Tennessee

Greetings, dear reader, from the trenches of the Culture War!

People often wonder what it is like to be a person of color living in the American Deep South. To such purveyors of curiosity, I can only describe it with two simple words: Death Trap.

In many ways it is not dissimilar to the Eastern Front of the Second World War. In that wretched conflict, Russian soldiers had but two choices: either advance, or retreat.

If the Russians advanced, they were cut to pieces by the Germans. And if they retreated, they were murdered by their only superiors for their supposed cowardice.

That is also the choice that colored Southerners face. They can either side with law enforcement, and be murdered by violent street gangs, or have sympathy with the downtrodden, and be murdered by crooked cops.

There is no third option. And as with many of my compatriots, I have long since stopped caring about who in the end will have the honor of disposing of me. Either way, I will end up just as dead.

So that is where my loyalties now lie. For I have long since learned that the true battle is not between the forces of law, and those of liberty. It is the struggle between love and hate, between light and darkness, and between peace and war. And that is a battle fought just as much within the human soul as it is fought upon the battlefield.