by Marceline Donaldson
Something is oddly familiar in this “stand-off: now going on amongst our government officials, politicians, hopefuls and a very oppressed group which Alabama and others are trying desperately to contain and keep in their oppressed state. Even the current Governor of Alabama has come public and done a modernized version of Governor George Wallace’s stand to keep African Americans from voting and therefore from their civil rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution.
When I heard Governor Kay Ivey on television taking her incredibly historical stance, I could not see her face for the imposition of George Wallace’s face over her face and figure on television.
Nothing hurts more than one of your own, standing up in the most self-righteous and arrogant way, selling you into slavery and she did that beautifully. She did not lose her very southern lady-like composure in the process of spouting and spewing evil. Clearly, the Republican Party has maintained its position as “Keepers of the Bigotry” which has long characterized Alabama. Have you thought about or read the story of what happened on the Edmund Petus Bridge? Do you see the parallels? We’ve had the slaughter of the women. It should now be time for the healing oil and who will do the pouring of that oil to heal our sins?
True – other states and areas do the same, but somehow the theatrics in Alabama and its connecting its maintenance of bigotry to a religion with its own theology is unique. We know well this heretical religion. The one which has been developing since slavery and which was used to justify and maintain slavery. We have lived with it in many places across these United States and still are living with its remnants. You know the religion. The one where you went into one of its churches and found you could only sit in the back pews, if you were African American – or you could only sit in the balcony – or you were taken out of the church by the ushers if you were African American because you were not allowed into those particular churches.
They still exist today and you can tell them almost upon entering into their ‘holy’ places. You look on their altar and you see those officiating are almost uniformly white. Maybe a child of color or two, but the adults of color are missing. You hear their sermons and they lack that something you hear in other churches. Their ‘leaders’ are ‘leading’ to gain a foot up in their jobs or chosen vocations. They are doing everything they can to help those like them maintain their facade of being ‘better than’. Those more enlightened heretical churches are doing some of the most foolish things you can imagine, but as you watch, they call those things their ‘holy rituals.’ And it becomes clear after a short time that they are keeping the bigotry and maintaining the image of superiority of the white males of Northern European ancestry – those in their midst and the others spread around the globe. You have to leave that space because what you also see and experience is their meanness when pushed to see and remove the bigotry and heresy they practice. It is time, however, for them and us to do just that!
The blanket has been ripped off. The psychic violence and physical and emotional destructive confrontation on the Edmund Petus Bridge has happened as the current Governor has let the rest of us see and hear her ‘religious’ beliefs, which are indicative of the many in Alabama who she represents – male, female of all stripes and colors. She has made a very clear statement that she prefers her political party with all of its shame and sin to anything else because she knows they will continue in the ways of the vile past and they will continue holding her and others like her up in their belief that they are ‘better than’ everyone in the world not like them. Her very words, however, show clearly that she is not free and equal, she is the governor, but she clearly neither respects her gender nor others around her who are neither white nor of Northern European ancestry.
Governor Ivey today – as did Governor Wallace in yesteryear – has given the green light to the worst kind of evil. She has called her state to shame themselves. She has declared her bigotry and the fact that she is conscious of her bigotry and will continue to practice it because that is what she sees her position as governor calling her to do. She has called her state to let the world know that the citizens of Alabama prefer their bigotry and will maintain it defending themselves against positive change even while exposing their children to the sin of pedophilia, psychic and physical sexual abuse, lying, cheating, which she has depicted as just fine and good and righteous choices if made defending their ‘white is better than’ status and their declared right to dishonor – disrespect – and so much more – those with whom they share this earth if those people are neither ‘white’ nor ‘male with Northern European ancestry’. What lessons those children are learning from their parents.
We are back on the Edmund Petus Bridge. Because of the lessons this current generation learned, while children watching their parents as they cheered for George Wallace and his friends on the bridge using it as their bully pulpit. They watched as some of their adult neighbors brutalized, beat and tried to slaughter African Americans and those supporting them on that Edmund Petus Bridge.
The children were present and silently watching that entire drama and so today we have that generation, all grown up, doing their best to follow in the footsteps of their parents, their friends, their government figures, their politicians. They are going where this evil is leading and, in the end, they will pay the price.
Many of those children have adopted the religion of their parents – who themselves adopted and adapted the religion of the slaveholders and slave owners before them. They have seen their parents and grandparents erect memorials to those who did their best to keep human beings enslaved because they wanted ‘free’ labor and wanted that ‘better than’, ‘white is superior’, white supremacy identity. They saw the KKK in their white sheets and pointy caps circling those lit crosses. They saw African Americans turned away at their city halls in brutal ways when they tried to vote; these children knew the U. S. Constitution was being violated in the process; and they were present in the home where their mothers and aunts and female cousins were treated as second class citizens; they were present in the rest of society to see those same relatives, all dressed up and play acting to avoid their reality as they were treated as the household servants. They understood who they were and the positions they would take before they reached voting age and they are now taking those positions.
When you sow the wind – you reap the whirlwind.
Alabama is and has been reaping the beginnings of that whirlwind when you look closely and you see it is one of the poorest states in the Union; when you see jobs scarce; when you see children going without; when you see the low level of education throughout the state; when you see the priorities of the politicians and government officials who are absorbed in maintaining their ‘better than’ status at a very high cost to everyone in the state; when you see the corruption overlooked because the ‘official’ is guarding your ‘better than’ identity; when you see all that has been wrought against Alabamians through their keeping their slaveowners religion above all else and crafting a political party which does the actual work the theology of that religion leads them to do.
It is one of the great tragedies of these United States. AND – not to be overlooked is the fact that our current president – Donald J. Trump – is very popular in this state which condones and gives him positive feedback on all of his evil deeds. When you see this state raising up politicians who follow his footsteps as he has followed in the footsteps of Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy, Adolph Hitler, Stalin and today Vladimir Putin, as well as the leaders of the mafia organizations around the world.
Sieg Heil Kay Ivey! There were also Jews who sold out other Jews in Nazi Germany and even today there are African Americans selling out other African Americans for what they think will raise them up to the status of ‘almost, but not quite equal to’ – ‘at least not like them’ – ‘different from those others’ – etc.
“Man’s inhumanity to man” – needs a political correctness overlay “We all die and move on out of this earthly sphere – yet we act as though some are better than and their human bodies will not rot. The color of their skin and the kind of genitals they have will preserve them”. Folly of follies are these humans, especially when they try to be ‘better than’. – At that point, the evil starts pouring out of them and their actions conform and are uniformly sinful no matter their money, status, history, education…….
________________________________________________________
Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!
[give_form id=”3763″]
________________________________________________________
Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.
Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.
Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net
