The Next Civil War Didn’t Start Last Week, It Wasn’t Even Close.
So last week I wrote about the many Civil Wars we’ve had in America, and that same day, a group of “fine” Americans attempted to start another.
The problem with being white in America, and thinking you have the justification of starting a civil war, is just that: you don’t have justification.
White Americans think they have everything so bad. But it’s all in their head. It’s all in their sick, sick minds. They don’t know “nothin’” about having it bad!
A feeling of distrust for government, is not enough to fight for!
We’ve had several cold Civil Wars in America. Last week’s puny effort was no civil war. Deranged factions of white supremacists, QAnon conspiracy theorists, and disillusioned police and former military, do not give you the internal fortitude to fight a war.
It is paper thin bluster. It is nothing.
To fight and endure a real civil war you must have real suffering. You must have experienced real hurt and pain from real antagonists.
None of these people milling around in DC last week have suffered such.
And that’s where I give you the start of this country’s 4th Civil War.
Starting around 1916 and running throughout the 1960s, six million African Americans migrated from the sharecropping farms and industrial challenged cities of the South. The industrial revolution was in full effect in the North, and jobs were plenty.
As a result, northern cities’ populations swelled, and northern cities’ governments by and large, failed.
And so began the ill fated policing policies which would lead to a systemic breakdown in managing race relations over the next 100 years.
We all see in our mind’s eye how it happens. White people in the North are no less racist than white people in the South. And hence while outright Jim Crow laws weren’t allowed to be passed, the beginning of “wink-wink,” more sinister personal racism, rose to the surface.
White flight from the cities, led to neighborhoods gradually becoming poorer over time. White landlords would eventually turn into slum lords. And government housing would soon be monopolized by those same white people.
These neighborhoods would also bear the brunt of the rise of drugs in America, particularly starting in the 1970’s as heroin and later crack cocaine would gobble up whole families.
This might surprise you to hear me say, but sans African Americans, the police would have been the least paid actors in this cyclical drama of race in America.
Because it was the police who were stuck between the rich landlords and politicians and the Black American, just trying to survive life in the ghetto.
Three Strikes Laws in the 1990’s aimed at curbing crime and drug use did one thing. It filled up prisons. Life sentences for marijuana distribution was not unusual. Overwhelmingly those convictions were Black Americans.
1n 2010, 40% of the jail, state, and federal prison population of the U.S. was Black. 40 percent! Even though Black people only make up 13 percent of the population! The incarceration rate for black people over white people was five times as high! Five times!
You might think the election of Barrack Obama, in 2008 ended the 4th Civil War. It did not. It rages on.
The murder of African American George Floyd, at the hands of Minneapolis policeman, outraged finally, Americans of all races. The ranks of Black Lives Matter grew with a rainbow of people. But even those demonstrations, in hundreds of cities, with millions of people, during this past year, did not end the 4th Civil War. It rages on.
This Civil War of oppression and submission will continue long into the future. And though statistics support some easing of the proportionality of jailed populations, we aren’t finished by a long shot.
And the answers will probably come from where you least expect it. Chris Rock has an interesting anecdote regarding aggressive policing.
He says, and I paraphrase, “Some professions can’t have bad apples! Pilots? No!!!! You can’t have a bad apple pilot!”
I think most police would probably tell you the same. Heck we saw it in Washington D.C. last week, with not only non-local police participating in the riot, but some capitol police taking selfies and allowing it to happen!
All the while the “good apples” are getting fire extinguishers thrown at them!
You all know what I’m talking about! Anyone in any town, especially small towns, rolls back home for Christmas only to find out Slug Johnson is now a cop? He was the bully on the school bus in 10th grade! How’s he a cop now?
Bad Apples.
But, at their pay, and for what they are tasked with doing, how in the world do you employ the good apples?
Pay more? Oh yeah. Dramatically more.
Train better? Oh yeah. Dramatically better.
But I don’t hear anyone talking about that. And until we do. This war rages on.
Next week, the beginning of the 5th American Civil War.