The World Turned Upside Down

     Over the weekend I saw "Marshall," the  phenomenal, twist-and-turn-filled courtroom-thriller biopic about an early trial of future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall,

...in which Marshall, a tough, brilliant young lawyer for the newly-formed NAACP in the 1940's fought to defend a black chauffeur who was accused of raping the wealthy white woman who employed him.

     And though this gripping, stranger-than-fiction true story of the victory of truth and justice over racial discrimination, bigotry and fear should have left one feeling uplifted, in truth I left the theater feeling rather glum.
     I felt glum because the movie showed events that took place at a point in history when the  American Civil Rights Movement was just over the horizon;  

...and because the great moments of that movement,

...the courage,

...the heroism,

...the suffering,      

...the hope,

...the solidarity,

...and the battles won for equal rights under the law,

...are now behind us.
    And now, seventy years after Thurgood Marshall fought for the rights of the oppressed and the victimized, the fight has changed and the meaning of civil rights has flipped.
     In 2017 the civil rights movement in America is white supremacist racist groups,

...who've united under a hip-sounding name and cool-looking symbol,

...led by budding Adolph Hitlers like Richard Spencer,

...Milo Yiannopoulos

...and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named,

...fighting for their right to publicly spew hatred and minority oppression on college campuses and any other public forum they can get their mouths on - and actually being taken seriously instead of being banished by the dictates of public morality and outrage to back under the rocks from beneath which they've slithered out into the open

...since the ascendancy  of

...and his band of hyper-entitled bigots.

     In 1965  demonstrators marched from Selma to Montgomery;

     In 2017 demonstrators rallied in Charlottesville.

     Now right-wing Christian groups cry out that they're suffering religious discrimination when people they don't approve of are allowed the same privileges and respect as they have, because giving people they don't approve of the right to do things they don't approve of is against their religion.

     Now people need only invoke the name of God or Jesus to spin their intolerance and  bigotry into righteousness and paint themselves as the offended or oppressed.  
     And it's amazing how little people in this country actually care about the welfare of America's war veterans,

 ...except to use them as a verbal tool to bludgeon those who are making a plea for civil rights.

     What tribal fools we mortals be.
     Please, somebody tell me something good.