To hear the mainstream media tell it this past few days, there’s a civil war that has been started in America. White nationalists, Nazis or the KKK depending on who you’re watching, have run amok on our streets and are killing us all. To hear the mainstream media tell it, these racist people who were created by President Donald Trump when he was elected to office are roaming our streets with dangerous weapons and attacking peaceful Americans.
If you have been listening to the mainstream media, you would not know that a group of people who were having a peaceful rally against what they saw as injustice done to them were set upon by a mysterious group who call themselves “peace protesters” and had to defend themselves. If you have been listening to the mainstream media, you would not know that a group of Americans who were holding a peaceful rally were intercepted by another group who took the laws into their own hands, thereby turning a peaceful event into a violent one.
Yes, the White Nationalists were rallying peacefully, as they have every right to do as citizens of the United States, until the so called peace protesters intercepted their rally and turned it violent. You will not get that part of the story from the mainstream media because they see this as another opportunity to dump on a president they hate so much for beating their chosen candidate to the presidency.
What the mainstream media is doing, advertently or inadvertently, with this anti Trump madness is teaching Americans that it is right to shut up people you disagree with even with violence. It’s okay to use any means necessary, including threats and violence, to deny people whose views and beliefs you disagree with their first amendment rights.
The white nationalists have abhorrent views, no doubt, but does that deny them the first amendment rights that our constitution guarantees every citizen? Does the views they hold deny them the right to peacefully gather and protest, if they wish to do so? Our constitution says it doesn’t, and no matter how much you hate that fact, it is reality, and is for a good reason.
You may think the views they’re expressing are abhorrent as I do, and you have the right to think that, but what you do not have is the right to physically stop them from expressing those views. The reason for that is simple, apart from the fact that the constitution guarantees that right to all of us. The simple reason is that we all hold views others might find objectionable, and if we all start trying to forcefully stop each other from holding views we don’t like, the only outcome will be chaos. What transpired during the white nationalist rally is a perfect example.
I know it’s difficult for a lot of people to see any good reason why people they consider racist and obnoxious should have the right to freely and peacefully rally and propagate what they consider their message of hate. Something you must consider, if you’re one of such people, is that there are also a lot of people out there who don’t think much of your own message, even if you believe it’s the greatest, therefore, live and let live. We know for sure that many consider the Black Lives Matter movement to be bad – even racist, so would it be okay for such people to intercept and challenge the BLM rallies?
I understand that you want to fight the views and messages they’re trying to propagate, but there are smarter ways to fight that than putting your life and that of others in danger by going out to intercept their rallies. I have argued with people who think it’s courageous and brave to challenge and fight these people because of their obnoxious views, but I think that people who win wars are the ones who fight smart. Putting your life, and other people’s lives in danger which is what physically intercepting and challenging these people amounts to, is not courage or bravery. It’s foolhardiness, at best, apart from the fact that shutting down a KKK rally actually does absolutely nothing to address racism in America.
But, if that’s your thing, you can do a counter rally in a different location where you don’t have to run into each other and raise the possibility of clashing. You can even do your protest on a different day, if you feel that you want it on the same location as theirs, and your rally will end up carrying more weight, and achieving better things than people being killed and injured. That is fighting smart, and gives you a better chance of achieving your goal.
The atmosphere has been so charged the past few days and you hear words like “racist” and phrases like “civil war” being thrown about by riled up citizens all over social media, and even in the mainstream media – especially in the mainstream media. The question everyone of us must ask ourselves in the midst of all this is who will the beneficiaries be from all of this? Who benefits from this division that is growing among the citizens, and is there a possibility that someone or group is engineering this rift for political purposes?
I don’t know the answers to these question, but I’m thinking about them, and I believe each and everyone of us needs to give them some thought. Something about the way the whole KKK rally and Peace group counter rally thing transpired made those questions pop into my mind. Was the Peace group counter rally organized or did it just pop up? If it was organized, who did it? I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theory so I leave you to think about it for yourself and reach your own conclusion. But, do think about it, I implore you.
Donald Trump may be a terrible president, but he did not institute racism in this country. The KKK or White nationalists have been in existence long before he was born, so he did not manufacture them with his election, like the mainstream media is trying to make you believe. Instead of using the opportunity provided by this tragedy to try and educate the citizens about the first amendment rights of every American to free speech, opinions and peaceful rallies, in order to minimize chances of this happening again, the mainstream media has been selling the lie that this was racism and civil war by continuously repeating that what happened was an act of domestic terrorism by racists.
It is not right, and must be a cause for concern for every American that our media will politicize a tragedy like this just because it gives them a chance to get revenge on a president they don’t like. It’s a known fact that our mainstream media is good at selling wars to us, but, so far, our war mongers have only sold us foreign wars. It’s time for every American to wake up and be concerned when it appears they’re trying to sell us a domestic war.
