America Will Be Twelve Countries Very Soon

A map of the USA, re-imagined as 12 nations.

Written by Jared Brock and published in Medium.com 11/16/2021

Have you been following the situation in Ethiopia?

Of course you haven’t.

No one has the time or mental fortitude to endure the unending amount of conflict that happens between human beings on planet earth.

The only reason I keep up with Ethiopia is that’s where my wife grew up.

Briefly: Colonialists left Africa in a terrible state, in which various tribes were smashed together into single nations, while others sought to grab new territory in the wake of colonial retrenchment.

Ethiopia is one of those latter places (but also was kinda-sorta colonized by Italy, which is why it still has such great pasta. It’s complicated.)

Home to five official languages and eighty different ethnic groups, Ethiopia is a powder keg for conflict with a growing population and depleting resources. One people group has already managed to splinter off: Eritrea’s independence from Ethiopia came at the high price of 250,000 people dead.

Now, essentially two tribes in Ethiopia — Tigray in the north, Oromo in the south — are trying to destroy each other. The Tigrayans are an ancient Spartan-style warrior tribe, and they’re so desperate for self-rule that they’ve started killing Ethiopian citizens. Things have gotten so bad that the Prime Minister of Ethiopia has ordered all military to protect the capital from falling, and is sending in Turkish combat drones. In twenty years, we might look back on the conflict and call it the next Rwanda.

It makes you wonder:

Maybe Ethiopia would be better off as two, ten, or even eighty smaller nations.

It’s the same all over the world:

Spain’s arcane monarchy oppresses several nations including Andalusia, Aragon, Asturias, Basque Country, Castile, Catalonia, Galicia, León, Navarre, Valencia, and Aran Valley.
Anglophone Canada just celebrated its 150th anniversary a few years ago, but it rules over a French-speaking nation that’s 400 years old.
A certain 1.45 billion-person Eastern nation that cannot be named rules over at least four other countries with brutal authoritarian force.
Want peace in the Middle East? Try a nine-state solution.
The United Kingdom is a laughable misnomer. The Welsh hate the English. The Scottish hate the English. The Cornish hate the English. Half the Northern Irish just call themselves Irish. The United Kingdom contains at least five countries, and all are essentially colonies of the City of London Corporation.
There are more than five thousand Indigenous nations across the globe, totaling nearly half a billion people.

The gig is up

Young people are waking up to an obvious fact that many older folks (especially those who murdered people who carried a different team flag) simply cannot fathom:

Nations are legal fictions.

Just bits of paper and a bunch of people who agree to play by the paper’s rules.

Yes, there are some benefits to nationalism.

There are also heavy costs.

People are rightly starting to question the value of nation-states as they are currently arranged.

What is the purpose of a nation?

To preserve a unique culture?
To express a political ideology?
To propagate a religion?
To organize an economy?

At the end of the day, I believe every nation is just an experiment in what it means to live well.

And currently, almost every nation on earth is on a downward trajectory, if not failing miserably.

The end of big countries

Large nations are unwieldy.

The bureaucracy it takes to run a 300+ million person nation proves economically inefficient in the extreme.

Democracy crumbles because it’s hard to get real representation at scale.

And there are so many disparate opinions that disagreements become intractable.

When working together inevitably fails, one party dominates through coercion, violence, or worse.

In a nuclear age where going to war will destroy everyone and everything, there’s no longer a need to have a vast population to defend your borders.

We just don’t need big countries anymore.

An introduction to Tinyism

“Tinyism is a political philosophy that believes current empires and nations should be fractured, shattered, and dissolved into thousands of independent micro-states and city-states. This action would vastly improve democracy and enhance economies — recent statistics indicate small nations are usually the happiest, wealthiest, and most peaceful.” — Hank Pellissier

Here’s my prediction:

Within one hundred years, there will be at least one hundred new nations on planet earth.

But there could be plenty more.

After all, there are 650 major ethnic groups, about 9,800 cultural-ethno-linguistic groups, and up to 24,000 unimax groups.

(Plus there are 108,000 publicly-listed corporations, all of which will be chomping for a private domain in the years ahead… and not one should get it.)

Why shouldn’t ethnic groups have the right to self-sovereignty, especially for the hundreds who’ve had their sovereignty stolen? Isn’t it inherently racist for one ethnicity to impose its will on another ethnic group?

After a major disruptive event — a colossal economic depression, a cyberwar or solar flare that knocks out the grid for a year or more, or a supervolcano that causes years of winter — we could see the emergence of tens of thousands of new sovereignties.

And that would be a very good thing.

In praise of tiny

When you have a smaller population, you can have a smaller bureaucracy.

When you have a smaller population, you can have more representation and democracy.

When you have a smaller population, you can avoid getting pushed around by groups that don’t share your values.

When you have a smaller population, you can better preserve unique cultures, races, religions, economic systems, histories, societal structures, and experiments in what it means to live well.

When you have a smaller population, you can have fewer rules, fewer laws, and more freedom.

And if you don’t like your tiny country, you now have far more other options to choose from.

“But what about national defense?!”

It’s a legitimate fear, but it’s worth noting that small nations are some of the safest nations on earth.

And luckily, returns to violence are drastically decreasing in the digital economy. There’s just less stuff to steal and fewer resources to exploit.

Quite paradoxically, being more “vulnerable” makes you learn to get along. New sovereignties will do well to form an alliance with hundreds of other city-states. Like NATO, attacking one would be like attacking all. Plus, new sovereignties will move swiftly to ink trade deals with hundreds of other nations to further increase the cost of war and the value of peace.

Pretty soon, everyone will get along because there’s no other choice.

The return of the city-state

The world is urbanizing and power is accruing to cities. Already in America, we’re seeing mayors defy state and national mandates in order to protect and defend their citizens (or just rebel for political reasons, depending on your point of view.)

There’s no reason to think that many cities won’t eventually just become laws unto themselves.

I’m excited for this to happen. After all, some of the most beautiful places on earth started out as tiny little cities, and their historic urban cores are still beautiful all these centuries later:

Paris was 25 acres.
Athens was 35 acres.
Lille was 60 acres.
Vatican City is 109 acres.
Oxford was 115 acres.
Old Jerusalem is 225 acres.
The City of London is 330 acres.
Monaco is 499 acres.
Rome was 608 acres.
The walls of Avila, one of the most gorgeous sights on earth, surround just 77 acres.

What will become of America?

Nearly half of all Americans want to secede from the union in one direction or another.

And that’s perfectly within their rights as human beings.

Others protest loudly that the union must be preserved at all costs. But they never seem to answer the all-important question:

What are we actually trying to preserve?

Our lack of shared values?
The sham of democracy?
McDonald’s and apple pie and baseball?

Think long and hard about this question — no matter what conclusion you reach, you’ll find that it simply doesn’t resonate with the majority of Americans.

And what’s preferable: A few dozen independent countries, or another civil war?

(31% of Americans think a civil war is likely within the next five years, with Democrats thinking it’s more likely.)

So why not take the bloated carcass that is the American corporatocracy and carve it up into a handful of actual democracies?

With any luck, we could see some pretty amazing things come out of the USA:

Washington and Oregon will become Cascadia and rebuild the rainforest.
Utah will rename itself Deseret and grab a chunk of Nevada.
New England will be the world’s purveyor of blueberries, maple syrup, and winter skiing adventures.
32% of Californians already support Calexit, which will make it the fifth-biggest economy in the world (ahead of the UK, France, Italy, India, and hundreds more.)
The Plains Nation will continue to feed the world as a giant agrarian commune, likely swarmed with bitcoin-loving libertarian “sovereign individuals.”
Texas (or rather, the Hispanic-majority República de Tejas) will have the eleventh largest military on earth, the tenth-largest economy, its own power grid, and enough solar and wind power to be a net clean energy exporter.
Las Vegas will obviously become the American Amsterdam.
Minorities will pour out of Dixie, plunging the Deep South into social chaos and economic depression — and perhaps the Confederacy will finally learn the lessons they were supposed to learn from the Civil War. (Or maybe it becomes New Afrika and all the whites head for Florida.)
New York City CorpTM (12th-largest economy) will become the first city-state with skyscrapers to be fully underwater due to rising sea levels.

What’s compelling about Tinyism is that the more experiments we run, the more we’ll discover what works and doesn’t work. Clearly, Sweden is better than North Korea. But is the Texan way better than the California way? With Tinyism, we’ll know pretty quickly. In that sense, Tinyism is almost free-market, with the political “market” being democracy itself.

“But it’s unconstitutional!”

…

So?

Tinyism is inevitable

Have you noticed that society is fracturing?

Do you think that extreme left wokies are ever going to find common ground with ultra-right Q-Anoners?

It’s just not going to happen.

There will come a day when the USA falls apart.
Will it be a massive economic depression?
The Yellowstone Caldera finally erupting?
Donald Trump becoming President whether he’s elected or not?

Even without a mega-event, there’s an unstoppable tide that all but guarantees a breakdown of these united states: Individualism.

Individualism, by its very nature, is an anti-culture.

As Russ Linton put it:

“Decentralization and blockchain tech will ensure this happens. Fiat currencies will be worthless and with that, the power of a nation-state largely evaporates. DAO communities, both digitally and geographically-bound, are what the future holds.”

We in the rich West have enjoyed a lifetime of unlimited selection, and this atomization mentality will eventually seep its way into politics. As the speed of change escalates, it could happen far sooner than we think.

And that’s okay.

I believe in the unconditional right of cultural and communal (but not corporate) sovereignty, and support all independence efforts toward Tinyism, so long as the leaving party takes their fair portion of the national debt and repays all federal infrastructure investment.

The key will be to have some kind of pre-agreed-upon sorting/transition process, like a peaceful version of the Hindustan breakup into India and Pakistan, followed by hopefully-less-dysfunctional EU (but without a shared currency) so the states all get along as the founding fathers intended.

Obviously, none of this is going to happen. The corporate predator elites who control the USA have a vested interest in keeping America together so they can wield its collective might overseas. Tinyism in America will only work once Tinyism sets in everywhere (especially in Ch!na.) We need a huge drop in returns to violence before unique cultures can become sovereign nations. Only then will smaller countries be allowed to flourish. And do you know what? It’s going to seem impossible until the very moment it seems obvious. Change is a long time coming and then it happens overnight.)

(But let’s be honest: It’s probably just as likely that we’ll all be dead from climate change, nuclear winter, or widespread “free”market-induced poverty.)

Still, Tinyism could create a great leap forward in human innovation, creativity, and culture-making, as real democracies create real diversity, reversing our long and boring descent into multinational sameness.

I’m cheering for a twenty-nation America and a 10,000-nation earth.

It’s either that, or we become a corporate-controlled one-nation earth where everyone conforms or gets crushed.

And no one wants that.

Some People vs Most People

An ode to optimism.

Written by Steve QJ and published in Medium.com 11/15/2021

I’ve noticed a trend lately. In every conversation about discrimination or politics or social justice, every time it’s suggested that society is getting better, or that attitudes are improving or that humanity isn’t irredeemably evil, somebody will start talking about “some people”.

Those scumbags.

Oh, you think the world is less racist than it was 60 years ago? Well, some people are still burning crosses on black people’s lawns. You think it’s possible to overcome hatred with compassion and reason? Well, some people are incapable of either. You think society is steadily becoming more tolerant? Well, some people (some women) still think women shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

Sadly, it’s all true.

Some people are racist and sexist and all the other flavours of bigoted. Some people will lie and cheat and kill each other over pocket change. By every measure, in every demographic, with no rhyme or reason, “some people” are the worst.

But it’s also true that most people aren’t.

Most people care about equality. Most people support universal healthcare and increasing the minimum wage and taking more decisive action on climate change. Most people are too busy trying to live their lives to have the time or inclination to make anybody else’s harder.

Most people take racism seriously (even if they disagree on how to fix it). Most people think gender equality is important (even those who wouldn’t describe themselves as feminists). Most people understand that the colour of a person’s skin or who they love or the configuration of their genitalia doesn’t matter.

Most people aren’t so bad.

But it doesn’t always feel that way. Mainly because the information we consume is perfectly optimised to convince us that “some people” (or more precisely a few people) are most people.

“Some people” make us feel angry and scared and, let’s be honest, superior. “Some people” drive clicks and comments and advertising dollars to websites. “Some people” inspire that most profitable of all emotions on social media; outrage.

That’s why you’re more likely to hear that some police officers kill civilians with impunity, than that most of them have never even fired their weapon. You’re more likely to see videos of some protestors looting and rioting and burning buildings to the ground, than hear that most (by which I mean nearly all) protests are orderly and peaceful.

And over a year after he left office, you’re still more likely to see clickbait about “some people” thinking Donald Trump is going to be magically reinstated as president, than be reminded that, in both elections, most people didn’t even vote for him.

Keeping the difference between “some people” and most people clear in our minds isn’t about blind optimism. It’s not about pretending there isn’t real injustice and suffering and evil in the world. History has shown us time and time again that there’s no limit to how low “some people” are willing to sink or how deluded they’re capable of being.

It’s about being deliberate about where we direct our focus. It’s about understanding the size and the nature of the problems we face so we aren’t swallowed by despair. It’s about recognising that no society ever healed itself with cynicism and apathy and outrage.

It may not always feel like it, but those of us who care about decency and fairness and building a better world? We are most people. We just need to act on it. We need to stop being afraid to stand up to the bullies and puritans on Twitter. We need to be willing to talk to each other. Even, no, especially when it’s difficult.

Some people don’t think it’s worth the effort. But most people? Well, that’s up to us.

Another Civil War in America?

Is America Heading Towards Another Civil War?

Trumpists are Growing More Violent, As America’s Differences Grow More Irreconcilable

Written by Umair Haque and published in Medium.com 11/1/2021

There’s a question that’s been eating away at me. I’ve tried not to ask it, but it keeps coming back to haunt me. It’s an ugly one, a difficult one. I’d bet, perhaps, that it’s occurred to you, too. It goes like this. Is America headed for a second civil war?

Before you object to me even asking, or call me “alarmist,” as so many Americans love to do even as their nation collapses, let me outline why this question keeps on eating away at me. And while you do, bear in mind, that I’ve lived through civil wars, and studied them, too. America today reminds me of those collapsed societies I was unlucky enough to grow up in. There’s something going badly wrong in America today. But just how wrong?

There are five reasons I think there’s a distinct possibility America’s headed towards another civil war. In fact, may already be in one — as my brilliant Twitter followers are calling it, a “cold civil war”— so let’s begin there.

I read a statistic today that finally made ask the question out loud. Like so many of today’s statistics, it’s shocking, grim, and yet unsurprising, all at the same time. Four out of ten Republicans who believe the election was stolen think political violence is justified. And let me remind you, a whole 70% of Republicans still think the election was stolen from Trump.

Think about that for a second. Four out of ten Trumpists support violence as a means to address their political grievances. Those are incredibly dire numbers.

Let me put them in perspective. If we saw them in any other society, we’d say: that society is on the brink of civil war. That’s the same level of widespread, mass-scale support for violence that existed in, probably, the Balkans. In African genocides. In Islamic sectarian conflicts. In fact, in many of those places, and at those times, there was less support for violence.

Imagine seeing a headline that said: “40% of Germans support violence to resolve political differences.” You’d shudder — and think of Nazism. Or think of reading “40% of the Dutch (or Swedish, or Danish) back violence on a mass social scale.” It’d be faintly ridiculous, because today those are happy, trusting societies. To really drive the point home, imagine “40% of Canadians support large-scale political violence.” LOL — Canadians are nice.

But all that should put in perspective how eerily wrong it is to see such statistics in America. Where else do we see numbers like “40% of one of two political sides support large-scale violence to attain their authoritarian ends”? Only in failed states. Serious, hardcore failed states. It’s hard to even find other examples today. Not even in Pakistan or India or Nigeria would you see such numbers — which is how shocking this finding really is.

And yet it’s also, like I said, unsurprising. Why? Because something’s in the air. Something poisonous. And we all know it. We can see it. Many of us are experiencing it. Americans are at each others’ throats. The culture wars are spilling over into real harm, violence, intimidation.

Americans’ cultural differences appear to be irreconcilable. What cultural differences are those? Well, one side — you know which — still wants America to be something very much like a supremacist, segregated, patriarchal state, where women and minorities are second-class citizens, if even that much. The other wants something less than a social democracy, but at least some semblance of an open, modern democracy. Now, the side which wants America to be a supremacist state has always wanted that, and appears totally unwilling to give up on it.

Hence, all those now infamous school-board wars. Moms and dads — perfectly seemingly normal ones — erupt in rage at teachers and school administrators. It’s murderous rage, too. They threaten their lives. Over what? Over having kids read books about slavery. Little Johnny’s feelings were hurt. He cried. He had nightmares. Because he was told how horrific it really was to enslave people, to genocide them over centuries. Wait — who’s the snowflake now?

American pundits have gussied all this up in a kind of tacky lingerie. They’ll tell you that one side is “opposed to critical race theory,” and the other isn’t. Don’t kid yourself. Teaching kids that slavery is bad is what American conservatives object to — as is the idea that America was founded a slave state, that many of its founding fathers were part of the enterprise of mass subjugation, and that even today, the benefits of all those centuries of supremacy accrue to a certain social group of people.

None of that’s remotely “critical race theory.” Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” the book in question which has fuelled these conflicts among neighbours, isn’t some kind of textbook about critical race theory. It’s just a book about what it was like to be a slave.

So these cultural wars aren’t really about abstruse theories or even “wokeness.” Not really. They’re about the same old things that America’s always been conflicted about. Supremacy. Hate. Greed. And violence, to attain those ends.

All those parents shouting at teachers and school administrators want to ban books. What kind of society does that remind you of? North Korea. Iran. The Soviet Union. Don’t kid yourself that this is some kind of academic fight about “theory.” It’s about the same old thing: hate, and the “freedom” to live in a hateful way, to reproduce, to teach your kids that supremacy and hate are virtues, too, just like you were taught, that you’re superior by virtue of purity of blood and faith, and everyone else is inferior, not a “real American.”

Now. The problem is this. Those differences are irreconcilable. Let’s take an example of where those school board fights have led. Now a place like Northern Virginia is riven. That might strike you as irrelevant, but it shouldn’t, because Northern Virginia is about the closest thing America has to Canada or Europe. It’s full of people from around the globe, who enjoy functioning public services, and enjoy, by and large, happy and stable lives.

But now things are different. “Youngkin” signs line the yards — of some people. In case you don’t know, he’s a mini-Trump. Now you know that your neighbours are racists. Supremacists. That they want their kids to have power over yours. The power to abuse and subjugate your kids, too. They think that their kids’ feelings being hurt by being taught the truth about slavery is more important than…the truth about slavery. Which means, of course, that slavery and supremacy and hate can’t matter very much at all, or teaching kids that they’re wrong. So plenty of Virginians, it turns out, even affluent ones, want to raise their kids to be little Southerners, of the old world — racist, hateful, violent, brutal, stupid. How do you live with that? Can you?

Let me say it again. These differences are irreconcilable. They’re not just about a culture war, but about something much deeper. Let me give you a parallel or two to explain why they’re so important.

Why did the Islamic World, for example — one among many — keep on melting down into civil war? Because one sect believed it was superior. And everyone else was inferior. By virtue of purity of faith and blood. In other words, your impurity wasn’t something you could change. The only option possible for you was surrender. You accepted the domination of those “superior” to you, or else. Or else what? Or else it was time for serious, serious violence.

Those difference were irreconcilable. Such differences are always irreconcilable. You cannot negotiate in good faith with fanatics and supremacists. If someone believes that they are inherently superior to you, and deserves the power to abuse you, to dominate you, to subjugate you — well, then where does that leave you? Where does that leave a society? The only option for most such societies is that they erupt into violence. I gave you the example of the Islamic world, but it could have just as easily been the Balkans, or Africa’s failed states, or Latin America’s endless implosions. You can’t negotiate with people who want you enslaved, subjugated, dead.

And it’s no joke to say that that is what Trumpists want. It’s no exaggeration. No hyperbole. Let’s think about it together.

We now know that 40% of Trumpists back using violence. To what? To attain their political ends. But what are their political ends? To put Trump into power. Why? Not because Trump is a nice guy, or a wonderful leader, or even that he’s going to fix America. But because Trump is a textbook demagogue.

What’s a “textbook demagogue”? Someone who scapegoats minorities and demonises others for the woes of the pure and true. In other words, the Trumpists want Trump in power because he is a supremacist. Think about what Trump does (if you even have to.) He looks at America, sees a broken country, ignores the plight of the most powerless — Black people, Native Americans, the women at their intersections — and instead tells white America that it’s the real victim. Then he turns right around and blames their woes — a loss of community, opportunity, mobility — on minorities. The very people at the bottom of the social ladder.

White Americans don’t have good jobs anymore? It’s not because they voted for Republicans who hollowed out the economy — nope, it’s the fault of…Mexican babies. Put them in concentration camps. White America’s experienced a catastrophic decline in trust over the last few decades? It couldn’t be because those old values of supremacy still manifest in greed and selfishness and mistrust and hostility — nope, it must be the fault of “foreign invaders.” Quick, hunt them in the streets. And so on.

Trump performs the classic demagogues’ trick of scapegoating minorities and women and othered figures for the woes of the pure and true — when, just like in any good social collapse, the woes of the pure and true are nobody’s fault but their own. Who made White America vote for the Republicans that then looted its retirement funds, healthcare, destroyed its towns, left it jobless and adrift. Nobody. So then why did it? Because of supremacy, in short. Reagan found a new code to appeal to the ugly old racist sentiment in white America. Now “real Americans” didn’t have to “pay for” the schools and healthcare and retirement of “welfare queens.” You don’t have to read too hard between the lines to see the racist dog-whistles.

So clinging to supremacy is what destroyed White America’s own chances at a future. And then Trump came along, and performed the demagogues’ trick, of blaming minorities for all that. He did something crucial, which only a demagogue can really do. He licensed violence on a mass social scale.

It would’ve been unthinkable, say, a decade ago, to read a figure like “40% of conservative Americans support mass-scale social violence.” Sure, they might have been deluded or simple or just terrible people, whatever (not to say liberals can’t be, either, but) — yet that hardly would have led to the place America’s at now.

What’s different now is that Trump licensed violence. He didn’t just “incite” or “stoke” it, as pundits say. He did something far, far more dangerous than that. He told his followers that it was OK. Desirable. Totally normal. That if it was the only way, then so be it, and it wasn’t really violence at all, just justified civil disoedience, maybe.

So now Trumpists see themselves not as regressive fanatics, but as noble crusaders for civil liberties. Hence, they’ve gone down the rabbit hole of radicalization. If you say to a Trumpist, hey, my man, you believe all that, essentially, because you’re a supremacist, a fascist, a racist, they’ll look at you like you’re the crazy one. They’re just defending their kids’ rights. To have pure bodies and minds, untouched by the poisons of vaccines and “critical race theory.” They genuinely appear not to see the way that the old, old hatred of supremacy underlies all this, because they think this is what freedom is: the entitlement to reign supreme over the rest of a society, subjugate, dominate it, abuse it, repress it.

If you think I’m kidding about that, just go ahead and take a hard look at Texas, where women now don’t have basic freedoms of speech, association, or privacy anymore. Anyone can act as a vigilante now, police women’s speech and association anywhere, and if they show the merest hint of wanting to exercise their rights to reproductive healthcare, they can be sued into oblivion, and jailed if they don’t the damages. Sound like freedom to you? It’s not, for the women. What it is is supremacy for the men.

And that is what America’s irreconcilable differences are — and have always been about. Freedom confused with supremacy. My right to keep you in your place — the place I’ve assigned you — as a second, third class citizen, a non-person, someone 3/5ths human, someone with no real freedoms of your own. But if my freedom is taking away yours — then where do we end up? Is freedom little Johnny not having to have his precious feelings hurt because he learned the truth of the horror of slavery? Or is freedom expanded when little Johnny matures into a decent, thoughtful, human person — not someone just like his supremacist parents? America’s never understood the answer to this question, which is simple. Freedom is expanded when we are all sane, thoughtful, wise, empathic, gentle, kind. Because only then is my life not about taking something away from you.

Let me try and crystallise the thoughts above. Something poisonous is in the air in America today. It’s not just Covid. It’s something even more deadly than that. It’s the foul stench of ancient hatreds. Americans of a certain kind — Trumpists — have been truly radicalised now. They have always believed that they were supreme, chosen, pure and true, and therefore the only “real Americans,” the thus the ones who the soil and everything on it “belonged” to. But now thanks to half a decade of simmering rage, a demagogue leading them on, they are willing to use violence to get their country back.

Which country is that? Ah, you know the one. The Jim Crow America. The America that genocided the “red Indians” and then…turned them into sports teams. The one that didn’t let women vote until 1920. The one in which Black people had to drink from separate fountains until 1971. That was just a few years before the average American was born.

Trumpist America wants its country back. All that rage on all those parents’ faces? The way that suburban soccer moms have turned into screaming banshees of supremacy? The way little Johnny should never have to cry over the unspeakable horrors of slavery, because, well, he should never have to grow up and be different from his mommy? The way his daddy practices shooting a machine gun every weekend with his buddies?

All that looks a whole lot like a country preparing for something, my friend. Something they — the Trumpists — already call “the Storm.” That is how America got here, which looks a whole lot more like the brink of civil war by the day.

Millions upon millions of Americans still believe they are the supreme ones, by virtue of blood and faith, and everyone else in society is inferior to them, below them, and so is “their” history, culture, so are their bodies, minds, stories, truths, meanings, lives . There’s no reconciling with a position like that — unless you want to live in subjugation. When a society has irreconcilable differences, history teaches us that violence becomes almost inevitable. And America has the oldest irreconcilable difference of them all. Sadly, even after all these centuries? America’s differences appear not to have moved one inch. The hateful America is right where it always was. Seduced, tempted, aroused by violence, for the purpose supremacy, to bring hate right back to life.

If that scares you, my friend…it should.

Umair
November 2021