Everybody has their own point of view and all the people that agree with that point of view are lumped together. People are mistakenly lumped into that group due to various reasons by who is lumping them. The comments at the bottom of a story I found on social media are what motivated me to begin defining myself in print. The main article can be found here: http://www.newsweek.com/white-supremacists-charlottesville-campus-fliers-662659 and the specific comments triggering my post today are from Elizabeth Pengson and Tony Taylor.

Ms. Pengson says this nation was never white and we are land grabbers and squatters on this land. Mr. Taylor comes back saying that white people stole it all to benefit the white race and we need to remember that.

My translation of this is that Ms. Pengson is white and is acknowledging that her ancestors stole this land from the people that were here which was not the correct way of doing things. Mr. Taylor is also white telling us his ancestors did it to make a better life for white people and that white people need to acknowledge, recognize and appreciate that it was done this way otherwise white people may not have all the privilege white people are accustomed to.

I will now give my point of view. I see no reason to embrace the horrors that got this 47-year-old white man everything I have been privileged to receive. I feel sacrifice is needed in an attempt to level a seemingly impossible-to-level playing field. The type of sacrifices required to accomplish this is my stumbling block. I can do what I can on an individual level by respecting all people regardless of how they were born in regards to race, gender or sexuality. I can also try to recognize the person that was born on third base and thinks they hit a triple versus the person that has been at bat countless times but has never seen third base. I can further try to recognize why they have never seen third base and not just assume that they may not be a good hitter or not practice hard enough. (For more info on where this thought came from you can go here:  http://neguswhoread.com/wypipo-explained/)

I can’t say that I am fully immune to hard feelings against people but they are learned feelings based on reason and actual experience. I don’t have anything against people just because of their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The hard feelings come along when they become stupid and affect me. Try wearing a Steeler’s logo in Cleveland.

I can say I am prejudiced toward felons. I feel if you live in this country there are certain rules that need to be followed. If you cannot follow those rules you get punished. Some rules are stupid, maybe most rules are stupid but the rules that carry felonious consequences should be acknowledged by everyone. If you do not like those rules you should do something to change them or shut up about it.

I feel things are unfair. One of several examples I have is the time I was thrown in jail because of my reaction to an officer disrespecting me. It has taught me not to react that way anymore. As first stated by Epictetus, a man born a slave about 2,000 years ago: It is not what happens to you but how you react to it that matters. I feel like a better person because of it. This was only a misdemeanor offense but it still scars my record of being a law-abiding citizen. If this had been a felony I may have different views but since it was not I feel that what I experienced in jail was a joke. I saw everybody in cages being fed and clothed and cleaned and given free time to roam about the wing outside of their cage to watch tv, play cards and interact with their fellow prisoners. Every day was exactly the same. Some were even forced into indigency by incarceration because they lost their job and home for being away for so long. What a pain in the ass. You break one of these stupid rules and wind up in jail for 90 days and lose everything that you have. Now don’t get me wrong. If you are barely hanging on to what you have and then go and smack your girl for any reason then you get what’s coming to you but if you get arrested on a bench warrant because you didn’t show up for court to pay for a traffic ticket that you didn’t have money to pay and then lose your house and job because of it then that needs to change. Felony charges are something I cannot relate to because it seems to me that common sense would apply to knowing things that fall into this area. I may be wrong as I have no experience in this ring but from what I have seen any felon should be dead. Prison is like a zoo. Felons are caught to protect them from the wild (or to protect the wild from them) except the taxpayers pay to keep them safe and alive. If we opened it up for visitors to come and view them like wild animals and charged these visitors as if it was an actual zoo then we could take the bill off of the taxpayer. If that particular prison/zoo did not get enough business it would have to close. The felons would have to be transferred to other zoos to be kept safe. One by one the prisons would go under. The other option, which would also be the consequence of this first plan once the last prison closed, is to kill them as soon as they are found guilty of the felony. Get rid of them. You can’t follow the rules, you die.

I can also say I am prejudiced toward anybody with an unearned sense of entitlement. Just because you exist does not mean that you get anything just because you think you should have it. I may even go so far as to take something away from a person like this, depending on the situation. …No, in my head I like to think like this but will I really do it? I doubt it.

I do not know how much I know versus how much I assume about history. This may hold true with some of you so let me lump all of those people together. This is what I and my fellow lumpers believe. Our ancestors were stuck in a country that was bringing them down. Too many people, too many taxes, too little freedom to do what they wanted to do. Word got out that some Italian renegade had begun colonizing the New World and they jumped on the bandwagon. They came over and were given land by their sponsored countries that must have acquired this land with squatter’s rights. I can maybe compare it to walking into a supermarket and seeing everything and just taking it all because it was there. No, bad analogy. Items in a supermarket are owned by the supermarket. The land wasn’t owned by anyone as it was one with the people who lived there. It was altogether a working circle of life before somebody came and said they wanted it for the queen or whatever bullshit they said. As these white people are building up trying to make a new home for themselves they found that exporting crops and goods back home to Europe was very profitable as long as they had a lot of workers. They created plantations that required intensive labor to grow, harvest, and process prized tropical crops. Next thing you know there are all kinds of dead natives. The natives that were not dead became enslaved to their new world order and soon began dying from being overworked and from old world diseases. Next, we can bring in the ships from the slave coast of western Africa in Jan 1526 telling all the new world settlers that they can buy slaves they’ve captured from war-torn neighboring African states to work their plantations and mines and rice fields. They could also be used in the construction industry, cutting timber for ships, in skilled labor, and as domestic servants. What a perfect way to build up a new world. Not like it was started here. Slavery has been going on long before this. It came here because of the greed and need to exploit the new world for profit.

Now I need to expand on two points of that last paragraph. Picture yourself in that scene. I’m not saying this is accurate. It is just what comes to mind. I cannot see it from the native point of view as I am unfamiliar with what their lives were like before us. I know I said it was all a harmonious circle of life but did that mean there was never any war or conflict? Come on. Knowing how I am I’m sure I would’ve been killed somehow. I cannot see it from the slave point of view either because of the backstory which I compare incorrectly, I’m sure, to Californians besting any inland states’ population for either coming into Cali or for not treating Californians nice enough when visiting the inland states and therefore enslaving them and selling them to the next new world order. It makes no sense why they were enslaved in the first place but then they are presented to the new world as slaves for purchase and they actually let it happen? I’m sure I would’ve been killed here too. Now from the new world order’s point of view. I hear an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a new venture of freedom and opportunity away from old world rule so I jump on it. I get here and put in the work and eventually get my own land. Now I find that there’s too much work for me to do so I make the natives do it for me. Then some ships come in with slaves for sale and answer my problems.

Have I realized I am over my head? Would staying in the homeland maybe have been a better choice? Was owning a slave just what you did back then? I’ll try to compare it to smoking. I didn’t come up with the idea of smoking on my own. A friend got me started. Then I found all kinds of new friends who smoked as well. It’s just what you did. Not once in maybe the first fourteen years of smoking did I think it was bad but two years after that I quit and got a dog (the one pictured up top). Were slaves just like cigarettes? Did everybody smoke? I need more information to fully understand where I was and what my choices could have been.

The other point I need to mention is my use of “our ancestors.” I really have no idea how or when my bloodline got here. It may not have happened until after slavery was abolished and suffrage was available to all. My granddad, a Fin, was adopted by another Fin family that I have no history on. I have little backstory on my other granddad or both grandmoms. As far as I know, I’m mostly German with a little Irish.

In an attempt to wrap this up I can say that currently I do not know exactly where I fall in terms of being part of the solution but I am a person trying to recognize when I can help make life better for everybody.

Some other reading that helped fuel this…

http://www.theroot.com/angry-earth-is-determined-to-murder-us-all-1802689008