Fire & Rain

[H2O Man]

I'm happy to be able to say that I am alive. Some slight discomfort, short of actual pain, in my face and sides. For when one reaches my advanced age, prolonged laughter has consequences. This has been on-going for a few days of my existence in a very republican section of upstate New York.

There was a "Black Lives Matter" rally in a public park in the largest town in the county. For days, on a facebook gossip group that too often channels the inner demons of Sean Hannity, rumors competed to reach the staus of "most delusional." George Soros was busing very dangerous black people to burn the town. Soros was encouraging Antifa to come by caravan to do unpeakable evils. Both men and women, perhaps intoxicated on liquor, chattered about the security that their gun collects provided them.

The rally, by the way, was both called for and organized by students attending the town's high school. They are all good young people who in most other times are known to make the community proud. The danger to the community was posed not by these students or there rally, but by the adults who seem incapable of listening to and understanding their message.

There are a number of good people who participate on the facebook group's page, but they are a tiny minority. I admire their calm determination to communicate sanely and rationally with the conspiracy theorists. But that can prove difficult in the face of imaginary non-white people who -- despite not existing anywhere but between the theorists' ears -- crowding reality out of the hearts and minds of the other side.

One man did post something about American Indians. He clearly did not want his land, located some thirty miles away from the rally, stolen from him. He also wanted to make it clear that he isn't a racist: he loves the Indians from the cowboy & western flicks he grew up on, and only hates black people. I know, dear reader, that like myself, you are thinking that the word "Noble" surely applies.

When family and friends ask me if things can possibly get worse, I assure them that they indeed will get worse within the next 24 hours. Frequently, one need not wait that long. Below that noble ode to open-mindedness referenced above was a response from one of his even more ignorant -- and fucking stupid -- buddies. "Fuck them! Indians kept declaring war on our country. They lost."

That stunned me. My mind was temporarily as foggy as if Sonny Liston had jabbed me. Is it humanly possible to be this dumb in 2020? I suppose about 25% of the voting public is. But wait! Could this be comic genius, making an uncomfortable yet hilarious joke at the racists' expense, like an Abbie Hoffman or a David Chappelle? If so, I was almost jealous.

Yet a quick check of this fool's FB status revealed that he was as stupid a human being as he appeared. I do not have the time, energy, or inclination to try to reason with him. Instead, I will sit out on my lawn, and enjoy the fact that there is absolutely no smoke rising on the horizen, darkening the sky above the town that didn't burn.

It must be a scary world the Trumpites inhabit.
H2O Man