There are sectarian truths which make me wonder about the biochemical processes and/or environmental influences responsible for the germination of “belief” and the proliferation of “truth”. Sectarian beliefs and truths that percolate damn near everywhere and are to-the-bone frightening if you’re on downslide of them. Three in particular have me head-stubble scratching their rise to pre-eminence. They are: guns don’t kill people, people kill people, you’re taking away our history/culture, it was a Republic (the U.S.) that became an Empire. These three memes are examples that have lead me to meditate on the interesting-if often deadly-formation of cultural “truths”.
Guns don’t kill people, people kill people
How did the perfect meme for gun control become an entrenched right to blast fuckers who scare you? Is there a blunter way to say, fuck no! You ain’t giving you the right to hold my life in your hands! Get your damn hands away from me! Especially that damn index finger! It succinctly states why people should almost never be allowed to carry or own a gun. In fact, it’s why gun totting cops are less of an issue for me than humans with guns…Sorry, guys with guns. I will never trust any guy, anywhere with a gun. Because he’s a guy. I know this because I have a dick and know what it does to me...
It’s our history/culture they’re taking away
This one is a gut wrenching, eye buggin’ bit of lunacy. My people are the progeny of escaped slaves from the U.S. who fled to a less oppressive oppression in Canada. For my ancestors who stayed or were unable to make it out I have to wonder this; how is their generational enslavement, disenfranchisement, mutilation and murder by those held up as bastions of your culture, torchbearers of your history, your history and not theirs? What insanity leads you to believe that your ancestor’s viciousness against them is a history that should not belong to them? Is it your belief that only the oppressive side of the dominant/suppressed equation earns voice? ‘Nuff said.
The U.S. was a Republic and everything changed when it became an Empire
So the westward slaughter and theft of autonomous, Native lands was not an empire-building exercise? From the first invasions of origin-state, fleeing colonists to the establishing of a voracious and savage nation the U.S. was an empire bent on expansion. The level of dismissal of Native civilization, agency, history, on and on and on, is breathtaking.
While these frown-inducing truths are worthy of a deeper dive than presented here, I will refrain. There are an endless parade of others, trumpeted on the stages of every nation state, choruslining vaudevillian truths to bedazzled lovers of gaudy, culture ditties. Myopic, focused, self-serving, tribal truths spanning all of human history, simplifying and distorting broader truths to the detriment of the species. Just look at what I wrote. A pretty good example.
“Truths” are still schismatic and self-serving. Even those truths touted as universals are universals only until someone, eyeing someone else’s shit, needs to justify taking it from that someone. That’s when that glowing universal begins the downward slide to a shit-stained, partisan doctrine.