For some reason, I have always appreciated “the view from behind.” As a child, on the first day of each school year, I was a nervous wreck waiting for the teacher to announce our seating arrangement. Front of the class? 😢 Too much exposure! Far too much responsibility to “be.” A nice, comfy seat toward the back? 😁 Perfect. I get to observe, to “see.” To breathecalmly.
In this blog category, “The View from Behind,” I invite you to join me, somewhere in the back.
I have not always been proud. As a matter of fact, it took most of a lifetime to come to terms with being gay. That designation, that reality, somehow took a hidden back seat.
But in my … EARLY senior years, I am attempting to embrace the gay joy of being gay.
A blog category examining the difficult yet enlightening TRUTH found in The 1619 Project. (I encourage you to read the book!)
Let’s take a closer look at the historical, racist and almost always overlooked hypocrisy of the 2nd Amendment.
“ A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
The scholar Carl T. Bogus writes in a law review article, “The Hidden History of the Second Amendment”:
“As a Virginian, Madison knew that the militia’s prime function in his state, and throughout the South, was slave control. His use of the word ‘security’ in the Second Amendment is consistent with his writing the amendment, for the specific purpose of assuring the southern states, and particularly his constituents in Virginia, that the federal government would not undermine their security against slave insurrection by disarming the militia.” (p. 257, The 1619 Project)
”The second amendment, ratified in 1791, codified for white citizens the right to bear arms and to protect themselves. If there were any doubts about who these rights pertained to, they were put to rest in 1800, when Virginia governor James Monroe called out several regiments of the state’s militia to thwart, before it could begin, a widespread revolt planned by an enslaved man named Gabriel, and then to hunt him and the other participants down.”
“As the historian Herbert Aptheker wrote in ‘American Negro Slave Revolts,’ as word of Gabriel’s revolt spread, the ‘nation from Massachusetts to Mississippi was terror-stricken.’ The response was to double down and make more explicit through legislation the prohibitions on Black people owning guns.”
“One Virginian wrote in the local newspaper that ‘we must reenact all those rigorous laws which experience has proved necessary to keep slavery within bounds. In a word, if we will keep a ferocious monster in our country, we must keep him in chains.’” (p. 257. Full documentation available in the Notes section of the book.)
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The 2nd Amendment continues to be misinterpreted and misconstrued today by far-right extremists, the NRA (and the politicians they own), as well as the U.S. Supreme Court.
Just up the road from Robert and me … Daniel Defense — the Gun Death and Murder Company which supplied the assault weapon used in the Texas Uvalde massacre.
Can’t afford two grand? No problem. Three months interest free financing!
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Is there any answer to all this centuries-long deadly injustice?
If so, I surmise it will be found in voting out those politicians who continue to sustain laws (and introduce new ones) which enable potential domestic mass terrorists. Who continue to revel in the glory of guns. Who place the value of the dollar above (far above) the value of human life. Who refuse to even entertain the idea of common sense gun laws.
This time a turkey, cheddar, lettuce, tomato and onion pita.
2. Truth …
3. Discovering Senior Citizens Inc. here in Savannah and attending a fascinating lecture, “The Rosenwald Schools: Challenge and Triumph.”
I bought the book!
4. Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes.
5. My chair in our study! It has a personality of its own. It’s alive. It (he? she? they?) is a place of refuge for me. It’s where I read. And mediate. It’s where I sit in peace.
And where I often sit in not-so-peace when my anxiety, Truffles, comes a’knockin. (My anxiety protocol sheet is at the ready nearby in the magazine rack.)
And the checkered pillow?
I bought it for my father when he was in assisted living and early dementia.
A blog category examining the difficult yet enlightening truth found in The 1619 Project.
“In 2020, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported on the racial implications of Stand Your Ground laws: the criminal justice system is ten times more likely to rule a homicide justifiable if the shooter is white and the victim is black than the other way around. In fact, the report notes that when a white person kills an African American, it is 281 percent more likely to be ruled a ‘justifiable homicide’ than a white-on-white killing.” (Full documentation on page 266)
NealEnJoy 