Some time back around Memorial Day, President Trump suggested that NFL players who kneel during the national anthem maybe ought to leave the country. An old colleague reposted the story.
SCREENSHOT 1:
We’re used to 45 tossing this kind of tone deaf red meat on the floor for his base. But… someone did agree with him. I may have been … triggered.
SCREENSHOT 2:
I reacted pretty aggressively. Immediately, she tried to tone police me as she does the NFL players, chastising me for my ALL CAPS shouting, while repeating her call for protesters to leave America for a place without freedom to protest.
SCREENSHOT 3:
I let her get away with it this time, sort of, and continued in calmer fashion going forward.
SCREENSHOT 4:
I also offered a bit of potential education: a screenshot of 20+ unarmed black people who died in police interactions. ‘Cause, you know, sometimes people just don’t know what they don’t know, like that guy in early February who thought Black Panther was a superhero based on the political party. So I offered her a chance to fill that gap in her knowledge.
SCREENSHOT 4a (detail):
Unfortunately, just like that guy, Lauren here didn’t care to investigate, as indicated by her dismissive response a little while later: The protesters aren’t fighting for anything, just complaining, she said.
SCREENSHOT 5-6:
^^^THIS question right here. It’s key. Why should we consider respect for the flag more important than liberty and justice? Her answer is decent but disingenuous because, as I point out, protests fit neatly into the box she proscribes for change.
SCREENSHOT 7:
I decided to unpack her latest reply a bit because she was on some NON-THINKING NONSENSE.
SCREENSHOT 8:
But here we come to the crux of it…
SCREENSHOT 9-10:
And there it is, ladies and gentlemen. I pointed out that unless it’s your person or your property, you can’t unilaterally deem disrespect. Yet she does, repeatedly, while discounting others’ equal freedom to decide. The protests are bad because she says they are and no one else’s view matters. She is the arbiter of all things.
This is white supremacy at its most cognitively dissonant.
Lauren is part of my old colleague’s FB circle, so I imagine she’s probably a decent sort and pleasant person. But she is completely bound up in white supremacist thinking in ways she can’t even fathom.
“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves.”
— 2 Corinthians 13:5
Bridge Over Troubled Opinions 