Why is there so much hate in our country? Where is it going?
My mind first goes to the Jacksonville shooting of a few days ago. A young white man wanted to kill himself but first he wanted to visit a black neighborhood and randomly kill as many people as he could. He ended up with three victims, but shot at many others. All were black. He murdered a 52 year old woman who was just sitting in her car. Then managed to chase down a nineteen year old boy who tried to flee and a 29 year old man who was walking by. He used an AR-15 style weapon bearing a swastika and racial slurs. The murders happened in a Republican-controlled state where you are allowed to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.
But it's not just mass murderers and suicidal racists I fear. I have two friends in my affluent Massachusetts town who worry every day that their grown black sons will be murdered by police. It is not an unreasonable fear, no matter what state. Police violence is a leading cause of death for young men in the United States. Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police.
But we are not just talking about black hate here.
Asians are regularly subjected to Asian hate.
Jewish people are one group who, just before I was born, were systematically exterminated in an educated, civilized European country. Many Jewish people I know, including my first husband, feel the Holocaust could happen again.
Hispanics are also discriminated against. Remember when Trump separated Hispanic children from their mothers, and caged them? The Uvalde shooting was directed at Hispanics.
Indigenous people exterminated, robbed of their land, and continue to have the highest suicide rate.
Oh, did I mention LGBQT?
Muslum people are still feared and denigrated.
Then women; mysogeny is very much alive.
Then psychics, yes psychics are descriminated against.
So what is going on here? When, if ever, will it end?
I did some quick scans and got the following.
What will Florida look like after Desantis is gone? I saw the color purple.
In light of the recent mass shooting in Jacksonville where a radicalized white nationalist shot black shoppers, and how DeSatan was booed when he came to the site to speak, I wonder what his future will be and what type of environment will Florida will be in the future. While he isn't directly responsible for the mass shooting, his rhetoric certainly doesn't help. And it seems like other racially-targeted mass shootings like the one in Jacksonville and Buffalo last year seem like they will be par for the course, and a lot of those types are commiserating online and becoming radicalized by other white supremacists and anti-blackness has been on an increase as of late. I find it interesting how the psychics on here really don't say much or have anything to say about that and how concerning it is.
@leebee Most of us who are intuitives on the site are also empaths and feel deeply about the rise of overt racism and violence in our country. It grieves me. The senseless deaths grieve me. My gut feeling is that the rise of Trump and MAGA caused this despicable behavior to become more acceptable within certain MAGA groups. And I don’t see it going away anytime soon. Sadly, my take is that it will take years. But maybe we need to go through this terrible experience so that our country has to face systemic racism, has to face the inherent bias and violence. We have to acknowledge our failures as a society before we can truly address them and make change. I don’t write about the deplorables and don’t like looking into their hearts of darkness. I think two things have to happen before our country heals: we must defeat Trump and Trumpism and we must sue Fox News into oblivion. Fox News is a pox on our nation.
In south Seattle, there have been a series of home invasions. Thieves hold these people hostage, assault them and rob them. All of the victims are Asian and we suspect that the actual number of these crimes is under reported. It’s horrifying and it’s happening in a blue state in one of the most progressive cities in the United States. And this affects me personally in that one of my daughters in law is Asian American and I worry about her safety and well-being.
@bluebelle I am right there with you on the alarm these home invasions raise. This week's Atlantic ran a startling story about a charismatic brilliant and horrific alt-right Nazi-style extremist who has a surprisingly large following on Twitter. Twitter keeps banning him and then reinstating him.
The article gets to the heart of the current political extremism where unimaginable violent supremism is now imaginable.
I know people don't want to think about the alt right because it is so horrible. But forewarned is forearmed, and in a sense, by understanding what Trump released from underground to above ground, we become innoculated, like a vaccine, to it spreading. We have to call out the extremism when we see it, knowing that it could take hold.
In fact, it has already taken hold far more than ever since WWII, and I for one feel that the current Administration may be doing too little too late. The Justice Department, trying, for example, to decapitate the Proud Boys with long prison sentences for two of their leaders, but I feel they must do more.
If you read the Atlantic story, and realize that this so-called Bronze Age Pervert, whose real name is alegedly Costin Alamariu, has a following, it may help you to call out elements of his philosphy when you hear those elements. DeSantis' negative twisting of the term "woke" to twist it into something bad, something to ridicule, is one of those racist and liberal hating elements that must be called out when it is uttered.
I suspect some people here may say, "But, Jeanne, you and other seers here have predicted that Trump won't succeed, that we will become a peaceful caring loving society?" What about that?
Answering that question is complicated. When we see the future, I believe it is not cast in concrete. I believe we are seeing the positive actions and lessons that will lead to that future. Without those lessons and actions, a different future can take place. There are few people alive today who went through WWII as adults. As such, our collective has not learned first hand the horror of the Third Reich. Most people today have taken their safety from right wing extremism for granted.
I suggest we not be complacent just because we've seen a positive future. The discomfort, indeed the horror, of seeing these alt-right extremists emboldened, of remembering when Trump called to the Proud Boys, "Stand back and stand by," as if he were telling them to just wait for his next order to strike -- that's horrifying as long as that man still holds the GOP in his grips.
What is concerning about Costin is how unabashedly and cleverly he states his Nazi philosophy, and how much of a following he has.
PS. He's not from the rural red state sticks. He grew up in the next town to mine, in MA and graduated from a high school where I used to teach. He got his undergraduate degree from MIT and PhD from Yale.
How Bronze Age Pervert Charmed the Far Right Atlantic An internet personality who espouses fascism, racism, and bodybuilding has won influential converts.
@jeanne-mayell, The Atlantic article was very unsettling but I am thankful that I read it. As you remarked in your post, forewarned is forearmed.
The increase in anti-democratic legislation and voter suppression laws have also contributed to this hateful and violent extremism. It's a mindset. Don't like how people voted? Let's find some way to nullify it. Don't like particular groups of people? Let's find some way to eradicate them.
Have you heard about what's happening in Wisconsin? Republicans in the Wisconsin State Legislature are threatening to impeach the newly elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz—before she’s even heard a single case. Protasiewicz won election to a 10-year term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April by an 11-point margin, giving liberals a 4-3 majority in the court, and ending a 15-year run with Republicans in control.
What is happening in Wisconsin shouldn’t be surprising. It's a large anti-democratic force that has been moving in our country's direction for some time. T didn’t create this problem; he capitalized on it. T arrived and shamelessly announced "these aren’t laws; these are norms. So I'll do and say as I please, and let's just see what happens." And for the past 7 years, other than the January 6 hearings which gave us some hope for justice, what's happened thus far has been no accountability for T and his minions. I remain hopeful that the chickens have finally come home to roost, and we will finally be seeing some accountability through the courts. Unfortunately, this anti-democratic authoritarianism has spread throughout the R party, which has emboldened these extremist groups and provided them with a larger platform to spread their hateful and dangerous garbage.
What's important is that all of this hatefulness is being exposed to the light of day. We can no longer sweep some of the shameful parts of our history under the rug, for as much as some legislators are doubling down and would prefer that we do just that. I love reading Princeton scholar Eddie Glaude Jr, who writes: "We are in the midst of a reckoning of sorts where we’re going to have to decide once and for all what kind of country we’re going to be. We can’t put this genie back in the bottle again."
@jeanne-mayell, I agree with your explanation on the nature of predictions. Our country's future is not fixed, which can feel scary right now -- but therein lies my hope. We have the collective power to create the world we have seen in our visions.
@deetoo Thank you for your illuminating post. What Trump did was to normalize a violent response when a political party doesn't get its way. His latest comments are that he will lock up his political opponents if re-elected. In the interview I just linked, his former aide Miles Taylor said that if the man is reelected it will be the end of democracy in America. If elected, Trump would do a cleansing of his political enemies. I am concerned at how close our democracy is coming to its edge.
I think it is time for some major prayer groups again like we did before the 2020 election. And we have to get dems to the polls in swing states. And when we do, we have to tighten up the laws so no politician can take us this close to the edge again.
For my own self, the day I learned Trump had been elected I cried hysterically all the way to work. When I later walked around my community I felt a target on my back. I felt vulnerable and exposed.. I tick off a lot of those boxes as an excuse for violence.
I still feel nervous in group settings and have shied away from most public spaces since then. Only now do I feel brave enough to start coming out of my shell. It is always an unpleasant reminder when I learn that people in my circle hold backwards beliefs towards immigrants, drag queens, and my favorite President Joe Biden.
It is all too easy to lose hope. But the work I do with teaching children to problem solve is my way of healing the future. It is important imperative work and I am grateful to do it.
It is all too easy to lose hope. But the work I do with teaching children to problem solve is my way of healing the future. It is important imperative work and I am grateful to do it.
@ghandigirl. Thank you for your post. I feel for you, and thank you for sharing your work with us. You give me hope.
@jeanne-mayell We are dealing with a group of Goyim Defense League, Nazi hate groups in our area... and local governance while denouncing it publicly says there is nothing they can do about... that its their First Ammendment right to free speech... yet they are pasting flyers on private owned vehicles in public and business parking lots, bagging up and tossing out on driveways, making swatting calls on synagogues, and staging "protests " outside synagogues and businesses. Their actions speak louder than their words... and seems to me to be " hate speech" and yet no one does anything to stop them !!! So to me? This inaction condones what they are doing.
Check out the Southern Poverty Law Center, they do much more than the name suggests, including working against hate groups.
@raincloud Yes! SPLC pretty much litigated the Klu Klux Klan out of existence. Here is an article on SPLC's website about Antisemistism. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/antisemitism
We’re watching “The Insurrectionist Next Door” documentary and there are common threads among the “patriots”: traumatic childhood experiences, crime, violence and imprisonment, cognitive disabilities, depression, low self-esteem, poverty, isolation, ignorance, undereducated.
As an educator, it’s heartbreaking to witness their clumsy pride, hypocritical and illogical arguments, and the especially excruciating bravado vs. helplessness conflict. To hear their contradictory words and witness their internal pain reminds me of adolescent triggers and responses.
I’m not excusing their crimes at all. And, it’s mind-boggling to see these lost souls attack the “liberals” who want to protect the very social programs necessary to shrink the wealth divide and elevate people so they can experience better lives. Yet, here we are still—insurrectionist’s common complaints and maladies persist alongside their bravado and hubris. In their heads, it makes sense. 💔