Sorry folks, I am broken.

I have been down some deep, dark rabbit holes and I am finally just gutted.

It started with a podcast that clued me on some things I had never heard about, and that began a journey. A long, dark journey into the depths of despair[1].

The initial reference was to Citizen's Councils, basically minted in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 that ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional.

Here's the series that I wrote on the Backlash from the Brown v. Board of Education decision:

The Backlash Machine - Sweaty’s Corner

The Backlash Machne, a series tracing a hundred-plus years of the same recurring move: American institutions — progressive and reactionary alike — managing racial hierarchy through mechanisms diffuse and technocratic enough that nobody involved ever quite has to say the quiet part. Sovereignty commissions, segregation academies, COINTELPRO, and the rest of the machine are coming.

Sweaty's Corner

Then came the State Sovereignty Commissions where the fuckery gained a veneer of officialdom.

Then I heard about Byron de la Beckwith, the racist chode that shot Medgar Evers, and how he became such a waste of skin.

And then I learned about the interstitial acts. The connective tissue between these iconic moments that were captured and documented.

You see, I went to a really good public school, in a state that at the time had the second-best public schools in the country (that was before Prop 13 fucked them in the A) and I did learn about the Jackson Mississippi lunch counter, about the US Military being required to force Ole Miss to admit and sit their first black student. I saw the pictures.

But I didn't get the rest of the story. And if you don't get that context, well you don't know shit.

You can go through life thinking that the "peculiar institution" wasn't all that bad, and that maybe the slaves did all right. You can think that was oh so long ago, and that surely, we have become better.

side note: I read Stuart Stevens' book "It was all a lie" and I have to note that his surprise was shocking since he grew up in Mississippi, a 7th generation Mississippian, the place that didn't need the KKK until 1963 because the entire state aparatus was so entrenched into segregation. I can't square that circle.

But that is a lie.

Just like when the mealy-mouthed politicians stand up and say that America is exceptional.

That is a lie.

Anyhow, I have completed as much of this thread as I care to. The remnants of the racist, transgressive deep south are still smoldering, still barely scabbed-over wounds, still driving way too much undercurrents of our social order.

And ugly shit is floating up to the surface now. And the general population is like "meh".

And to hear John fucking Roberts pontificate about how we've eliminated the scourge of our original sin really defies any semi-focused scrutiny. And Clarence Thomas? Fuck that guy.

Sidenote: One of the core drivers of Byron de la Beckwith's animosity to Blacks was miscegenation, race mixing. So someone should fucking hang that on Justice Thomas.

You can only take so much of the vernacular that drove these people, "miscegenation", racial purity, race mixing, mongrelization, and many far worse terms.

When the fucking Third Reich patterns their approach to the "Jewish Problem" from the US South, the breakdown of reconstruction, and the Jim Crow south, the segregation, and how to diffuse that throughout society, you are pretty fucked.

I am going to need to change the subject. I have completed a lot of writing in this vein. There is a lot more. In fact, the more I wrote, the more tangents, and offshoots appeared.

But my natural curiosity is burnt out.

I may take a break, or I may switch to writing about the tech bros (oh wait, that gets me to Elon Musk, an unreformed Afrikaner who uses his shitty social media platform to utter the worst fucking racist trash). Or perhaps pivot back to more music (oh wait, AI is totally fucking that too). Or bagging on Substack and their tattler scanner that is getting everyone's panties in a bunch? Or I can dig back into my past and resurface why I hate LinkedIn so much?

Or we can talk about Otters and Dogs.

Any ideas?

Let me know below, and help me get away from this very dark place.

1 - This is a reference to the end of the epic song from 2112 by Rush IYKYK