2016-11-10-0233Z


the left could well be right about one thing at least: electing Trump set us back about 50 years in terms of openly expressed hatred. I've seen plenty of posts from Trump supporters using terms like "nigger", "sand nigger", and "wetback", and they're glad to be free of the bounds of political correctness now that their boy Trump has opened the floodgates of allowable discourse.

the problem is, if you've studied even recent history, silencing hatred never works out well anyway. witness the brutal wars after the breakup of Yugoslavia after the iron hand of Tito fell into his grave. the hatred just picks up where it left off, plus interest from the years of simmering on the back burner.

I agree with Mencken: "I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave."

all those years of repression of the neo-nazis and Ku Kluxers haven't bought us anything. now they're out painting their swastikas just like before. what we do need to do is make them fear us, not the policeman or the FBI agent. every marginalized group must have Deacons of Defense, people who are armed, trained and unafraid, and cannot be elected out of office or bought off by big corporations.

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last updated 2016-11-09 21:47:10. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com