You Know You're About to Hear Lies When Oppressors Begin With "Well…"

Originally published in 2023… I wish more people had listened then.I become triggered when I see anyone respond to a tough question by sighing, shaking his head, and uttering a soft and melodic “Well…”That’s the gentle way of starting a conversation that can be summed up as: “It seems like you’re being treated unfairly, but let me spend endless hours lecturing you as to why you’re wrong. I know eventually you’ll break down and submit.”Some part of me instantly says, “Here it comes. He’s acting calm, but there’s the clear threat that if you don’t keep quiet and agree, he’s about to blow his stack. He’s making such a big show of staying calm so he has a justification to hit you if you persist in opposing him.”“Well…”The other thing they do is say “No” or “No, no, no,” in a soft tone while they give a sad little smile and shake their head. Mike Pence is a master of this. Everything about him drips creep as far as I’m concerned.“No child, you’ve got it all wrong, let the unopposable patriarch correct you before you get hurt.”And then they go off and talk and talk and talk. They can talk for hours if you let them. They can talk until the television station stops broadcasting for the night. Politicians do this all the time. They use a lot of words like “freedom” and “pride” and “hard work.” They just sprinkle random words in there from a pocket dictionary of positive thoughts, all while smiling and shaking their head and looking at you like you’re a simple-minded fool.And it all starts with, “Well…”They have the privilege of being calm. They have the privilege of talking all night. Your only job, as far as they are concerned, is to shut up and do as you’re told. But it seems like, lately, the foundations of this tactic are beginning to crumble.We’re supposed to sit quietly and take itI honestly don’t understand what’s going on in Florida. For some reason about half our country is fine with our society failing to denounce slavery as an act of absolute evil.“Well…” they say. Then they’ll offer some offensive argument like, “Actually, plantations offered health care because it was to their benefit to keep slaves alive.”But when you say, “Slave owners shot slaves dead. They tortured slaves.” You get the head shake and the “no, no, no,” even though those are indisputable facts.I saw a really weird video the other day where Jesse Watters tries to insist that nobody is spreading lies and misinformation about slavery, then he turns around and spreads the same lies and misinformation (almost in the same breath).Ron DeSantis is doing it too. He made a weird statement about how learning how to become a blacksmith might be applied later. My question is, “Later… like when? You are aware people were slaves for life are you not? There IS no later. Assuming there must be a later is applying the morals of our age to the past.”These mental lightweights insist on perceiving a completely fabricated version of history. These are the type of people who want to believe Mel Gibson’s “The Patriot” is an accurate representation of America’s past (for the record, that’s an offensive thing to believe).But if you say white people benefited from slavery, watch outThe double standard in our society is appalling. I have no doubt that a teacher would get fired if she said white people received (and still receive) an enormous economic advantage from slavery and the institutionalized racism that continues to inflict appalling injustices on marginalized communities.There’s a large population of privileged white kids out there whose only concern in life is choosing which elite ivy-league school they’re going to attend. They don’t have to worry about paying. They don’t have to worry about getting accepted. They don’t have to worry about passing. It’s all wrapped up and handed to them on a silver platter.Later on in life, they’ll be handed jobs where they speak endlessly on television about how “hard they worked” to get where they are today.“But wasn’t your family offensively wealthy?”“Well…”Somebody recently told me that after high school, his only choices were a minimum wage job or crime.But the entitled voices that benefit from injustice will talk and talk and talk to keep any oppressed populations from having any air time. Naturally, the liars are allowed to dominate all air time. The rest of us never get to sit at that table.Rich jerks bend over backwards to defend the absurd mythology that they “worked hard” and that everybody else is “lazy” and “undeserving.”I always reply, “If they were so committed to doing hard work, why did they need slaves? Why didn’t they just do all that hard work themselves?”“Well…”It’s easy to appear civil when you‘ve got a soft and comfortable lifeThe most effective counter measure evil people use to oppose the fight for social justice isn’t direct opposition. Direct opposition reveals the oppressors for what they are. They know that this is disadvantageous. Instead, they stall.The injustices of the world are what they want. Therefore in order to succeed, all they have to do is nothing. This is a huge advantage. All they have to do is delay any change. Delay is their deliberate tactic.If you say, “This isn’t fair.” They don’t scream, “YES IT IS BECAUSE I’M SUPERIOR AND YOU NEED TO LEARN YOUR PLACE.” That rouses people. The Civil War taught them that aggressive approach is ultimately ineffective. They’ve learned to keep people asleep. So, instead of direct opposition, they make a patriarchal chuckle, smile, and softly say, “Well…”Today, if anyone gets roused, the oppressors point and say, “Look at how they’re descending into lawlessness. That should scare everyone. I realize we have social injustices to correct, but we have to restore civil behavior first.”Delay.They achieve their goals by delaying. Rather than let anyone express a reasonable complaint, the oppressors gobble up all the air time. “Well, patriotism and hard work and the opportunity to succeed and freedom and liberty and bald eagles and amber waves of grain…”Blah, blah, blah, it goes on and on. It’s all delivered with a silky voice and a smooth smile. All they have to do is nothing and they win.Using delay as a weaponWhat the oppressors know is that some people are in such a vulnerable state that they’ll die if nothing is done. The oppressors are fully aware of this. Black people are more likely to die from causes related to pollution, so oppressors resist any action to improve the environment.Black people are more likely to die from poor access to healthcare. Therefore, oppressors resist any healthcare reform.You can go right down the list. Pick any problem that disproportionately affects Black people, and the oppressors are committed to doing nothing about it.Delay, delay, delay.And if you ask them to justify their actions, they say, “Well…” then they drone on forever because that’s also a delay.There are many examples from history about the devastating consequences of delay.Maceo Snipes, a veteran, was the first Black man to cast a vote in Taylor county Georgia. Members of the KKK shot him in the back the next day.[Maceo Snipes] walked three miles to the hospital with his mother. The doctors left him waiting for six hours. By then, he needed a blood transfusion. The doctors claimed the hospital had no “Black blood.” Snipes died two days later — July 18, 1946: Murder of Maceo SnipesDelay is murder.Our next step in the fight for justice is to take it upon ourselves to recognize that delay, that saying, “Well…” is just as much an act of deliberate aggression as physical violence. We can’t allow the oppressors to bog down our social discussion with nonsense designed to prevent us from helping the people most in need.The people most in need are dying. Their lives matter.It doesn’t “benefit you later” to be abusedOur society has reached a point of absurdity. The ray of hope is that it appears as if the forces of injustice are becoming more desperate. It was an act of desperation to hoist Confederate flags and engage in a terrorist assault on the United States Capitol. That didn’t work in 1861 and it didn’t work in 2021.Part of the history America refuses to teach is that oppressors did, in fact, take a hit at the end of the Civil War. The mistake of those that fight for human dignity is that we let the oppressors slither back into positions of power.“Will you behave yourselves this time?”“Well…” they said.For some reason, we’ve let them passively develop, and deploy a tactic of delay for over 150 years. The good news is that people seem to be seeing it now. The oppressors are finally being called out on their oppression, and, in their desperation, the unapologetic racists are indulging in the kind of aggression that tends to rouse the forces of justice.The lesson here is that we can’t be lulled to sleep. We’ve already heard the justifications of the oppressors. It’s time to give equal airtime to the complaints of the oppressed.It’s not unreasonable to demand immediate change when inaction gets you killed.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! 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