I Believe in America… Not Demographics

The radicals on the extreme left are destroying what I’ve spent the last 50+ years fighting for. I believe in America; they believe in white America, black America, gay America, etc. etc. America. There aren’t any individuals; everyone goes in their own demographic box, and your box is what you ARE. If you’re in the conservative box you’re all as bad as the worst of you, if you’re in the liberal box you’re all as good as the best of you, if you’re in the black box you’re a perpetual victim, unable to obtain even basic ID without help from people in the radical box.

How you’ve lived your life, who you’ve fought for, who you’ve helped, what you’ve contributed? Irrelevant. Who you’ve hurt, what you’ve taken, what you’ve destroyed? Also irrelevant. You are your box, and whether it’s a good box or a bad box is at the sole discretion of the radicals.

Do we have a history of sorting people out like that? Yes we do, just with the good boxes/bad boxes flipped the other way around. That was shameful then and it’s shameful now. It’s a despicable and destructive way to see the world. And it’s what I was raised to fight. No one deserves to be punished for things they haven’t done or blamed for people they don’t control. The old boxes should serve as a bad example, not a blueprint.

I’m not into judging entire groups of people for things some of them do, and I do not run on rumor. Whether I bless you or blame you, it’ll be for what I can prove you’ve personally said or done. When I say “radicals” I do not mean liberals and I do not mean democrats, I mean the individuals who do the radical things. All of them I know about ARE liberal democrats, but not all liberal democrats are them. That’s the beauty of having a lot of friends who disagree with me on different issues, including issues that are important to me. It keeps me honest; I can’t hammer on most groups without hammering on friends. And it’s a constant reminder that other people’s perspectives can be just as valid as mine.

Any particular mega group – ethnicity, profession, politics, etc. – that’s so big that you can’t fit all of ’em in an Olympic size swimming pool is going to have a full range of personality types. Most people are good, some people aren’t; no one’s ever proven me wrong on that. For the life of me I do not understand how anyone can believe all conservatives or black people or Christians or dog catchers or whatever think alike and act alike. That tells me you don’t get around much. That tells me you don’t like talking to people who don’t think exactly like you. You really ought to try it. I 100% guarantee you’ll be pleasantly surprised (most of the time anyway).

Boxes are wrong. Boxes are ignorant. Boxes are unnecessary. We took all the power away from the people who used to do the sorting. We don’t need to give it to the ones who are doing it now. That hate doesn’t get any cleaner just because they’re running it in the other direction.

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Bama has been a rodeo cowboy, a professional stuntman, and, for 39 years and counting, a bouncer at various biker bars and redneck rat cage juke joints through the Deep South. He makes cool stuff as Crimson Tied Paragear, using knots his Army Ranger Scoutmaster taught him at Boy Scout summer camp deep in the Okinawan boonies back in 1972.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.