I don’t know what caused the altercation, maybe it was nothing.
Maybe a bumping of shopping carts, or something simpler, as I can imagine, it doesn’t take much in the crowded shopping exit of a Costco on a mid-December Saturday.
But the elderly white man clearly was saying you should be deported… the Hispanic man, yelling that he was not an illegal, and he has rights… the white man answering, well you look like it and so it went… the anger, the self-righteousness, and the responding demand for respect of rights… but the chaos made me think of how we are near a tipping point like we’ve not seen for 86 years… since maybe Germany’s Kristallnacht.

Unser Eigenes Kristallnacht*

Righteousness is killing us
the cruelty is purposeful
the gradual normalization of hate
was always intended to get to this point.
The language of otherization is vermin,
rapist, criminals and this is purposeful
as is the cruelty of separation, of division,
and worse.

Yes, take criminals off the street
but we need no special laws or actions
except enforcement of current law.
We need a path toward compassion
and fairness, without mindless mob
action by the righteous and
morally compromised.

Tipping points are never quite
clear until we are seeing it with
the eyes of history, in the analysis
of the past we find we are no
better than those who came before,
we who think we are better
may someday witness “our own
night of broken glass”.