In the 50 years plus since Medgar Evers was murdered …

In his driveway. Within earshot of his wife and children. In all that time, there has been exactly one (1) statue erected in the Mississippi civil rights activist’s honor. That statue resides at Alcorn State, the formerly segregated college he attended on the GI bill.

One statue. At his alma mater. Compared to hundreds of statues of Confederate generals.

That’s another reason why so many folks find the Dixie stuff offensive. The dearth of honors for genuine American heroes like Evers, who gave their lives to combat the horrors that the Confederacy strove to sustain. It also took almost 30 years to bring his rotten killer to justice, but who’s counting?

When only one part of your “history” is represented, there are reasons for that. And the reasons are rarely good.

In this photo from Skokie, I’m the tall guy in back with cool shades and his mouth hanging open …

Just kidding. Despite my reputation as a latter day Zelig, I was not actually present for the Skokie Klan rally and counterprotest in 1978.

Although I did visit a buddy in Skokie the week before it and encouraged him NOT to bust heads. To just show up and show solidarity. For one thing, there weren’t that many heads to bust … maybe 50 knock-kneed really dumb-sounding Klan dudes sporting the half-hood look made popular during the second resurgence of the Klan in the 1960s.

I also lost a couple friends by vehemently defending the ACLU’s decision to represent the Klan in its attempts to hold a rally. And I have not wavered in that position. An inch. With the obvious exceptions of not being able to shout “Fire” in a crowded theater or specifically call for violence against another person or group of people, my support of free speech is absolute. Both in principle – which is what makes the first amendment the cornerstone of liberty – and in practice.

The more you let the Klan types talk … especially in public and in debate … the less attractive they become to weak minds and to young unloved men searching for identity in all the wrong places. None of their ideas are evidence-based. Or logical. Or strong enough to survive the mildest debate. And most of the Klan types wilt under pressure, cringe, turn and run … not to mention whine when they lose their jobs or their Mom gets mad … so any semblance of emotional strength or emotional appeal usually fades as well.

The only time that shit seems attractive is when lit by the LED screen of a lonely viewer of Breitbart or some other online receptacle of horse manure and obvious idiocy. Alone in your room … while posting Pepe the Frog pics for the amusement of other curdled adolescents … you might imagine your pimple-assed face to be the face of a new Aryan nation.

But not in the light of day. Not in the light of Liberty.

P.S. I wasn’t happy with the way the local police handled Charlottesville. And I’m not convinced that the right of assembly always means the right to assemble exactly where you want to … e.g., I support the ability of a locality – for public safety reasons – to deny one venue and suggest an equivalent substitute. But those posts are for another day.

Would you want the interwebs to vote on whether you get to keep your job?

Can we stop this?

We all now live in an early 20th century midwestern small town, where a person’s moral worth is discussed and decided over back fences by people with nothing better to do. And where a single sin gets you banned both from church and from drinking at the American Legion.

Take a break from the daily outrage, everybody, and make sure the rent is up to date on your own glass house.

Blue People Trapped in Red Bodies

This photo from downtown Indianapolis makes me nearly as happy as participating in the huge march and rally in Los Angeles did yesterday.

FOX reported (with admirable discretion given the fact FOX is the propaganda arm of the GOP) that the Indy Women’s March attendance was in “the thousands,” and I won’t make a guess based on one photo about how many thousands that might be. But I think it’s a safe bet that yesterday’s crowd was one of the largest for some time in my hometown, surpassing even the crowd that gathered to protest the 2000 firing by Indiana University of Bobby Knight. A Trump supporter, but – more importantly – a basketball coach.

Here’s the thing. We can’t right this ship unless we can turn a bunch of the red states blue and do it in two years … before the damage of unrestrained GOP gangsta rule becomes incalculable and irreversible. Mitch and Paul are licking their chops. So are their 1% “Fuck America, I Got Mine” supporters. Some of whom are now proposed for the Cabinet. Betsy DeVos, for instance, of Amway money, who never met a good public school she didn’t want to close and turn into a shitty charter school for the profit of a friend.

Indianapolis already knows that Trump lied about bringing jobs back to Carrier. The money he allegedly secured for Carrier will go toward automating the plant. Automation, by the bye, along with internet businesses such as Amazon and Uber, globalization, robber baron corporations who feel great loyalty to their short-term stockholders and none to their employees or communities, and those 1% UnAmericans who ship their jobs and profits overseas are the reason there aren’t any jobs left in Middle America. Not because a few black and brown folks still get food stamps. And a few elderly folks make enough from social security that they don’t have to share cat food with their cat.

In a month or two, all of Indiana will realize that the Obamacare they wanted to repeal is the Affordable Care Act that saved their kid’s life and made it possible for grandma to get a new hip. And the Hoosier faithful were never real warm to the idea of cozying up to the heathen Russkies. Just how far Trump has his head up Putin’s ass will hopefully become apparent to them and they won’t like it. And the Conman in Chief is no “Music Man,” that great mendacious musical written by a Hoosier, Meredith Willson. Not only will the Hoosier kiddies receive no musical instruments, the Music Man won’t be shown to have character and decency after all. And he’ll grab some other woman’s pussy after he’s done with Marian the Librarian.

And then there’s Pence. Speaking of musicals. Folks in Indiana don’t need to be told what a little shit Mike Pence is underneath the innocuous exterior. Initially as a Congressman (which took him awhile to attain because he used his campaign funds the first time around to pay off his mortgage), then as Governor, finally as Tea Party Senator, Mike has been doing to Indiana what he’d now like to do to the country. Which is basically to keep women barefoot and pregnant and close to the dinner table, deny rights to gay people, and tolerate and empower the intolerant. As governor, he pushed through the Religious Freedom Protection Act … because, you know, folks in Indiana are so restricted in their church-going.

Hmm, I wonder if the Religious Freedom Protection Act applies to Muslims.

How we got from Indiana voting for Obama in 2008 to cursing the nation with Mike Pence is the question that needs to be answered and addressed. If we’re to make sure that America (and especially states like Indiana) continues to have a pulse. Forget the Great Again garbage. Great Again like what? Like when black people knew their place and the only brown people were the wives of rich Indiana businessmen who spent their summers by the country club pool. Guys, the Fifties were sad and weird. And a helluva lot sadder and weirder if you weren’t white.

Somehow, some way, we have to make Hoosiers understand that their interests are not served by the servants of the 1%. They are still waiting for those jobs and that money Reagan promised them would trickle down. And, meanwhile, almost 40 years later, a whole lot more jobs and money have trickled out.

People in the middle of America have been lied to for so long, they are used to it. FOX news makes them angry – provides them their daily one-minute hates and gets the blood pumping – and then there’s their favorite bedtime story of what a Paradise This Would Be if the government just got off our backs.

To be told the truth is jarring for those of us who have been emotionally sustained by lies. It shames us, embarrasses, makes the blood pump in more stressful ways, keeps us up at nights. But a little time spent with Donald Trump as President might just open some eyes and minds. Maybe even hearts.

Events such as the women’s march in Indianapolis are a start. It remains to be seen whether it was an isolated protest by blue people trapped in red bodies. Or the beginning of real and lasting change. But I know it gave me hope.