First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”
– MLK 16 April 1963
The biggest problem facing any real resistance to the Trumpland narrative gripping the American narrative are the aged hippies, and other middle class Liberal whites, who were college age in the 1960s and early 70s.
These folks feel they accomplished things. They take credit for ending a War. They pat themselves on the back for integrating their local public schools. They embraced the Gay Party Scene.
But now these white people are unreasonably cranky and clueless and stuck in this outrage loop that swings between feelings of sheer exhaustion and disrespect. They feel entitled to their new agey racism and hippy dippy cultural appropriation because of their notions of antiquated liberalism. They have not progressed with the Progressives.
They want to shame Trump. They think their outrage should be enough. They want the Administration to know someone is watching, someone with a TSK TSK head shake at the ready. And because of this, the Trumpites will continue smashing through the Distraction Economy, dominating the news cycles and meme generators with new meaningless provocations.
These things that Trump says in his tweets are inherently meaningless in the scope of what actual shit these tweets obscure. The United States bombs Syria and kills 200 Russian fighters (who may have been there illegally) and there is barely a blip, while Trump tweeting about the 14th Season of the APPRENTICE is bigger news. There is something seriously wrong.
And what is seriously wrong rests firmly on the shoulders of the aged hippies, sitting at home trying to do yoga in front of their endless Fox News consumption, swept up in the Distraction Culture of Outrage. A state of unease that relies upon fury and anger to diffuse any real, actual angry outlets which might threaten the status quo. A status quo that is finalizing all the things that the 1960s and 1970s radicals fought against.
Dump out the bongwater into your hanging fern and help out.