Full disclosure…I am a white, straight, housed, clothed, well-fed, educated, healthy, American.  You know, one of the lucky ones.  I have marched, protested, written about and contributed to causes related to social injustices and inequality.  I’ve been bullied, (who hasn’t), belittled and vilified as a “Jew boy”, but, in my nearly 77 years, I have not experienced real fear of harm from others due to my own intangible othernesses…until recently.  I admit that I am not devoid of some biases that urge me toward irrational hatred:  bigots, bullies and bad drivers, (generally inconsiderate people), cruelty, war, guns and religious zealotry, polluters, posers and dumb-fucks who line up behind other dumb-fucks simply because hating in groups is, I guess, more fun than hating alone.  I blame the Internet and the meteoric rise of social media for fomenting the present, dangerously divisive tipping point in human evolution.  Rather than focusing on the miraculous possibilities afforded by our finger-tip access to the vast, collected knowledge base of mankind, our species, the supposed big-brained dominant one, has opted, in far, far greater numbers, for porn, mind-numbing gaming, shaming, influencing, Tik Toking and congregating virtually to conspire and hone bigotry and intolerance to the point where a fat fuck game show host was able to incite the near overthrow of American democracy with a few well-placed Tweets.  My still-beating ‘60s hippie heart has had most of its Kumbaya stomped out of it and my addiction to the 24-hour news cycle has sloshed most of the liquid from my way less-than-half-full glass.  My best research efforts, using the aforementioned everything-you-could-ever-want-to-know database, have empirically convinced me that bias, intolerance and hatred are not innate.  They are taught to children and nurtured through pedantic catechism, indoctrinated ideology or familial and community example.  Haters breed hate and the heavily delineated tribalistic lines in the sand are rarely crossed without the intent to perpetrate violence.  The vilest aspects of human behavior, the kinds of things that would have abruptly ended the careers of those under public scrutiny, certainly politically, a mere twenty years ago, have become normalized by legislatures, state houses, schools, churches, in print and throughout streamed and broadcast media.

I’m not sure where I thought this would lead.  Usually, when I get myself all worked up like this, I stumble toward some closure.  I got bupkis!