Disenfranchised :When You Don't Have Hope by RRO.

When you don’t have hope then lots of things look good:

• Drugs

• Radical religion

• Riots

• Protests

• Guns

• Violence

• Hate Groups

• Revolution

• Terrorism

Do you know where most of the terrorists came from in Paris? Well, the answer is Brussels. What part of Brussels. The Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek.  What’s it like?  Well it might be called the Fuller Park of Brussels.  Fuller Park is a rough neighborhood in Chicago.  Both have high unemployment, poverty and a great deal of hopelessness.  Kids in schools in these two neighborhoods don’t graduate from high school, they don’t go to college.  Sometimes, they don’t even eat.
Last week the Chicago please released a video of a teenager in Chicago being gunned down in what looks old fashion murder to me.  He was on drugs, PCB, and had a knife in his hand.  He was walking down the middle of the street.  The police pulled up and shot him.  The first bullet took him to the ground.  He was shot an additional 15 times.  You can see the puffs of steam rise from his body as each bullet penetrates his body.  That certainly solved his drug problem.
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Detached from our reality

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A moderate amount of PCP often causes users to feel detached, distant, and estranged from their surroundings….may be accompanied by a sense of strength and invulnerability.  Its bad stuff.  But, who is to JUDGE that we would not want to feel detached from our surroundings if we grew up in Gaza, or Fuller, or Molenbeek.
Personally, drugs are not my style. I think I would detach by starting a violent revolution, which might look like terrorism to some.

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Bigotry is one Response to “Such People”

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We respond to drugs, terrorists, and all forms of radical behavior in this country with one simple emotion: Judgment.  It is one thing to condemn such behavior, but to make a Judgment that we are superior to all these people, to say that if we were raised in a pocket of hopelessness that we would quietly suffer and do no harm is a huge judgment against a large part of humanity in the world today — much of it inside our own borders.
And our primary action to deal with all these problems.  Violent force.  Guns.  Bombs. Military Task Forces.  Drones.  Wars. Prison.  Capital punishment.  And yet, has we kill millions, millions more rise up from the infinite supply of the disenfranchised.
Trump is the champ of bigotry.  Never in my nearly 70 years on this planet have I seen anyone that is a dangerous as this man.  He is bigoted against Mexicans, Immigrants, Palestinians, Muslims, handicapped, Democrats, his fellow Republican candidates for President, and anyone else that he can make fun of to feel superior.  Trump would never look below the surface to find out where terrorism, drug use, and all other forms of disenfranchisement is coming from … it would be beneath him to treat others as humans.  And what is worse, he speaks to what is the worse parts of all of us:  that little (or big) core of bigotry that exists in all of us.  Hitler was the last one that did this well.  Trump is going down the same road disguised as a savior appealing to disenfranchised religious right.

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Compassion, Loving our Neighbor, Being our Brother’s Keeper

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If we want to change the world, make it a better place,  using deadly violence against all the disenfranchised in our country and the world will lead to the long advertised apocalypse.  If we do not look at the core problems behind wealth inequality in our country and much of the globe, then the world will continue to unravel as we mass produce the disenfranchised.  If we ever needed some serious dialogue on the issues, it is now.  Two of the candidates for President in my mind are approaching some of the issues with openness and candor.   Bernie is good on helping the working man and down trodden.  Rand Paul is good on addressing the financial mess our congress has got us in.  Both are against attempting to solve everything with our price gouging military industrial complex.
We need to start talking … and taking the best of every point of view.