Thursday 4 June 2020

CNN Townhall Meeting on Racism

So it was announced this morning, that this racism topic will discussed at the 'virtual' Townhall deal run by CNN. 

Then the big news came....Elmo and Big Bird will be there as well.

I sat there and tried to envision how this would work, and how CNN's sixteen viewers would handle this.

The problem I see....certain Americans are very racist about cartoon characters.  I will admit that I've been anti-Coyota ever since I started watching the Roadrunner cartoons.  I also don't care much for the Care-Bears.  And to be honest, I'm very much against the Deputy 'Dawg' character. 

Introducing Elmo and Big Bird?  It makes this into a joke.  I assume they are thinking that 4-year old kids are watching CNN in the time-slot, and maybe they can get them onboard....early on in life.

Odds of an Election in November?

Well....if you have the protest thugs still in operation and feeling frisky, I'd say that they'd attempt to intimidate voters, shut down voting stations, and create a violent confrontation scene with police and National Guard. 

It's also possible that armed non-protesters would show up to vote, and conduct citizen's arrests, and inflame the childish thugs even more. 

In this path, you'd have Trump 'win', but hundreds of thousands would say that they never had a chance to vote for Joe Biden, because of the polling station issues. 

Various lawsuits would then occur, challenging each state, and trying to prolong the mess long enough....that the Electoral College is not actually able to function. 

A challenge to democracy and the Republic?  I would suggest at this point (after the election)....that we are in the midst of civil war, and voter anger would go to a new level. 

A Vast 'Darkness' Landscape

I travel a good bit....around the world.  For me, it's a learning experience and generates a lot of pondering over how cultures exist, remarkable alternate paths, or fail to achieve success.

So last year (in the spring), I went to South Africa for 17 days.  I saw a good bit of Cape Town, and the far northeast (the safari-park landscape).

South Africa is this unique land, which whites came into (both the Dutch, and the British) and made into a developed country, with blacks given a diminished role (saying it nicely).  Based on pressure in the 1980s, a change occurred.  People can argue over the success or failure of the change, but in the end.....all the white leadership business got dumped, and everyone got the black leadership business.  If they didn't like that either.....well, there is no other alternate path ahead.

So I had conversations with three folks in this trip.  One was a former Rhodesian farmer who'd left after the Mugabe land screw-over.  One was a South African who'd got fairly educated and was middle-class.  And the third guy was a over-60 guy who'd seen the 1980s, the change in the country, and frowned over the results.

What all three openly admitted, is that South Africa has so much to give, and to achieve.....but everyone with status or 'power' is working on their own personal agenda.  If you are black, you get ahead based on your 'friend', and not your efforts to get ahead.

Nothing in South Africa works as advertised....all three readily admitted that.  The police aren't your friend....the laws are never enforced....murders happen on a daily basis, with the public simply entertained by the news people now.

The former Rhodesian farmer?  He looked off into the distance and described all of this potential and tens of thousands of Rhodesians being part of the farm industry.  They weren't just feeding Rhodesians themselves (cheaply), they were marketing to half of Africa, and in the decades ahead....they could imagine themselves marketing to the Middle East and Europe.  All of that came to a complete end....where the farms were so crapped-up....that they couldn't even feed Rhodesians themselves.

So as I flew out of Cape Town, on this 12-hour flight....I just sat there pondering....so much potential, and no one trusting in the system to work.

It is becoming this way in the US.  If you go to Baltimore, Detroit, or Chicago....you get this feeling of a urbanized up-to-date 'township'.  People standing there and being told about all these opportunities and just not seeing any of them to advance upon.

Imagine a circus-advance team coming around and hyping this big circus which coming to town in the future.  Lot of talk, lot of dynamics, lot of elephants and lions, lot of clowns, etc.  So folks wait.  And wait.  And wait.  And wait.  When they do finally start to see some evidence of a circus....it's basically one-crippled-up elephant, four meth-head clowns, and free marginalized ice cream (one dip per cone).  That's what the black communities in these maga cities have come to expect.

Mayors come and go....city councils come and go.....prosecutors come and go....judges come and go.  No one delivers anything related to the big circus that folks were told about thirty and forty years ago.

Schools in these urbanized areas?  They hire up 'friends-of-friends' and give out significant money to produce marginalized students.  You can task people to assess and value the local school system.  What you typically find is that private academy operations do a better job than local public schools....so the black parents who have money....send their kids there, and the kids 'soar' because of the better environment.  The rest get crappy one-star education.

Leaving the mega city?  Occasionally, you find people who finally woke up and found some town a state away or three states away.....where promised 'circuses' are given a lesser prominence, and they hire up professional DAs and judges who fairly assess things, until they get run out of town by progressive politics.

As for the destruction you see in Minneapolis?  A lot of this was led on by white Antifa people, who have no investment and no anchor to the local town.  They simply came to destroy public property and to send a message.  It took a day or two, but local blacks kinda woke and grasp the nature of this message and the fake nature of the future talked about.

There is a dead black guy, and you've got more than enough evidence to prosecute the cop and hand him a 25-year sentence for 3rd-degree murder, and a charge or two for a hate-crime.  The three other idiots?  Lesser crimes, but they contributed to the stupidity of the moment.  None of the four will survive more than three years in prison, where gangs there will take care of the revenge required.

We can argue about marginalized idiots hired up as police across the nation, and probably agree that somewhere between 10 and 25 percent of the police in the nation aren't qualified for this type of duty.  Whose fault is it for the idiots remaining with a badge?  Well, it goes back to the mayors, city councils, and DAs.  Remember, they were the ones elected into their jobs for a reason.

So I'm suggesting a darkness is developing over our landscape, and those in the urban areas are the first one to see it, and feel the pain.  Go look at cities like St Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, etc.  Population-wise, each decade they decrease.  People see the issues, and move beyond the darkness....an hour of commute is not a big deal.

I grew in the state of Alabama.  Birmingham is the mega city there.  You can assess since the 1970s....people with jobs in Birmingham and real salary....left the city for suburbs safely outside of town.  They didn't see a need to stay, and found urban areas 30 to 60 minutes away.  The mayor and city council?  Every generation comes and goes, and it's like the circus routine I discussed....one day....a big circus will come....you just gotta wait for it.  So folks for 50 years have been waiting, and other than observing the 'darkness'....there's not much patience left.

Resolving this?  You'd need the right people, and a thousand-odd things working in a different direction.  So far, that hasn't fallen into place.

So a few final note.  In roughly five years, 'THE' minority party will be the Latino folks (not blacks).  Whatever gain that they thought they had in the works....with the Democratic Party....has five years to work itself out.  In roughly twenty-five years.....the Latino folks will be THE majority, and things will go along a different route.