The Benefits of Corona and Racial Strife.

I hate labels. A label attempts to tell people what you are, but usually tends to stress what you are not. Black, white, conservative, liberal, Harley, Honda, purebreds, rescues maskers, anti-maskers, all labels that people use to define themselves, not realizing that such definition paints them into a crate in the eyes of others. Labels don’t unite, they divide. If people knew what I believed on certain issues, they would label me as a conservative somewhere to the right of Ben Shapiro. But on other issues, my beliefs would place me firmly to the left of The View, when the truth is I DON’T GIVE A DAMN; as far as I’m concerned, the more dogmatic your beliefs on any issue, the less likely I am to want to be around you.

Contrary to the constant filth being currently shoved down our throats by a system intent on dividing us, the goal of the vast majority of the actual people of our country has always been to be an inclusive melting pot. Do we have issues? We don’t just have issues, we have the whole subscription, but the good dwarfs the the bad by a massive margin.

I am a very pale person of color. The three greatest compliments I have ever received in my life are “you and your family? You should be Mexican”, “you’re like my white dad”, and “you were the first person to ever look beyond my burns and treat me like a human”. To hate someone because of the color of their skin is to hate the God Who created them in the color of their skin. But by the same token, to hate myself because of the color of my skin is also to hate God that created me in the color of my skin. It’s just a color; cut us, we all bleed red. Our tears are all transparent. Peel away the initial superficial layer and we’re all the same. But Lincoln said it best, “a house divided against itself cannot stand”, and those that would divide us know this all too well. The techniques of confusion by misinformation being used today are taken directly from the playbook of Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister of Nazi Third Reich, and we all know where THAT led…

Or do we? A people who doesn’t know their history are doomed to repeat it, and we’re repeating it an alarming rate.

Years ago when my kids were just toddlers, I had a terrible dream. In this dream, a massive venomous snake was slithering around my house, silently winding it’s way beneath my feet, through the legs of furniture, so silently and stealthily that we paid it absolutely no mind. So relaxed was I with the situation that I sat on the couch and calmly watched as the snake sunk its fangs directly into one of my kid’s skull, then proceeded to swallow its prey whole and slither up into my console and coil itself into a silent reptilian mass… right where my television sat at the time.

Today, that television has been joined by many other insidious reptiles, not the least of which is social media, slowly and silently injecting their venom of hatred and deceit. If it wasn’t for the mission of this page, to provide an oasis of non-Hallmarky positivity in a desert of negativity, I would shake the Facebook sand from my sandals and leave this place. But the message of Charlie is still true today; we all have a mission, we all have purpose, and you can’t just avert your eyes and walk away from a seemingly insurmountable problem.

So what are the benefits of Corona and racial strife? I’ve found that this difficult time has made me much more willing to reach out to those that I’m being incessantly told that I have nothing in common with. And in return, I have found that those people are much more responsive to me; it’s almost like we are all starving for connection and validation. The seperation felt by “social distancing” we have been “encouraged” to engage in is much more than just physical, it’s mental and spiritual, and the chance for even a hint of connection is not one to be squandered. At the gas pump, in line at the WalMarks, at the DMV, the unemployment office, wherever we find ourselves, we can prove the mass media naysayers wrong.

Forget the labels that they would place upon us; we be of one blood, ye and I.