Jeff Stahler for April 22, 2021

Yeah. I’m hoping that Chapter 5 has an asterisk: Back to* Death & Injustice

*Not quite so much… and trending better.

Let’s not go back to sleep on the issue of justice and equality.

Maybe one of those choose your own adventure books, but whatever once you choose and however long it takes to get to chapter 4, you’ll always hit chapter 1 again.

This is too simplistic. The reality is:

US history: Oppression of anyone that is not part of the so-called “whites” who use “race” and anything else they can think of to justify their hold on wealth and power. It is systematic. It is used to steal land from the native Americans, to oppress Asians, to enslave Africans. In Europe to justify the “Aryan master race” and to exterminate millions of Jews, Roma, Sinti, homosexuals, mentally handicapped and anyone that does not fit the image of the “master race”. The Nazi version was just an extreme version. The only difference to what has been going on the US and is still going on in the US is that they were more consequential, systematic and open about it. In the US the perpetrators of the “white” supremacy ideology hide behind religion and so-called conservative values. But in essence it is all the same thing: the belief that “whites” are superior to everyone else.

Do not use the terminology of supremacy. Do not use terms like “white”, black", “colored”. Eliminate any terms associated with supremacy from your vocabulary. Otherwise nothing can change and the ideology of supremacy just gets strengthened.

When I was a grade school kid about in the 4th grade I was to do a book report. I attended a four room grade school with a very small library of donated books and no librarian or check out cards. The book report had been assigned about two weeks earlier and I’d waited until the day before the report was due. I found a book about the life of Babe Ruth. A lot of pages at the back of the book were missing. Without telling my Dad why I was asking I inquired what he knew about Babe Ruth in his later life. Dad said he drank a lot of booze and was very popular with the ladies. The old lady teacher I think was born before 1900 or looked like she was . . . smiled as I gave my oral report and said she had seen that book and often wondered why it hadn’t been thrown away yet but now I must have found the missing pages with a smile on her face. The town had a population of 350 and she knew all the parents. Years later I found out she’d told the story to my folks.

Hopefully this book ends soon after 400 years before the country falls apart like a worn out book.

The “Rumor on the Right” as reported by FOX “news” is that Chauvin was innocent. The jury ONLY returned a guilty verdict because they feared BLM riots.

This says a lot about the right and FOX news – they are very good at projecting – Of course the verdict had to be rendered out of fear of property damage. It had NOTHING to do with justice. After all, to a Radical Right Winger, property rights are more important than human rights.

Did we just “Cancel Culture” on cops getting away with murder?

A very sad truth. A shame that taints our promise.

So long as we have a system where “Not Guilty” is the first thing we hear. Where legions of lawyers are salivating to defend the indefensible. Where solidarity is everything… justice is going to be sporadic at best.

Business as usual.

There’s a compelling short story in Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950) called “Way Up In The Air,” in which Earth’s entire black population leave the planet for Mars. Bradbury wrote a sequel, “The Other Foot,” in The Illustrated Man (1951), in which twenty years later the white population of Earth must appeal for their very survival to the new “Martians.” I suggest reading these two stories, while pondering “Justice” and if the outcome would be (or should be) as optimistic as Bradbury envisioned.

Will this be on the final?

I hope that the “5th chapter” doesn’t happen, but I fear it will. UNLESS all of us do something to keep it from happening. Please support any legitimate group who does try to stand up for ALL people. Your votes can help so use the ballot box. Your spare change can mount up to a worthwhile fund to promote tolerance, as well.

The bullet we seemed to have dodged is Trump’s following of the Nazi master plan. Dems have stalled it but there are still many vestiges of it in society. Never let your guard down.

Injustice has always existed, but with the use of video both by police officers and the public it’s become obvious far too many police call out commands to stop, put your hands up, drop the weapon as a formality before pulling the trigger, giving no time for people to actually comply, or even recognize the person is complying.

CH1: American Revolution…slavery stays in place; CH2: US Constitution signed…slavery stays in place; CH3: Civil War…slavery abolished, enter Jim Crow and KKK; CH4: Civil Rights movement, enter new discrimination laws and gerrymandering; CH5: TBP.

I believe you’re accurate here Jeff; sadly so :-(