Dear Occupant

Once upon a time, I asked if you were a Jew, why would you ever drive a German car? Then I thought about blackfolks. If you are the descendant of American slaves, why would you ever wear cotton? Moreover, why would you EVER live in a slave state that lost the civil war? Every time the Confederate Flag controversy comes up, I ask this same question. I never get a satisfactory response.

Not for nothing, I put a statute of moral outrage limitations starting with the Great Depression, when my grandparents got married and everybody in America was broke. The case is simple. You don't get a choice about what American history you inherit. Either you're an American citizen or you're just a person living here. If you're just an occupant then you get no claim on anything. Go ahead and put a NOTW sticker on your car. But if you're an American, then you get to claim everything, and everything gets to claim you - not selectively.

YOU and YOUR PEOPLE didn't write the Constitution, so how do you get to claim civil rights? YOU and YOUR PEOPLE didn't conquer the natives but you live on conquered land you ain't giving up. Neither the Germans, Koreans, Viet Cong, Taliban or AQ said, oh wait those are African Americans, let's not shoot. You're an American and you don't get to choose. You inherit all America. When you renounce it all, like Assata Shakur, then all of your rebellion can get taken seriously. Otherwise, get over yourself and your ethnic consumer boycotts. Shoot a cop or shut up. 

I'm not saying injustice hasn't happened or not to notice. I'm saying there's no cosmic justice. There is the justice system and all of its strengths and weaknesses, but that's the only path of recourse. If you didn't get your settlement from the law, it's not going to change just because you can surface a hashtag to a million people. In other words, there is no Social Justice, and that's really why I bother to write all this over booze. Like I need to care about some moral supply chain in my consumer products.

I have been entirely too close to the sort of folks who literally made an assessment about the entire visible spectrum of justice possible under the American system of government, and made a GO / NO GO decision. This vestigial radicalism gets on my nerves. I don't have it in for people who find themselves incapable of patriotism, but I don't see them as anything more or less than self-serving political opportunists.