I took this shot at Greenville County Square on Saturday, right before the March Against Monsanto.
~*~
My wee Tumblr blog doesn't get much attention... not sure why I started it, except that now I can officially "like" other people's entries. Still no comments allowed though! Such a weird system; I still find the 'nesting' thoroughly confusing and I frequently can't decipher who has said what.
I recently posted THIS on Tumblr... to me, some of the most shocking content I could ever have posted. (Then again, that statement probably just shows my age.) It's a photo I took at the Fort Sumter museum in Charleston, of a slave tag. Lots of people don't realize that enslaved African-Americans wore identifying tags (like animals), so I thought I would share the photo. I also included a slavery-era poster warning northern blacks (in Boston) against approaching police, who were then-empowered as bounty hunters (aka "slave catchers"). These two displays in aforesaid museum had the cumulative effect of shooting me right through the heart. I may even have shed some tears. But on Tumblr? Not a big deal--I got one "like" and one reblog. And that's it.
History is bunk, as Henry Ford schooled us.
I recently read a Wiki about a Tumblr blogger I have been following for some time. I consider this individual little more than an amusing hysteric/abusive psycho-nuisance, but when she has emotional meltdowns (often, as psycho-nuisances usually do), she unwittingly provides us with some first-class comedy relief. I was startled to read that this person is regarded as "serious social-justice" (is "social-justice" now a noun for a certain type of radical poseur on Tumblr?). And I am wondering--how is that possible? Serious social-justice?!? Saints preserve us.
This person has done nothing but vent endlessly (several times a day, usually) in a self-righteous, pseudo-political fashion, using all the trendy lefty buzzwords of the day. She has never done ANY political organizing or actual community-work in real life. At least, if she has, she has never mentioned it. And since every single wayward hypochondriacal symptom and every meal eaten and every DVD viewed is carefully cataloged and shared with her legions of fans, I think we would have heard all about any ACTUAL SOCIAL JUSTICE work by now. In excruciating detail.
And yet, this person is considered "serious social-justice"; its enough to make you want to tear your hair out.
This might go a long way towards explaining why this current generation faces endless wars (plural) they seem disinclined to stop, much less actually protest against. After all, it's been left to their poor and immigrant peers (along with computers and drones) to actually fight these wars, so what is the harm? They have far bigger fish to fry, like picking apart other bloggers for using the wrong trendy words and/or having the wrong opinions. (And even though they loooove to see racism and ethnic bias under every rock, they don't see their blatant disregard for the people their country is bombing, as racism and/or xenophobia, as it certainly is.) This explains why there are all these "social justice warriors" on Tumblr, and yet they have had no impact at all, ZERO INFLUENCE, in the public square. None. Zip. Tumblr is like a fantasy-land, a computer game, and "social justice" is one of the colorful environments chosen as background, just like choices of locations in Farmville.
Very, very few Tumblrites have even commented on the current government shutdown, so it seems obvious none are receiving WIC (as I once did, which I mentioned on the air last week) or utilizing HEAD START or are immediately affected by government in any other way. In fact, very few mentioned the long-awaited roll-out of Obamacare. I have not seen any of them discuss the pros and cons of Obamacare... in fact, its all fulminating, with little mention of real life events or the ramifications of various political policies.
It's disheartening, even frightening. I hope this is not the future. If it's only one FRAGMENT of the future, I can handle it. But I hope this is not what "social justice" eventually devolves to: SOCIAL JUSTICE FARMVILLE! GET COOL CARTOON IMPLEMENTS FOR VIRTUAL COMPOSTING! BUY CHICKENS THAT LAY ONLY FREE RANGE VIRTUAL EGGS! And don't forget to put down the people with the ordinary chickens for not being cool. Otherwise, where's the fun in that?
(War? What war?)