Awakened and Asleep

It seems like it’d get tiresome being outraged all the time. It seems like with all the things going on in the world the small hills the hard right conservatives want to die on, crosses held high above their heads wouldn’t be worth it. 

GREAT!

You have forced people who don’t identify as their birth gender to use a restroom they won’t feel comfortable in. 

POW!

WONDERFUL, you have excised ‘woke’ books from libraries thus making kids have to, I dunno, go to a larger library or even an online bookstore to get the offensive items. 

ZOWIE!

OH, and you’re really putting it to the libs if you cut diversity education and jobs. I mean, we can’t let the snowflakes feel good about embracing all people when it’s really just the White folks that need to be reminded that they’re special.

KA-BLAM! 

And you better make sure to protest those giant corporations that may give a little light from their stage to any group that you don’t think deserves it. GAY – NO WAY! TRANS – NOT ME, MANS! SOUTHERN LIVES MATTER IS MORE LIKE IT! I mean, hey, support whatever brand of whatever that you want. If protesting a gigantic beer company that’s owned by another giant company because they acknowledged that trans people drink their beer too is your cause then by god, get it. 

It just seems like there are bigger fish to fry. 

This war on wokeness is nothing but a song and dance to distract from the bigger issues that should be addressed but that there are no easy answers. OH, but if you can stop wokeness then Jesus will come back and fix everything.

Hall of Lous, yeah.

There’s no real understanding of wokeness even is other than ‘people tryin’ to git rights that I don’ want ’em to has!’ We so easily forget that we are a nation of wanderers who set up camp under someone else’s moon. We forget that we were all strangers, all outcasts, all lost, and were found here. We forget that were it not for the rebels and the iconoclasts, rich though they may have been, there’d be no United States. Oh, it’s a grand, tough gesture to play dress up warrior and carry guns and cosplay as heroes but it doesn’t make you one. It’s comical that the same people that are outraged at the ‘violence’ of peaceful movements are the ones arming up an calling for insurrection and Civil War. It’s somehow brave and patriotic to occupy government property and to threaten people with death because you aren’t getting your way but man alive, if you march or take a knee for justice then you need to go back to some imagined country you are thought to come from.

We fly giant flags and banners as if we understand what freedom means and that it’s a give-and-take that doesn’t let us all have what we want but tries to get us all a little closer to something akin to happiness. Freedom is the right to speak but also the responsibility to shut up and not constantly fight every change just because you don’t ascribe to it.

Leaning on the IT’S FOR THE CHILDREN chestnut when you fight ‘the woke agenda’ gets old when the kids are the last thing considered. We want more guns in more hands. Is that for the kids? We want people to pretend they are all straight and that they are the gender that their body is. Is that for the kids? We want the ‘good’ Black folks to sit down and be quiet and not make a scene. Is that for the kids? We want to cut out all of the aid that folks need from time to time when they lose a job or have a larger life issue they are dealing with. Is tht for the kids?

If it’s ALL for the kids I just have to ask…which ones?

Telling young people that they can’t be who they are, who they KNOW they are, because their body just doesn’t physically agree isn’t for them. 

It’s for you. 

It’s because you don’t get it. 

You don’t understand. 

You don’t want to understand. 

You just want things to stay the same. 

This is to say, you doing what you like, when you like, and how you like, and everyone else getting your permission to do the same. 

And you can’t cry out for THE CHILDREN when you have banners on your homes and vehicles with hate speech and foul language because you don’t like this politician or that law. 

Petulance isn’t one of those things it seems like you’d want to pass on. 

Podcast patriots and country music heroes don’t change the world, they just preach to the converted. 

And hey, as a leftie, our side does the same. 

It does feel good to point and yell, or to, I guess, sing and yell. 

The problem is what it incites and inspires. 

Marching for change, even if it gets out of hand sometimes, is vastly different than marching for the satisfaction of one ego. 

And if we want to bring up violence, then sure, some social protests got violent and dangerous. While not all of it were people involved with those causes some of it was because of those folks. I offer though that none of them shot and killed people like a certain teen who crossed state lines with a weapon ‘help out’ when he wasn’t asked to. And there’s a difference between that and a concerted effort to overthrow a government by any means for what comes down to the demands of a traitor. And if we’re going to bring up the election, I don’t recall Al Gore demanding a ‘march’ or anything else when he lost a controversial election to  Bush. 

Just saying. 

What all of this is to say is that NONE of this is for kids, per se. 

If I am honest, I don’t know WHAT’s for other than to just cause mess and ‘own the libs’.
But what does that mean?

We are still on a planet that is dying because of us. 

The economy is still a mess. 

Nothing despots like the one in Belarus have nuclear arms now and owning the libs doesn’t change that. 

So what’s the point?

So you win the culture war. 

Bully for you. 

You force everyone to pretend they aren’t who they are, to not love who they love, and to be quiet and behave. 

That’s American?

We can’t go to war with everyone we decide isn’t showing America enough respect. 

We can’t bomb our way to the glory days. 

World War 2 is revered because people CHOSE to fight for a cause that was bigger than America. 

What cause is there like this now?

Banning people from a restroom?

Good god. 

What happened to the party that wanted fiscal responsibility and to steer towards the middle on social issues? 

What happened for finding common ground?

What happened to liberty for all?

I may not have agreed with the Republican party but they at least stood for something more than lies and rhetoric.

They were more than just fearmongers.  

For people that wave the Bible around they sure don’t understand it and for folks that preach the Constitution, they sure don’t abide by it.

Believe me, I am going to be the first person to declare that I don’t agree with all of the social changes and how they are being achieved but the fact is that we’re all American, all have rights, and all deserve to find our happiness if it doesn’t include limiting another’s rights to the same. That used to be what we aspired towards. 

Now I guess it’s all just so much gamesmanship as the world burns around us. 

Hopefully, someone’s here to be declared a winner when it’s all through. 

…c…