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A Letter To The MAGA Loving Goons Who Stormed The Capitol
In The Name Of A Purer, Whiter America: You'll Never Be Happy. By Rich Herschlag
There are all sorts of thought pieces out there now about bridging the gap between left and right, progressive and conservative, urban and rural, white and blue collar—however this massive, destructive, deadly and potentially irreversible so-called culture war is labeled at the moment. And that’s fine. I’m all for it. I’m all for metrosexual fresh air funds where you take a bunch of guys with fine arts degrees, toss them into the woods, and outfit them with paintball gear. I’m all for sticking a bunch of Blue Ridge Mountain rednecks on a condo board on the Upper West Side to debate what varieties of sedum to plant on the new roof garden.
But there is a new program afoot. It’s not about seeing things from a different point of view for a few minutes while tanked up on moonshine. It’s about literal compromise. And it goes a little something like this. You want to kill a million of my people. I want you to kill none of my people. So we compromise at your killing half a million of my people. That’s fair. We meet right in the middle. Nothing positive can happen if both sides don’t give a little.
This isn’t me being sarcastic, at least not to a great degree. In the aftermath of the mass murder of mostly Black Americans in a Buffalo supermarket, there were pieces on FOX News and Newsmax calling for a better understanding across the divide. There were David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart urging more dialogue. As far apart as various media platforms and pundits were on specific solutions, there was a broad, implicit consensus that some sort of give and take was necessary. The underlying premise is that if we can somehow chit-chat a bit and steer our way to giving these raging white folks at least a portion of what they’re asking for—namely, a simpler, whiter, more homogeneous, more rural, more heterosexual, blander, more predictable, more Bible-based, more churchgoing environment not only in their communities but also our own—we may eventually be rewarded with a decrease in the size and frequency of racially motivated massacres.
.....
Nowhere in this sometimes seemingly random tapestry of everyday grappling would an uptick in the racial, social, sexual, religious, or cultural purity of your surroundings render you, me, or anyone even one percent happier for more than an hour. The difference between me and you raging white folks storming the Capitol is that I know it and you somehow, unbelievably, pretend not to. So hear me out. When you eventually achieve this racial, social, sexual, religious, cultural purity surge, it will be your crack cocaine. You will experience a brief rush. And when that fades you will become even more angst-ridden, inconsolable, and violent than before. So you will make things still purer, whiter, more absolute and that will not help. And finally somewhere down the road, probably sooner rather than later, you will go marauding on nearby islands, decimating across the channel, incinerating down the lane, hypersonic missile launching over the border, and unloading an assault weapon in a neighborhood supermarket....
But there is a new program afoot. It’s not about seeing things from a different point of view for a few minutes while tanked up on moonshine. It’s about literal compromise. And it goes a little something like this. You want to kill a million of my people. I want you to kill none of my people. So we compromise at your killing half a million of my people. That’s fair. We meet right in the middle. Nothing positive can happen if both sides don’t give a little.
This isn’t me being sarcastic, at least not to a great degree. In the aftermath of the mass murder of mostly Black Americans in a Buffalo supermarket, there were pieces on FOX News and Newsmax calling for a better understanding across the divide. There were David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart urging more dialogue. As far apart as various media platforms and pundits were on specific solutions, there was a broad, implicit consensus that some sort of give and take was necessary. The underlying premise is that if we can somehow chit-chat a bit and steer our way to giving these raging white folks at least a portion of what they’re asking for—namely, a simpler, whiter, more homogeneous, more rural, more heterosexual, blander, more predictable, more Bible-based, more churchgoing environment not only in their communities but also our own—we may eventually be rewarded with a decrease in the size and frequency of racially motivated massacres.
.....
Nowhere in this sometimes seemingly random tapestry of everyday grappling would an uptick in the racial, social, sexual, religious, or cultural purity of your surroundings render you, me, or anyone even one percent happier for more than an hour. The difference between me and you raging white folks storming the Capitol is that I know it and you somehow, unbelievably, pretend not to. So hear me out. When you eventually achieve this racial, social, sexual, religious, cultural purity surge, it will be your crack cocaine. You will experience a brief rush. And when that fades you will become even more angst-ridden, inconsolable, and violent than before. So you will make things still purer, whiter, more absolute and that will not help. And finally somewhere down the road, probably sooner rather than later, you will go marauding on nearby islands, decimating across the channel, incinerating down the lane, hypersonic missile launching over the border, and unloading an assault weapon in a neighborhood supermarket....
The rest at https://thebanter.substack.com/p/youll-never-be-happy
