The Embers of Hate

 

I don't miss it at all.

The rage tweets.

The calls for violence against any and every one within finger-pointing distance. The overwhelming racism and "othering" of any ethnicity, for daring to want to be treated equally as Whites.

The dick-in-hand Nazis, wearing their red hats they got in exchange for a sheet hood, carrying their swastikas and tiki torches, armed like they're defending Stalingrad against the final push, with the sly winks and silent support of the police.

The unchecked corruption and pillage of American resources, funneled into private offshore accounts, the open door policy for any Russian despot to pilfer the country's secrets.

The pants-shitting level of anxiety and national paranoia, escalated every day, sometimes every hour, to new heights of insanity.

And the "centrists" (so-called), sitting comfortably by, offering color commentary from their conservative strongholds, while their Black/Asian/Latino neighbor cowers behind locked doors, for fear of being black-bagged and deported to a country they weren't born in, while their children are raped and sold off to White families, simply for "looking that way".

I lost so many people I thought of as friends, because of this. Many of them revealed as aspect of themselves that dumbfounded me, even today.

The hatred. The willful ignorance, the joyous embrace of a man they believed to be the second coming of the Christ. And when that man fell, as all men do, they screamed and rent their garments, they fell to their knees and cried out; "O Lord, why hast thou forsaken us, your chosen race?"

Even today, these same people skulk and mutter to themselves, casting side glances at people like me, expecting the retaliation they surely would have dealt, if the jackboot was on the other foot. The disbelief on their faces etched like granite, the hollow stare of an apostle discovering he's been following a lemming all this time, and they've just gone over the cliff.

They hate me for the future I represent. They hate themselves for what they now know they'll never be.

I don't miss it at all.