Thursday, October 24, 2024

I won't keep ignorance or people who engage in it from dissuading me from voting, because every vote "counts," this time

 

In between being on what CNN called Donald Trump’s “October Lying Spree” on immigrants 1 , and Russian media calling Kamala Harris with the nuclear button  “worse than a monkey with a grenade," 3 while lavishing praise on Trump who they “suggest” will aid them in winning their “special military operation,” in The Hill Kent Jones tells us “Who will pay for Trump’s tariffs? You will, America” 2 —a massive, self-inflicted economic wound: “The ‘billions and billions’ that would supposedly flow into the Treasury would not come from foreigners but from U.S. consumers. It would be a new national sales tax, imposed on U.S. citizens, and collected on every item imported into the country.” 

Doesn’t it seem like virtually everything in retail stores has a “Made in China” label on it? Trump proposes what is essentially a 60 percent sales tax on all those goods; in other words, a regressive tax that hurts lower-income people far more than it does the rich, and not subject to tax refund. You’re complaining about inflation now? Just you wait if Trump is elected again. 

And in a New York Times op-ed, commentator and economist Paul Krugman tells us more on “How Trump’s radical tariff plan could wreck our economy." The biggest “plus” for tariffs is that they would “theoretically” aid domestic manufacturing—that is to say, if this country is manufacturing anything to replace said goods otherwise being imported. But Krugman notes that what actually happened from the first round of Trump tariffs was that domestic manufacturers actually raised prices if they had a competitive product. There was also the loss of jobs for those who worked in companies that dealt with imported goods (most apparel companies, for example). Tariffs would not necessarily spur growth in the manufacturing sector, since parts and material only available overseas would likely see retaliatory action by the international suppliers.

Krugman tells us that “What the tariffs would do is shrink our economy. They would cause us to sell less of the goods we currently export — that is, stuff we’re relatively good at producing — and more stuff we aren’t that good at producing. The effect would be to make the economy less efficient and poorer. So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?”

Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.

 

Pros: I can’t think of any.

 

The Harris campaign and her media supporters should be pushing hard on the negative effects of Trump’s economic “plans”—either he is taking advantage of his base by telling more lies, or he has no clue what he what he is doing, meaning that he doesn’t “think” outside of what he thinks will relieve his personal pet peeves, even if they make no sense whatever.

Here 2, TIME gives us a rundown of Trump’s proposals; one of the problems it sees, as others have, is that Trump’s supposed “support” for Social Security and Medicare is subject to another one of his un thoughtless campaign promises, which is to end income taxes on Social Security—which most observers will not only drain the fund quicker, but in the long-term reduce benefits. When the trust fund runs out, possible by 2030, current payroll taxes will cover only 76 percent of the current level, meaning Social Security benefits will be slashed by a quarter if nothing is done.

The way to “fix” Social Security is quite simple—raise the maximum income level to tax; millionaires and billionaires pay relatively nothing into the fund, as well as the corporations they run or work for, which are supposed to provide a matching amount.

TIME also notes, besides the inflationary and massive debt-inducing parts of his “plan,” Trump claims his massive deportation scheme would lower housing costs; but builders claim that this actually will drive up housing costs with the loss of immigrant construction workers. In regard to mass deportation, it would also further inflict damage on the Social Security fund by eliminating the taxes immigrants pay into it regardless if they are ever eligible for benefits themselves. TIME continues on this point in regard to Trump's mass deportation scheme,

Critics contend that such actions could disrupt industries reliant on immigrant labor, leading to labor shortages and ultimately driving up costs rather than lowering them. A recent analysis from the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that a deportation program would reduce employment and lower the U.S. GDP. A separate analysis from the American Immigration Council found that it would cost $315 billion to deport 11 million people.

MAGA lemmings are not that dumb not to see through Trump's blather that he could still be unlikely to follow-through on, not that he and his stooges like Stephen Miller won't at least try as a PR stunt, right? Well, yes, because, you know, what does any of this have to do with "thinking," and unfortunately even an idiot like Trump can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time, like sink a ship of state.  

On the My Northwest website, there is this discussion concerning Bath and Body Works selling a “KKK” candle. One individual saw the “resemblance” to a KKK hood right away, while the other, younger man, admits he wouldn’t have “seen it” unless he was told to look for the “resemblance”: 

 

 

This is the society we live in today, where in an anti-DEI political environment, it is "liberal" tenured professors who lose their jobs for exercising their freedom of speech rights 5 , where people who most need to be educated are purposely left ignorant about the history of this country, and how things have not only little changed in the psyche of the country, but have gotten worse in the Age of Trump. Hell, racist assholes who repeatedly beep their cars because you “look” like the current “stereotype” of a car prowler (i.e. Hispanic male) think that the Nazi salute you give them is just a “friendly” wave.

The mindless lemmings following Trump over the cliff obviously don’t learn. Despite a billion-dollar defamation judgment against himself and his Infowars operation in bankruptcy proceedings, Alex Jones continues to use his platform to disperse conspiracy theories, most recently having Marjorie Taylor Greene on his show declaring that Dominion deliberately switched votes on its machines in the 2020 election. Of course this was the same charge made by Fox News hosts who admitted behind the scenes that it was a lie and yet continued to push the claim, eventually leading to the $800 million defamation judgment against the network. 

Of course, what we’d all like to see is Dominion file a defamation lawsuit against not just Greene but Elon Musk (with his money, he can afford a million-dollars-a-lie as well as a million-dollars-a-vote), so that for lack evidence she will be proven in court to be a serial liar just as her main boss is--although her other "boss," Mike Johnson, is putting in a good show as one as well on network news shows.

And since we are on the subject of “mass deportation,” how exactly does Trump exactly expect to accomplish this? It won’t help that he says he is putting a 100 percent tariff on Mexican-made, American-branded cars. I mean, sure you idiot—throw thousands out of work in Mexico and watch them find their way across the border looking for work here, which they will find because employers will need to replace all those mass deportees because Trump doesn’t understand that the term ‘”full employment” and unemployment rates are not mutually exclusive.

The fact is that Americans should be less concerned about Trump’s threats of “WW III”—although some claim it is already “happening” in Ukraine—than a possible armed confrontation on the border between the U.S. and Mexico if Trump carries through with his mass deportation scheme without an “exit” strategy beyond forcing millions of people down Mexico’s throat. There are those who suggest that Trump’s mass deportation scheme is just another election stunt, just as it was during his first term, and that logistically and financially it is unlikely to be implemented on the scale that Trump likes to throw out there into the wind to blow away (I mean businesses that rely on immigrant labor must think he is just “joking”).

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum—the country’s first female president, which this country would do well to emulate this election—may or may not not take kindly to bullying by Trump if he is president again. For now, I don’t think Mexico is taking seriously Trump’s plan to deport what he numbers as 20 million people (all of them Hispanic, as if none are coming across the border are from the eastern hemisphere, especially from India and Asia). But what if he does establish mass concentration camps on the border and threatens to a launch a tide across the border? I mean, he has to have Mexico’s “permission,” right? You think Mexico is just going to sit there and let him do it?

Either Trump is (1) lying (huh?) to his foolish supporters, or (2) he is going to convert this country not into a Harris “migrant camp” but a mass concentration camp and (3) attempt to coerce Mexican into allow a mass of people to be pushed across the border, either through trade threats or launching missiles into the country (oh yes, he’s threatened that recently)  and (4) Mexico will resist and (5) Trump will again threaten military action and (6) Mexico will respond by putting its military on the border and (7) the question then is who will blink first, seemingly more likely to be Mexico, but who can know for sure.

U.S. policy in Latin America has always been pretty much been a one-way affair; even FDR’s “Good Neighbor Policy”—i.e. no direct military intervention—was contingent on economic benefit for the U.S.; while U.S. businesses and Latin American elites continued to reap profits, the common people (especially indigenous people) saw very little benefit, economic or social. Then came the Cold War and support for right-wing murder regimes against the rights of the lower classes,  which included land redistribution and nationalizing resources, since the business and social "elites" didn't like to "share."

But since the end of the first Cold War, the U.S.  has abandoned Latin America and is now paying the price for it, as noted in this article 5 and in this MSNBC report: 

 


 

Foreign Affairs adds that in contrast to U.S. trade interests focused almost solely in Europe and Asia,

These far-flung efforts, however, badly neglect solutions in the United States’ own backyard: the countries of Latin America. The region is rich in the critical minerals the United States needs. Many Latin American countries already boast sophisticated pharmaceutical industries. Others have technically sophisticated, economically competitive, and geographically proximate workforces that could assemble, test, and package microchips made in U.S.-based fabrication plants. American car makers already rely on Mexico, and incorporating Latin America more fully into electric vehicle manufacturing would make the industry more competitive by drawing on different labor markets and tapping into a fuller range of subsidies provided by the Inflation Reduction Act.

U.S. leaders consistently overrate the worth of securing alliances next door to China and overestimate Europe’s commercial prospects. Neither Europe nor Asia can provide substantial or sustainable solutions to the threats to U.S. supply chains. The United States and Europe can certainly benefit from unifying the way they set technology standards, screen their foreign investments, and move toward more environmentally friendly and labor-friendly sourcing of all kinds of goods. But Europe will never become a strong source of critical minerals or an affordable supplier of inputs to semiconductors or electric vehicles. Other than Australia, few U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific have significant critical mineral reserves. And it will be enormously hard to pry Asian electric vehicle, semiconductor, and pharmaceutical supply chains free of Chinese influence.

In terms of geographical proximity, Latin America, by contrast, is a Goldilocks option for U.S. manufacturers. It is not so close to the United States that moving production there would dangerously concentrate risk from natural or manmade disasters, but it is not so far that it creates complicated long-distance logistics problems. The United States has a great deal to gain broadly from helping Latin American countries strengthen their economies. Most of those countries are democracies, and economic growth and democratic consolidation in the region would create new investment opportunities and middle-class consumers for U.S. companies. And Latin America is the one region in the world with which the United States has an existing trade and market advantage, having already inked free trade agreements with 11 countries there.

Yet the United States is failing to engage Latin American nations commercially or strategically, missing an opportunity to shore up national security and wasting built-in geopolitical advantages. Indeed, the United States cannot afford to overlook the opportunities Latin America offers. China already recognizes Latin America’s potential. It is swooping in fast, expanding its trade with the region from $12 billion in 2000 to nearly $500 billion in 2022. Its mining and refining companies are moving to lock up access to the region’s natural resources.

When it comes to the countries south of the U.S. border, some American leaders may simply feel that good fences make good neighbors. Taking that stance would be a big, counterproductive mistake. If the United States fails to integrate Latin America substantially into U.S. supply chains and keeps looking farther afield for economic allies, it will only help bring more Chinese influence closer to its doorstep.

Of course a bigoted “businessman” like Trump and others who have negative stereotypes about the people from Latin America don’t know a thing about that, just threatening to send “missiles” into Mexico and putting 100 percent tariffs on automobiles by U.S. auto companies, and this country's biggest "export" to Central America is U.S.-bred gangs. 

Trump is ignorant of facts that the Harris campaign and its media supporters should be talking about, that Trump is lying to people about the “benefits” of mass deportation. A paper produced by the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire found in studies of the mass deportations of 1929-1937, the 1964 ending of the Bracero program, the “Secure Communities” deportations during the Obama administrations, and during the COVID pandemic, none of them had the promised “positive” effects, only the “negative” ones on employment and the economy. It was always the same “argument,” as during the Great Depression, when 60 percent of those involuntarily deported (likely children) beginning with the Hoover administration were U.S. citizens:

Lee et al. (2017) studied the effects of the deportation of 400,000 to 500,000 first- and second-generation Mexican immigrants between 1929 and 1937. Proponents of the program projected that the deportations would open up jobs for Americans during the Great Depression. This paper found that, in contrast with the stated policy objectives, there were small decreases in U.S.-born employment and increases in their unemployment. The authors’ analysis ruled out a positive effect on wages and found that the effect on the wages of the U.S. born was either neutral or negative (i.e., wages declined). The areas from which the largest numbers of immigrants were deported saw declines in their non-immigrant population as well, and a tendency for native-born workers to end up in lower paying jobs than they had previously held. The strongest negative employment effects were on jobs that were complementary to those that had been held by the deported. Without immigrant workers, employers eliminated higher paying jobs of native-born workers that relied on immigrant work.

That’s right: without migrant labor to be used in low-paying jobs, businesses would be forced to close unless the “natives” working higher income jobs took pay cuts or "voluntarily" accepted demotement to the lower-paying jobs left open by the deportations. Studies on the effect of the Obama-era deportations showed that

the deportation of 454,000 immigrant workers not authorized to be in the United States from 2008 to 2015 reduced the employment share of U.S.-born workers by 0.5 percent and reduced their hourly wages by 0.6 percent. Future large-scale deportations have been estimated to reduce the size of the U.S. economy. Estimates of U.S. economic loss range from 2.6 percent to 6.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (the most widely used measure of national income). At 2023 levels those equate to losses to the economy of between $711 billion and $1.7 trillion. Employment losses for future mass deportation have been estimated to be as high as 3.6 percent.

If you need more factual information, Stuart Anderson in Forbes tells you here 1 not to believe Trump’s impossible lies about “illegals” getting all the jobs. Anderson points out that the “unfortunate” fact is that like in many Western countries and Japan, “The growth of the U.S.-born working-age population has slowed down. That helps explain why the proportion of the workforce that is foreign-born has increased and become a significant part of employment growth in the United States.” 

Thus it can be said that fewer workers filling jobs means the products they would have made would instead be coming from imports with all those high tariffs Trump says he will implement—and thus further loss of jobs and tax-paying workers. The "unfortunate" fact is that no one really should "tinker" with the economy as it is now no matter what they claim they will do on the campaign trail, which is why things never really seem to change all that much--except of course how much goes into the pockets of the rich.

While the economy and employment would likely shrink significantly if Trump's economic "plan" is actually implemented, a Trump-led government would be spending billions of dollars “capturing, detaining, processing, and deporting people.” Instead of having a sensible immigration policy instead of one that makes it more difficult for people to enter legally, even for temporary work permits, the kind of racism that ended the Bracero program is quite literally biting the hand that feeds you since then. 

Those 54 percent of voters (including a quarter of Democrats) who support mass deportations in a recent poll have certainly found themselves caught up in racist rhetoric, and the “mainstream”—i.e. “liberal”—media has done little to “educate” people about the disastrous effects on the economy (but what do they care, their paychecks depend on ratings, and racist rhetoric against migrants excites a majority of viewers).

What are we being sold ad nauseam every day from one side, and is run away from by the other side?  In the excellent 1997 update of the 1957 film classic 12 Angry Men,  directed by Oscar-winner William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist), like in the original there is the all-male (but this this time “diverse”) jury…

 


…and the defendant a teenage Hispanic male…

 

 

…accused of murdering his abusive father and facing the death penalty, having been found guilty after apparently represented by an incompetent or disinterested court-appointed attorney. What I found interesting is that, unlike the original film, the racist Juror No. 10 is portrayed as a member of the Nation of Islam...

 


 

…and what he says is much more disturbing (as opposed to simply ignorant as in the original) in that it sounds like it is coming right out of the mouth of someone we know today:

Just look at what we're dealing with here. You know him! You know this kid! This guy other here, I don't know what the hell is going on with him, all that talk about psychiatrists...Maybe he ought to go to one! Now look! Let's talk facts. These people are born to lie. Now, that's the way they are and no intelligent man is gonna tell me otherwise. They don't know what the truth is!

You take a look at them! They're different! They think different, they act different and they don't need some big excuse to kill somebody either. Well, it's true! Everybody knows it. Smoking that crack...Nothing but crack he is!...Anyway, these people they get all drugged up and BANG! All of a sudden somebody's lying dead in the gutter...Ok, look, nobody's blaming'em for that. That's just the way they are by nature, you know what I mean? They're violent! And human life don't mean as much to them as it does to us. These spics! They stay high on dope and they fight all the time...Look, if somebody gets killed, so somebody gets killed, they don't care!

They breed like animals...Ok, sure, there's some good things about them...Look, I'm the first guy to tell you that...I've known some who were ok...but that's the exception!...There's not one of them,...not one, that's any good! NOT ONE!...We're facing a danger, don't you know that? These wetbacks are multiplying like rabbits! They come over here illegally and they're multiplying five times faster than my people! That's five times, brothers! And they're wild animals!

They're against us, they hate us! They want to destroy us! They come over here and they benefit from everything that we've built! That's right! Don't look at me like that...There's a danger...We are living in a dangerous time, brothers! If we don't smack them down, if we don't do something, every chance we get, then they're gonna own us! They're gonna breed us out of existence...I'm warning you! You listen to me...I'm telling you, this boy...put this boy on trial, we got him. We got him! That's one at least! I say that we get him, before his kind gets us!...I don't give a damn about the law! Why should I? They don't! Come on, wake up man! We can make a difference here!

Watching this I seem to recall that I’d heard this before in another context, years ago. In fact, I mentioned the incident in this post here 4 where among other things I pointed out that Hispanics don’t have anywhere near the media power Blacks and other “disadvantaged” groups in a place like "liberal" Seattle have to promote themselves and air their grievances. I remembered that I was once on a bus when I black male got on board and sat behind the driver, who also happened to be black. 

Soon the driver engaged him in a truncated version of the above speech, which confirmed my suspicion that Metro had a culture of discrimination against Hispanics. Of course in the film, this rhetoric is supposed to leave the other eleven people disgusted; but of course in today’s reality, at least half the country seems to believe it to be the “truth.”

I’m not going to be gaslit by people who have a "monopoly" on "victimization," and who don't want to understand the world from my perspective, and are not the ones being labeled every day as criminal “vermin” and “poisoners of the blood” on one side, and on the other side people either secretly believe it or are too afraid to say anything against it in order not to “upset” people who should be called out for their racism. 

In a culture where Hispanics are not "respected," this is how a place like “liberal” Seattle makes people they want to ignore “disappear”:

 


It is unfortunately true that Asians also like to gaslight people with claims of being “victims” of “racism”--or "hate" as they prefer to say to avoid the discussion--as claimed in the cover story of this magazine below that I saw a stack of at my place of employment--when their countries of origin (mainly East and South Asia)  have either racist immigration and citizenship policies, or have “caste” prejudices:

 


This is how the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “racism,” and offers an example of it:

 


Haven’t Asians benefited from racial distinctions, as in the “model minority” stereotype? And don’t they feel some sense of “superiority” over other groups in a country that has for a century battled its racist demons, only to “import” more of it? I’m just asking here. Why call people "racist" or throwing around words like "hate" for pointing out they are losing what they fought for decades of blood and tears to achieve to self-entitled "master race" types, most of them only relatively recent arrivals? 

I speak from experience here; a month ago I had to go to a pharmacy to pick up a subscription of antibiotics after a dental procedure. It would have taken only a few minutes to fill the order, but the Indian pharmacist told me I had to come back in another 90 minutes because she was going to lunch. Expecting there to be a line, I came back 30 minutes early  to be the first one there. Not long afterward someone who I took to be  a Chinese immigrant came by and looked annoyed that someone was already in line, and tried to insist that I was too dumb to know what I was doing there. I pointed to the sign that said the line started where I was standing; couldn't he read? At least I know enough what side of the sidewalk to walk on.

This guy apparently thought it demeaned him to be seen standing behind me, so he disappeared. A man in a wheelchair showed up, and when I saw that guy coming back a few minutes before the pharmacy reopened, I told the disabled man he needed to get in line now, which I could tell pissed this racist off, which was the intended effect for treating me like I was a subhuman type who it was "OK" to shit on.

Hispanics are held to a different “standard” than other groups, one that relies on negative propaganda rather than “context” or factual information. “Little” lies are too good for them; the “bigger” the better, and the more they are believed the Trump base. They are all potential “criminals,” “rapists,” “drug-dealers”—how many times have I been asked if I have drugs to sell—“car prowlers”—those multiple car beeps by paranoid people—“shoplifters” who must be “followed,” and just plain “illegal.” 

It’s funny, but I watch old movies and TV shows, and it didn’t used to be that way; Hispanics were portrayed as fun-loving “banditos,” “revolutionaries,” “exotic dancers,” the women as “spitfires” and the men as being overly “honor-bound,” farmers in need of the assistance of gringo gunfighters, and when it came to being socially-conscious, they were wrongly-accused of murder or the victim of the usual societal prejudices, stuck in there in movies like Giant

Who is speaking for Hispanics? They themselves are certainly not allowed to do so for themselves, at least not in any form of broadcast or film media. In today's society, white women can call themselves "victims," and you better believe it or else, which is a bit hypocritical given their position in society, and the power they have to destroy lives with a simple accusation. The Packers new kicker, Brandon McManus, should feel fortunate he has a job because the NFL decided that the accusations of two flight attendants were without "merit," but only after his previous team cut him based on the accusations before due process was meted out.

Hispanics used to be what people thought of as the “foreign” flavor of the country; they have now been replaced by Asians, and relegated to the lowest status (maids, gardeners) or criminals (drug cartels, gangs), while blacks are at least representative as more positive characters and not stereotyped as a criminals responsible for half the crimes in this country. Even Chris Rock 6 calls out Hollywood for trying not to hire  Hispanics; you don’t even see any as “extras” on the streets in films set in Los Angeles. in a city that is 50 percent Hispanic. That isn’t being “racist”?

So we are told that the “flood” of “vermin” pouring over the southern border that threatens to either turn the country into one giant “migrant camp” if Harris is elected, or one giant concentration camp if Trump is, ABC News is demonstrating the hypocrisy of the day by accusing the Dominican Republic of “racism” against Haitians for trying to control the “flood” of refugees pouring across its border. As I pointed out before, Haiti’s current problems are mostly of its own doing. The Dominican Republic has maintained a more-or-less stable government and economy with a slightly smaller population than Haiti but a lot more trees as this image shows:

 


The negative environmental impacts of Haitian activities on the border has had the effect of degradation on the Dominican side of the border, which a UN-sponsored mediation between the two governments have failed in the past to remedy. The destruction of Haiti’s environment shows not only that there was no leadership to control problematic activities and their long-term impacts, but made the landscape far more susceptible to the destructive impact of severe weather events and earthquakes. 

But the most damage was done by unstable governments, with politicians who recruited once isolated gangs as storm troopers to intimidate their political opponents, and eventually lost control of them once the gangs realized that they now have the real power in the country, with gang lords the de facto rulers of the country (such as it is).

Although Kenya has sent militarily-armed police to Port-au-Prince to maintain a law-and-order presence, the New York Times is reporting that the gangs are “still on top.” Yet instead of pointing the blame where it belongs, news outlets like ABC and others shift the attention to alleged “racism” by the Dominican government, whose actions cannot be defined by the previously mentioned definition of racism—but which certainly defines that of Trump and his supporters toward Hispanic migrants.

Obviously, a lot of people don't "respect" Hispanics in the country, and can dump on them at will without expecting to be contradicted. I mean, who in the media is allowed to "speak" for them? People throw the word “respect” around and I don’t even think they know what it means, just something they use to defend certain behaviors that other people find “disrespectful.” Rules for civil behavior? "Rules"--you know, even simple ones that they post on Metro buses concerning noise-making (where are the "Ride Right" signs for the recent French-speaking arrivals?), or in the library--are apparently only meant to "oppress" certain groups, so it is their "right" to ignore or "rebel" against them.

I’ve seen so much that it is hard sometimes not to be indifferent; you don’t want someone to get in your face and making physical threats, so you just keep walking. That was apparently the “mistake” a “normal” white woman made in front of the building I work in after hours. I don’t know why she was standing there with all those people with nothing to do with their lives but “hang out” by the corner 7-Eleven, sit around and make a mess of what used to be the front of a Kinko’s store before it was bought out by Fedex. 

Maybe she was waiting for one of the two buses that stop there, but if she was she certainly missed it, because when I walked up there were people gathered around observing her bloody noise. Someone said that little black woman I saw walking off, who frequents the place in order to engage in insensible yelling contests with people who look at her wrong, supposedly became “paranoid” when she saw this white woman texting, and believing she was the subject of the texting, walked up and punched her in the face. I observed that the recipient of the blow looked “shocked” at what happened, like what did she do to upset this person? Of course, it is pointless to ask this question when you are dealing with people with mental health issues and for whom it is easy to blame "society" for their "problems."

Recently at the Seattle Armory I engaged in a "discussion" about the meaning of "respect" with a person who interrupted my writing by plugging his cell phone into the same plug I was using and started playing music. I looked at him "wrong" and he started haranguing me about "respect." I suggested that despite what the BLM movement claims. that in 91 percent of black homicide victims the perpetrators are also black, so he shouldn't be a hypocrite when "respect" was something that should start at "home," if he even knew what the word meant.

Of course I was being “racist” for suggesting he was “black.” I asked him what he thought he was then in order to enlighten me, and he told me he was “Creole,” which I think he just made up. I looked it up on the Internet and read out what Google’s alleged AI program defined it: “The term ‘Creole’ is not a racial label and can refer to people of any race, including Black.” That didn't sit well with this guy, either, so came the threats of going outside and settling this discussion in physical violence against this little 64-year-old who looked like a "Mexican" and probably deserved to get beat anyways because he didn't "belong" and it's "OK" to say this about people who look like me:

You take a look at them! They're different! They think different, they act different and they don't need some big excuse to kill somebody either. Well, it's true! Everybody knows it.

Someone called security, and of course I was the one going to be blamed for causing trouble, so I agreed to make it "easy" for them and left. I don't think I'm going back there again, since some people are so absorbed in their own "self-respect" that they don't take the time to consider that some people might believe that their engagement in such might be considered "rude" and "disrespectful."

As I say, I and people who I “look like" have much bigger problems to face if Trump is elected that the media is doing its part to exacerbate by avoiding speaking to the reality faced by those called "vermin" and "poisoners of the blood" and other demonizing and dehumanizing terms, perhaps believed by many so-called "brothers." But I’m not stupid…

 


…because this election isn't just about my personal "gripes," but about where this country is headed if Trump is elected, some Hieronymus Bosch nightmare world. While I have to admit that one vote in a “deep” blue state may seem irrelevant, the other thing that motivates me to do so anyways is what might happen if a million other people feel the same way and don’t bother to vote.

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