“Words can’t express the anger” a friend wrote, while watching the opening morning of the Chauvin trial.

Perhaps they can.

About six months after Chauvin’s #BlueLivesKneel moment, 74 Million American’s voted for more-of-the-same, united by their Trumplican racist right common interest.

Your outraged reaction to that live video of a white cop in Blue crushing the life out of a black man in Black while onlookers stand by taking pictures, places you in a majority of similarly incensed Americans walled off from 74 million Republicans for whom Chauvin means #BlueLivesMatter and who do not see any offense to the natural order by Chauvin’s policing style.

These same people you would see confronting #BLM protestors shouting #AllLivesMatter when what they mean is #OnlyWhiteLivesmatter

So willingly, openly racist they conflate gaslight nonsense with idiot ignorance repeating the defense teams predictable narrative;
“Floyd was on drugs at the time so he must be guilty. Plus he is Black. Toxicology proves it.”

They see the video you saw and believe Chauvin did nothing wrong. Black criminal drug users get what they deserve. law and order matters. Its not an easy job. Thank God for officers like Derek #ThankyouforYourService Chauvin.

Although there has always been push-back by liberals to this brand of nasty convenient idiot, the advent of alternative-truthTrumpism in 2016 has lowered our national bar of compassion. And for this reason, the reaction to Floyd’s murder was heartening. It was so black and white in our post-truth society to see systemic racism in the dock – made punishable by law. Finally an actual moment in law where black lives matter more than the right to white immunity. Thanks to the presence of an actual video of the event – without which we would never have heard the name George Floyd.

Symbolically at least, Kaepernicks taking the knee was an encouraging sign of solidarity that spread worldwide, including at all major sporting events like European football. The most watched influencer of all Televised events. That was the one positive outcome of the George Floyd snuff movie. The most viewed ritual execution in History.

But now we see Wilfried Zaha (The Crystal Palace player) who is also Black, refusing to take the knee.
The protest has gone full circle. Informed Black anti racists will no longer ‘take the knee’. At the same time crowds returning to games now boo players still taking the knee.

Racism continues unaffected. Endemic systemic racism across the board, wherever the racist right maintain their conservative status quo. Right below the surface just behind the headline stories, Blacks still get killed by white cops. Black football players still get racist messages on the field and at home, delivered by social media.
The numbers don’t lie.
Ask any Black person. (Or African American.)
Even Trump can freely use the N word and face no accountability, but instead attract followers for this very reason. So while its great to see some interest in changing our racist ways we have only a few short steps on what will be a long journey.

Since Floyd’s murder, despite a few #BLM protests and a few million people admiring a few thousand elite sportspeople taking the knee, the average white supremacist perspective remains unchallenged.

Clearly to the conservative racist sector Black Lives matter as much now as they ever did, marginally less than when they were chattels, benefiting the investment of White businessmen back when America was booming in the ‘good ole days.’ The Great America of MAGA fame. Trumps reference for that past to be revisited ‘Again‘.

Derek’s trial is going to test Americas Trump-Wall like never before.
Judgment for Chauvin (and his co conspirators) is not the end of this matter. He is only the defendant in the dock. Just a tiny tip of the kneeburg, beneath which some 74 million Americans continue with deny deny deny. They are neither racist nor fascist and they are far too clever to grasp the ANTIFA they vilify is the same ANTIFA ideal that stormed the beaches in Normandy in the uniform of the anti-fascist.

74 million is a sizeable percentage of the 330 million USA population. But it is still a minority and it is that minority 74 million who, symbolically at least, who have the most to gain from reviewing the value of this Chauvin trial.

For the majority this is a reset opportunity from which we can learn about our racist past and most benefit a better future without denial of our historical racism, much of which remain intertwined in the fabric of our legal system.

South Africa’s apartheid policy was similar to the separate-opportunity determined along racial lines that we see in much of the US.

South Africa’s model of legal discrimination by race, the laws of apartheid like the group areas act and the mixed marriages act, was ticking along very nicely. Apartheid was good for the economy, booming with free labor to mine gold and other minerals requiring labor costs. In fact, by the end of the sixties, South Africa’s economy was the third largest in the world thanks to the value of gold and other minerals white owned mining companies so successfully engaged Black labor to exploit. Separate development was working great, even though 16% were the exclusive beneficiaries.

Then along came a pesky liberal. Peter Hain. Moved to England and started all kinds of trash talk about ‘Racism is bad.’ As if……. Every South African Church and school taught Biblical white supremacy. Blacks don’t need any Western education. The Bible says “They are born to till the soil.”

Soon, largely arising from, Peter Hain’s efforts, an organized reaction group evolved. These racist malcontents started the anti-apartheid movement. It spread as songwriters wrote songs about it. In 1984 the Specials had a hit with Free Nelson Mandela. Gradually people started thinking about racism through the messengers in media.
Awareness began and spread; the distribution of wealth along the lines of color; the distribution of opportunity along the lines of color.
Especially, the opportunity for superior education along the lines of color.
Soon that energy led to all kinds of boycotts, none of which really made any difference at all to the inherent systemic racism that infused the Country through its churches and its schools.

Until; the the sporting boycott.
“No normal sport in an abnormal society.”
The racist conservatives Government of South Africa so wanted to play Rugby against their like minded sporting equals, the Blacks, the Kiwis, France and even England, that the carrot of being allowed to rejoin the sporting world was; above all other pressures, what made the Apartheid regime and their supporters, the Trumptards of their day, review endemic systemic legal racism and make some hard lifestyle choices.

With the carrot of sporting readmission to guide them, they raised the issue of racism and white-entitlement to the fore. They ended the 33 year, very expensive ‘Apartheid War’ famous as the Angolan Border War, that turned an entire generation of white boys into armed, trained, racist God fearing killers by forced-conscription. A two year process in which I was an unhappy participant.
They freed Nelson Mandela, after 27 years of Hard Time in Terrorist jail and along the way became the first nation to ever voluntarily decommission a nuclear capability before handing over power peacefully to the former terrorists. (1994 was the year the free Mandela became president, aged 75). Another astonishing first for Africa, that won Noble Prizes for the two figureheads. Mandela and the White leader, De Klerk.

Here’s an aside that contains a few tremendous ironies.
I left South Africa in the mid eighties for a new life in London. I found my new home in Surrey on the Thames overlooking Hampton Court Palace where I spent 29 years.

Less than ten years after I bought my home there, on my usual morning walk along the Thames tow path I noticed a bald headed man who looked just like de Klerk. How strange to be reading about South Africa’s changes – and to bump into Mr. de Klerk on the towpath.

Turns out, before de Klerk handed over the reins of power to the former terrorist, he left his wife. Marike de Klerk, for a wealthy friends wife. One who owned a home inside Hampton Court. After de Klerk left Marike, in 2001 she was murdered in her Cape Town home by a Black intruder. Black on White crime was peaking around that time as the Country moved towards it’s first inclusive election.

After many years of marriage and three kids, de Klerk, 61 at the time, took up with Elita Georgiadis, 45 at the time. Elita and her husband, Tony, a weathy and influential Greek/English shipping Magnate, had been close friends of the de Klerks. The two couples had holidayed together at the Georgiadis’ English estate, Stud House, inside the grounds of Hampton Court Palace, and on board their yacht. It was that house in Hampton Court that de Klerk and Elita went to when it all ‘fell apart’ in South Africa.

Bumping into de Klek was geographical coincidence enough but, wait; there’s more. On the other side of the Hampton Court grounds, Ian Smith, the former Spitfire pilot and racist leader of Rhodesia, lived. We shared the same hairdresser.

These two neighbors, both former leaders of Africa’s two most powerful White racist Governments gave me pause to reflect on the ethnic make up of my new home in England. And it’s true.
Where I landed up after leaving Apartheid South Africa, in beautiful Surrey with a 15,000 acre garden and the glorious Thames outside my front door, I had no Black neighbors. (Although I hasten to add – I had many Black friends.)
Those two African leaders and me all ended up within a stones throw of each other in a small area in England, six thousand miles from Southern Africa.
What odds.

When South Africa addressed the transition from a racist political leadership entitling whites at the expense of the rest, the issue of ‘making good for past wrongs’ arose. A challenging prospect for any leadership – as America found out when trying to recompense the surviving Indians.

South Africa elected a Truth and reconciliation commission. Admit your past with qualified immunity. The victims get closure and the villains go free. The Government will then allocate reparations to the victims.

This approach avoided the much anticipated civil war, as the end of white Apartheid controls gave new opportunities for vengeance by the formerly oppressed Black population. (Although the death toll by criminality following the release of political prisoners that included rapists and murderers and the opening of the borders to criminals from the North, who soon brought in a massive drug industry and populated Johannesburg downtown with gang culture, may well have been lower if there had been a civil war.)

Affirmative action laws provided ongoing reparation. (With mixed results, because greed is not exclusively white behavior.) Billions of Rands were paid out to discourage Black vengeance and promote ‘A Rainbow Nation‘. Peter Gabriel immortalized Steve Biko, a Black man killed by White cops with more deliberation than Tauvin on Floyd. Biko’s killers walked free after the Truth and Reconciliation commission, annoying many civil rights activists.

By the late nineties many South Africans of all colors were made to review how they saw Black people. A new understanding of the consequences for a racist society allowing their police to brutalize Blacks with qualified immunity followed. And now, after one generation post-emancipation from Apartheid, South Africa has a non-racial constitution, a democratic process that reflects majority will (even if the majority will can be bought for one left shoe) and white police can no longer execute Blacks at will and expect to be rewarded, as was the case when I grew up in that climate of white superiority enforced by violence.

Violence of the same kind I saw on that eight and a half minute video shot by the 17 year old onlooker. Trumps America encapsulated in 8 minutes and 30 seconds. Everything you need to know. And more.

If anything good comes from the Chauvin trial, it may take the shape of improved education. Right now, developmentally in our understanding of racist behaviors we, Americans of all skin color, appear to be at the American equivalent of the boycott-stage for apartheid South Africa. Socially at least we see many on the creative liberal side saying “No normal socializing with racist hatemongers.“

Chronologically, our conversations and understanding of racism in general appear to me as similar to the mid-seventies in the anti-Apartheid movement.

The educated Liberal left have a “No normal socializing in an abnormal society.” Top level musicians able to afford a conscience as influencers, refuse to work with Right Wing racists, exposed by their Trump behavior over the past four years. (Read the marvelously bearded and beautifully articulate bass player Lee Sklar’s recent interview on this very subject.)
Anti-racist/anti-fascists who can choose, choose not to work with or socialize with racist fascists. That may be the soft touch for America’s review of racist advantage – the carrot – that worked with the South African sports boycott.

There is denial of racism here that I recognize from my African experience. A fear born of fear of Black retribution for – you know – the unmentionable?
That quality of being a racist fascist while proudly denying both as a patriotic nationalist, but not really, because your so smart, no one will ever know if you just deny it?

Gaslighting has become the norm like never before. Since the gaslight king sold ‘Gaslighting for dummies’ to 74 million Americans who know they are not racist or fascist if they repeat “I am not a racist fascist“. Because if you say it often enough it must be true.

The televised trial means the opportunity to watch the prosecutors at work and once more the subject is our endemic systemic racism. Will they seize this opportunity to inform and affect the racist right. Those who watched this story grow; the #BLM movement it seeded where even #PortlandMoms assembled in protest T-Shirts to be met by heavily armed Militarized police with tear gas and rubber bullets in the face, and saw no racism. Spreading their hateful narrative about ‘Black’s looting’ and ‘law and order’ even as Republican plants were caught on film; like Umbrella man, smashing windows to feed Fox news.

Reputationally and educationally this is a marvelous opportunity to understand more about Americas racist fascist elite and in this process, start a new approach to educating the next generation. Where we learn how to end the systemic racism that brought us here.

While prosecutors will likely jail Chauvin for life, paroled in 15 years, my real hope is that the guilty verdict will encourage a new interest in learning the ‘why’s and hows’ underpinning our systemic racism. And with that new interest; just as we saw in South Africa with the sport boycott, become that change, to repair the racist legislation that continues our enshrined white supremacy.

The Three Rs (Press Release)
2020 release: The Three Rs . The racist religious right and other short stories. A compendium of stories predicated on the X Y axis between liberalism and conservatism.  
“The chapters I was fortunate enough to read pre-publication are fascinating, informative, full of psychological insights, and sometimes, very funny.”
    Andrew Colman (Professor of Psychology.)

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