Being a veteran, many of my Facebook friends are conservative. They tend to like their firearms and dislike Black Lives Matters protesters, “Why can’t they all be like Darius Rucker from Hootie and the Blowfish?” Recently I found myself in an inane argument where I tried to prove that Black Lives Matter was not the same kind of group as the Klu Klux Klan. I patiently, I thought patiently, explained that Black Lives Matter was a citizen’s group whose intention was to shed light on the issue of police murders, while the Klu Klux Klan was a violent domestic terrorist organization that lynched thousands of black people, often for the crime of glancing in the direction of white woman. My desire to explain is a weakness and it is why I origionally went into teaching. Growing up, I always thought that if I could explain something with patience and reason that I would gain a friend and might in the process convince somebody of the righteousness of my cause. I grew up three miles from Disneyland in the era of Reagan therefore optimism and the grease of In and Out burgers ran through my arteries. Needless to say, the response to my comparative Facebook essay about the differences between Black Lives Matter and the Klu Klux Klan was not well taken. The guy who posted the well worn love it or leave it post received 639 Likes, while I received an offer for a one way ticket to Afghanistan, a few posts about the likely probability that I was a homosexual, and a couple of challenges by veterans who made it a point to state their former unit’s name, the type of weapon that they carried into combat, and their ability to shoot people at long distances. It’s difficult to tell nowadays, because of video games like Call of Duty, whether these Facebook trolls were veterans or disgruntled grown children making a mess of their parents’ basements, or maybe they were both veterans and disgruntled grown children making a mess of their parents’ basements. My question, that I hope the person who reads this post will help me answer, is that if by reason, a person cannot even convince a group of people that Black Lives Matter and the Klu Klux Klan are different, or that creation science is not a science, or that climate change is an actual thing and not just a conspiracy designed to make chemistry professors wealthy publishing journal articles in obscure scientific quarterlies, then what hope is there for democracy.
I am a socialist and I really want to be able to have open conversations with capitalists and social democrats and libertarians about the future of the planet. Being a socialist and a Veteran for Peace in Spokane, Washington, my circle of trust oscillates between twelve and thirteen people, the number rising and falling because of the advanced age of the activists. They don’t make it to all of the meetings, but neither do I.
Bringing the message of socialism and peace to the outside world is daunting. Even in secular Washington state, people seem to put their hopes more in the return of Christ Jesus than they do in any kind of notion of solidarity among the working class. Many Americans want nothing to do with even the concept of class. Class is a permanent state, a European construct, while in America there is mobility. The other day as I rode my bike past the Spokane Arena, I saw streams of business attired people exiting the saddle shaped complex. I asked a well dressed young man if the arena was holding church services and the guy said, ‘energy drinks, it is a convention on how to sell energy drinks. There are millions of dollars in selling energy drinks; you should take a look for yourself.” How do you approach a guy like this about socialism? He might have some lousy job at Office Depot, but to him, that job is a stepping stone. Soon he will be an energy drink baron. America is like that. The optimism, the hope in things unseen, the knowledge that despite what people say, that energy drinks are the ticket out of the world of selling paper products.
Convincing people that Black Lives Matter and the Klu Klux Klan are both organizations, but that that is where their similarities diverge, and explaining to people the folly of building an energy drink empire in Spokane, Washington is a Herculean task. People believe what they believe and beliefs are more powerful than any fact. If I believe that the Klu Klux Klan and Black Lives Matter are equivalent, then it is so, and no amount of reasoning from “some gay that probably doesn’t even own a gun ” can overcome that. I am not only secure in my belief but I am easily able to find people who already agree with me and validate my myopic vision. I too am susceptible to the trap of seeing things in a calcified state and then finding others to validate my positions. The internet was supposed to make us reach out to others and learn what different people thought about all matters of existence, from the horror of the Klu Klux Klan to the process of selling energy drinks in a saturated beverage market, instead it has created echo chambers for people looking for assurance for their values.
It seems that at one time, long long ago, that Americans could at least agree on the parameters of argument . We have this set of facts, you interpret them as you do and I see them as I do. With the issue of the Black Lives Matter versus the Klu Klux Klan there are basic facts that support the idea that the Klan was a domestic terror organization. To argue against this premise is to read from an entirely different data base than what the standard historical works cite. How is there progressive movement in a society where not only the interpretation of the facts are up for question, but also the facts themselves are up for question?
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