Overthinking It is celebrating our nation by searching for the most American piece of pop culture with the word “American” in the title. Read the entire series here.
n the final matchup of the Violence region, American History X narrowly triumphed over American Sniper. For all of Sniper‘s many ‘Merican qualities, American History X felt disturbingly contemporary. Many of the things Derek Vinyard said reminded me of a certain presidential candidate (hint: not Jill Stein). And even though we generally try to keep politics far away from this site, this low-hanging fruit was too tasty not to pluck.
It honestly scares me that such a large portion of the US seems to agree with all of this. I always thought that this extreme racism was delegated to a vocal minority. Now, though, it seems like almost half the population is nodding along.
I feel like it is more like a 1/3 of the population is on board and the other 20% of people who will vote for him are republicans who don’t like it but are too tied to the republicans to disavow Trump.
I have lost all faith in humanity at this point. Even if Clinton pulls through, a solid half of the country has voted for a man endorsed by the KKK.
I read a bunch of statistics once on theories people believe. No matter how outlandish a theory about 25-30 percents of the population seems to believe it. About a quarter of the population doesn’t think Oswald killed JFK. That same number thinks extraterrestrials are living on earth disguised as humans and 25 percent of people believe Trump is presidential material.
For being a more scientific, less emotion driven publication, you sure seem to fall into the same liberal trap.
Face it, in the “Current Year”,identity politics are rampant, especially ethnic ones. Blacks and BLM rioters are given “space to destroy” entire neighborhoods by police who are terrified of being called racist for enforcing the law. Mexicans and other latinos practice open ethnonationalism, protesting Trump rallies with Mexican flags, saying that this or that southern state doesn’t belong to America. In Europe, masses of Arab and South Asian immigrants pour in and clearly state, if anyone would bother to listen, that they will out-reproduce the European locals and turn France, the UK, Germany, etc into an Islamic caliphate.
That’s fine. People are tribal. It’s in our DNA. But any logical person would understand the hypocrisy of saying that white people aren’t allowed to vote in favor of their ethnic interests when every other non-white group votes as an ethnic block. Any reasonable person would see the blatant political agenda behind calling Trump (who is rather tame, considering the issues here) a modern day Hitler because he wants to build a border war.
It’s not that the police are “afraid to enforce the law,” it’s that they’re reaching for their guns far too quickly and unnecessarily and African Americans are being killed disproportionately. Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old, was shot for having a toy gun. Philando Castile was shot and killed at a simple traffic stop because he “reached for something” after the cop asked to see his driver’s license. Twenty-six percent of people killed by cops in the past year were African American, despite making up only thirteen percent of the population. Black Lives Matter is a peaceful organization calling for an end to violence, not for “space to destroy.” They organize sit-ins and rallies, not riots.
And even though I’m white, it’s certainly not in my interest to vote for Trump. As a woman, I refuse to vote for somebody who sees me as an object or trophy, or who thinks that I should be punished for making decisions about my own body or that I shouldn’t be allowed to work with “negotiable assets.” And while it may not affect me directly, I’m not interested in voting for somebody who wants to take away somebody’s right to marry, a right the Supreme Court determined was Constitutionally given. I’m certainly not interested in voting for somebody whose running mate thinks electrocuting teenagers because they don’t love the right people is alright. While it may not affect me directly, I’m not interested in voting for somebody who writes off an entire group of people as rapists and killers or somebody who likens terrified human beings to poisoned candy. Look beyond your own self-interests. Our votes affect the entire country, not just ourselves.
Finally, if you can listen to him talk about making a database of American Muslims and not think about yellow star patches in 1930s Germany or Japanese internment camps in 1940s US, you might want to revisit your history books.
Probably should mention one of the candidates is partly responsible for murdering a million people of colour due to wars, coups, arms dealing, etc. Hint, it’s not Donald Trump.