Charlottesville

Unclear what to title this. I went to UVa, I lived on The Lawn. It took my breath away to see white supremacists with torches organizing there Friday night.

This is such a fight for the health of our body politic that it is very easy to give up, to give over to the relief of only reading and communing with someone, anyone, mirroring your beliefs. This makes you feel better, quells anxiety like opioids do as they wash over deeply embodied and probably genetic despair. It hurts to read what the other side has to say. This piece from the Federalist (written by its Publisher, no less) wanders around claiming things I want to probe because there are holes. He titles it "The Reality of Charlottesville," a phrase/header I've seen more than once, from different sides, over the last 48 hours.

I've avoided giving the white supremacists any of my video time, because of desire to give them as little of my time and energy as I can. These white, angry men are the black hole of society, and they know it and understand that their aggression can and will suck a lot of people in. It sucked them in, after all. 

A fine line exists between acknowledging these people as humans with grievances and responding as though they are violently afraid animals who will kill to maintain their toxic, constricted, dried out reality.

The star of the Vice documentary has The Federalist up on his screen at the end of the segment while nearby, a Black Woman points out that being black in Charlottesville, home to the University that the contradictory Thomas Jefferson founded, means you live every, day, down to your bones, a contradiction. It's the one where your people had to fight to establish, inalienably, a right to being there, to owning a piece of there, while the others could do so and also do whatever with you, whenever and however, for free and fun, as well as for profit and ownership.

Donald Trump is a wolf in sheep's clothing. He is the emperor without clothes. He is choosing his followers because he is in a leadership position without any leadership skills or interests, and certainly without any steady moral compass. The great Alexandra Petri says exactly everything here. Also watch the documentary below.