2025-01-18 at 20

In polite company, independent thinking is frowned upon. The people in charge of an organization like to be the ones who define what things mean. Questioning or analyzing those definitions is frowned up. It's akin to insubordination. The larger the organization is, the more entrenched the official version of the truth becomes, and the sin of asking “why” can be considered radical or unpatriotic. Take the role of the US military, for example. You know you've heard that they "fight for our freedom." After all, freedom isn't free, right?

Now, tell me how exactly rice farmers from Vietnam threatened the freedom of the United States in the 60s and early 70s. How they threatened it so much that the US had to sacrifice the lives of 58,220 service members. The majority of them were draftees forced to fight under penalty of law. Or, tell me how Iraq threatened our freedom because 19 Saudi Arabians flew planes into buildings in the US. If you ask those questions out loud, you are going to get labeled. If you teach US history in a public school, you will get fired. The safest thing to do is accept the narrative and wave the flag.

There is a sizable portion of white people in the US who believe we don't need programs to encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion. They believe racism is a thing of the past, that there is no need for the voting rights act and that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. himself would be against affirmative action. They believe this in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In my home state of North Carolina, as soon as part of the voting rights act was overturned by Supreme Court conservatives, the Republican Party crafted a bill. That bill, said the judge who overturned it, was designed with surgical precision to keep as many black people from voting as possible.

We should know, given quantifiable numbers like the achievement gap in public schools, the pay gap between white workers and their non-white counterparts and the incarceration rates for different races, all of which favor white people, harming everyone else, that a problem exists. Unfortunately, most white people, as indicated by the way they vote, believe the issue isn't racism, but that POC are...what? Well, they won't come out and say it unless they know you are a member of their club, but obviously, they think the issue is inferiority, laziness and entitlement. The fault doesn't lie with the in-group who've run this country for over 400 years. It lies with the people who only got something close to equal rights in my lifetime.

Once again, don't go into the company of powerful people, particularly white ones, and point out the obviousness of systemic racism. They have a label for that, “identity politics.” When you think independently of the narrative that people are comfortable with, you make them uncomfortable and based on my experience, that is a grave sin. It's certainly not polite. It's "discussing politics." It's frowned upon. Furthermore, it will get you fired. They'll say it was because of something else, but in the end, speaking truth to power is risky business.

Of course, today's majority reserves a spectacularly evil brand of groupthink to demonize their favorite victims, the people in the LGBT community. It's not a new community. They've been with us for all of recorded history, but only in the past few years have they come close to having the rights they deserve. There is no logic in denying them rights. In fact, society harms itself by persecuting them. One of the greatest minds of the 20th century, Alan Turing, credited with saving 20 million lives in World War Two by cracking Nazi codes that gave the allies the information they needed to defeat Germany, died by suicide. He was chemically castrated by the British government for being homosexual. If you are capable of thinking independently of popular opinion, you see bullshit for what it is.

To be anti-war, anti-racist and anti-hate you have to ask questions that make people uncomfortable because humanity in the 21st century is so warped that being a war - loving hate filled bigot is normal and opposing it is radical.

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