I, being cowardly and soft, tend to agree on the violence tall. Although really it’s meaningless internet chest thumping. That goes for most of the grandstanding, childishness, outright illiteracy, etc. But what can you do in the dirt of this, only the most recent of Western civilization’s “vast wastelands.” The racism thing I wouldn’t single out. Racism is not especially bad, not worse than any other gross stereotypes and barbarisms. That goes for all the isms, too.
Anyway, about the violence. I shrug it off as juvenile and speech born of impotent desperation merely. Then I think of the Revolution, the Whiskey Rebellion, and all the other rebellions. What pin pricks motivated our forebears to bloodiness compared to our gushing neck wounds! Leave aside the Civil War. It could win the argument on its own, but we don’t need it. I don’t even want to go down the list. You know it: conscription, foreign wars unrelated to defense or security, income tax, death tax, the Fed, endless bailouts, endless emergency powers, cradle to grave welfare, crushing debt, fiat currency, wage and price controls, the War on Drugs, eminent domain, property forfeiture, internment camps, administrative law, the revenoors, Bonus Army, Kent Stare, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Elian Gonzales, blah, blah, blah.
Why did we declare independence in the first place? Oh yeah, the British, our legitimate government, wanted to tax us to pay for the French and Indian War. Also because they fumbled the political response to protest movements, but mostly because we were sick of being a cog in their mercantilist system. This with the highest standard of living in the world and, like, a one percent :ax burden. And we fought a WAR over it! A real one.
Our government does worse stuff to us every single day than the British did to their colonists across years. Either our forefathers were monstrous, extremist, bloodthirsty diehard zealots who oughtta be condemned instead of celebrated, or we are sheep.
We are sheep.