Archive for August, 2014

You are here.

No closer.

I keep paying attention to this.

I keep pointing it out.

There is just enough to keep the women and kids all fired up.  Just enough to make us all afraid of things we don’t understand.  Things they aren’t about to explain.

We can dance to it but we absolutely hate the beat.

At least the American impetus is often enough about race exclusively.  Spectacularly.  Race on the most granular level.  Not only its institutionalization but the  bones of the implementation.   The talking points of bigotry.  Calves the size of cantaloupes on drug mules threatening our way of life and diseases like Ebola flooding our borders every minute.  Stealing our jobs and all like that.

It’s a goddamn political discipline.

The indiscriminate killing of young black men because they are young and black and because entire swaths of America have decided that they are a problem before figuring out they are human.

You know, the fundamentals.

White cop shoots unarmed black kid to death from like twenty feet away.  Unarmed. With extreme prejudice.  At least six times.  Twenty feet away.  Broad daylight.  Almost two weeks ago.  Eyewitnesses.  No tazer.  No backup.  Walked around the body for awhile.   Hasn’t even been charged. You gotta be kidding me.  They need a grand jury.  Might take until mid October.  That’s some bullshit.  Everybody knows who did it and it’s murder.

The cop never even filed a report.  Think about that.  He never filed a real goddamn report.  Who’s kidding who here?

5th amendment about to become  an eight hundred pound pain in the ass.

Everybody knows.

The local powers think it’s a secret.  Really.  They think they are keeping a secret from the world.  Kinda like they believe they have superhuman abilities of deception and obfuscation and no one suspects anything at all.  It’s like they don’t know that we can see.   What kind of bubble are these abominable white men living in?  They leak unrelated information, video, toxicology, they invent blunt force trauma injuries nearly two weeks after the fact.

What we have here is an entire municipality with lungs that turn oxygen into shit.

More than anything else,  I’m fascinated by this dance in particular.

He was gunned down in the street for no good reason.  He wasn’t armed with anything.  We actually know who did it.  And the dance is awesome.  Damn near overwhelming.  Everyone with a microphone keeps playing along.  Everyone in front of a camera sways to one version or another.  To keep the peace.  To preserve some semblance of order.

Like if they stopped dancing and admitted that a kid was shot full of holes and the cop who did it was allowed to flee the state, we’d all go fucking nuts.

We might.

We should.

Because that’s exactly what happened.

They tell us he shoplifted.  They called it burglary.  Not true.  Didn’t happen.  Store owner and video. They call him a “thug”. Racist code for “nigger”. Fuck me I hate that word.  Both of them.

But no, goddamnit, no.  We breathe a sigh of relief and maybe exhale some gratitude and focus a little more on the problems at hand.  We’re able to do that because the media is waltzing to insipid disco and refuses to belly up to the bar.  Our cue to have another. See?

If only they could join us in our disgust.

Instead they relieve us of it.

What we have now is a pointless debate where none is necessary.  There is nothing to argue here.  A dirty cop executed a man in the street for no reason and we jump around pretending to figure out what happened and what to do.

Pathetic.

We know what happened and we know what should happen.  We know what is right.  We know what to say about it.  We know what to do about it.   There is no religion here. We kneel at the altar of a certain convenience of views. We recognize the folly of too much courage and too little.

One only feels respect when it’s mutual.

Or all we have to do is dance.

Drinks for my friends.

 

 

At this point what we don’t know is not important but what we do know is of awesome relevance. We know that a white police officer pumped at least six rounds into an unarmed black male who witnesses say was earnestly trying to surrender. That police officer had only foreknowledge of one rather innocuous crime upon initiating the confrontation.

That crime was jaywalking.

What we know is that the killing occurred in a city with a rather notorious and insidious culture of racial animus.  A consistent and verifiable history of prejudice, persecution and prosecution against the majority of it’s citizens who are black.  What we know is the majority of the residents of Ferguson Missouri are fed the fuck up.

Here’s another thing we know, in any other scenario, with any of the finite number of variables altered or reversed, the shooter would be in jail, in custody, charged with murder.

The local, state and federal authorities appear to be at a loss.  All of them confused about what to do to control the demonstrations.  What to do to stem the violence and looting.  What to do to curb the understandably spirited civil unrest.  You’d think they would have caught a clue last Thursday when cooler heads prevailed briefly and the flagrant show of over the top military style force was dialed back for an evening.

But no.

The next day, local authorities, despite the protestations of the federal DOJ, released convenience store video of the victim apparently pilfering some cheap cigars.  Not long after they were forced to admit it was completely unrelated and that the officer in question had no knowledge of it.  Today it was leaked that toxicology reports indicated the victim was on the pot.  Really.  That he had marijuana in his system.  Really.

Here is what I know and what you probably know too:  If the sonafabitch were in fucking jail and being charged with murder, the mood might just change a little.

I’m not sure it would alleviate the tension entirely but it occurs to me if there is any sincere desire to ameliorate the situation in a meaningful way they would arrest the murdering prick and parade him on perp walk  with all attendant pomp.

Drinks for my friends.

I get it she says.  I understand she tells me.  All those hoses and belts, all the tubes and valves, all those wires and lines that are leaking and spraying so much sorrow and doom and that man thought four or five times more and four or five times faster than me…… It makes sense why he would take his own life.

It makes complete sense.

She tells me this on the way to the balcony for a smoke.

I follow her out while it makes sense to me.

Maybe it wasn’t just Mr. William’s own morbid malaise.

Maybe it’s us.  All of us.  The worst of us.

We live in an age where heroes are impossible, where dignity and elegance are endangered if not extinct.  There is hardly any grace anymore. It is now virtually impossible for a champion of ordinary people to establish any meaningful foothold before they are either dissected by corruption or seduced by it.

Selfishness now elevated to virtue.

Peace, love and understanding bifurcated into “isms”.

I think we have reached the point of no return.

We may just be fucked.

The only question I have is who we’re taking with us.  How many other species?  How many beavers how many whales how many bees?  How many fucking caribou are we going to take with us?  Every mammal on this planet knows the entire planet is now toxic.  They can see it smell it and taste it while they swim or hunt.  While they forage and breathe.

They know.

And so do we.

Bloodshed is the new normal and nutritious food is neither.  We cannot bear witness to all the war and famine and suffering on this scale now, just how jacked up shit is, and not know how goddamn close we are to the end of days for too much longer.  We cannot keep this up.  You cannot smell your shampoo in the morning without understanding that rain forests are evaporating.  It’s virtually impossible despite your personal grooming choices.

Goddamn we are brave.  We rage against the dying of the light.  Oh my how we rage. We have cable tv and relatively slow internet.  We have HD and smartphones that keep us from even looking at each other.  Been in an elevator lately?  We consistently vote against our own interests out of fear and ignorance. The human race is stuck in its own stupidity.  Our very own vulgarity and self loathing. We can’t be bothered about the better angels of our nature having expired.  We are now subject to barely more than our foibles and weaknesses as the race of man and they will most surely be our demise.

The planet cooks, it’s actually baking.  Soon water will be at a premium like gasoline.  Politicians rape and steal.  Religions and ideologies visit war on the rest.  All covered, spun, spewed and packaged for our entertainment and so called edification on cable tv in HD.

Violence and firepower elevated to a virtue.

There simply is no countervailing wind to blow against the avarice and mendacity that constantly engulfs us with every breath we take and every move we make.  There simply isn’t.  It doesn’t exist.  It’s not democrats.  It’s not liberals.  It’s not social workers or teachers or unions.  Combined they have not enough to oppose the human mountain of filthy lucre that piles everyday despite the best intentions of what is not a unified front.

What we have now is a gale, a hurricane, that has already ripped apart any sail that would turn its wind, its force, into anything but malice .

It really is like evil is winning.

We slash funding for education while we demonize teachers and then build more prisons for profit.  We cut food stamps and unemployment beneficiaries off at the knees while we arm our police departments with weaponry intended for third world military conflicts.

She tells me this on the way to the balcony for a smoke.

Drinks for my friends.

His hand passes in front of my face, its trail is all tobacco and wool and after shave with a wooden top.

He’s showing me the ticket he just bought.

The goliath in my periphery.

I can’t stand it.

Giant cacophony of the calliope.

Light and sound shrink me.

I can’t help it.

It scares me sick.

I know if I knock on hindquarters it will be impossibly hard and hollow.

The other kids can barely stand it.

Their glee is desperate and horrible.

They screech bloody and hysterical.

He talks on his phone, glasses reflecting the sun  so I can’t see his eyes and know who or what he is.

He wants me to get on it.

He wants me to ride it.

The day was warm and dense.

It’s cool now with a breeze so now a harbinger of inevitability.

Cold sweat down my neck and between my shoulders.

He brought me here for this.

To please me?

To make me happy?

Why does this matter to him?

Doesn’t he understand that I am afraid of this?

Here at the carnival and all I want is cotton candy and corn dogs and maybe a Ferris Wheel ride.

I had no intention of mounting one of these snarling mutes impaled by brass polls from deck to canopy.

It lumbers and wheezes, painted garish.

Portending violence.

He knows.

I know he knows.

He doesn’t want me to be thrilled.

He wants to witness my terror.

To absorb it.

To drink it.

He hands me the simple pink ticket and I have no choice.

My voice dries up and my will evaporates.

I walk through the gate and the grinding organ is breathing far too loud.

Its awful distortion hisses and confuses me.

I hate it.

I can’t stand it.

The deck rattles and sways under my shoes.

I rap my knuckles on its rump.  So hard it makes no sense and the thunk is hollow.

There is no choice but to mount the beast and hope for the best.

To be free of it as soon as I can.

I’m in a very busy department store and everyone understands but me.

No one looks at me.

No one sees me.

Sweat runs around my ears and past my throat.

There is no saddle and I can’t reach the stirrups.

Right from the start it feels on the verge, about to be out of control.

Nothing to do but to cling to the poll.

My hands wet.

Afraid for my grip.

If only I could be somebody else or someplace else.

He talks on his phone and laughs and I still can’t see his eyes when I come around.

He betrays not a single other thing.

Drinks for my friends.

I guess I’m naive.

It was obviously a mistake to open my head and heart and share my thoughts on something as profoundly controversial as the Israeli Palestinian conflict.  A mistake to speak out against war in general and this one in particular.

In hindsight it occurs to me that my biggest mistake was not only not taking a side but also lamenting the conspicuous horror and consummate savagery of it.  Sincerely and honestly despairing all the senseless death of men and women and children. So many, so completely innocent of everything, but still finding themselves between powers greater than their own and no where to run.

I guess it was a mistake to so earnestly, perhaps brazenly, reveal my own humanity and genuine empathy. I guess it was a mistake to instead of endorse the actions of one side or the other, to have  the audacity to wonder at its end.  To hope for a resolution.  It’s a mistake I can live with.  I’ll own that mistake every day with every fiber of my being.

For this I have been called an anti-Semite.  It breaks my heart, it really does.  Some are content to say so behind my back, but some who are so quick to judge have been valuable friends of mine for nearly a quarter century.  People whom I respect and without reservation can say I love.  People with integrity and in possession of hearts so honest and open as to be vulnerable to all the cruelties of life and other people.  People who I know feel the same about me for the same reasons.

Some of these people now judge me to be anti-Semitic because I didn’t pick a side.

Their side.

I imagine that if no one were to take a side, war would be impossible.   I’m a pacifist.  I am guilty of that and so be it.  But I absolutely bristle at the label of anti-Semite.  It is no different than the furious offense I would take to being called a racist or a homophobe.  It is beyond exasperating.  It is not in any way representative of how I’ve led my life and the choices I’ve made as the result of teachings by good, honest and thoughtful parents.

To be called any of these things is bad enough.

It is an anathema.

To be thought of as any of them is soul torturing.

I would ask any of you who actually know me, who know my heart, my actions and deeds as a fellow inhabitant of this planet to stop and think.  Just because I oppose not just your war but all war including the ones my country wages, all violence and cruelty, all man’s inhumanity to man, that doesn’t make me an anti-Semite.  That merely makes me a human being with a modicum of compassion for all the other human inhabitants of this tiny blue marble hanging in a universe too vast for any of us to comprehend.

I have maligned no one in particular, I haven’t discriminated against any individual or group.  I have never in my life consciously engaged in anything of the kind. What I have done is shine an obviously uncomfortable light on every single one of us.

“Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” -Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.

If I have offended anyone, it was not my intent but I nonetheless apologize.  I’m not sure whether it’s more painful to have inadvertently done so, or for any of you to assume I would do as much with malice or intent.

Drinks for my friends.

*In the interest of context this piece is intended to address a small number of reactions to the previous one on the same subject-simply scroll down to the previous blog*