Journals anyone?

I'm not sure I have more than two readers here, but hey! It's worth a shot...

I have two of these: Lee Valley Everyman's Journal.

I had written in just a few pages, and cut them out many years ago, when I realized that journalling was not, and would probably never be, something I'd do.

Anyone want them? I'll cover postage, I just hate recycling them, as they're pretty much unused (again, a few pages were cut out) and nicely bound etc.


They found a home, yay!

See, the problem is that racism is easy.

Once taught, racism is easy.

In many ways, it's the easiest way to view life, a life in which what you accomplish is because of how awesome you are (rather than because of, say, white privilege or wealth or gender) and in which what you miss out on or the negative experiences you have (lack of education, job loss, poverty, no insurance) are the fault of someone else.

If you have been taught to hate, taught racism, that someone else becomes oh so easily someone black or brown, or someone of a different gender, or someone of a different religion, or someone with a different lived gender and sexuality.

You missed out on an education because of affirmative action and all the slots going to less intelligent black folks (never mind that you never opened a book in high school and that your motto in the senior yearbook was "D is for Diploma"). A women was promoted as boss because she was a woman (never mind that she had more relevant experience, had been in the job longer and have negotiated some pretty killer sales , and eventually you got fired.) The letter you got denying your a home loan was signed by someone whose name ended in "stein" and we know what that means, now don't we? (never mind the bounced checks and the credit card someone gave you and that you maxed out, and are just paying the minimum on when you can). You met this wonderful, funny, hot chick in a bar and when you got to her place, well. Let's just say that was was in the panties was NOT what you expected and you got out of there pretty quick (never mind that she'd several times mentioned how much happier she after her transition, but you'd thought she'd meant changing jobs or something!)

Racism, and any other "ism" becomes the excuse and the someone else becomes the cause.

The problem is that that worldview is stunningly self-coherent once you've accepted it. It explains and excuses.

Way back when, in the dark era before online banking, I had a minimum balance on my checking account of, iirc, $500 to avoid fees. I balanced my checkbook to count that $500 as 0. It became my baseline... and my emergency fund. Racism is kinda like that $500, the baseline by which all else is judged and a safety net to prevent your own inadequacies from being evaluated.

It is also a juvenile, immature, and facile way of viewing the world, but it's a simple one, and once entered, it becomes a lens that distorts reality. The danger of a man like Trump is that he add more Vaseline to their lens, distorting their reality further, and telling them over and over that their reality is the true one, and that everyone else are the liars, the snowflakes, the takers, the entitled.

So when polls come out, like today's Quinnipiac poll (analysis from WaPo), that show that only a slight majority of Americans think Trump is racist, and the data show that white men, Republicans, and white people without college degrees are in large part responsible for this numbers, I despair. And they live in their bubble of calling everything that doesn't fit with their world view "fake news!" and accuse others of racism.

As a side... I think Joe-Tapioca Biden may well win the Dem nomination because of this. Because he's going to be benefit by being Tapioca White Guy and people are going to wonder if it's worth the red flag of a (white) woman, a POC, or OMG a WOMAN of color in front of the angry brainless bull that is Trump.