When you’ve lost Joe Rogan…
I do not blame Joe Rogan for finally turning on Donald Trump, I really don’t. After all — everyone has a breaking point — everyone. Looks like Rogan has found his. Before I get into the weeds of why Rogan is so very angry at Donald Trump, a quick aside.
One of my favorite songs growing up was Janice Ian’s “Society’s child.” You know, when people are children — that is when their feelings and beliefs are shaped and molded. This song, which still has the ability to send shivers down my spine, helped mold and shape me.
I grew up knowing through music like this and through history, that some people were irreparably racist, that some people hated with a passion, anyone who did not look exactly like them, anyone who was not a perfect replica of a white person.
And how sad it made me! I was a bit of a solemn child, and couldn’t make sense of much of this ugly, dirty stain called racism. This subject is as relevant today as it was way back in my childhood. You see, the GOP simply, I believe. hates black and brown people — hates, hates, hates, them and cannot hide it any longer.
So Joe Rogan, who gets a LOT of listeners, finally had enough and came out against these indefensible ICE raids, saying it wasn’t just criminals and “very bad people” who were being erased, oh no, not at all. It was good, kind, loving people as well — society’s children who happen to have a skin tone other than white.
There are ALSO growing claims of racial profiling. There are claims of ICE agents not even asking for this person’s papers, or that person’s papers, or identification. Some of these raids involve simply rounding up innocent people and throwing them in vans.
“It’s the racial factor,” the brother of one woman who was rounded up remarked. Indeed, it is. It’s the racial factor. “Open season on immigrants.” You see, these raids are not about rounding up criminals. They never really have been. It’s about the dark. The dark skin that terrifies Donald Trump and his posse. Hatred is ALWAYS born of fear, always. Fear is a breeding ground for hate and suspicion.
“It’s insane.” That is Rogan talking about the senseless raids. “Not cartel members,” he went on. “Not drug dealers.” “Just construction workers.” Just — people.
Images of fear we see daily now. But I hope these people can sense us — and know that many of us gaze at them not with fear but with love, not with suspicion but with smiles of welcome.
This is not permanent. This would never be allowed to happen were WE in power. For we, the Democrats, are society’s children, but so is that hard-working food vendor who feeds and nourishes so many. So is that person working hard in the cornfields. So are you, so am I, so are all of us. That, my friends — THAT — is America.
