Jackson sucks

My campaign to get him off the money continues

I never got why this guy was so popular, or why we still have a tradition or a form of "democracy" which bears his name.. and which persists as an active force in politics. Without anybody referencing what it actually does. Namely, it seeks to fuck over non-whites or non-Americans through xenophobia and fear and anger and use that as a wedge issue to "distract" from the more pressing real life concerns of say, poor white farmers/labourers (who instead care more about Mexicans or Muslims or Cherokees anyway). It always has. And it always will.

Why we should celebrate this sort of politics is beyond me. It is among the worst form of pandering, to our fear and our anger, the most base emotions rather than to our idealism, to our hope. You can see this in Palin's trope of "how's that hopey changey thing working out for you". I for one was never particularly hopeful. Mostly because I know America is populated by people like this (some, but far too many), who do revere a man who kicked around the Indians and the blacks (and the English), and who do revere authoritarians who boss around arbitrarily and keep "those other people" in line, and who do think that this is a land and a promise that is entitled only to a "chosen people". White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (or at least the heterosexual ones), with a little exception carved out for Catholics or Jews, and in some parts of the country not even that.

This was not the dream imagined by many writers of our founding documents, nor many of our most revered leaders (both political and civil), and when it appears, it should be vilified and shamed for its detachment from reality. Yes people can hold these views of intolerance and fear and hatred. That is also among our rights that we are free to be stupid or bigoted or smaller than we have the ability to be as a people. People will, with great liberty and freedom, often do silly unobjectionable things and believe even more terrible views. But those views are in error. And they should be shown this error rather than be exploited for it. We have every right to support people's voice when we are in agreement with it. And to oppose it when we are not. We cannot silence it. But we can disagree, peaceably and perhaps in time, one of us will recognize the error of our thinking or our words, apologize, and move on a little wiser for it.