Lilith Sinclair, an Afro-indigenous non-binary organizer for BLM Portland stated, she is not just “organizing for the abolition of the militarized police state,” but also for the “abolition of the United States as we know it.” This doesn’t sound like the words of someone who wants to correct the things that are wrong with our current system but somebody who wants to create a new one with no idea what to do if they did.

It might not be fair to say that BLM is like the confederacy, after all the confederates joined their states together and said they were leaving to create their own country. BLM has no army, a poorly written statement of their goals, and no land to claim as their own except for what they try to steal as autonomous zones. Currently, protesters are working towards burning down the Federal Courthouse in Portland and the state along with local government is aiding them by telling the president that they do not want Federal officers in their state. This was taken one step further on July 21, 2020 when the attorney general of Oregon said that federal officers would be arrested if they tried to detain anyone during a protest. The federal government has the right to defend their property especially if it has been under siege for 53 days, at the time of writing this. It would appear that not only the media but the politicians of these cities and states are taking sides against the federal government.

When Confederate statues were being torn down, I kept hearing that these people were traitors and didn’t deserve to have a statue celebrating them. Recently in England, a statue of a BLM protester was erected to replace a statue of Edward Colston. Colston was torn off of its pedestal and thrown into the river only to be replaced with the image of a protester/ rioter who partook in the event and stood on the empty pedestal with her hand raised in the air. The image of a slave trader was replaced with the image of a rioter that helped destroy public property. One used his money to fund orphanages and the other pushes a communist agenda. Which one of these deserves to have a statue?

The word traitor is used for the confederates and while I don’t agree with their reasons for leaving the union. I will agree that they were still Americans just like the people rioting in the streets these days. Because they were Americans and the nation needed to heal those that had survived the war were taken back into the nation. Their families erected statues in the hopes they would not be written out of history and forgotten. There is something to be respected knowing that they stood up for what they believed in. its more than I can say for a lot of people these days. However you may think of these men, they have families that remember them. There were ideas and personalities that died with them, families destroyed when they didn’t come home and the problem of living with an enemy that you fought for four years when it was over.

There has always been more than one America. There was the north and the south. Now we have the east and west coast. The forgotten fly over region. Texas, I will leave that as its own culture. No matter how we look at our country we can not forget that we are all Americans. At the moment the left and the right are looking down the barrel of each other’s rifles wondering who will fire first. The right holds back while bricks and water bottles fly through the air. At the moment the left can’t win. The demands they have set forth don’t work in the democracy that we have and the majority of people don’t agree with what they believe. The left has dug its own grave and is screaming from the bottom how it was everyone else that put them there. As we sit back and watch the left continues to dig and I wonder how long it will be until someone offers a rope to get them out, or start throwing dirt into the hole.

I have hopes that one day the left snaps out of the bipolar episode it is having and decides to join society again. There current plan to cry, bitch, and complain their way into universal basic income is no way to move ahead and heal the country. They continue to talk about reparations while destroying everything around them and not caring about who has to clean it up. There will be a day when they realize their fit didn’t give them the outcome, they thought it would. People won’t forget the businesses that were destroyed, the people shot and killed, and the people cancelled and had their lives ruined. There will be a day of reckoning when they will ask for forgiveness and I don’t know if people will have it in their hearts to forgive them. For me, there will be no hugs to give. There hasn’t been any effort to correct the destruction I have witnessed. My city still looks like shit. A memorial to a cop who lost his life protecting the city had to be removed because of vandalism. Graffiti still covers my bank. Windows haven’t been replaced. Nobody has been arrested. The south had to rebuild, after all it did start the fight. As for the left they can start by cleaning up the mess they created. Scrub the spray paint off the buildings. Replace the windows you smashed. Help the business owner rebuild the structure you set on fire. Take back the items you stole. Paint over black lives matter that has covered our streets. if this is too much, find somewhere else to live. There is an idea that this is their country and only their country. Like in 2016 there is a forgotten group of people who are wait for their time to speak and their numbers are growing.

The difference between the Confederacy and BLM is knowing when you have lost. There was a period of forgiveness, Lincoln knew this. In order for the country to survive the north had to accept the south back into the nation. Everyone was an American but these days I have to wonder, with the talk of abolishing the government and everything labeled “white” how does one move past the inherent racism dividing the country? Is there a country after everything that has been said and done in the name of a toxic belief? How does a country move on from an attempted murder suicide like the one happening right now? Only time will tell.