POWER IN THE NAME

the road ahead

 

A lifetime of habit patterns around looking back on Dec 31 at the year gone by, I woke this morning thinking about what has come to me in the year and what has gone away. I don't remember a time I did not think New Year's Eve anything but another night before another day. Every day is New Year's day. It's like naming a dog. I feel like dog is best without a name, a name being something imposed on dog from outside by the human mind. Yet I don't know if the animals have names for each other. They're not telling. I've seen a gathering of about twenty raccoons in a picture taken by trail camera. I imagine they all knew each other, an extended family. Crows live in extended families unto tribes. They know each other as people in a small community. Surely they know one another by position in the hierarchy, by relationship, and subtleties humans don't see. I'd guess Mama has a crow equivalent. Brother, sister, seems like these relationships being known, they would have an identifying sound or thought for each one. I find behavior in the animal and bird world similar to ours, as it would be, considering evolution.

 

 

 

I've no problem with the word evolution. First, I'm not selling anything and am not a missionary for any agenda. People who have an issue with the word, evolution, don't read. There's the long and the short of it. Somebody who doesn't like a word I use can either tell me about it or not. I've seen contention over word usage all my life. In childhood, black people were known to white people only by nigger and colored, sometimes darkie. Of course, it's all demeaning, coming from a subconscious belief among white people that we're superior in every way, therefore privileged. In the late Fifties, a cry went up for white people to call black people Negroes, while Negroes went on calling each other nigger unto this day. But it's not ok to say it and be white. A white man is outright forbidden to refer to a woman a bitch or a cunt. It's totally ok for women to call men assholes or dicks in coffee shops, in print, on tv and radio.

 

 

Somebody black calls me a white motherfucker and it's ok, but not ok for me to call him a motherfucking nigger. For myself, I approach it with understanding that white man is, historically and present tense, the oppressor of black people, women, etc. White man has traditionally been the privileged demographic. That there are no restrictions on names minorities and women can call white men tells me political correctness is aimed at the white man, to bring white man under control. It's ok because arrogant white man believes himself superior from birth onward, thereby goes along oblivious to names he's called. White man is on a fast downhill run in this time on greased skis and he knows it. White man mind, not all white men, but the mind, has come together in one political party that represents half the population. We have devolved politically, from 1980 unto this year soon completed, 2015, to the clown bus of a dozen white man pretend candidates with a token black man and a token woman spewing white man unreason, strategically appealing to ignorance in the American people with the propaganda of fascism.

 

 

The shocking part is how well it works. The most cynical minds of all thought up this strategy and set it in motion. The republican party today is an illustration of the white male belief system, a branch of the patriarchal belief system, crumbling before our eyes, reduced to denying reason, intelligence, knowledge to maintain power. We're learning upfront that democracy has become a threat to white man. We've already learned through Southern history the white man will happily throw off democracy to hang onto power. I have stopped paying attention to anything to do with the clown bus. They've taught me what they're about, which is of no interest. Curiously, Trump has turned out to be the trump card in the political/media bridge game going on. Throughout my life I have attempted to understand people not me, from foreigners to everyone I know. I am my own political correctness cop open to understanding others the best I'm able, receiving every individual in my life as he or she is within themselves. Another way of saying I go in peace. I don't use any of the disrespectful names, except for the humor of irony with close friends who understand where I'm coming from. Like you. And this comes from a basic ethic to regard others with respect if I want respect in turn. Respect boomerangs. Disrespect boomerangs. It's my choice in every moment of every day. Happy New Year.

 

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

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