Anti-racist disciple Tim Wise finally "admits' that his pursuit of racial equality, Constitutional law and fairness for all races--including all white Americans-- has been a LIE.
by Tim Wise
For all y’all rich folks, enjoy that champagne, or whatever fancy ass Scotch you drink.
And for y’all a bit lower on the economic scale, enjoy your Pabst Blue Ribbon, or whatever shitty ass beer you favor.
Whatever the case, and whatever your economic station, know this…
You need to drink up.
And quickly.
And heavily.
Because your time is limited.
Real damned limited.
I know, you think you’ve taken “your country back” with this election
-- and of course you have always thought it was yours for the taking,
cuz that’s what we white folks are bred to believe, that it’s ours, and how dare anyone else say otherwise -- but you are wrong.
You have won a small battle in a larger war the meaning of which you do not remotely understand.
‘Cuz there is nothing even slightly original about you.
There have always been those who wanted to take the country back.
There were those who, in past years, wanted to take the country back to a time of enslavement and indentured servitude.
But they lost.
There were those who wanted to take us back to a time when children
could be made to work in mines and factories, when workers had no legal
rights to speak of, when the skies in every major city were heavy with
industrial soot that would gather on sidewalks and windowsills like
volcanic ash.
But they lost.
There were those who wanted to take us back to a time when women
could not vote, or attend any but a few colleges, or get loans in their
own names, or start their own businesses.
But they lost.
There were those who wanted to take us back to a time when blacks
“had no rights that the white man was bound to respect,” – this being
the official opinion of the Supreme Court before those awful days of
judicial activism, now decried by the likes of you – and when people of
color could legally be kept from voting solely because of race, or
holding certain jobs, or living in certain neighborhoods, or run out of
other towns altogether when the sun would go down, or be strung up from
trees.
But they lost.
And you will lose.
So make a note of it.
Tweet it to yourself.
Put it on your Facebook wall and leave it there so you’ll remember that I told you so.
It is coming, and soon.
This isn’t hubris. It isn’t ideology. It is not wishful thinking.
It is math.
Not even advanced math. Just simple, basic, like 3rd grade math.
The kind of math that proves how your kind -- mostly older white
folks beholden to an absurd, inaccurate, nostalgic fantasy of what
America used to be like -- are dying.
You’re like the bad guy in every horror movie ever made, who gets
shot five times, or stabbed ten, or blown up twice, and who will
eventually pass -- even if it takes four sequels to make it happen --
but who in the meantime keeps coming back around, grabbing at our ankles
as we walk by, we having been mistakenly convinced that you were
finally dead this time.
Fair enough, and have at it. But remember how this movie ends.
Our ankles survive.
You do not.
Michael Meyers, Freddie Kreuger, Jason, and that asshole husband in
that movie with Julia Roberts who tracks her down after she runs away
and changes her identity--they are all done. Even that crazy
fucker in Saw is about to be finished off for good. Granted, he’s gonna
be popping out in 3-D to scare the kiddies, so he isn’t going quietly. But he’s going, as all bad guys eventually do.
And in the pantheon of American history, conservative old white
people have pretty much always been the bad guys, the keepers of the
hegemonic and reactionary flame, the folks unwilling to share the
category of American with others on equal terms.
Fine, keep it up. It doesn't matter.
Because you’re on the endangered list.
And unlike, say, the bald eagle or some exotic species of muskrat, you are not worth saving.
In forty years or so, maybe fewer, there won’t be any more white
people around who actually remember that Leave it to Beaver, Father
Knows Best, Opie-Taylor-Down-at-the-Fishing Hole cornpone bullshit that
you hold so near and dear to your heart.
There won’t be any more white folks around who think the 1950s were
the good old days, because there won’t be any more white folks around
who actually remember them, and so therefore, we’ll be able to teach
about them accurately and honestly, without hurting your precious
feelings, or those of the so-called “greatest generation” -- a bunch
whose white contingent was top-heavy with ethical miscreants who helped
save the world from fascism only to return home and oppose the ending of
it here, by doing nothing to lift a finger on behalf of the civil
rights struggle.
It's OK. Because in about forty years, half the country will be black or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it.
Nothing, Senõr Tancredo.
Nothing, Senõra Angle, or Senõra Brewer, or Senõr Beck.
Loy tiene muy mal, hijo de Puta.
And by then you will have gone all in as a white nationalist movement
-- hell you’ve all but done that now -- thus guaranteeing that the
folks of color, and even a decent size minority of us white folks will
be able to crush you, election after election, from the Presidency on down to the 8th grade student council.
Like I said, this is math. And numbers don’t lie.
Bottom line, this too shall pass.
So enjoy your tax cuts a while longer.
Go buy whatever you people buy when your taxes get cut: a new car or two, a bigger house, an island. Whatever.
Go back to trading your derivatives, engaging in rampant financial
speculation that produces nothing of value, that turns the whole world
into your personal casino. Whatever.
Play your hand, and for the love of God play it big. Real big. As in, shoot for the moon big. As in, try to privatize Social Security, and health care, and everything else. Whatever.
At least that way everyone will be able to see what you're really about.
We’ve been trying to tell them, but nothing beats seeing it with your own eyes, so "Go big or go home," Bubba.
"Git ‘er Done."
"Cowboy up," or whatever other stupid catch phrase strikes your fancy.
Just promise you’ll do more than talk this time.
Please, or as one of your celluloid heroes might put it, “make my day.”
Do whatever you gotta do, but remember that those who are the victims of your greed and indifference take the long view.
They know, but you do not, that justice is not for the
sprinters, but rather for the long distance runners who will be hitting
their second wind, right about the time that you collapse from
exhaustion.
They are like the tortoise to your hare.
They are like the San Francisco Giants, to your New York Yankees: a
bunch that loses year after year after year, until they finally win.
You have had this confidence before, remember?
You thought you had secured your position permanently after the
overthrow of reconstruction in the wake of the civil war, after the
elimination of the New Deal, after the Reagan revolution, after the
Republican electoral victory of 1994. And yet, those you thought you had
cowed and defeated are still here.
Because those who have lived on the margins, who have been abused,
maligned, targeted by austerity measures and budget cuts, subjected to
racism, classism, sexism, straight supremacy and every other form of
oppression always know more about their abusers than the abusers know
about their victims.
They have to study you, to pay careful attention, to adjust their body armor accordingly, and to memorize your sleep patterns.
You, on the other hand, need know nothing whatsoever about them. And
this, will surely prove politically fatal to you in the end. For it
means you will not know their resolve. Will not fear it, as you should.
It means you will take their greatest strength -- perseverance -- and make of it a weakness, called losing.
But what you forget, or more to the point never knew, is that those who lose know how to lose, which is to say they know how to lose with dignity.
And those who suffer know how to suffer, which is to say they know how to survive: a skill that is in short supply amid the likes of you.
You, who could not survive the thought of minimal health care reform,
or financial regulation, or a marginal tax rate equal to that which you
paid just 10 years earlier, perhaps are under the illusion that
everyone is as weak as you, as soft as you, as akin to petulant children
as you are, as unable to cope with the smallest setback, the slightest
challenge to the way you think your country should look and feel, and
operate.
But they are not.
And they know how to regroup, and plot, and plan, and they are planning even now -- we are -- your destruction.
And I do not mean by that your physical destruction. We
don’t play those games. We’re not into the whole “Second Amendment
remedies, militia, armed resistance” bullshit that your side fetishizes,
cuz, see, we don’t have to be. We don't need guns.
We just have to be patient.
So party while you can, but mind the increasingly loud clock ticking away in the corners of your consciousness.
The clock that reminds you how little time you and yours have left.
Not much more now.
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock.
And wait for you to pass into that good night, first politically, and then, well...
Do you hear it?
The sound of your empire dying? Your nation, as you knew it, ending, permanently?
Because I do, and the sound of its demise is beautiful.
So know this.
If you thought this election was payback for 2008, remember…
Payback, thy name is…
Temporary.