A short history of race war.

Fuck it, let's do this.

I have had a rough few days from a mental health standpoint and when those occur I have been known to make poor decisions, such as quitting good jobs without notice or calling in from work for a week straight, this blog is something I can fuck up with no consequences, so when I was having a bad time it was the logical choice to go. Also I needed to spend some time without my brain working, if I am writing I am thinking, but when I am not feeling good I am not thinking about things in a healthy fashion so a few days playing World of Warcraft until I am tired enough to fall asleep was what I feel like I needed. That is the only explanation I will be giving to anyone, as well as all the detail I feel is necessary to impart.
Let's move on to the story of the evening shall we? Unrelated to me and my personal problems.

When I write about guns, I almost invariably include a line about gun owners fantasizing about killing a black person, this isn't a throwaway line targeted at racists, rather I feel that our nations love affair with privately owned firearms is inextricably tied with the racism inherent in our culture.

From a practical standpoint it just makes expressing your hate too easy, at least one of the victims of the police would possibly be alive today if civilian ownership of guns was forbidden, as he had a legal firearm and was shot after telling the cop about it, but police aren't military either, if they didn't have any guns both those men would be alive, as would the five cops killed yesterday as well as the poor soul who chose to shoot them, let's be honest here, it is rather more difficult to beat someone to death with a club than it is to shoot them.

There's more to it than the practical of course.

The country was founded by, let's call them "rough" sorts, literally murdering their way to the possession of territory, and since they couldn't quite kill all of the people who were already living there, and those people rather strenuously objected to having their shit fucked up by the invading white man, for a time on the frontier it was just good sense to go armed, the problem is that in the early days of America, everything was kind of the frontier, you couldn't go to the big city and be assured of your security, because both the native people as well as competition from several other major powers were actively interested in undermining your security, also for a time there simply were no major cities to retreat to, unless you felt like crossing the Atlantic.

So there was a practical reason to carry guns, sort of, I mean the reason was based on the consequences of a racist, imperialist culture invading a completely new land, but for the average individual who just wanted to live on their homestead those reasons were irrelevant. Also hunting for food was a pretty large requirement of life on the frontier.

Time passed and the country became independent, not without dispute, and again, everyone carrying a gun was a pretty good idea even then, as the fledgling country had virtually no standing army as we would think of one today, so they used basically whoever lived in the area and showed up with a gun.
There were, of course, ongoing issues with the native Americans, many of whom still had objections to us being here, this would go on for a while really.

The natives where "pacified"(mostly murdered) however by the time the Civil War rolled around, and once again firearms were everywhere, or rather they were still everywhere because most of the reasons I listed above were still more or less valid.

The Civil War began due to a number of reasons that all pretty much boil down to slavery and don't let anyone tell you otherwise, yes states rights played a role, that role was the states wanted the right to own slaves, yeah there was an economic angle, that angle was the Southern economy was slave based.
Then there was the fact that the country was incredibly racist in a way that none of us alive today can properly comprehend, the fact that the founding fathers did not see fit to actually talk about it in the Constitution and Bill or Rights is proof enough of that, despite the fact that many of them personally objected to slavery as a practice. You can go back and forth about intentions, and about what was bargained away or negotiated during the writing of the documents our government is based on, but the fact remains that our country was founded with a massive amount of human beings still being considered property and despite the fact that many objected to this state of affairs, they were far from the majority.

So we killed each other by the thousands, and this killing was done over black people, and when it was done those black people still existed, and our soldiers took their guns home with them. Remember that the armies in the Civil War were not composed of philosophers here, the only difference between the average Union or Confederate soldier was what state they were living in when conflict erupted most of those who fought really didn't care for black people at all, why would they? They hadn't really been raised to and now they were dying in some of the most horrific ways yet devised by man to free them.

When the country was reunited the ball was dropped, no provisions for equality under the law were passed, few reparations were made, for a hundred or more years, we trained ourselves to go armed and react with violence to perceived threats, then we created an underclass of technically people, but not really protected people with little to no representation or power and those ruling the country really couldn't be bothered to increase that representation, and indeed actively worked to prevent it.

Basically we flooded the country with weapons and created an underclass of perceived threat that was almost free of consequence to persecute and who could find almost no protection under the law or even cultural norms. Remember that where you end usually depends on where you start? Well black Americans started as the enemy, and today for many, they are still the enemy, one need look no farther for evidence than literally any time a black person is stopped by a white cop it seems.

Guns and an enemy, for the centuries this country has been settled by the white man that is what we have had as a constant and that is still just as true today as it was when Columbus first reported back that the people of this continent would make fine slaves. Without the one, we wouldn't have the other, and without the other, we wouldn't want the one.


Philandro Castile
Alton Sterling
Lorne Ahrens
Michael Smith
Michael Krol
Patrick Zamarripa
Brent Thompson

The latest national victims of a race war that has been ongoing since the founding of the nation, it's a war that our society trains us to accept and participate in from the day we are born, it's a society that profits enormously off of arming us for that war, and it is knowingly perpetuated by those in a position to profit from it, there is no way for them to claim ignorance or lack of intent at this stage. The lobbies, the manufacturers, and the politicians they own, as well as the police departments that gleefully accept, and demand, the latest in technology designed to murder as efficiently as possible. There is no excuse to be a major part of any of these groups and not be aware of the harm being done to individuals and the nation. Not anymore, and not for a long time.