Something to talk about

In the last two years, I have been further radicalized by villainous notion that human beings are all human beings. That the rich are not by definition smarter or better than anyone. That the workers of the world are due the rewards of their labor. That all races creeds and colors deserve the same baseline respect and admiration. That women are not only people too, but in most cases, better people than their testosterone addled counterparts.

Don't let that last sentence imply that I am "ready for Hillary" (terrible tagline). I am a Bernie Sanders endorser through and through. And with exception taken to just how horrible the Republican field is right now, if there was someone palatable on the ticket, I'd be tempted to take them over Hillary. I am READY for a woman president. I despise Hillary Clinton. If the DNC would get off their knees to stop blowing her, they'd realize my sentiments are WIDELY shared by the independent electorate, and especially in the face of the Douchebag Don's campaign-by-racism-and-zenophobia upswell, they should get half smart. But they won't. Because the Democrats are as strategically and tactically feckless as the Republicans are willfully stupid and evil.

My last post in 2014, (perhaps I'll make this an annual event, like one of those christmas letters that humblebrags about all the goings on in the family) I said something like "there is so much bad shit going on right now..." I think most of us would agree that 2014 was a cakewalk compared to the fecal snowstorm that 2015 has been. Although, much of what was so bad in 2014 - primarily race relations and ignorant 19th century prejudices and scholarship - has merely metastasized in this god awful year.

Personally, (#humblebrag) 2015 has been pretty great.
Professionally, (#donttellmyboss) 2015 has been sort of a wash. A lot of fading in to find myself at my desk, then fading back out again, wondering how certain things got done.
Universally, (#Godhelpusall) 2015 has been about as bad a year for the United States of fascist, racist, ignorant right-wing republican god-awfulry as one could ever dread. But I don't need to tell you that.

So welcome to the fray Minneapolis! In 2014, the New Civil Rights movement was springing up in Fergueson and NYC and Chicago, boy it was sure nice to live in such a progressive and accepting state as Minnesota. Then, three weeks ago, Minneapolis has had its own, uncharged, untried, un-convicted black man execution. Doesn't matter if the guy was guilty of beating his girlfriend (if so, he's a piece of trash who deserves a trial and jail time), doesn't matter if he had a long criminal record (he did. But assuming the police knew that means they must have also known, wait for it...) doesn't matter if he had a pending lawsuit against the very department that killed him (...if they had known about the former, they would have known about the latter, so, what? They kill to keep him quiet?) Doesn't matter that one of the officers involved was sued for waging a "Campaign of terror" on the neighborhood...oh wait, that DOES matter. You know what else matters? Almost five-hundred complaints about the MPD, and ZERO disciplinary actions. Even a broken clock is right once a day, there is no way that 500 complaints were all unsubstantiated. But here's the problem. We are indoctrinated since 9/11 to fucking worship cops. And they don't deserve it.

Sure, some of them DO. Some of them are great! And YES, I want to be able to call 911 when a scary man is breaking into my house. That's why I pay taxes. And that's why they do their JOBS. But the profession naturally attracts the best AND the worst type of people. The truly good, and the truly bad. People who want that power and to use it. A police officer is four times as likely as your average person to commit Domestic Assault. Gee, that deserves some hero worship. After a hard day protecting and serving the shit out of you, all an officer wants is to go home to a hot meal and to smack his wife and kids around a bit. And worse, the bad are capable of corrupting the good. What changed in this country that we forget "Serpico" or the thousands of other cases of police malfeasance? Up until basically the Norman Rockwell post WWII era, city cops were considered by all to be dangerous, uneducated, hateful little political hit-men and noggin-clockers. Even in Norman Rockwell's era, the cops were the ones spraying fire hoses at peaceful demonstrators and swinging batons at Martin Luther King's marchers.

Now with Fox News 9 out there working PR for the MPD, they spread any suggestion the cops make as gospel and won't publish a word the protesters say without weakening and caveating the declarations. The Minneapolis police union boss is a hateful bigot troll who could watch one of his officers cut a 10-year-old down on his (the 10-year-old's) bike and then go to bat for the officer's restraint. Does it make a difference to the average viewer if the response, regardless of the impetus, is always the same? Can't we notice that somehow, regardless of the situation, our police are blameless, beacons of restraint and good-ol-fashioned protestant whiteness? How is it possible that the officers are always in the right? Did Minneapolis, and the profession of police officering in general, stumble into having an entire corps of justice-wielding automatons of perfect force/threat symmetry? Because we would have to have, to deserve the rote explanation and defense of indefensible actions of officers in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Chicago...and St. Louis, and New York, and Fergueson, and Austin, and wherever burg it was that Sandra Bland was murdered). They have the impossible record of never having made a mistake, and having always been in the right. It would seem. Put on the blue, and you are a Pope unto yourself. Infallible. So long as you direct your aggression at a marginalized community, the ignorant shitheads of the conservative right will jump up to salute you and troll with vitriol those who don't prostrate themselves before your altar of public service. (In the same breath, they'll castigate all other forms of public service as a communist tax waste.)

I just.... The fucking stupidity of people is mind blowing. How people can look at a Mussolini-wannabeni like Donald Trump - a retarded fuckass of a dicknosed, daddy-funded fascist id - and say "what a breath of fresh air." This person is fucking dangerous. You like roads? Fuck you communist! You like school? Fuck you! Here in America, you make your own fucking school. You like sewers? Fuck you! You ARE a sewer, and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you live in one. And as long as you're different than the white undereducated masses I'm talking to, Fuck you in general!

And now its way past lunch and its the Christmas season, so have a heart, and support human beings in the fight against those who deny human status to anyone "other" than their own waspy-ass hate merchants.

This post was written, then given a 20-day cooling off period before publication. Written Dec 1, 2015.