I’m afraid I’m must apologize in advance. Usually, I try to avoid using expletives in my writings. Expletives tend to decrease the impression of a message, I think. Can be off-putting and limit a person’s credibility when expletives are used in a forum where a higher level of decorum is the goal.

Last night, Saturday, March 5th, 2016 Kentucky held its first caucus in state history. A caucus does not elect a president. A state caucus dictates in general how many convention delegates a particular political party candidate receives during the party’s national convention. Delegates from each state then vote at the national caucus to throw support towards a particular candidate. From the national convention a party’s presidential candidate is chosen. Candidates not chosen at the national convention are not eliminated from running on their own independent ticket but the odds of winning the election diminish to almost zero. Running an independent ticket is very expensive. For example, simply to register for the Republican Caucus in Kentucky requires a $15,000 filing fee.

Being involved in politics seems way out of reach of most Americans to me. To register for the Kentucky Republican Caucus a $15,000 fee is necessary. I’m not sure about the filing fee for the Democratic Caucus; I’ve searched and found nothing. I’m sure there is one, I simply didn’t search hard enough.

Donald J. Trump carried most of Kentucky (red), while Ted Cruz had a strong showing in a few areas. Picking out spatial patterns is sort of hard for Trump. Cruz, meanwhile, enjoyed support near Henderson, KY, Louisville, and then along a stretch resembling the route of I-64 from Morehead, KY, to Ashland, KY.

From the New York Times, Sunday, March 6th, 2016

We can see from the NYT maps above how each of the two more popular GOP candidates fared. The maps illustrate the difference in vote counts between Trump and Cruz, by Kentucky county. The graduate symbol map (left) illustrates using circles to denote popularity. Clearly, the Jackson Purchase favors Cruz, as does Northern Kentucky, near Cincinnati. This pattern bears itself out in the middle map and right map. Trump most demonstrably carried the southern and eastern Kentucky counties. Cruz was heavily favored in western Kentucky, with one gem of a county, Breathitt, a seeming Cruz oasis in a wilderness of Trump.

I find all of this caucusing amusing. Or, I did until I awoke this morning.

I enjoyed breakfast with a friend of mine, an establishment named for a famished Ursus Arctos. When I returned home, I noticed a small white tube laying in the road. My friends have often teased me, “You would never make it in the military. You are too curious. You would walk over to the first shiny object, pick it up…and then they would be picking you up.” True to a fault, I picked up the white tube and unrolled the sheet of paper.

The above image gallery is the result of images I collected from scouring my neighborhood. These tiny white tubes were in nearly every drive not only on my street, but the streets adjacent to mine. Texting friends around town, they too found tiny white tubes they had initially ignored until I sent them pics of the tubes I collected. Then, they looked around their neighborhoods and found more of the same.

I felt violated, really, violated in the sense ignorant racist assholes had intruded upon my quiet street near a university campus to espouse what they say is not a message of “hate,” but a message simply to encourage White people to wake up and realize the cultural genocide is being waged against us. To which I say, “Go fuck yourself, KKK. Seriously. And stay off my street.”

The text of the first pic states, “”Law-abiding citizens of your community sleep in peace knowing the Klan is awake!”

No! I did sleep in peace knowing you asshatted halfwits were mostly in prison, or in seclusion, in your underground Morlock lair where you belong. Now, I have to spend my waking and sleeping moments living in trepidation your fucking brainwashed infantile brains are perhaps ambulating around my street and there are few things worse than a nervous White person packing heat.

White people make me nervous now. Is this person a closet KKK asshole? Let me see your wallet! You probably are carrying some sort of card to let you in to your racist White Supremacist meeting place. I need to see your purse, please; see if you have any KKK paraphernalia on-board.

I blame Obama.

No, no; that’s not it. This is not Obama’s fault. The GOP would like for you to think all of these racial issues are rooted in Obama, that President Obama was instrumental in fomenting a racial divide in the United States. The GOP would like for this message to sink in, but it won’t in me. Yes, Obama is connected to the rise of racial issues in American society, but he isn’t responsible for fomenting them. No – the GOP is respoinsible.

From Mitch McConnell to Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin – Kentucky, come on, really? – the GOP and its half-witted step-child, the Tea Party, have done nothing but vociferously agitate against Barack Obama since January 1st, 2009, for no other reason than race, honestly. And, Donald Trump opened another front against President Obama in his pursuit of Obama’s birth certificate, a furor which has diminished by is not extinguished. Trump, Cruz, Rubio, and a number of other GOP candidates at local, state, and national levels have brought varying degrees of racism into our everyday lives through instilling in Americans fear of immigrants from Mexico and the Middle East, essentially anyone with skin slightly darker than a person with an April tan. With Spring Break quickly upon us, millions of American college students may suffer from racial profiling due to our heightened awareness of dark people.

The Internet is full of truths, half-truths, lies, and pants-on-fire lies. As the GOP continues to encourage deeper and deeper cuts in education, our American society is going to become more and more susceptible not simply to sheer nonsense. Hopefully, absolute nonsense will be easy for people of all stripes to recognize. No, what will really become a stupendously onerous chore will be dissecting white lies, deliberate obfuscations, fallacies, and erroneous cultural memes.

Cutting education works to the GOP advantage but not America’s advantage. Cutting education allows the GOP to infuse their messages with more fear, more doubt, and more reliance on them to keep America safe. However,  by cutting education the GOP reduces America’s absolute advantage in science, technology, and medicine, in innovation. Many companies invest as much as 11% in research and development. The United States should try to invest as much in Education as Defense. Education is a matter of national defense, defense against low wages, defense against stupidity and the racial divisions favored by the KKK, White Nationalists, Cultural Purists, and Defenders of the Confederacy.

We live in the 21st century. There are people walking among us who still believe the world, Planet Earth, is flat. I shit you not. I would not shit anyone reading this blog. Time is valuable. We have no time to waste clinging to wrong-headed myths of the past. Americans need to look ahead, plan ahead, plan for a brilliant future, a safe, well-educated future. I don’t see this path belonging to the fear-mongering war-hawk racists who have embedded themselves within the Republican party.

I’m not saying Democrats are the answer. I have yet to see the same level of vitriol emanate from their party. The United States may need a true 3rd party representing some other platform other than the Party of No the GOP has become. Most every other highly developed country has more than two parties and those parties must work together to accomplish legislation and set policy. Countries the size of the United States, of which there are not many, in terms of size or area, tend to have limited parties, e.g. Russia (1 party), China (1 party), Canada (every day is a party), Brazil (did someone say party?)

I can’t tolerate racism. Cannot take it. Judge people by who they are, how they act, how they treat others, especially those in the service industry, or custodians/janitors. Don’t judge people by skin color. Judging upon skin color is fucking stupid, small-minded, certainly not Christian.

A later post might be a pic of my bail notice after I punch some dipshit in the face for dumping more KKK propaganda on my street.

PAX

Update: In speaking with people at my local coffee shop March 7th, 2016, the distribution of KKK fliers seemed to prevail all over western Kentucky, not limited to only Calloway County, Kentucky. Reports from Facebook indicate fliers were spread throughout the Jackson Purchase area, including Murray, Benton, and Mayfield. I notice this morning no local, state, or national media outlets have even mentioned KKK propaganda on the heels of the Kentucky Caucus. I, for one, do not think this is a coincidence.