"Let me go over that again: Reagan’s popularity was popular. When you went through the various traits of Reagan and what Reagan stood for and his policies and so on vast numbers of people disliked nearly all of them. What was popular was his popularity and I don’t think that Reagan’s alone in this."           

--Rick Roderick 

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
--Steven Weinberg

This kind of radical imagery is necessary if we (religious and secular people of good faith and intentions) are ever going to shatter a cultural symbolic order that seeks to lessen the suffering of others. We ingest this symbolic order through benign daily conversations, and the ideas and images disseminated through television and other forms of media. We are being consciously and sometimes subconsciously conditioned to see some people as less than us. 

Australian philosopher and Princeton professor Peter Singer developed a thought experiment in which he asked people if they would jump into a swimming pool to save a drowning child if it meant ruining a thousand dollar suit. Every person asked, without hesitation, answered yes they would jump in to save a drowning child. Then he asked the participants to send the thousand dollars they saved by not jumping in a pool to a charity that helps children dying overseas. This was a much tougher proposition. It’s hard to make sacrifices for people half a world away, harder when they pray to a “different God”, and even harder when they don’t look like you.

Omission is one of the most powerful tools the media has at its disposal. The media can't control what we think, but they can control what some of us think about. The deafening silence in light of the facts about corrupt Officer Gliniewicz on conservative talk radio and Fox news is telling. I've spent more hours than I care to admit watching Fox, and listening to talk radio. I forced myself to watch The Five, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity. Sheppard Smith was the only person who addressed the way the networks on air personalities tacitly linked the "murder" of Officer Gliniewicz to the Black Lives Matter Movement. It doesn't make me want to nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize, but after watching several hours of their programing over a two day period: I felt somewhat vindicated that a day after the story broke someone made my time worthwhile.

When it comes mass shootings, the gun is the tool of the coward. Their individual weaknesses are over compensated for by hatred and semiautomatic weapons. A profound lack of courage is at the center of these attacks. For some, it's easier to shoot innocent people than it is to address the unfulfilled areas of their lives. They often leave manifestos behind detailing their desire for cultural relevance. These perpetrators are often the products of a culture obsessed with fame and instant gratification. The socioeconomic factors facing our country must be addressed, but we have to accept the fact that some people don't value life. There's not an economic metric we could improve that can make another person's life valuable to someone who's decided it's worthless. 

Anyone who has spent time on crutches knows how good it feels to walk unaided. If, however, you were bedridden or in a wheel chair those crutches would be a major achievement. That's how civil rights function in America. The life of racial and ethnic minorities is leaps and bounds better than their ancestor's, but that can't be the only metric we use to judge progress. It's easy for someone in 2015 to question the motives of those who highlight racial disparities in our economic, educational, and legal systems, but how many of those critical of the shared struggle for equality can honestly say race and ethnicity don't factor into the lives of minorities? 

For me, the saddest thing about Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of social media is the constant use of memes. Too many people have given up on thinking. I understand sharing a meme that's funny, clever, or has a sentimental feel, but to completely outsource your thinking to someone with a meme generating app is troubling to me. The majority of the social, political, and economic based memes I see are blatantly false and designed to be click bait. Information is easier to get now than ever, yet too few are willing to invest the time it takes to read peer reviewed journals, attend talks and lectures, or -at the very least- think for themselves.

Nation: A people who share the same lies about their past, hatred of their present neighbor, and illusions about the future. 

--Ernest Renaud

The myth that America was founded on Christian principles is so embedded in the psyche of our nation that questioning it's veracity is considered blasphemy. Many patriotic Christians point to biographies, autobiographies, and the Constitution instead of the Bible to validate this claim; what they disconnect is the fact that most Revolutionary history was written from the perspective of politicians and generals. It doesn't take a very smart person to understand that history told from the top down doesn't reflect the views of the average person. The native, the slave, the housewife, or the poor would have a different view of the same events based on their social positioning. This isn't a relativist argument. If we can't look at the past objectively, how can we look at our present condition with all of the emotions associated with our individual beliefs, critically?

Tim Wise defined lynching as, "the extra judicial killing of any person". There was a period in this country where every 2 1/2 days a black man, woman, or child was hung from a tree. I write these words knowing that I'm the second of my parents children born without a legal challenge to my rights as a human being. My parents went to segregated schools. The history many of my patriotic friends want me to understand happened during the civil war; the history I can't get them to talk about is much closer. It took the south seventeen years to fully integrate schools after the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision.

We can also make reference to all of the illustrious Black kings, queens and warriors of the past, and cite everything that Black people have accomplished throughout history. But what's the purpose of having all that knowledge if we don't use it to move ourselves forward?

-- Eric L. Wattree

When I read this it reminded me of Frantz Fanon. Six weeks after the riots in Baltimore what's changed? Modern day attempts at social movements end up being the equivalent of someone yelling in a quiet theater, sure the yelling snaps us to attention and forces us to focus on the disruption, but as soon as calm is restored we find ourselves fully immersed in the distraction on the screen. Likewise, as soon as the camera crews leave the epicenter of the hostilities we, as a nation,  refocus on our individual distractions.