Here we go again.
I admit that I am a literalist; meaning that I take things literally. If you say that “black lives matter,” I say “of course they do.” If you say “all lives matter,” I say, “of course they do.” If you say “wait a minute, when I said ‘all lives matter,’ I didn’t realize that the phrase was being used as a way to say that black lives really don’t matter,” I pause, turn my head askew, and ask, “so are you saying that quite literally all lives don’t matter?” And I will get no answer.
As we embark on the nauseating 2020 presidential campaign all of the identity politics that make many of us sick will be on center stage. And apparently, we’re starting with revisiting the asinine discussion of which lives matter.
In full disclosure I will freely admit that part of what angers me over this entire topic is that the racist and hateful organization and movement known as “Black Lives Matter,” was created as a result of a lie over Michael Brown being murdered in the streets of Ferguson Missouri while pleading for his life and saying “hands up, don’t shoot,” none of which ever happened.
Michael Brown was a thug who attacked a cop and tried to take the cop’s gun. He didn’t die because he was black and his life didn’t matter, he died because he attacked a cop. He was initially targeted by police not because he was merely black, but because he fit the description of a person who had just robbed a convenience store (a fact later proven true by surveillance video). In other words, Brown robbed a store, a cop found the person who robbed the store (Brown), and confronted him, and Brown responded by attacking the cop, who ultimately killed Brown in an act of self-defense. And from that came the horrific movement known as “Black Lives Matter.”
As a man married to an African American woman I know first hand that racism is real and prevalent in America and that it is most horrifying when it lives within the souls of those who have authority and power. I have seen it, felt it, and lived it. And I know that Black Lives Matter is not only not the solution, it’s fanning the flames of the problem.
Enter the phrase “all lives matter,” which, without context seems fairly mundane and simple. If you were awaken from a coma after 20 years and confronted with this phrase you might say “well, yeah, of course all lives ,matter in theory…I mean I’m not sure about pedophiles or murderers or rapists…” At which point the wise soul from 2019 would inform you that we aren’t talking about specific behavioral anomalies and characteristics, we’re simply looking at things through a blank prism and saying that all lives, assuming they commit no heinous crimes, matter. Regardless of race, color, creed, religion, sexuality, political persuasion, or anything similar, all (innocent) lives matter. As the coma patient, you would wonder if you were talking to a diagnosed idiot and simply say “yes, of course all lives matter.”
And yet, in 2019, if you were to say that aloud you would somehow be deemed a racist. One of the 479 people running for the Democratic presidential nomination to face-off against President Orange in 2020 is a man named Pete Buttigieg (you pronounce it however you want) and he was recently asked about having the audacity to once say that “all lives matter.” Fortunately for the nation, he immediately indicated that he would never say that again. Which, to those of us who have brains, means simply that all lives don’t matter. Some do, some don’t. If you’re confused, I have put together a list for you of lives that do and don’t matter in 2019 America:
In the end, this despicable time in our nation’s history comes down to what we call “identity politics.”
You either fall in line, or you’re not part of “the movement,” and you are to be destroyed. It’s disgusting and divisive and that’s exactly what its’ founders and soldiers want it to be. BLM is not looking to heal the nation, they’re looking to make it burn. They ignore the fact that many of us understand that the American criminal justice system is unarguably racist and needs to be reformed. Rather, they yell, scream, shout, shove, break, destroy, and march, all while demanding that black lives matter, and if you have the audacity to confront them and say “of course black lives matter…as do all lives,” you will be shoved to the back of the bus and ostracized and ignored and marginalized.
Oh, the irony.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/04/politics/pete-buttigieg-national-action-network/index.html
