I'm tired

Here we are again. Again.

How much are we as a people supposed to endure? Damn. Just Damn.

George Floyd. He shouldn't have been treated that way. That's all I got.

I'm just so tired.

Some thoughts on Tragedy

This is a political post. 

I'm going to first suggest a simple step, a change of policy.  How about....all media outlets NOT use mugshots to discuss any victims AND stop using Facebook glamour photos to describe any alleged murderers. Let's start there. 

I drove down to visit the folks the the country this week. My father has started wearing shorts, which is monumental if you know him, and my mother is still putting together food for me to take so I don't have to cook when I get back. My younger brother looks good. I bring this up because it on those trips that I try to escape my bubble and see what the rest of the world is thinking. I find those who only want to work in echo chambers unpalatable, no matter what the views are, so I strive not to be one of them whenever possible. So, between my house and my parents, I listen to a variety of local media to see where my thoughts are on the social spectrum. 

I was somewhat taken aback.

On the final leg of the journey back from parents on Sunday, I tuned into a a right wing pundit's radio show.  What at first seemed funny, then a lot less funny, quickly transformed into a defensive screed. Listening to him I got the impression that Libertarians are apparently trying to join Crossfitters and Vegans, in that every one in those groups can't wait to share that fact with you. This radio pundit mentioned he was a Libertarian before nearly every statement he made, as though the term signified his thoughts held more gravity due to his association. After listening for almost a half hour, him working through his always self centered rationalizations as a way of explanations, contradicting himself and failing to see it, and ignoring basic concepts of empathy I'm surprised he's still on the radio. Ah, but it was conservative radio, so my bad.  

He first indicated that he was sure white male privilege was a fraudulent concept. Apparently just designed to annoy him. Then he explained how there was no relationship between the Dallas police department and what happened in Baton Rouge and Minnesota. As though this was a news flash, and we aren't all aware that the irrational people don't think logically. There was a long piece about how terrible hate crime laws are, because people should only be judged on the actions. But he kept repeating the term "in cold blood" to describe the events in Dallas as though simply killing someone wouldn't qualify as heinous enough. He followed that up with the Black Lives Matter Movement conspiracy concept, in the protests that continued despite the shooting were designed to push the events in Dallas off the front page. As though the BLM movement is a vast well organized machine. He finished by to educating his listeners to the dangers of thought police, how he was an enlightened man who knew he was and needed no validation, while carefully treading over some past professional transgressions he was obviously still very bothered about. It would have been funny if he wasn't dead serious.

That he has a radio show, which means people listen to him, is a frightening concept.

It is my opinion that what happened in Dallas was outrageous, there is no reason to shoot police officers at all. Even now, prominent activists have been calling for peaceful protests all weekend, not pushing out calls for a repeat performance. Before this act of senseless violence we saw a model demonstration, where the police and protesters were even taking photos together. Afterwards, we found ourselves again in the cycle of finger pointing, confirmation bias derived anger and the usual conspiracy theories. What could and should have been a starting point for reasonable conversation concerning the deaths of Sterling and Castile, has once again devolved into social and political gamesmanship. Despite what my new favorite radio personality would have you believe, it is possible to both a believer in the ideals of Black Lives Matter and pro-Police. The two are not mutually exclusive.

I'm not sure where we're headed. We live in...in interesting times.

Changes in thinking an attitudes move slowly, but we live in an instant digital world, where we expect change and satisfaction quickly. Where relationships can blossom in 500 words or less. This problem isn't from a digital world, and so we're going to have to go back...to a time of thoughtful conversation and patience...to address it. I hope we're up to it.

Oregon: A Slightly Colored Opinion

This is a political post. 

I've heard a number of arguments as to why the outrage in Oregon is different than Baltimore or Ferguson, and I really don't think they hold much water. I'll get into that in a moment, but I seriously want to suggest a non-violent solution to that situation. 

1. Shut off the heat and water. 

2. Cordon off the area - allowing no one in, but allow them to peacefully depart - After getting fingerprints and pictures. 

3. Wait. 

Considering that the protesters didn't pack any supplies, and actually had to ask folks to bring by snacks on twitter, this is about as disorganized a protest as you can get. I think more than a little cold and quite a bit of hunger will weaken this wide eyed resolve and get this Federal land issue back into the courthouse or the statehouse where it belongs. I figure about ten to twelve days, three weeks at the outside.  

Now that I've saved the day (again) let's get to why we shouldn't listen to the weak arguments as why armed white protesters should be treated with kid gloves while unarmed black protesters merit a calling out of the National Guard.  Slate, I site actually like, proffered as a defense the  argument that the Oregon situation really doesn't lend itself to soundbites or instant reactions, and that the issues are hyper-regional. I'd like to remind it's author, Jamelle Bouie (black), that really nothing lends itself to soundbites or instant reactions, not this situation OR the what occurred in Baltimore or Ferguson. Although we live in the age of instant news, very little outside sports scores lend themselves to ten second sound bites or three hundred word articles to which we've reduced our awareness. Just as this is a very nuanced situation that could probably be discussed for hours, so to are the police brutality situations all across the country. Oregon isn't special.  

Bouie goes on to explain the situation's origin's are hyper-regional, concerning the use of federal lands in areas with huge national forests. But this is the same as the actual acts of police violence oppression in specific urban areas like Ferguson, Baltimore, Chicago, New York....etc,. Similar because of the participants dissatisfied with treatment by the government,  these also are hyper-regional in nature while being part of a larger national issue, but none of them gave rise to idea the armed takeover of government property and nor should this situation.  

And the idea that these are long standing issues is almost laughable, because unless I've got my history wrong black people have issues in this country since there was this country. By comparison, this outrage is mere thirty or forty years old. 

The only real difference between these matters  seems to be that this is a Federal matter, and the incidents of black protests are taking place more on the local level, which Bouie points out very, very late in his article. But just pointing out the debacles at Ruby Ridge and Waco, and the eventual horrible results they initiated, as the reason for restraint isn't the best argument either. Disgruntled readers can far too easily draw the misguided conclusion that more violence and not less is the answer if that violence leads to future restraint on the part of authorities. It won't. This more detached Federal approach to intervention doesn't need a testing to see if it's equal.  

And I believe the treatment is not racial. Or I really want to.   

Because that is hard to do once you get to the part where the sheriff pretty much just asked local folks to avoid the area and told the protesters to just "Go Home." No armored Humvees, no shock troops, nothing even remotely threatening. Okay, great but, for the last few days there hasn't even been as much as a single guard - local or federal - and the "protesters" come and go as they please. Really?  There is handling it and then there...nothing? Wow. 

Someone gets sent to jail for something they admit they did, and you can seize a federal building. But innocent unarmed black people are shot in the street and we aren't even supposed to even say anything. I'm just saying. 

As much as we don't want this to be about race....it's still kinda about race. Sorry. 

 

What Year Is This?

This is a political post. 

In the last thirty days racist people have killed nine people at an historically black church and now six other churches have "caught fire".

The last part, the other churches burning to the ground, doesn't appear to be heavily covered in the national media, and I'm certain not on Fox News who still think the confessed Charleston shooter might have had "other" motives. Since the Charleston shooting, College Hills Seventh Day Adventist Church in Knoxville, God’s Power Church of Christ in Macon, and Briar Creek Baptist Church in Charlotte all burned in consecutive days. Another church, Fruitland Presbyterian Church, in Gibson County, Tennessee also burned but the investigators haven't made a ruling regarding the cause as of yet.

The term coincidence doesn't even begin to cover this.

Then, after a skipping a day, Glover Grover Baptist Church, in Warrenville, S.C and The Greater Miracle Apostolic Holiness Church in Tallahassee, Fla both caught fire on June 26th.

Is this 1959? We have the internet and and can make video phone calls, we've landed men on the moon and can convincingly change a person's sex, but racial progress stopped with Kennedy? And I say racial because only church's that are predominantly attended by black people appear to have been the targets, so it doesn't look like Christianity is under attack, just the black section. Even those of us who don't attend church regularly understand it's importance in a community, so the act of arson against a church resonates. Isn't a house of God still a house of God no matter the race of those who gather there? What kind of mental gymnastics makes this okay?

Some like to entertain the notion that racism was over since we all got together and elected a black president. But what it really did was strip the veneer of civility and expose that we aren't quite who we think we are. What we have found is that a lot of the ideas and notions, stereotypes and cultural blindness that should have gradually faded away in the past fifty years are still very much here, and not just in the small change resistant pockets we thought they might be. Activists have been working on this for fifty years without pause for racial equality, and now we find that at best all we've done is maintain the social status quo from before the federal highway system was even a thing. We may have even lost a rung or two. Considering just how much time has passed, that's just scary.

I'm not sure where we go from here.

Micheal Steele might be....The Mole!

This is a political post.

Secret agent Steele?

When I was in undergrad, on Friday's a few guys and I would go to the best Happy Hour in Tallahassee. When I say best, I mean the freaking best. This was a Happy Hour buffet with mashed potatoes and prime rib, spaghetti, baked chicken and even fresh tacos. With full sized plates and literally no crowd, you could eat heartily for the price of single drink once a week. Well, not really. What was the true price of this meal? Once a week I had to go to a Western themed redneck bar to get it. And each week I'd get ID'd, then order my one drink and chow down. It took a few trips, but I figured out that even there, they were a little afraid of asking the black people to leave without causing an bigger issue than the one they already had.

Which is where the Republican party is right now with Micheal Steele.

How do you fire the one prominent black Republican in America without looking like...well, without looking like what people think you are.

And damn if the brother isn't milking the party for everything under the sun. I mean he's going BIG. He's been talking about buying a private jet with RNC funds, he travels by limo and stays at the best hotels. On a midwinter trip to Hawaii, probably checking on Obama's birth certificate, Mr. Steele ran up charges of almost $44,000....not including the plane ride. We won't even discuss the few stacks "somebody" dropped at the bondage club in LA that the RNC approved of...while he just HAPPENED to be in town. The term he might want to learn, since he likes trying to infuse urban slang into his speeches is "big ballin' baby! ". And he's done it all while having the people who hired him as the Anti-Obama sit quietly and fume about his antics. Well, maybe not quietly, but fume nonetheless.

He looks like a baller, doesn't he?

It sounds insane I know, but maybe Micheal Steele is a mole, sent by M.A.D.E.U.P. (Mythical American Democratic E-something Usurping People's-Rights) to both embarrass the Republicans with his antics and bankrupt them with his profligate spending. I mean think about it, where is Micheal Steele's birth certificate? Has he ever eaten a bean pie? Where is his people from? That the RNC donors are bleeding cash due the economy and the party's coffers are starting to get a little low would make people consider cutting back just a bit, maybe. I know they're going get an uptick from people still made at Obamacare, but still, Steele is making it "rain" more than a little bit. So maybe he is mole.

But what do I know. His spending might be the Republican Stimulus plan. Maybe.

The New Terrorists are American

This is a political post.

In this country we have a system. Every so often we sit down and we all vote and decided that the great ship of state either should stay the course or change direction. It was devised ages ago by our founding fathers, a system that guides this great state we call home on a slow path towards the future.

And in this country we lament for those without our freedoms. Of other states whose governments are not ruled by law or civil discourse, but people screaming in the streets and threats of death. We decry the places where uninformed and narrow minded people are manipulated by a powerful few into mobs and feel compelled to use fear and force to get a point across, one that serves no purpose for the greater good other than to keep those in power in power....

This is what you would say if you lived in Australia or maybe New Zealand and were talking down to America.

Yes. Down to us. Because with Democratic senators by the score receiving death threats for supporting health care reform in this country you begin to wonder if this America or some third world nation run by some feverish religious coalition. And in the America I grew up in, if you didn't like what the government did you marched, you carried signs and gathered signatures, you organized and got the word out, and you got legislation passed and went to court, but showing up to see the President with a gun got you jail time and screaming at elected officials meant you were nuts.

You see the new terrorists aren't Muslim or Iraqi or live in the Middle East or live in caves and want us all to die. The new terrorists are American, who eat at Denny's, live in nice neighborhoods and root for home team on Saturdays. But they're just as uneducated, just as uninformed as that frustrated follower of Islam on the far side of the world who joins the "cause" because he sees an idealistic way of life (that doesn't actually exist) threatened. The new terrorists disrupt meetings with displays of anger, spewing forth emotionally charged nonsense. They quote conjecture and use their fury to deflect honest conversation and dialogue. The new terrorist is the suddenly "powerless" (not realizing they had no power before), the suddenly wrong in the face of the facts, the people afraid of change.

I say uninformed, as the idea that the government would hold "death hearings" to decide if someone will be productive to society is patently absurd and a baldface lie. Especially in light of the fact that our current system of private insurers do actually do have "death panels", those actuaries and executives that routinely deny healthcare and discontinue coverage letting people die in the interest of profit.

I say uninformed, as the protesters demand the government "keep it's hands off medicare", what I guess they consider a well run system, when medicare IS a government program, and it's very existence proves that the government won't kill old people or decide that autistic children will be put to death, and that the government CAN run a health program.

I say people afraid of change because the current system they scream and holler to keep will bankrupt itself much like Wall Street did, and this time it won't take our money but our lives doing it. And instead of embracing the possibility, the protesters embrace the concept of static. But that leads nowhere.

And I call them terrorists because they employ the use of fear and raw emotion instead of fact and information. Congressmen receiving death threats over legislation designed to help 50 million Americans? Although the President flubbed the line, his statement is true. Much as the existence of the post office did not stop the creation of or threaten the future existence of companies like UPS and FedEx, a "public" option for healthcare wouldn't destroy the whole system. What it does it is offer an alternative, and to some degree keeps the private companies honest and striving to differentiate themselves. Knowing that if they charge too much customers will go to the Post Office makes UPS more efficient and a better firm, in an effort to keep costs and therefore prices down.

That the word "socialist" now fills in for both 1950's fear mongering terms "communist" and the "N" word is a whole other matter. The fact that we've lived in a blend of capitalism and socialism since the 1930s seems to have escaped everyone.

The grand problem of playing with terrorists, and by playing I mean taking them on, is that to defeat them you have to get even nastier than they do. One of the things that happens in countries that promote terrorist activities is the demonetization of the enemy. The problem is once you've won, how do you turn it off? As soon as one "enemy" is defeated, a new one will have to be manufactured to sustain the only thing that gives the group life. In Iraq, as the Americans left, the terrorists began attacking forces of the law in general. It will take a generation before it calms again. Do we really want that here?

I find it amazing that despite the fact that Wall Street ate itself and had to be bailed out by the US government in the last 18 months goes by the boards when someone says we need to stop the Healthcare industry before it does the same. History's lessons appear to be forgotten even quicker than normal in this digital "instant" age. The idea that we can fix this now, create a blended system of a baseline system of care with premium care for those who want to afford it seems to have been lost on the masses.

Do those who disagree with healthcare reform need to shut up and get with the program? Hell no, we live in America. But in America we have a way of doing things, and quite frankly this methodology ain't it.

Quick Film Review - Goodbye Uncle Tom

A friend of mine, in effort to help me understand real racism, loaned me a copy of a film he described as the "real deal" concerning slavery. It would "touch me, move me, and give me a new outlook".

This film was Goodbye Uncle Tom.

The film is now part of the Mondo Cane DVD series, shot by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi in 1971. It's cinematic treatment of slavery is extremely different from all other slave epics -- Roots, Mandingo, Beloved. Shot in a pusedo documentary style it shows modern film makers traveling through time to see slavery up close and personal. Shot in Haiti, it depicts graphic slavery, including copious male and female nudity, rape, auctions, beatings and any other unpleasant slavery related act it can conjure up.

You ever have a child come up to you and show you a picture they painted, and you get all funny and tell them how good it was. It's gonna be like that.

I watched it cold with no build up, so I went in with minimal expectations.

I'm going to suggest that if you are a homosexual or bi-sexual racist sadist with a scat perversion in the mood for rough dark meat, then this is the film for you! I can't think of anyone else I would suggest sitting down to see it.

After a scene straight from a redneck or a black militants dream of 20 or so slaves running around a plantation dining room, we go to a cargo ship and arrival procedures. From there to traders and disenfranchised workers to mammys and the like, all the while treated to overdubbed historical texts recited by actors without a trace of irony. The film is exploitation at it's worst. A scene described as heartbreaking appeared almost silly to me, a much maligned shot of small white girl leading her "pet black boy" around by his collar as she frolicked in a field. The later stages of black power rallies didn't even appear to have a basis, as did the blood fantasy ending.

Watching I'm not sure what the purpose is. I looked online and the original filmmakers stated that wasn't a message film, they wanted to show what was going on. It's been called the "most racist film in history", and watching the banality of it unfold was almost funny. Maybe I need help. The people who seemed most proud of it, as I researched this farce, were those black militants who wanted it seen calling the films "based on historical facts".

Maybe it's just me, but I think we can do better than this. I think anyone can better than this. They tried for a African Passion Play...and ended up with nasty soft porn. Bad nasty soft porn.

Barkeep. Just mix some shit in a glass...I need to get this taste out my brain.

notes from the dog-watch

At this point I'm wondering if they'll take his pension, 'cause the boy look through.

Yesterday, the two other defendants in the Mike Vick dog fighting case took plea deals that stated they had to testify against the alleged ringleader, Vick. They will undoubtedly corroborate the story of the other defendant who'd already agreed to co-operate with the authorities in late July. I'm not one to cast doubt on one's aspersions of innocence, but this does not look good.

What prompted this missive was reading the "fray" postings that accompanied an article indicating that Vick's lawyers were "in talks" about a plea deal of their own. This came from my reading of the AJC.com's Talk of the Town semi-blog.

By BlackGirl August 14, 2007 11:45 AM
Should Vick be punished…yes. Is he a thug because he killed some dogs, well, what about those that kill deer for fun and call it hunting? Are they too thugs or is that word just saved for young black men?

By hellooooo August 14, 2007 11:58 AM
If Vick is either found guilty or pleads guilty, then he should be punished accordingly. If the NFL has a rule that felons cannot play, then he shouldn’t be allowed to play. I don’t care if he’s pink with purple polkadots, rules is rules. And BG, if a hunter is killing for fun, yes, he or she is a thug… if they kill and then have the meat processed etc., then, no, they are not thugs, they are providers. (I don’t think that particular question is color-coded, personally :-)

I found this bit of dialogue particularly interesting. It's been clear that the division on Vick has run along racial lines, whites condemning him and blacks adopting a innocent until proven guilty attitude, in a throwback to the old south that is at once revealing and disturbing.

The word Thug has been bandied about with great frequency on this issue. And for those who don't see it for what it is, a code for the N-word, that's clearly what it is. Oddly, the aptly named "blackgirl" does not cry for patience...but merely at the usage of the word Thug. It's the answer from "helloooo" which demonstrates the gulf of understanding between the races. Killing and having the meat processed makes it okay? So if Vick can prove he had dog burgers, would it be alright? Dog is eaten in many parts of the world with no outcry, so it's not a crazy notion.

Simply having the meat processed hardly makes it fair or just. Meat is available from other sources, so the hunting isn't necessary. Not any more necessary than putting two dogs in a pit so that money can be wagered. At least the dog had a fighting chance.

It's not a real popular opinion I know. If he broke the law he should go to jail. But I'm going to wait and see if he really broke the law. Innocent until proven guilty, call me crazy.

Bartender...a little hair of the dog. Yes, that means Jager.