At long last I have found a reference to the terror network I think of when our fearless leader talks about terrorists and religious extremists. In a review of Doug Marlette’s new book, Magic Time, Marlette is cited as comparing the international terror network to the terror network in this country that kept 10% of the population in terror for 8 decades and more.
Conceptually, most Americans simply are not ready to hear our countrymen compared to jihadis, but the network that effectively disenfranchised Blacks in this country through terror was no different: they bombed, killed, burned out, threatened, kidnapped, extorted, tortured, and fired any person who dared break the “code”. Every Black person knew this but I seldom meet a White person who thinks of it like this. Even down to using religion and the Holy Scriptures as its basis, this movement replicates Islamic fundamentalism in its violent and virulent forms. There is no difference. And people we move among supported it, drove it, funded it, and approved of it. My own grandmother was a member of the Klan.
So while we justifiably condemn Islamic terrorism, let’s not act like we don’t know anything about terror. And it’s not in the past; my wife’s brother-in-law was fired from a job he had had for 10 years after she and I visited him in a small town in Texas. Coincidence? He suddenly got lazy and shiftless? Hard to say. At least he didn’t get dragged to death like James Bird in Jasper, just a few miles south of where he lives.