America has committed many a crime it has never had to really atone for, but few of them reach the heights of the chattel slave trade of Africans. Even whilst our founders rebelled against the tyranny of the British, they only briefly considered freeing the slave. Thomas Jefferson originally penned a condemnation of slavery in the Declaration of Independence, but chose not to include it to appease southern slave owners. (And also because he kept slaves.)
The time honored question remains; how could a country that preached liberty and freedom see fit to maintain a slave trade that they knew was inhumane?
As we enter day *checks watch* 3,482,372.7 of the coronavirus pandemic, once again we have to observe that for all of it’s talk about liberty and freedom, what white people consider freedom and what the poor, people of color and marginalized minorities think freedom is are entirely different.
That difference is embodied by our giant, petty infant of a President. Here stands the leader of the free world, a man who most definitely did not want to become President, thrust into a role he neither deserves or cares enough about to try to understand. Trump was elected to the highest office in the land in large part due to his predecessor existing. Barack Obama was the culmination of literal centuries of African-American progress, the educated black child of a single mother, a man who so thoroughly believed in the concept of what America could be, or should be, even if it rarely was.
Barack Obama’s mere election was an affront to white people. Not Obamacare. Not the bailout. Not embracing gay marriage, or wearing a spiffy tan suit. A black man being President attacked white people’s entire concept of freedom.
I.E, the freedom to being as hateful, disdainful, and scared of progress as is possible, and to not suffer consequences of that.
Trump was birthed from that ooze. People ask what white folks see in Trump all the time. Does he have a patriotic message? Not really; his entire message is that America is crap and has been since at least the 1960s (ya know, when the Civil Rights Act passed). Is he a populist? No; in fact, Trump can not and will not shut up about how rich he is, and how he is the elite of the elite, and even if he can occasionally bring himself to rally blue collar white folks, you can never say that he’s doing so because he admires or even likes them. He says populist things not because he believes in them, but because he can say a certain combination of populist sounding words and white folks will cheer for him. Trump is more shallow than a puddle drying on a summer day.
No no, what white people see in Trump is their concept of freedom; the ability to do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you what, wherever you want, for any reason as long as it pleases you. Donald Trump is a sociopath and a narcissistic. He does not give a shit about anyone or anything, only himself. Trump is the ultimate beacon of white people’s concept of freedom.
I mean, think about it; what are the protests on state capitals by armed Americans threatening to “stand up to” (read: “shoot”) politicians really about? (I mean besides well monied far right-wing groups trying to make it look like there’s a large national movement against stay-at-home orders when there isn’t one.) Are they about wanting to get back to work? Yeah, maybe a little.
But mostly what they are about is the belief that they should have the choice on whether to get infected or not. They should have the choice over whether their loves ones get sick or not. They should have the choice to die, and for their families to die, and for other Americans who are potentially infected to die. They should have the freedom to live in a society that doesn’t make them wear masks and maintain 6 feet of distance and to wash their hands, because it should be their choice to do those things. Insisting that they stay-at-home has last to do with bills and more to do with not liking being told what to do.
White freedom is easily defined as not being required by society to give a fuck about anything, anyone, anyplace, anytime.
In most communities, “freedom” simply means being able to live well without fear that the color of your skin or your gender or your sexuality or your sex will hinder you in some way. The rest of us accept that in order to have something that vaguely resembles a functional society, we must all make sacrifices for the greater good. (THE GREATER GOOD.) It means on some level caring if your neighbor falls ill, or if their child dies in a school shooting, or even if they’re just having a good day.
Freedom for the rest of us means giving a fuck about other people and other things, even when we could be selfish, and hoping the world doesn’t shit on us for that belief.
Mike Pence didn’t wear a mask because “he gets regular coronavirus test and he isn’t sick“. Donald Trump doesn’t wear a mask because, he will assure you that he is the mostly healthiestly man who ever was president, no one before he was as healthy as him, did you see just the other day on the news someone from OAN who is real news, not the fake lamestream media news like CNN or the failing New York Times someone said that he was the most healthy president ever, can you believe that, that’s just what people are saying.
A security guard was shot and killed for asking someone to wear a mask. A 68-year-old grown ass man wiped his face on the shirt of a Dollar Tree employee for politely asking that he wears a mask. In Stillwater, Oklahoma, the city manager has to amend a proclamation requiring the use of masks after essential workers who are just doing their fucking jobs were threatened with acts of violence.
Each of these goons, whether they were white or white-adjacent (as in they believe freedom to mean not giving a fuck while not getting that white people could not care less about them), took it upon themselves to impose their special kind of freedom on people who’s only crime was politely asking them to think about someone other than themselves. To protect themselves and protect others. To simply ensure that more people don’t have to die from this thing.
The President of Not Giving a Fuck has already signaled he is bored with the coronavirus and is using his white freedom to simply ignore the problem. The comes as red states (ya know, the ones he needs to win to be re-elected, so he can continue to sit in the White House and not give a fuck while he trips toupee’ first into money he neither needs or has earned) are beginning to come to grips with outbreaks that are increasing exponentially, even as their governors claim that things must be open.
Even the ability to ignore COVID-19 is a result of white freedom.
The hard truth is that the United States probably is not doing enough to hasten the spread of the virus. Despite the fact the US (arguably) has been successful flattening the curve, the case numbers keep climbing and people keep dying. It’s past the point where “flattening the curve” should be our primary goal; now we have to actually try to suppress the virus.
We need contact tracing. We need to isolate those who are ill instead of just sending them back home to potentially infect their loved ones. We need large scale testing to track the places where the virus is at it’s worse. We need stricter terms for social distancing than ever, not a staggered approach to re-open. Mitigation only means keeping the virus at bay while hundreds of people a day still die; if we were at all serious about beating the coronavirus, we’d be in the suppression stage. We’d be willing to give up some of our freedoms in order to, ya know, actually stop the coronavirus from killing people.
But we won’t. Because the President doesn’t care. He wants to move on. He’s bored. And many of his supporters don’t care either, because their idea of freedom is to be divorced from a large community that works together towards the goal of making life livable. They can dismiss it as an east coast issue, or a virus that only kills old people, or a disease that mostly targets black people, or that it’s only because blue states are inherently bad at taking care of anything, because then they don’t have to care.
It’s an over there issue. In Whitefreedomland, every citizen does not have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Instead, they decide who gets to live and die, who gets the right to exercise liberty, and the only way to experience true happiness is to make sure that they are the only ones who experience it.
43 states will have begun to re-open by the end of the week. Many small business owners will return to work and see less customer traffic than ever, only now, instead of merely wondering how to pay rent, they will have to pay for electricity, running water, and payroll for employees. Big corporations will simply reduce their workforces to make up the costs of being open when no one wants to shop. The economy will not bounce back. Unemployment numbers will still skyrocket. Hundreds of thousands of people will get sick; thousands more will die.
And in the decades, or the centuries to follow, most people will look back at America’s appalling reaction to this latest tragedy, and the amount of deaths that were preventable, and shake their heads out how stupid and ignorant the country was.
The rest of them will be white people, and they will without a shadow of a doubt ask “why should I be judged by what my great-great-grandparents did”?
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I’m really worried that these fucks are going to start shooting up hospitals when their family members inevitably fall ill…
Same, my friend.
Same.
“But mostly what they are about is the belief that they should have the choice on whether to get infected or not. They should have the choice over whether their loves ones get sick or not. They should have the choice to die, and for their families to die, and for other Americans who are potentially infected to die. “
Exactly. It’s why we’re doing stupid ass shit like this.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-parties-walla-walla/281-3f983c32-3b6a-48f8-8ee0-bc6cff3881ec
When I was a kid our parents did that with chicken pox. But we don’t know enough about this virus to know whether there is such thing as immunity. It’s scary reading comments in my timeline from people who don’t know what they don’t know.
That’s exactly what I was thinking when I saw it this morning. The chicken pox parties of my childhood.
WTF Walla Walla? I love Walla Walla but then again I am just drinking wine there. Lots of farmers & rednecks & lots of very religious Trumpsters in between wine snobs & Hispanic farm workers. Messed up!
Great article KC, you nailed it. If these fuckers want freedom to go out & get the virus we should have the freedom to not treat them at the hospitals. Sign a waiver & u can go do whatever you want but are not welcome anywhere we are trying to do the right thing.
I’m hoping enough of them won’t bother to go to the hospitals because it’s “just the flu.”
I have been saying this since this all got real to the sensible among us, but I will say it again: for these chuckleheads to realize that this shit is not a game, literally every family in the country will have to lose someone, like a biblical plague. It isn’t enough to see dead bodies being loaded into temporary morgues. It isn’t enough for your brother’s girlfriend’s neighbor’s yoga instructor to have died from it. It has to hit home in every one of these houses. I have been in medicine for 18 years and I am doing shit I never expected to do, 6 days a week, every week for the last 8 weeks. Any of them are welcome to drop their AR-15s and come walk a shift with me. I start rounds at 6:30a, sharp.
…someone invoked Pascal’s wager elsewhere already & I’d probably call myself an agnostic by inclination…but if you think it’d do you any good I’d pray for you & everyone else working those shifts
…if I’m honest I think it seems like you’re underappreciated even in the good times so I know it ain’t much but, sincerely, thank you for what you do
…& I’m sorry there are hard of thinking assholes out there to trying to make it harder…would that there were anything I could do about that
To white people, freedom also means freedom from discomfort and inconvenience.
If I come across a person refusing to wear a mask and making one fucking peep about how stupid masks are, I’m going to pull mine down and cough in their fucking face.
As always, EXCELLENT post KC!
I just want to add a couple points:
For some of these bags-o-dicks, it’s *also* a matter of wanting the privilege of having folks serve them again…. waiters/waitresses/bartenders, store clerks, hairdressers/barbers, in some cases, even strippers.
These middle-aged white dudes *miss* having folks wait on them… serve them… have their time and finances *controlled* to an extent by them.
The power and control these asshats felt, by bossing those folks around (whether as the dickbag boss, or the jerk-ish customer) is another thing they desperately miss & want back.
They’re the SAME dudes who used to talk down to me, presuming I was uneducated & “on welfare,” when I was selling pulltabs as a part-time fun job while working a 40hr/week dayjob, when I kept the pulltab job as I went back to college, or as they bitched to me about their servers & bartenders being “lazy” and “probably single moms on welfare”(when those women ALSO typically did those jobs as a part-time gig while working 40-hour dayjobs *or* going to college fulltime🤨).
The dudes bitching & whining the loudest–like Trump–are typically the laziest motherfuckers in the room–who assume that *everyone else is lazy and looking to just do the least work possible,* because that’s THEIR m.o.
And they can’t imagine that other folks intrinsically HAVE values & work ethics, since *they* don’t.
On the generational/future guilt,though, I WILL freely admit that–aside from trying to lift up voices, get my own ass out of the way, and shut the fuck up, I *don’t* know how to fully make amends for the shitty things my (white) ancestors have done.
So aside from pushing hard on folks to admit the truth, I’ve got no good ideas for today’s eventual grandkids.
Because, YES, I know that there isn’t a doubt in my mind, that some of my own ancestors owned people… there is little to be found right now, about the Dutch *West* India Company… but as the sister organization to the Dutch *East* India Company–the folks who brought the Slave Trade to the US, I have no doubt that my ancestor who was a company secretary was involved in the trafficking of people. His father, who was apparently a Dutch Burgher, was involved in the “purchase” of Manhattan Island… and then there’s the Scot, conscripted by the British Army, and forced to fight, who stayed after the Revolution, and married into “A wealthy Virginia family”–aka a slave-owning family…
There’s *nothing* concrete yet that I can point to, and say “YEP, these folks owned people!” But ALL the likelihood is there…
I hate it. It sickens me…. but I don’t know, yet, if there’s a way I CAN ever make it all the way right… aside from trying to stand up when I see bullshit, and call it out today, and work so that the tinies I work with *don’t* have to face that same bullshit.
I work with them, and I teach *them* as best I can, so that THEY don’t need to make all the same mistakes we have. I act like “an explainer” to help shit make sense, and I also try my hardest, whenever possible,to instill a solid moral compass–because I KNOW my kiddos tend to be literalists (like me!😉😈), and that they can either become easily swayed by the dark side, or taught to stand for sunshine,good,and light…
But it’s never going to absolve the horror committed by some of my ancestors.
It just won’t.
I mean…just collectively as a country, America has never dealt with slavery. The Reconstruction era of post-Civil War America was the closest we got to trying to reckon with it, and white southerners burned all that progress to the ground. Just as African Americans were beginning to take foot holds in the government and build up their business, white southerners destroyed all that progress, and white northerners moved to appease them rather than punish them.
So there was never this moment in history where America had to grapple with the actual costs of slavery. White folks made sure it never happened.
There are no easy solutions for how modern white people can make amends for the actions (or inaction) of their ancestors. The fact that it took America having a black President for the United States government to even formally apologize for slavery speaks volume. And the tone deafness over reparations from Democrats (including black candidates) speaks louder still.
I think any Progressive should be in favor of some form of economic reparations for black people, be they as a new Civil Rights Act bill that restores much of the damage the Supreme Court has done to it, or economic reparations of some sort. And I think Native Americans should get the same as well. (Few things made me as mad as when Bernie said he didn’t think the US should give reparations to black folks because “then you’d have to do it for Native Americans too”, and I was was like “YEAH, EXACTLY”.)
…I’ve had a few conversations around the idea of reparations with a few different people over the years & I’ve had a degree of feeling like some responses align a bit uncomfortably with “so we’re saying you takes your check this one time…& then we don’t talk about all them other times ever again – we good?”
…so I guess I tend to think maybe there might be more to be gained by way of making a series of less singular steps more by way of permanent resources than individual payments?
…if education outcomes have historically favored the white kids & things like the UNCF have been attempts to do something to redress that would not similar steps to help overcome & eventually reverse the consequences of things like redlining or the relative rate at which different demographics have access to the kinds of investment & capital that allows for the whole entrepreneur approach to business & the accumulation of wealth make some kind of sense?
I mean…”reparations” could take a lot of forms. It’s hard to say “don’t make it monetary in some way”, but…for example, re-instituting bussing and reintegrating schools would be a great first step. Discouraging white people from fleeing areas where minority populations are growing and destroying the tax base would be another.
Investment in black communities that revitalizes areas while also not kicking out black folks and building expensive housing for white people, a program that allows black people to gain capital to start small business without discrimination, improved regulation that makes it even harder for banks to turn down well qualified black applicants. Like there are a lot of economic incentives that could be reparations, but the conversation kind of revolves around a one time cash pay out black people, and politicians say that’s a non-starter.
…I guess I was a little clumsy about it but that second paragraph is kind of what I think I was trying to get at?
…I didn’t mean to imply that paying out some actual money you can hold in your hand would be a bad thing so much as that reducing the question to a one time payment that somehow is supposed to thereafter absolve the beneficiaries of a history of injustice from needing to make any further accommodations on that basis always strikes me as wrong on a number of levels
…the schools thing is likewise a good point & I didn’t mean to suggest that the one fund had the academic thing covered…but I’m aware I tend to go on a bit & I was trying to restrict myself to a non-crazy amount of typing this time around?
There was explicit redlining where I live, in which African Americans were only allowed to rent/buy in certain communities. Those lines provide a road map for locations that should receive investments in education, small business loans, housing stock renovation that could be made available to minority buyers at favorable rates, as well as straight cash payments. It’s just that Whites don’t want to do it.
“freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”
…the joplin version, surely?
…poor old kris…it’s like nobody remembers he wrote the thing
I think that was a bit of a “fuck you” from Janis to Kris. They used to live together and had a bad break up, IIRC.
…could be…there’s another version of hers from a few years later than woodstock that has her saying something that sounds affectionate about him when she points out it’s one of his songs before she sings it…but I can totally see how that would make sense & now that you mention it it does kind of ring a bell?
> …poor old kris…it’s like nobody remembers he wrote the thing
I do! I just like johnny cash’s rendition more. I would say: 1. cash, 2. kris, 3. janice. for me. I love the man in black so much!
What about the Grateful Dead cover?
I knew of its existence…
Just wow. This is straight up, undiluted, unfiltered, concentrated Truth.
Damn.
Bravo.