As a boy in school during the 70’s I absolutely fell in love with American R&B music, I thought it was the best sound I had ever heard. Today as a grown up I still play the Temptations, commodores , Dells , Stylistics, O‑Jays and the entire litany of acts which dominated that era .I also learned to love all kinds of music including classic reggae which has the Blues and Jazz sound to thank for it’s existence.
As a little boy I was constantly singing in my high falsetto which I copied from many of the acts like Eddie Kendrick and others like the Bee Gees..I always noticed that whenever I sang even my family who loved me unconditionally either laughed or had a funny look on their faces.
Not to be deterred I continued singing until one day I decided to record myself singing , I really fancied myself a potential rock star. After recording myself I decided to listen to my recording , I was about to show those family members that they had a real star singer in the family.
Then I heard the sound which was a cross between a cat whose tail got caught in a crack and the sound of a piece of metal scraping on concrete. I really wanted to apologize to everyone whom I ever offended with my singing.
Many years later I was driving up the Taconic Parkway with my wife we were listening to (you guessed it ) classic R&B on the car radio. My wife is a terrific singer who potentially could have a successful career in the secular music world if she so desired. Of course being the woman of God she is she does not see that as an option for her.
As we sang along I was emboldened to suggest to her “hey babe we should sing together, I will sing backup “. She being the sweetheart she is said to me, “yes babe but can I tell you, you would have to sing way way back” .
We had a great time laughing for the rest of our journey, I couldn’t stop laughing about the way she said it.
As the mass shootings across America seem to intensify I wondered whether the people on the political right ever considered recording themselves and listening to the things they say?
Timothy Mc Veigh was a white Anglo-Saxon home grow terrorist he was American as they come. McVeigh and his accomplice Terry Nichols detonated a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.
According to his wikipedia page McVeigh McVeigh, a Persian Gulf War veteran, sought revenge against the federal government for its handling of the Waco siege, which ended in the deaths of 76 people exactly two years before the bombing, as well as for the Ruby Ridge incident in 1992. McVeigh hoped to inspire a revolt against what he considered to be a tyrannical federal government.
Theodore John “Ted” Kaczynski the Una-bomber..
As a Harvard undergraduate, Kaczynski was among twenty-two students who were research subjects in ethically questionable experiments conducted by psychology professor Henry Murray from late 1959 to early 1962.[5][6][7] In 1971, he moved to a remote cabin without electricity or running water, in Lincoln, Montana, where he lived as a recluse while learning survival skills in an attempt to become self-sufficient.[8] Seventeen years after beginning his mail bomb campaign, Kaczynski sent a letter to The New York Times on April 24, 1995 and promised “to desist from terrorism” if the Times or the Washington Post published his manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future (the “Unabomber Manifesto”), in which he argued that his bombings were extreme but necessary to attract attention to the erosion of human freedom necessitated by modern technologies requiring large-scale organization.Wikipedia.
These two are just a couple of the more recent white home grown terrorists which comes to mind when we consider terrorism in America , of course there has been a history of local terrorism of all kinds in this country including but not confined to those wrought on ethnic minorities by other groups as well as the United States Government.
It is perhaps too easy to forget how many times this has happened.
THIS ACCORDING TO MOTHER JONES.COM
The horrific massacre at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in July 2012, another at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin that August,another at a manufacturer in Minneapolis that September — and then the unthinkable nightmare at a Connecticut elementary school that December — were some of the latest in an epidemic of such gun violence over the last three-plus decades. Since 1982, there have been at least 81 public mass shootings across the country, with the killings unfolding in 33 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. Forty-four of these mass shootings have occurred since 2006. Seven of them took place in 2012 alone, including Sandy Hook. A recent analysis of this database by researchers at Harvard University, further corroborated by a recent FBI study, determined that mass shootings have been on the rise.
The perpetrators: More than half of the cases involved school or workplace shootings (12 and 20, respectively); the other 30 cases took place in locations including shopping malls, restaurants, and religious and government buildings. Forty-four of the killers were white males. Only one was a woman. (See Goleta, Calif., in 2006.) The average age of the killers was 35, though the youngest among them was a mere 11 years old. (See Jonesboro, Ark., in 1998.) A majority were mentally troubled—and many displayed signs of mental health problems before setting out to kill. Explore the map for further details — we do not consider it to be all-inclusive, but based on the criteria we used, we believe that we’ve produced the most comprehensive rundown available on this particular type of violence. (Mass shootings represent only a sliver of America’s overall gun violence.) For the stories of the 151 shooting rampage victims of 2012, click here, and for our groundbreaking investigation into the economic costs of the nation’s gun violence, including mass shootings. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map.
Since the vast majority of shooters are white Caucasian male who are conveniently labeled mentally ill when they go on their terror spree, why is it that if a shooter happen to have an Arabic sounding name the entire Religion of Islam is on trial?
This goes to the heart of what I intended to convey with my little opening story. Does the political hawks on the right realize just how stupid they sound? Or do they even listen to the ignorant statements coming from their own mouths?
This monster walked into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston South Carolina where parishioners were engaged in Bible study he summarily slaughtered nine and injured one .He was taken into custody without receiving a bruise on his person. We are told officers stopped to get him hamburgers after arresting him . There is white privilege if ever there was any.
The number of white misfits who summarily plot and execute terror plots right here in the United States are too many to mention . On the contrary there are a few instances where someone with an Arabic sounding name like Nidal Hasan an American also commits acts of terror. Hasan an American convicted of fatally shooting 13 people and injuring more than 30 others in the Fort Hood mass shooting on November 5, 2009 was a United States Army Medical Corps psychiatrist who admitted to the shootings at his court-martial in August 2013.[3][4][5] A jury panel of 13 officers convicted him of 13 counts of premeditated murder, 32 counts of attempted murder, and unanimously recommended he be dismissed from the service andsentenced to death.
As the nation grapples with yet another mass shooting , this time at a gay nightclub in Florida the perpetrator just happen to have an Arab sounding name. Of course the narrative rapidly defaults to Islam , and who should call Islam radical and who is not doing so.
As the President said in his response to the Republican jack-ass of a presumptive Republican nominee ’ ”what difference it makes whether he calls it radical Islam”? The fact is that the conversation ought to be centered around how to stem the spate of senseless killings, instead it has become as always about beginning an unwinnable war with an entire religion of over 2.8 billion people.
Whether the terrorist act is committed by someone with an Arab sounding name or not the situation is the same . America is made up of people from all over the world so of course there will be terror suspects with Arab sounding names as there will be people of other ethnicity. The fact of the matter is that in most cases where they have those ethic names they are not foreigners at all but were born right here in America.
The problem is when a political party looking to replace the party which controls the Executive branch of Government goes to the polls and elects as it’s presumptive nominee a carnival barker and a total buffoon. Out of a field of 17 candidates this what they came up with ‚a racist xenophobe whose claim to fame is being a con artist. He has no idea about policy and has no clue how his actions as commander in chief of the world’s most powerful nation would impact the rest of the world.
This absolute ignoramus could potentially be elected president while some nations are considering banning him from entering their countries.
This is what the world faces, a con man with some money , bravado , and a whole bunch of hatred for everyone else who is not white Anglo-Saxon.