‘what kind of protest has ever been acceptable?’

Let’s all take a re­al­ly good look at this photo. 

Like re­al­ly drink it in: 

This is of course a pic­ture of the fa­mous lunch counter sit-ins back in the 1960s. Just a man, sit­ting at a counter. Mild protest eh? He’s not ri­ot­ing, he’s not be­ing con­fronta­tion­al, he’s just as­sert­ing him­self meek­ly in protest to an un­just system. 

OK now look at all those white dudes around him: You can feel the hate ra­di­at­ing off them like stink lines. That Paul Walk­er-look­ing one even has an in­cred­u­lous look on his face as if to say “who does this guy think he is?”

Does this look at all fa­mil­iar? It shouldn’t but it does. Be­cause for a lot of you this was your Face­book friends list over the week­end. Those an­gry, hate­ful big­ots aren’t that dif­fer­ent than you and me (to use Tyler’s fa­vorite filmic cliche). Well, they are dif­fer­ent to Tyler and I, but you get the point. 

These are your un­cles that show up to spout ginned-up ‘black on black crime’ sta­tis­tics, your aunt that has nev­er once seen a case of po­lice bru­tal­i­ty she couldn’t ex­plain away with an ap­peal to wear­ing pants that fit bet­ter, your sweet ca­su­al­ly-racist grand­ma that nev­er once pro­nounced the name Barack Oba­ma cor­rect­ly, on purpose. 

Don’t let the black and white aes­thet­ic fool you, in the grand scheme of things 55 years isn’t re­al­ly that long and his­to­ry doesn’t end, it rolls. 

This is our re­al­i­ty. Right now. And for all their emp­ty protes­ta­tions about flags and the Con­sti­tu­tion and Trump and re­spect­ing the troops (as emp­ty a con­cept as every­thing else they spout), all your friends, fam­i­ly and ac­quain­tances seething about foot­ball play­ers kneel­ing dur­ing the an­them are at their core just mod­ern avatars for these an­gry south­ern men in the pho­to giv­en so­cial me­dia accounts.
 
 

—ja­son malmberg

Flom­mist Ja­son Malm­berg is a sim­ple man who be­lieves in brown liquor and small dogs. He also makes art some­times. Copy­right © 2017 Ja­son Malmberg.

MOR D’ARTÍCULOS  MOR FLOMM !

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nuts and gum – to­geth­er at last things I have learned this elec­tion cycle just protest­ing eat, sex, can we have more beer? one year get the hell out of our society liv­ing their faith fab­u­lous­flomm­ness