Throughout all of recorded history pertaining to human civilization past and present, neither a day or night has transpired without the indignity and heartache caused by the racist’s isolationism, nativism and nepotism destroying lives mentally and physically, its plethora of victims knowing no release until the synapses formulating those memories are dead and buried. But it is not the biggest threat humanity has faced or faces today.
A statement which no doubt will upset many already too eager to be upset by anything not favoring and reinforcing their own preferences and predilections, but the reality I know is that racism had absolutely nothing to do with my mom being bound to a hospital bed for the rest of her life. Just a quick glance her way suggests she has in fact lived a far, far crueler life than has Barack Obama or Jay-Z/Beyoncé, and certainly not for lacking intelligence or a good work ethic or the willingness to help others.
To be sure, racism is prompted ultimately by middle management in service to the Powers That Be, a reactionary ploy the same as sexism or homophobia for divisively prompting people to further segregate themselves into groupings with each and every last one thus seeing itself as the superior. Middle management does this purposefully, under the pretense that it’s what their own masters could or should want. As egos only ever bowing to greater egos, such theoretical middle management wishes to befriend, to fuck or to vicariously be its masters, and so strives for their gratification as though glorification of the symbology embraced by chosen masters might transfer to glory for its susceptible audience in turn. Imagine if you will an emotional variant to the trickle-down theory of economics. For that matter, elections are tampered with not by the self-serving wealth deciding the fates of the population, but by their most fervent admirers who earnestly do not know that the decisions are already settled prior to the campaigns. The thought first struck me years ago in my media days, seeing so many unpaid entertainment bloggers obsessively promote products from companies already possessing paid marketing teams and endorsement deals. By asserting a supremacy for one’s own persuasions through the denigration of whichever ethnicity or sex or sexual proclivity, whatever competing brand loyalty obliged of the more subservient, those asserting are as well declaring their very own personal inferiority by way of a symbiotic codependency towards their own superiors, or rather toward what they themselves perceive to hold in common with their perceived betters.
It’s basically taking the initiative of defending a celebrity from perceived threats to their dominance, not because the celebrity is somehow better than the perceived threats of persons merely uninterested or sold on the dominance of competing superstars, but because the celebrity is regarded as superior to the self-appointed defense, by the self-appointed defense itself. When judging a man, you define yourself far more than you define him. What marketing of the celebrity superstar ego that appeals to its followers, the like-minded views on politics or religion, or the common persuasions of ethnicity, gender or sexual preferences, is accepted as a foundation connecting the following personality cult to its centerpiece. Not however, because it is what actually defines the particular iconic ego, but rather the messaging serves as the chosen worms intended to attract those hungriest for fraternity or unity away from the solitude of their prejudicial psychopathy, the voids requiring fulfillment. I insist that all those most offended by otherness, most troubled by differences of opinion or alternatives to preferred symbology or branding or belief systems, are always the loneliest persons. I’m sure there is some crossover here in how those bullied predominately are most likely to then become bullies themselves. Demanding a superiority or supremacy be acknowledged by non-believers is not so much a favorable conviction regarding the strengths of whichever purportedly supreme thing, be it a personality or a product, a skin-tone or political movement, as an all-consuming though unvoiced dread of its inadequacy.
If the Christian god has a whole day set aside for judgement, why would he need assistance in the matter from his most fundamental adherents? If a product is just so fucking great, should customers ever be obliged to help with its advertising, or is pledging #TeamTaylorSwift not taking a knee for matters other than truth or justice? Likewise, if someone calls you a racial slur or some other personalized derogatory expletive, they are confessing a doubt in the strength and independence of what they have been sold on, or else you pose no threat to its sovereignty and warrant no attentions.
What middle management fails to grasp however, a point missed as well by their victims of racism, sexism and homophobia, is that the Powers That Be, the personality cult centerpieces atop the pyramid of personality cult centerpieces, hold no loyalty to any race, orientation or creed. They do not believe in any nationalistic ethos or religious dogma. The interns running your favorite entertainer’s social media are not tasked with reading your responses. Tax-dodging billionaires surprisingly are never actually patriots. The State Department does not instigate wars because they hate Communists or Muslims or because they care to preserve human rights, but because profits are to be assured for their invested financial interests. They only believe in themselves and they only possess loyalty to their private ambitions. Provocateurs of symbology do not necessarily even believe in their own products and services, so much as requiring everyone else to comply with unquestioning loyalty. The people entitled with abilities for keeping everyone down, do not see us to love us or to loathe us, for who you truly are or for who you yearn to be, as they never turn away from their most becoming reflection. Profiteers of an invading army do not see the foot soldiers willing to die for them to love them personally, and they do not see the casualties of the foot soldier’s zealotry to loathe them personally. The foot soldiers see in their casualties only persons different from what they themselves believe to have in common with their own masters, oblivious to how the prompts of preferential disregard do not come directly from the profiteers, who are only ever perceiving not what concerns themselves but what flatters themselves. By the same logic does the Vatican forbid the concept of living saints, because you are never to actually see the rewards promised.
One-sided enrichment is a hard sell, but strengthening the illusion of a united front inspires the worst in anybody. Like you’re not a racist if you’re just following orders. A bigoted cop conducts his or herself accordingly because they believe their divisiveness is in keeping with the symbols they have invested in, normally as conveyed by the loudest proponents of the broadest symbology represented by god and country or capital, admitting its supremacy cannot be measured unto itself without crippling anything which may run counter to its wish-fulfillment. They believe that their most favorite icons want the divisiveness explicitly, when what they actually want, is everything. The more regard given to symbols, the less regard afforded to people, even those persons such symbols are tasked with representing. Flags and badges and burning crosses are never for conveying strengths, but for hiding weakness and fear, hiding them from anything which may disprove the symbol’s sexy or legally authoritative or religiously-compelled representation as actually being the center of the universe.