Friday 6 July 2018

We Used to Talk

“Out on the road the other day I saw an affluent black man driving a BMW with two bumper-stickers. One was pro-NRA and the other one was a Tea Party sticker that read, ‘Don't tread on me'.  This left me very confused.”

-- Kimberley Johnson, feminist writer (HuffPost), in a Tweet

Normally, I don't care about what people want to Tweet on, or about.  About fifty percent of what I tend to notice is garbage remarks that someone had pop up in their mind, and didn't think much about.  Had they spent an hour pondering the episode.....they would have reached a conclusion, and just skipped broadcasting it to the world.

The trouble with Tweeting is that you just want blabber rather quickly, and not think much.

In this case, she wants to suggest that she is keyed 'in' on what black guys think, and they should not be pro-NRA or pro-Tea Party.  My humble guess is that she also would like to believe that 95-percent would always vote Democrat and most all blacks are anti-Trump. 

But I just don't see how in this day in age....you can go around and 'label' folks. 

I got into a conversation one day with a black guy I worked with, and came to discover that he was also in DC comics as a kid.  Yes, he knew Green Lantern, Wally West, Arthur Curry (aka Aquaman), and Doctor Fate.  We got into a 20-minute conversation about comics, and the story-lines. 

I suspect if you gathered a group of a hundred black guys who are in the $30k to $70k wage cycle....at least fifty percent own a handgun, and half of those are NRA members.   Course, for Kimberley, this might be an additional shock that she might not be able to handle. 

The trouble here is that folks tend to live in bubbles and never seem to go out and grasp the outside of their bubble.  It's ok for Republicans to sit down and have a coffee with a regular Democrat....discussing fatty bacon, poorly landscaped lawns, forgettable vacations, or the upcoming NCAA season.  Before all this 'war' business started up.....it was a pretty regular thing in the 1970s or 1980s for folks to discuss non-political stuff, and exchange bits of discussion. 

My impression is that Kimberley has lost that skill, and the best she can manage is to hang around folks who are like herself.  It's pretty sad, if you think about it. 

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