I hope a time comes before my own death, in which people come to understand that the “crazies” in USA society are not just sick or “evil” aberrations – nor do they spring out of nothingness.

So-called “crazies” are the entirely expected human outfall from centuries of:

interpersonal and institutional violence,
duplicity,
religious extremism,
racism,
misogyny,
homophobia,
environmental pillage,
greed and consumerism as national ideology, and

the incessant lies, lies, lies used to cover-up, justify, and obfuscate the almost ceaseless hypocrisy of The American Myth.

 

*****

 

Take Ryan Wesley Routh, an American “weirdo”, who wanted to dispose of another American “weirdo”.

The only difference between the two? One comes from the American underclasses, the other from the world of inherited wealth built upon underclass exploitation.

One wanted to commit violence out of a misguided(?) sense of social justice.

The other is a catalyst for violence internationally, vandalizes constitutional law, and evades justice in order to preserve and extend his wealth, power, and privilege.

Two crazies.

The rich one spews hatred against immigrants, even though his own mother was an immigrant and his father’s father was also an immigrant. Of course, being Johnny-Come-Latelys in terms of American history doesn’t matter – the main thing is that they were such very “white” Scottish and German immigrants, and they got their hands on some money through unscrupulous and immoral business dealings.

Money and whiteness have always been at the core of “The American Dream”.

 

*****

 

Don’t be fooled by Ryan Wesley Routh‘s gaunt, Northern European-looking hangdog appearance and sandy hair.

Routh is in fact part of a confusing mish-mash of people who have been ethnically intermixing in the eastern part of the USA for generations – long, long before the USA even existed.

Without comprehensive DNA testing, these peoples from the Carolina Piedmont and Southern Appalachia proper are often impossible to tease into clear familial threads.

Some come from families of large slaveholders, while others come from relatively poor farmers and tradespeople who held only one or two slaves.

Many in fact descend from the PROGENY of these slaveholders – whether big and small – children of the women abused, raped, or kept on the side as “consorts”, separate from their “official families”.

Subsistence farmers too poor to keep slaves were often those most likely to marry the “mulatto” women born within this deep and wide cauldron of wickedness.

This “not quite white” American underclass has existed literally for centuries – long before certain Drumpfs and MacLeods arrived in the USA, shiny and white on the outside, ruthless, dark and bigoted on the inside…

It has never been easy for members of this mixed-ethnic American laborer underclass to get ahead.

And before they could even imagine “social mobility”, they had to achieve “racial mobility”.

The minute some of them managed to achieve “racial mobility”, they were often still too poor to resist the onslaught of the land barons, railway barons, coal barons…

This is one of the greatest untold secrets in US history – how a “brown” underclass spent generations on the outside peering-in at “The American Dream”.

Trying to be “white” enough to be part of “White Christianity”.

“White” enough to serve as actual soldiers in the military, rather than as cooks, janitors, or supply workers.

“White” enough to gain access to a good apprenticeship or a decent education.

“White” enough to eventually gain access to middle-class jobs.

Such an intergenerational struggle is not easy to keep on a steel-rail track leading to eventual success…

Many fall by the wayside.

Self-loathing can often lead to profound social sicknesses like domestic violence and substance abuse.

Even those who did manage to reach the “white” side of the color bar – but without becoming skilled or educated – were often left clinging to little more than their “whiteness”, their Christianity, and birthright “American-ness” as markers of their self-worth.

This underclass represents much of the cannon fodder sent to places like Vietnam or Iraq – while proudly proclaiming “I come from a military family” and telling themselves that they are “protecting our freedoms”.

Many of these people forgot, or were never told about their socio-ethnic roots.

Unaware of the original reasons their family had been locked-out of social advancement, they eventually came to resent nebulous groups like “Welfare Queens“, “Non-Christians“, “Experts” or “Elites” or “The Deep State“.

And they are also the ones most easily fooled by fascist propaganda and rhetoric which plays upon their various insecurities and resentments.

Too proud to see themselves as victims, they would rather align themselves with the rich and powerful, however unlikely it is that they will ever sit at the same table.

But some, a very particular subset of the disempowered, don’t want to sit at the table of the rich and powerful.

They just want to have some goddamn AGENCY in this life.  Any kind of agency.  Like the agency to take-out some of the rich, corrupt, and powerful.

Most of the currently enraged members of these underclasses are perfectly sane, if misguided, in where they choose to apportion blame. A few are batshit crazy.

Many of the rich and powerful are also perfectly sane, just selfish and greedy.  Many are utter sociopaths.

Ryan Wesley Routh.  Donald John Trump.

A couple of crazies in this crazy story called “America”.

I know which one I’d sooner offer a spare bed in my house if either knocked on my door in the middle of a stormy night…