How the election of Donald Trump changed online communities

Posted on by Llewen Leave a comment

Every online community, active since 2016, has an orthodoxy, a specific set of beliefs and practices. If you don’t adhere to that orthodoxy, you are rejected. The political left and right are the same in this regard. And now this principle seems to apply to every online community that I am aware of. This is how the election of Donald Trump changed online communities, all over the world wide web.

The election of Donald Trump, and the events that followed, shocked every online community that I am aware of into a very specific orthodoxy. Anyone that does not adhere to that orthodoxy is no longer welcome. Trump’s election was the trumpet blast that destroyed tolerance.

For those who were inclined to be intolerant, the election of Donald Trump made that intolerance socially acceptable. For those who were inclined to be tolerant, the election of Donald Trump drove them from tolerance, to intolerance.

Trump’s election didn’t signal a change in beliefs, but it very clearly changed the way we all deal with beliefs that differ from our own, especially in our online communities.

January 6, 2021

America is not racist,

Posted on by Llewen Leave a comment

We just feel the need to let loose sometimes
And tell brown people they should go back
To where they came from.
America is not racist,
We just feel the need to stop and frisk brown people
Demand that they produce their identification
And shoot them in the back when they try to comply.
America is not racist,
We just don’t think that brown people
Should live in our “gated communities”,
Compete with us for jobs
Or go on dates with our daughters and sisters.
America is not racist,
We’re all racist,
We all react to difference,
Real or perceived.
America is not racist,
We just let pink people do things
We would never let a brown person do
And call them whiners when they complain,
And tell them they got that position
Because they are brown
When it doesn’t fall to us.
America is not racist
We just fetishize our caricatures of brown lives
To magnify our own fear of the fantasy we have created.
To give us an excuse to pull that gun
To paint that swastika
On our own hearts,
To hang that noose
From the trees in our own home towns.
America is not racist,
We just dream dreams
Where brown men rape our daughters,
And brown women do our laundry,
And the unrecognized guilt
Drags those dreams kicking and screaming
To the range where we shoot targets
Wearing hoodies and baggy pants.
I’m telling you,
America is not racist.

State Capital building in Nashville Tennessee
State Capital building in Nashville Tennessee