Racism in America

Posted on December 3, 2014 by Sean T. Smith

We can deny a thing, but this does not make it any less true. Racism exists and continues to shape America, and while some still dispute this, it remains a fact. Can we, as a people, overcome this legacy, or is the nation doomed to repeat the same mistakes repeatedly, inventing new tragedies along the way?

Racism is more than one thing.

There are different kinds of racism, but at it’s core is a generalization, a stereotype, which is used to define an entire group of people based upon ethnicity. It is limiting, reducing the content of a person’s character to the color of their skin.

Institutional Racism

When racism is codified, when the promise of equal protection under the law is broken, the country itself is undermined.Police officers shoot and kill unarmed kids without consequence. Racial profiling. Gerrymandering in minority areas to split up districts so that the vote is diluted. The inequities in our Criminal Justice system in which black offenders are far more likely than Anglos to receive harsh sentences. The disparity in funding for schools and education between affluent areas and inner cities. Institutional racism dates back to the origins of our country, when slaves were deemed to be less than human. The Emancipation Proclamation began to address this, and the Jim Crow laws were finally repealed, and the Voting Rights Act was a great step toward dismantling institutional racism. It lingers, still, though, and all you have to do is flip through cable news to see it.

This is directly linked to economics. Poverty perpetuates racism. Lack of jobs, education, and opportunity creates an endless cycle. A war on poverty is also a war on racism; this is the battle we need to be fighting, not a war against eachother.

Cultural Racism

Racism is part of the American psyche, woven into our collective history. It thrives in the South, but is by no means limited by geography. Stereotypes, played out again and again on television and movies, in music and the stories that the news decides to focus on, reinforce this kind of racism. This works both ways, too. In many black communities, there is a distrust of white people, of the police, and the feeling that not only is their voice not heard, but that it does not matter. This distrust, distaste, this sense of unfairness spills into the streets, simmering in the shadows until it explodes with violence.

Individual Racism

Each person must make the choice to be color-blind. It starts with us. If collectively we choose to see a person for who they are, not by the color of their skin or the clothes they wear or the car they drive, then racism will cease to plague the nation.

Closet racists are the worst. They fill a pew on Sunday morning and spew hatred on Sunday night. They choose sides, rather than choosing a person. They don’t consider themselves to be racist, yet their actions prove otherwise, their veiled condescension, the hypocrisy they wear like a coat. When the media seizes upon cases like Trayvon Martin or the killing in Ferguson, these are the people who assume that a kid deserved to die, rather than question their own beliefs or the facts of the case. They call in to talk shows like Rush Limbaugh, hide behind anonymity on social media, and broadcast hatred and division with snarky memes and mean headlines.

If this continues…

The country is becoming increasingly diverse. America has always been a melting pot, but it’s been the rich white folks who have made policy decisions since our founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence. As time goes on, the balance of power will shift. It’s already happening, and there is much screaming and gnashing of teeth over this fact. It’s inevitable, though. Within two generations, white folks are going to be in the minority.

There have been calls for civil war, revolt, secession, assassination and violence from extremists who are terrified of the changes coming to America. Rather than work within the system, they seem to want to break it entirely. This kind of thinking is seditious, dangerous, and gaining traction. As we move into the next election cycle, it’s going to get even worse.

We need to vote for responsible leaders, and do it in every single election.

But people are decent and good, for the most part...

The next generation will be better than mine. My kids don’t really see race. I think each subsequent generation will improve upon the one before, and that with time, the lingering vestiges of racism can be stamped out. It takes time, effort, and teaching our children. It takes honest dialogue and love for one another.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Check out my books on Amazon! Next year, The Tears of Abraham will be published, a novel about the coming American Civil War.

Russia Rising: The Cold War Gets Arctic

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Sean T. Smith

The search for a Russian submarine off the coast of Sweden conjures images of Tom Clancy novels, and sheds light on a conflict brewing for generations. The cold war never ended, and it’s more dangerous now than it ever was. The U.S. military is paying attention; the rest of us should, too, for our lives and the lives of our children depend upon it. This is not the time to be slashing our defense spending, and in particular, thinning the ranks of our military by giving the boot to combat veterans and officers with experience in the name of slashing budgets. It’s ludicrous and dangerous. I’ve personally spoken to many active duty personnel who are outraged by these cuts, this purge, and while I at first thought it was some kind of spin, I’m now certain it is true. It scares me. Russia is rising. In the Ukraine, Russia sends in troops under the guise of humanitarian response, ignores the rest of the world, and pursues its own expansionist goals with methodical, ruthless abandon. There is method to their madness.

U.S. fighter jets intercepted Russian bombers off Alaska and California in June, another in a long string of recent potentially deadly aerial encounters. Four long-range Russian Tu-95 Bear-H bombers, accompanied by an aerial refueling tanker, flew into the U.S. Air Defense Identification Zone, an area extending 200 miles from the North American coast, off Alaska, where they were intercepted by U.S. F-22 fighter jets.

Two of the Russian bombers peeled off and headed west, while the other two flew south and were identified by U.S. F-15 fighters within 50 miles of the California coast.

Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, in a presentation to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said this:

“They’ve come with their long-range aviation off the coast of California; they circumnavigated Guam,” Carlisle said, showing a picture of a U.S. F-15 fighter “intercepting” a Russian bomber off the Pacific island.

In April, a Russian SU-24 fighter jet made a dozen close-range passes by an American warship, the USS Donald Cook, in the Black Sea in what the Pentagon called a “provocative” move while tension continued to ramp up in the region.

Earlier this week, two Canadian F-18 fighter jets intercepted a Russian aircraft over the Baltic Sea, as Russian military activity increased in the area.

in September, NORAD reported that Canadian and U.S. jets scrambled and intercepted six Russian aircraft within the Air Defense Identification Zone, which rings most of North America.

Russia has simulated bombing runs against Sweden, invaded its air space time and time again. Fighter jets swoop in on NATO aircraft, violating both common sense and international law, roll to show off a weapons load, and then stick around until the West scrambles fighters to escort the Russians away.

Why would Russia be doing this? To test response time, of course. To intimidate and bully, certainly. To probe for weakness. What is their long game?

It’s about oil and power.

Recent discoveries of oil and gas under the sea floor in the arctic reveal that the area may contain up to 30% of the worlds oil reserves. Since much of the ice is melting, a new Northern Sea Route, an alternative to the Suez Canal is a real possibility.

Arctic Military Command

The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reports that a 6000 member force of permanent troops will be established in the Arctic region. Russia is reactivating Soviet bases in the area. They annexed an island last week, and are building air strips capable of supporting fighter jets. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Tuesday, “We have moved into the Arctic rather actively and this year we shall have many units deployed along the Arctic Belt – in fact from Murmansk to the Chukotka Peninsula.” He went on to say,“This is fundamental, large-scale work.”

Russia is shifting it’s fleet, creating a new Northwest Command, which will protect it’s interest in the arctic region. Russian training exercises, including the use of paratroopers, has increased exponentially in the last year.

President Putin announced in September that Russia is developing new nuclear weapons and increasing its offensive capability. Russia’s nuclear deterrent and doctrine is based around the use of a First Strike. The United States has announced it will also increase it’s nuclear capabilities, and is developing weapons capable of striking targets anywhere in the world within an hour. Over the last year, both countries have increased the deployment of nuclear weapons.

Earlier this month, Russia announced it will not renew the twenty-year old Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which was a crucial partnership between the United States and Russia to dismantle and decommission chemical and nuclear weapons. More than 7,600 warheads were dismantled under that program.

Now, both sides are building more nuclear weapons

The Land Grab

Against this backdrop of threats and volatility and military buildup, a land grab is coming. Russia is going to try for more oil-rich land, and it’s going to happen in the north. They may try to invade one of the Baltic nations, testing NATO’s resolve. Russia could waltz into Sweden or Norway with little conventional resistance. Much of Europe is disarmed, relying on NATO and the United States for defense. But would the U.S. or NATO be willing to use nuclear weapons in that event? If Russia puts boots on the ground, supported by armored divisions and aircraft, how does that war end without one side resorting to the use of weapons of mass destruction? The use of a tactical nuke on a battlefield could lead in seconds to a retaliation and escalation.

There is always hope, and perhaps clear heads will indeed prevail.

I wrote about the outcome of such a conflict in my novel Objects of Wrath. If you are intrigued and terrified by this scenario, please check out my books!

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7873199.Sean_T_Smith

The End of Times… War and Rumors of War

Posted on September 7, 2014 by Sean T. Smith

Mankind has always possessed a morbid fascination with the apocalypse. From the Biblical Flood and Mayan calendar to modern day science fiction, civilizations have been aware and intrigued, sometimes terrified, by their impending doom. In fiction, this is entertaining, but the reality is more chilling. Societal collapse has been a recurrent theme in our history, and perhaps this is one of the reasons we are drawn to books like The Stand and television shows like The Walking Dead.
For many Christians, the End of Times means the rise of the Anti Christ, Armageddon, and the return of Jesus. Christians have been looking toward the heavens for about two thousand years now, wondering if this is it.

Sad ruins remain to remind us that the world as we know it is far from eternal. Entire cultures in the Pacific rose and fell, and disappeared. The mighty Mayans are gone, the Roman Empire fell, sacked and destroyed from within. Yet, even those breakdowns did not lead to the destruction of the human race. Life went on.

Only in the last sixty years, the blink of an eye in terms of history, has mankind developed the ability to cause its own extinction. While in the past, a meteor strike, super-volcano, or a blast from a star light years away could have erased us from the planet, we now can do it ourselves with the push of a button.

A global nuclear war is one obvious way this could happen. To put this in perspective, consider that Russia and the United States possess thousands of nuclear weapons. Russian weapons are dirtier and their largest nukes are more powerful than those in the United States’ arsenal, but it’s irrelevant. The tipping point for a nuclear winter is roughly one hundred explosions, according to the most recent science. There has been debate over the years on this topic, with some estimates coming in at only thirty or forty simultaneous explosions causing the planet to go cold. If thousands of these weapons were launched, that’s the end of us. The atmosphere is choked with radioactive ash, obstructing sunlight, the temperature falls, plants die, and there is no more food. The animals die, and homo sapiens perish right along with the rest of them.

In the last sixty years, we have also decided to come up with other, creative weapons of extinction. Biological weapons could do the job just as well as nuclear bombs. Our scientists tinker with viruses, which actually alter DNA, finding ways to make these things more deadly. A genetically altered virus could end our species. We’re looking at the worst outbreak of Ebola, a virus as scary as its name, which according to Dr. Tom Frieden, the Director for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, “is the world’s first Ebola epidemic, and it’s spiraling out of control. It’s bad now, and it’s going to get worse in the very near future. There is still a window of opportunity to tamp it down, but that window is closing. We really have to act now.”

Against this backdrop, we now have the greatest level of danger in the world we’ve seen since World War II, with Russia poised to trigger a global war over the Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin on the throne and his finger on the button, not the kind of man to face in the ultimate game of chicken. Because, he’s the guy that doesn’t swerve at the last minute. Then of course, there is the militant, insane, ISIS movement which is spreading like the black plague, a tide of evil which is consuming countries torn by war. The radicals are willing to stop at nothing, bereft of the slightest shred of morality or human decency, killing innocents without remorse or hesitation, and seeming to relish every shot Shia, every cut throat.

In Gaza, Israel sends in armored vehicles to stop rocket attacks on civilians, and levels schools, homes, and lives. Israel is defending itself against attack, against those who use children as human shields in order to gain support from around the world. Hamas WANTS to provoke Israel into these attacks. It’s Terror 101. Israel becomes more isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly vulnerable to attack from neighbors who have invaded time and time again. Israel also has nuclear weapons, and while they will never confirm this, everybody knows. If Israel is attacked, and it’s really just a matter of time, they will use these weapons if it looks like the war is lost. It’s called the Sampson Option, and it is chilling.

The Old and New Testament in the Bible lay out some things which have come to pass that are irrefutable, though seemed highly unlikely. Israel, it was foretold, would cease to exist, and it’s people would be scattered. That happened more than once. The temple would be torn down. The Romans did that. Israel would become a nation again. This seemed impossible, yet in 1948 Israel was again a nation. One of the last important pieces of scriptural prophecy is the rebuilding of the Temple. There are plans underway now in Jerusalem to do just that.

Whether one believes in the prophecy or not, those things did happen. The book or Revelation, the last and scariest book of the Bible, is rife with images and verses open to debate, with the scrolls and seals being opened, the four horsemen of the apocalypse coming, and death on a pale horse riding to doom mankind.

These may not be the end of times, and perhaps humanity will figure out a way to become better, alter its essential warlike nature and selfishness and transcend the hatred we wield like a sword. At no time in all of human history, though, has the end seemed quite so imminent or possible.

Keeping the darkness at bay… Thank you, men and women who serve.

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Sean T. Smith

I write military, survivalist fiction, yet I have never worn the uniform. My deepest gratitude goes out to those men and women with the guts to go to the darkest places in the world, braving gunfire and bombs, blazing heat and freezing cold, and separation from loved ones. You folks are keeping our country safe, while I’m sitting at home in front of a laptop in my pajamas.

I almost joined the military twice. The first time was back in college. I took the ASFAB, and I was gung-ho. I thought it would be a great way to gain some discipline and pay for college. I ended up joining (this is really sad) because my girlfriend was going to go through basic with me, and then onto MP school. She didn’t meet the height requirement. The recruiter, who was a genuinely nice man, competent and I’m guessing an outstanding soldier, slayed me with the look of disappointment when I told him I was backing out.

The second time I almost joined was about a week after 9-11. I’d been living in Nashville, and until then believed that evil was more of a concoction by the military industrial complex than a reality which would come stalking U.S. citizens here at home. When the towers fell, I wept. I was stunned by this evidence of evil unchecked, and it was a feeling of violation that I think almost every American felt. I wanted to do something about it. I felt I should act.

I didn’t, though. I thought about it and I made some phone calls, and one day I wandered into a Marine Corps recruiting office. I was already past thirty, and the guys looked at me like I was nuts. They took me about as seriously as I did, I guess. It was justified, because I did not have the balls to go ahead and enlist.

I like to think I’m tougher than I actually am. When I see American citizens getting beheaded on the news by these ISIS lunatics, I think, okay, lets go to war. Let’s blow them off the map, because that kind of evil has to be stopped.

But that’s easy for me to say and decide, when I’ve got nothing at stake. I don’t have a child ready to ship out, a brother waiting on his third deployment. I’m not writing a will and a note to leave for my wife in the event of my death someplace in the sand.

I told my wife last week that if I were younger, I’d enlist right now, being outraged at the atrocities taking place in the Middle East. I realized later what a stupid thing to say that was. I’m angry, but I’m not that guy, the soldier on the wall while the enemy storms the gates. I write about heroes, but I am not one.

So it is with great humility I say thanks to all of you who have the intestinal fortitude to risk your lives for your country. I am in your debt. You folks are heroes.

We The People

Posted on August 3, 2014 by Sean T. Smith

I love the United States of America; we are the greatest nation in the history of mankind, yet we are not the country that we were, nor the one we believe ourselves to be. America lost its light along the way.

America stopped Hitler. America invented rock and roll, the automobile, and the internet, and put men on the moon. We are a nation of innovators, fiercely independent, and hard working. We as a people were admired for standing for freedom and democracy. That is part of our heritage.seantsmithauthor.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/what-do-i-need-to-know.jpg”> Self-Compassion

America defeated the Soviet Union without firing a shot. (Not The Big shot, thank God.)

Those are defining moments as Americans, right? We stopped Stalin, King George, and Saddam Hussein. We helped rebuild Germany and Japan after World War II.

But…America became a nation by killing off the people that were actually Americans first. Whoops.

Along the way, America built a nation upon the backs of people who were enslaved. Slavery happened. People owned people. That’s also part of our heritage. This country would not exist as we know it without the push west at the expense of the Native Americans and the generations of slave trade and labor which built the agricultural base in the South.

I love America. I love the United States. We are not all one thing, though, either good or evil, nor have we ever been a homogenous society. In fact, our diversity is one of the things that made us great. We have been a champion of freedom and that which is good, but we have also committed atrocities and grave mistakes.

And now, while the United States consumes itself with bitter fire and ignorance, self righteousness and self- loathing at the same time, what is the truth of it? As a people, as Americans, can we recognize the difference between a patriot and a fool?

It’s harder than we think, and now a war within looms because we’re that idle and dumb. The patriots, who are not actually patriots but those who undermine the country with lies, ignorance, and hatred, are dangerous because many of them advocate open war, rebellion, and violence. And their numbers are growing.

The amount of misinformation being blasted over the airways and internet is mind-blowing. The truth seems hard to discern, and many people, it seems , prefer to believe lies, whether the lies we tell ourselves or the lies of others, than to look for the cold, hard truth. The truth, like the America itself, is not just one thing.

The United States strove to be a beacon of hope for the world, a “city on a hill,” and in many respects, the country succeeded in fulfilling the hopes of our founding fathers. It seems to me though, that we the people no longer strive for this ideal.

We watch videos of cuddly cats on the internet rather than try to learn something. We past memes on social media full of ignorance and hate because it is easier to click than it is to actually read. We are convinced we are right and that the other side is wrong, seldom listening to those who disagree with us, remaining in a bubble of ignorance.

The true patriot will listen, learn, and read a history book.

One of the building blocks of our democracy is compromise. Without it, the government cannot function, either at the national or local level. When politicians and voters become so entrenched in their beliefs that they are unwilling to bend, the whole system breaks down. The government now is a picture of this dysfunction. Unfortunately, the government reflects the will of the people, and we are divided.

The true patriot will strive for unity over division. The only way this great country will find its light again is if we the people become that light.