{"id":106569,"date":"2018-11-28T10:52:32","date_gmt":"2018-11-28T17:52:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=106569"},"modified":"2018-11-28T11:12:53","modified_gmt":"2018-11-28T18:12:53","slug":"recognizing-and-repenting-a-pattern-of-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/11\/recognizing-and-repenting-a-pattern-of-evil.html","title":{"rendered":"Recognizing and repenting a pattern of evil"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Here\u2019s an absolutely typical story<\/a> about a Dad and his two kids who were arrested and humiliate for Shopping While Black.<\/p>\n

This daily reality in Trump\u2019s Amerikkka is steadfastly met, every single day, by conservatives who whinge that seeing <\/em>that reality every single day is \u201cplaying the race card\u201d and who then complain that they<\/em> are the victims because they did not personally lynch or falsely arrest or shoot or vandalize the property of a person of color. Because every story of false arrest or police shooting or brutality against People of Color is really <\/em>about the sufferings of narcissistic white people, who have to hear such stories. And that hurts their feels. Diagnosis: Severe narcissism.<\/p>\n

Or take gun violence. The first, last, and only response of the Gun Cult to every mass shooting or to the yearly harvest of 35,000 dead (a figure ISIS could on dream of) is always \u201cDon\u2019t blame me! I didn\u2019t shoot them! Don\u2019t touch my guns.\u201d<\/p>\n

The thought never enters their head to ask, \u201cWhat can we do to change our current laws so that our gun slaughter rate begins to approach that of the rest of the civilized world?\u201d The idea of thinking of somebody else and their good first never occurs to them because they are massively selfish. Their sole response is to indulge in a fantasy starring themselves as the heroic Good Guy with a Gun, taking out the the Bad Guy in an action\/adventure flick.<\/p>\n

What the Gun Cult refuses to recognize is that this country only allows white people to be Good Guys with guns as Philando Castile<\/a>, Jemel Roberson<\/a>, and Emantic Bradford, Jr.<\/a> would all tell you if they had not been murdered in cold blood by the cops for exercising their perfectly legal 2nd amendment rights. Roberson is a particularly egregious case since he was, in fact, a security guard doing his job and stopping an active shooter. But he\u2019s still dead.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why: The NRA is not and never has been about second amendment rights. It\u2019s about a white racist organization that exploits white fears of armed brown people. In the 60s, it was all about gun control for black people<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When the Brown Guy was president, the Gun Cult endlessly stoked white fears that the Kenyan Muslim was coming to take our guns. The NRA supported the monsters who harrassed the parents of Sandy Hook<\/a>, claiming that they had their own children slaughtered so Obama could Take Our Guns. And the Gun Cult wasted time and resources forcing the governor of Texas to send out troopers to monitor a perfectly ordinary military exercise called Jade Helm since the white racist paranoid gun nuts managed to convince themselves that the Brown Guy was going to declare martial law, take their guns and put \u201ctheir\u201d white women in shariah re-education breeder camps. The endless rebel yell from these champions of the New Confederacy was that the 2nd amendment exists because the Founders wanted citizens to be able to make war on the constitutional order they were founding if they didn\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a lie, of course. Obama took nobody\u2019s gun. George Washington crushed armed rebellions and spat on the idea that guns were for making war on the government. Abraham Lincoln smashed that lie even harder in 1865. And, as the racist behavior of the NRA illustrates, the main purpose of the 2nd amendment was so that slave states could hold on to their slaves<\/a>. The rhetoric of the Gun Cult was all about<\/em>\u00a0the race of the President the Gun Cult feared. All that stuff about \u201cneeding guns to fight state tyranny\u201d? It was all code for \u201cWe are afraid of the brown guy being president and doing to us what we long to do to him and the rest of the brown.\u201d Because with the Cult of Trump, accusation is always a form of confession.<\/p>\n

Proof: When Trump made it easier for police to acquire military grade hardware, the Gun Cult was ecstatic.<\/a> Why should they be ecstatic? Just a year before they had been talking about the need for guns so that the highly realistic scenario of portly Texan and Montana gun nuts making war against the 101st Airborne in a Second American Revolution at an Oregon Bird Sanctuary could unfold. Now these brave allies in the struggle for freedom are cheering because the government is giving cops the power to crush them with overwhelming force?<\/p>\n

The answer to the riddle, of course, is simple: The government holding the guns is now perceived by the Gun Cult as the friend of these guys:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

You know, the guys Trump called \u201cvery fine people\u201d while he called peaceful black protesters \u201csons of bitches\u201d for kneeling to protest things like the murder of Castile, Roberson, and Bradford or the false arrest of a black dad and his kids.<\/p>\n

Because, for the Gun Cult, guns are really there, not to protect citizens from the state, but to protect paranoid white racists from brown people.<\/p>\n

\u201cOhhhh!\u00a0 The race card!\u00a0 He\u2019s playing the race card!\u201d\u00a0 You can hear the cry go up again from the real<\/em> victims: white people who have to hear about this again.\u00a0 And then the whole cycle starts again.\u00a0 \u201cI, personally, have never falsely arrested anybody or shot anybody or lynched anybody.\u00a0 So when I spend the next few days in comboxes here vehemently denying the obvious patterns documented in this post, it\u2019s not because I am a supporter and excuser of racism.\u00a0 It\u2019s because your Tone is mean and hurts my feels and I thought this was supposed to be a Catholic blog and O the humanity!\u201d<\/p>\n

Ahem<\/a>:<\/p>\n

We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God. Man\u2019s relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says: \u201cHe who does not love does not know God\u201d (1 John 4:8).<\/p>\n

No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned.<\/p>\n

The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion. On the contrary, following in the footsteps of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, this sacred synod ardently implores the Christian faithful to \u201cmaintain good fellowship among the nations\u201d (1 Peter 2:12), and, if possible, to live for their part in peace with all men, so that they may truly be sons of the Father who is in heaven<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then there is the final wheeze from the Cult: Antifa!\u00a0 We need guns to protect ourselves from the epidemic of Leftist Violence!<\/p>\n

Remember that thing about how, for the Cult of Trump, accusation is always a form of confessi0n?<\/p>\n

Yeah.\u00a0 So here\u2019s reality.\u00a0 There is no epidemic of leftist violence.\u00a0 That\u2019s a lie.\u00a0 The reality is that, since 9\/11, 73% of domestic terror has come from far right\/white supremacist goons.\u00a0 The rest is Islamicist.\u00a0 \u201cLeftist violence\u201d is statisically negligible.\u00a0 It is not a thing.\u00a0 It does not, for all practical purposes, partake of existence.\u00a0 Stop lying.<\/p>\n

Which bring me to our basic rule of thumb: If your first, last, and only response to the unjust sufferings of others is not \u201cWhat can we do to change this?\u201d but \u201cDON\u2019T BLAME ME!\u201d you are part of the problem because you are imprisoned in selfishness. Repent and bring that to God to change your heart.\u00a0 Stop pretending that your Tone Police schtick is anything other than denial.<\/p>\n

This, by the way, is especially true if you voted for Donald Trump.\u00a0 The issue is not what you did on 11\/8\/16.\u00a0 The issue is what you have done every single day since then to rationalize instead of taking responsibility for your vote.\u00a0 If you are not protesting the evils and the rest of his Cult have done, especially to fan the flames of racism and violence, you are complicit, not innocent.\u00a0 Stop thinking only of yourself and start putting others, especially the least of these, first.\u00a0 It\u2019s not All About You.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s an absolutely typical story about a Dad and his two kids who were arrested and humiliate for Shopping While Black. This daily reality in Trump\u2019s Amerikkka is steadfastly met, every single day, by conservatives who whinge that seeing that reality every single day is \u201cplaying the race card\u201d and who then complain that they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":106593,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[334,367],"class_list":["post-106569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-gun-culture","tag-racism-is-a-sin"],"yoast_head":"\nRecognizing and repenting a pattern of evil<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Here's an absolutely typical story about a Dad and his two kids who were arrested and humiliate for Shopping While Black. 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