A post submitted by CGI member Commonman5150.

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The Karen Phenomenon

After watching the viral “Karen” video of a white nurse in New York who had an altercation with a black man over a bike rental, I felt the need to put my two cents in on the topic. I heard one commentator describe her actions as “Karenicity,” as in “you can see all the Karenicity of this woman,” saying her tears were fake, that she used her pregnancy and white privilege to get away with stealing the bike from a black man. Of course, all the race baiting industry fell into full “go” mode, in their attempt to demonize this woman as a racist Karen. The problem is that the woman was justified (somewhat) in her actions, it was her bike, and she had the receipt to prove it. I think she might have handled the situation in a different way, but then again, I just didn’t finish a 12 hour shift at Bellevue Hospital and I am not pregnant, (no men can’t get pregnant, sorry Alphabet Mafia) so that being said, I can certainly empathize with her reaction. The whole Karen thing smacks of racism, the only form of racism that’s permitted in today’s society. In today’s society, it’s ok to stereotype and denigrate white people, on the erroneous premise that whites are responsible for some mythical systemic racism because of their white privilege and white supremacy. According to the left these are the biggest threats to America today so it’s ok to be racist against Caucasians. In doing some research for this, I found page after page of Karen videos, middle-aged white women that act as if the world owes them everything, are always asking to talk to the manager and go over the top to complain about the slightest perceived infringement on their lives. This is a bit personal for me, because one time, while my wife and I were still living in California, she was called a Karen by a guy in the parking lot of a local grocery store. There was no reason for it, it’s not like Marie was being belligerent about anything, we were just walking to the store and this guy called her a Karen because she is a middle-aged white woman. In actuality, between the two of us, I’m the more “Karenesque.” I’m the one who will call someone out for bad service, I’m the one who will ask to speak to a manager. Maybe this is because of all the time I spent on my job giving good customer service. I usually can tell when someone is not doing their job, and if that has a negative effect on me, I might call them out for it. Maybe it’s because I’m getting old, my filters don’t work so well and my “give a damn” button is fubar. My wife, on the other hand will never do that. She has far more patience than I, and in all our time together she has never done anything that would be labeled as Karenicity. So, when the incident with the nurse happened, I decided to look into it a bit more, so I could get a better read on the Karen phenomenon.

It’s no problem finding Karen videos on YouTube, there are hundreds of them, some rank them by their Karenicity, how over the top they are, how racist they are, or how bad they make the Karen look. I tried to find out if Karens leaned to the left or right politically, and interestingly enough, despite Google and YouTube’s bias against conservatives they were pretty much a-political, in other words, most of the Karens didn’t go off politically, some did, but it was not an overwhelming majority by any means, although the common definition of a Karen is a white, middle-aged Republican woman who suffers from too much white privilege. I also tried to find videos of black women losing their cool, and they were a little harder to find, but there are quite a few of those as well, but none of those ladies have earned such a popular social moniker like Karen. I have to admit at some level these videos are slightly entertaining, because of my experience in sales and having to deal with unreasonable customers from time to time, however, in the 35 years I spent selling auto parts, I never had a “Karen Experience,” although my very first customer, a dude, wanted to fight me because I told him the part for his 67 Cougar was obsolete.

After watching as many of these as I could stand, a couple of dozen, it confirmed what I was thinking all along. It all boils down to context. I had a pastor one time say during Bible Study, “a text without a context is a pretext.” It meant that when you study a passage in the Bible, or anything for that matter, you must consider the context, when was it written, what language was used originally and is the translation reliable. Who was writing the text, and what were their circumstances, you have to consider all of the factors that went into why the text was written, what was the writer’s intent based on all of the context of the text. If you don’t do that then the interpretation is simply conjecture and probably incorrect. That’s exactly what happened in terms of the nurse video, everybody made an initial judgement on her without taking the context of the situation into account.
A great many of Karen videos I watched showed what can only be described as middle-aged white women, yelling, being belligerent and disrespectful to the person they are engaging. Others showed women who might not have gone off, if the person being interacted with simply used some discretion and de-escalation techniques, and still others looked like they were completely staged, they were just too over the top, too dramatic and too convenient. This made me think of a training video from back in my Ford days. FoMoCo was always sending consultants out to the dealerships to get them to try the latest sales and training techniques, this one guy was really good and I got to know him a bit later on. He did a talk about how to deal with customers, and played a Chick-Fil-A video where the clerks were talking about how they have been coached to empathize with the customer. The point being, since you have no idea what the customer is going through at the moment, you should not judge them by their actions. More than likely a customer’s demeanor has nothing to do with ordering a chicken sandwich, but is probably about something else entirely going on with them personally, so you shouldn’t take it personally. It’s looking at the context of an individual situation. Every single Karen video I watched had one thing in common, they ALL lacked context.

That is precisely what is being done, intentionally, in our news media today. Tucker Carlson made this exact point on his twitter presentation when he described how news organizations will tell a story, in his example it was a guy arrested for armed robbery, but is proclaiming his innocence. They don’t tell all the story, purposely leaving out crucial details, like maybe mentioning the fact that this guy had been arrested 6 times before for the exact same crime. We’re seeing this exact scenario play out in reality with the arrest of a former Marine, Daniel Penny, for 2nd degree murder for his actions on the N.Y. Subway. The MSM described the decedent, Jordan Neely as a sort of harmless Michael Jackson impersonator who didn’t deserve what happened to him, omitting the fact he had a lengthy arrest record and was threatening other subway riders. Today’s news stories are purposely edited to be short bites of insufficient information lacking any kind of context for a couple of reasons. The first is that our attention span has been dumbed down to the point where we are unable or unwilling to go into any kind of depth on an issue or story, taking every story at face value without questioning its veracity. The second is if the whole story was told, it would be reminiscent of George H.W. Bush’s infamous quote, “if the people ever found out what we’ve been doing, we’d be chased down the street and lynched.” If all the “normies” out there woke up and discovered the deep and insidious lies our news media, government, the corporatocracy and social media have been telling us, lynching would probably be the most non-violent of the reactions.

The “Karen phenomenon” is a microcosm of all this. Yes, there are people, women and men, white and black, and brown and young and old, leftists and conservatives who act irrationally from time to time, it’s called being human, we’re all imperfect beings. Singling out a specific group for ridicule is precisely the method being used to divide us, it’s the modis-operandi for the progressive globalists. The N.Y. Nurse, George Floyd, the Catholic Covington boys, Kyle Rittenhouse are prime examples of stories that were deliberately manipulated to enflame by purposely excluding context. The Karen videos are good examples of this as well, but they don’t have to be, for instance, maybe the woman in a Karen video who is pissed off at someone for not parking correctly, became exasperated because she is tired of people taking advantage of her and trampling on her rights, or is simply having a bad day, we’ve all had them. While it isn’t an excuse for bad behavior, it also isn’t an excuse for someone to humiliate her. These days we’ve been programmed to only see the bad in people, to not search for the reason behind the anger, to instead, instantly judge someone on the basis of a 2 minute video. I find it both interesting and disturbing that all of these incidents are caught on camera, these days everyone has one, and it seems like people are more interested in catching something that will go viral, then in possibly doing something to help the situation. Sadly, in the case of Jordan Neely, one person did do the right thing in trying to stop this obviously mentally deranged man from harming others, and is now probably going to go to prison for it. I pray that he is exonerated. but with the N.Y. courts it seems unlikely that he will get a fair trial, just ask Donald Trump about N.Y. City juries.

The old adage is “it takes two to tango,” for once I’d love to see a video of an accused Karen where the person she is interacting with decides that they are not going to play that game. There was one, where the lady was going off on a guy because he was parked (legally) in front of her house. She aggressively confronts him, and he responds, angrily saying he is doing nothing wrong, and then calls her a Karen. How about if the guy puts down his cell phone, apologizes for making her upset, and moves his truck somewhere else. Is this really a hill worth dying over? Is it worth the anxiety and anger a confrontation creates? Is getting your 15 minutes of fame worth degrading someone? I understand that everyone is on edge these days, and everyone is concerned about their rights, and rightly so, our rights are being trampled on every day, but not by some Karen, in the grand scheme of things, the things that Karen’s get upset about are trivial when you consider we are on the brink of WWIII. So how about instead of calling someone a Karen, you act like a decent human being. For instance, in the nurse video, what if the guy had simply asked for her to show her receipt? No, that wouldn’t have played into his game of making a Karen video that would give him his 15 minutes. She could have de-escalated the situation as well, by letting him have the bike and going to the manager and explaining the situation, but like I said before, she had just finished a 12 hour shift and is pregnant, so she gets the benefit of the doubt, and that guy is just an asshole. (Although my cynical side thinks that the whole event might have been staged). I guess the point I’m making is that we don’t have to fall into the trap our culture tries to ensnare us with. We are all born with the capacity for thought, for empathy, for kindness. Some try to use those traits, and if you pay attention, you will see people every day performing random acts of kindness. Unfortunately, a lot of us have discarded them and have made the world worse for doing so. If we apply the context rule in any Karen-like situation, more than likely there will be an opportunity for a peaceful resolution.

I realize that someone reading my blogs may think that I’m intolerant and hateful of progressive-globalists, and therefore I’m being a hypocrite by judging them out of context. It’s true that I have a great deal of hate and I have zero tolerance for them, but that is only because I’ve done the work, I’ve have seen the context of their actions, they are evil, there is no other way to put it, and I’m unashamed to say I hate evil. Their obvious desire is to bring about the destruction of America and western civilization and instill a One World Government which will enslave the masses. Still, I hope and pray that peaceful resolutions can be found, I pray for the lost, for all the so-called Karens of all types and genders that have become enslaved to their anger, because I was lost, because at certain moments I’ve displayed Karenicity. I pray that people will act with decency and compassion, rather than trying to humiliate each other for a brief moment of recognition. Remember Jesus’ words, “let he who is without sin, cast the first stone”, at any time someone could post a video of something we’ve done in the past that would be humiliating. (thank God, I grew up in the 70’s before cell phones). I pray for our leaders who have turned away from God and embraced a secular humanist philosophy that can only lead to strife and destruction. Most of all I pray for unity, where we can all come together, all different faiths and ethnicities, to put aside the things they are trying to divide us with and instead fight the evil that is trying to destroy us. There will always be “Karens”, and “Shaniquas” and douche-bags and plain ol’ jerks, the old saying “two wrongs don’t make a right” applies, don’t become an asshole just to humiliate an asshole. Another, is don’t assume something about somebody, to assume makes an ass out of “u” and me. If you search for the context in any situation, you’ll probably find your initial assumption was faulty. Anyway, like I said, this is just my two cents, thanks for reading and as always…

Rock on Y’all!