Going Down The Internet Rabbit Hole

I've been on the internet a long time now.  I remember when I first gained access, it was at work, in the year 2000.  I was a late comer I suppose.  My right wing aunt had already been on here for years finding men, whom she would then meet, and crazy shit would ensue.  Those right wingers do have some dating stories, let me tell you.  When they turn all their hate and anger on each other, shit goes down.  I should have known more, but I was so confused over what she was doing here. 

In the office, I would try and look around the internet, but I had no idea why people were getting "addicted".   I found the Coach website and that was about it.  

Then, in 2001, my fiancé bought me a home computer and a modem for my birthday.  It happened that Netscape was my home screen, and one day, they had a front page poll about George W Bush.  I answered it and it said "discuss this here".   

And that is how I found the Netscape political message boards.  That is when I first went down the rabbit hole.  I spent years on those now long-defunct boards, and now, years off of them.  Recently I returned to a political message board I posted on post-Netscape, and peeps, the genie has been let outta the bottle. 

I'm not one of those people who thought we solved racism when President Obama was elected.  But I am one of those people who thought our history was on an upward trajectory.   Well, I'm white, what do you expect?   I guess I'm also a little naïve because I didn't even realize how much men hate women until Hillary Clinton ran for President.  Of course I've experienced sexism, but I really didn't understand how right Germaine Greer was when she wrote "Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.”

And I am a woman, so if I didn't know that, what are the chances I would understand just how much of a racist country we are? 

I had left this particular message board because it has almost zero moderation.  The board owner is a self-proclaimed Libertarian.  He votes Republican without fail, so he has no values, but he does want his fellow white dudes permitted to shit up his board with as much racism as they can spew.

And they can spew a lot of it.

I used to be so outraged, believing he should censor them.  I still feel racial slurs should be censored, but the Trump years taught me something about my fellow Americans.  They weren't just on this message board.  No, that message board was representative, it revealed.  And if I had understood that, I might have seen Trump coming.  Because of course, Trump only incited and inflamed the hate he knew was already here.

"Come on out of the closet," he told Americans.  And they swung that door open fast enough.

White men really do believe they are being "replaced".   I mean, when they marched in Charlottesville, chanting "you will not replace us" they didn't see it written in chalk on a sidewalk.  This is their belief.   I don't want to let white women off the hook here, many are just as bad.  But I've written so much about married white women and their choices to vote their loser husbands atop the hierarchy.

Let's take a real look at who these women are married to.  

Their white God, Tom Brady, retired last week, and this got them all abuzz as one might imagine.  

"With Tom Brady retired there's only 3 white guys left in the NFL."

"Why aren't white people allowed to make $30 M a year playing in the NFL or NBA. Where's our equity?"

"We have pro-black affirmative action for supreme court justices. Why not some pro-white AA for football players?"

When called on his "only 3 white guys left" claim, he responded quite reasonably with

"It's a joke!!! My gawd but you trannies are stupid."

This is just a small sampling of what's on this board.  There's no point in posting there, I realize that now.  I used to think there was a point, you know?  But it's just America's lanced boil spewing infected, stinking liquid.  And it's everywhere. 

They are terrified of transgender people, obviously.  And they believe black people are going to replace them.  With good reason I am certain.  These are the slope-headed, drooling stinkasses of the country, and they certainly don't have anything other than their perceived superiority as white people going for them.

Take that away and what's left?  They can't compete on a fair playing field, so they scream and yell at any attempt to make them play on one. 

Outrage doesn't work.  I used to  live in a world where you could shame these guys, but those days are gone.  There is no upwards trajectory.  There's a pendulum, I guess, and it swings back and forth, and you hope it swings your way often enough to have incremental progress.  But the truth is, it may not.  It may swing so far their way that we never get back.   They may install Trump again.  Who knows.

The question which haunts me is; would we be here today without the internet?

They found each other, these children of early humans mating with Neanderthals, and they regained the power they lost post-civil rights movement by banding together, one crazier than the next, infecting each other, until they formed one mass infection and went viral. 

And then came Trump, the master of the 140 character riot.  With no Twitter, does Trump ever become President?

I have my doubts. 

Sometimes I long for the days when all I knew of the internet was the Coach site.  But I was living in a bubble, wasn't I?   Certainly any non-white person could have told me that.  

I  have no solutions, just my thoughts.  I can recede to my privileged bubble, going out dancing to live music, pretending I don't know who surrounds me.  Dating white guys,  most of whose politics repulse me.   Give up.  My white skin, if not my gender, allows me that privilege.  

But then, I do have a gender.  I am a woman.  And one thing I've always known, always known, is that if there's a bar where a black man is unsafe, or a gay man is unsafe, then I too, am unsafe there.

When there's a group of white, straight, cisgendered men, who will shoot a black man if they get the chance and don't think they'll get caught, or tie a gay man to the back of their truck and drag him to death, then a woman too, is unsafe in that space.  

And I just fucking hate them you know?  I am outraged by them.  I know it's all the fashion to mock the outraged as "woke", but I've been outraged by them long before that term came to general use. 

Trump made his bones coming down an escalator ranting about Mexicans, but he stalked Hillary Clinton around that stage, humiliating her with her husband's infidelities.  Looming behind her in his bulky,  behemoth of  a husk, panting in her ear.  And America cheered.

And that outraged me.  So even if you put aside the moral question of looking the other way, which I don't think you should, you are still left with that.

White married women tend to think their husbands will protect them from the pussy-grabbers of the world.   I don't know why they believe that, but they do. 

I never wanted anyone to protect me, I want to defend myself.  I'm ornery that way.  

And I know that while these angry, violent men walk freely around, there are no safe spaces for me, even if I wanted to retreat to one. 

I wish more white women would get that our fates are tied not to white men, but to those whom white men deem lesser than. 

Life is a never-ending learning experience.  And I've made mistakes and fumbled the ball at times, but I was never playing on the white man's team, and let's face it, no matter how safe and comfortable it would make me, I'm never going to be playing for them.

I just don't think that men are very much of a prize.   Is that because I'm ugly and they don't want me?  No.  Is it because I really don't like heterosexual sex?  No.  Unfortunately, I do enjoy the penis.  

I just don't like injustice, it makes me angry.  And I don't personally enjoy being under anyone's thumb.  Why do you?

Are men prizes?  What do you win?  I've sworn off ever living with a man again. And not just because my snoring would be exposed.  I brought a man home last year and practically made him sign a contract first.  No sleepovers.  You are not permitted to poop in my bathroom, ever.  If I see even one small skidmark, you're outta here.  You will shower before entering my bed. 

He agreed to terms.  

You are probably mystified why I'm single, right?  

I don't really understand the whole marriage race, and I never have.  I guess that's why I'm single, and my voting habits are that of a single white woman.  So all of this male approval shit is not really a problem for me.   But I'm not getting anywhere.  No matter my personal rules, I still have to live in this country.  I stopped feeling gaslit a while ago, now I'm resigned.  

I still believe in a better future, but we are in the dark times now.  And I don't know if I'll live to see that future.  And with climate change, who knows if this is really the Endgame, and we just don't know it yet.   I guess you can only try and make the world a kinder place, one day at a time, in your own small way.  

But even that is of no help to the more vulnerable.  Those who are not walking around in a white body, or a cis-gendered one.    Like I said, I don't have the answers, only my thoughts.  And those thoughts are dark too.