“…Who are you better than?” by Jinx

I have been getting more and more disgusted with the behavior of some of “my fellow Americans” over the past year or so. The bile and hatred spewed forth by previously mild mannered grandmas and quiet every day Joes and Janes is just amazing to me.

One of the members at my Out of the Woods board posted a link to the following post that I’m going to tease-quote here in a minute. Beware! It has some harsh and non-G-rated language in it. It should be read, anyway. The poster, Jinx, is trying to explain why there has been this increase in hatred and even violence of late. It’s an enlightened post, in my opinion. I wish I had written it. Read it. Tell me what you think about it.

Originally posted at the Adventure Rider forums.

“…who are you better than?”

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Quote:

“You know when I was a little boy, there was an old negro farmer that lived down the road from us, named Monroe. He was … (subtle laugh), I guess he was just a little more luckier than my daddy was. He bought himself a mule.”

“It was a big deal in round that town. Now my daddy hated that mule. Cause, his friends were always kidding him about, ‘They say Monroe out plowing with his new mule and Monroe is going to rent another field now he had a mule.'”

“One morning that mule showed up dead. They poisoned the water. After that, there wasn’t any mention about that mule around my daddy. It just never came up. One time we were driving down that road and we passed Monroe’s place and we saw it was empty. He just packed up and left, I guess, he must of went up north or something.”

“I looked over at my daddy’s face, I knew he done it. He saw that I knew. He was ashamed. I guess he was ashamed. He looked at me and said, ‘If you ain’t better than a nigger son, who are you better than?'” – Agent Anderson, Mississippi Burning

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And welcome to the Tea-hadist mindset. With Barack Obama in charge…who are you going to be better than?

And don’t think some of us recognize the symptom because we are a pack of condescending know-it-all asshats. We are…but that has fuck-all to do with the observation.

It’s just that we have seen this before. Up North…in our so-called “enlightened” neck of the woods.

Want to know the difference between North and South? Well, a man once told me that up North, it is OK to have a Black as your boss, but you will be damned if you will have one for a neighbor. Down South, it is OK to have a Black neighbor…but you will damned if you will have one as a boss.

So we went through all this Tea Party nonsense up North, about 35-45 years ago. And the reaction was just as vehement, inarticulate, and dumb as what is being spewed now. If you want to see hate and spittle, you should have seen how South Boston reacted to school integration.

But you would not have seen it 24/7 as you do today. It happened…but not in a perpetual echo chamber. And thank Christ for that.

Please follow this link to read the rest of this interesting and though-provoking post at the Adventure Rider forums.

Hate brought us The Inquisition. Hate brought us Nazi Germany. Hate brought us Uncle Joe Stalin and the 20 million he sent to oblivion. Hate currently drives misguided people to put high explosives in their Fruit-of-the-Looms in order to blow up jet liners full of innocent people. Don’t hate. Life’s too damned short to be spending it hating one another.

Rock on!

~Eric