Who is Protected and What is Served?

SHOCKING VIDEO: LAPD officers seen striking protesters with batons in Fairfax district confrontation https://t.co/gWbBswwzvs pic.twitter.com/HscxXj4sKN

— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) June 4, 2020

Before I go any further, I want to unburden myself of a confession: I read Senator Tom Cotton's op-ed in the paper of record, and was unsurprised. Cotton has snakes in his head. He would necessarily view the poor, beleaguered, heavily-armed, body-armored and outnumbered municipal police forces inadequate to properly batter down the protests against: people being battered down by heavily-armed police forces, because there is just something about the snap and shine of a jackboot that sends a thrill through a certain kind of person. That's Our Tommy. He never saw the situation but the application of force would make it better.

He's wrong, of course. The problem with his premise is that the American people aren't fucking sheep to be prodded along off the streets by the armed forces they fucking pay for, and the very idea that the First Amendment rights of people to mostly peaceably gather and voice their wholly reasonable opinion (that unarmed people should not be brutalized by law enforcement, because that is not, actually, enforcing the law) is not, for the sake of a handful of over-publicized vandals and shit-stirrers, to be abridged. (Folded, spindled, or even mutilated.)



I am persuaded more than ever that it's possible the elite colleges that award degrees to the Tom Cottons of the world might just be trying to avoid screams of bias and partisanship, because of how the New York Frigging Times gave his mental product a pass when it fails to be anything more than just the opinion of one fact-deprived but clout-entangled personage, who doesn't seem to care that whether the protesters even have a point fully backed by the fucking Constitution to which his lean and hungry ass swore an oath--that people should be treated equally under the law, and black people most certainly are not. (But in Tom Cotton's defense, white people should certainly be abused by law enforcement in the event of their inconvenience to power in his cosmology, most likely, making him most definitely a monster, but not, let it be known, a total hypocrite.)

So, to get this off my chest, while it is appalling that this mess was apparently run without being read for klout'n'klicks and whatnot, there is a part of me that thinks it far better that we have it broadcast that Tom Cotton does have snakes in his head, and would like to announce that it is far past time that the US armed forces start breaking skulls on the high street so that the fucking hoi polloi learn their place, so we can understand that he is poison and not elevate him to any position of especial power outside of Arkansas in the long run, in rather the same way that I stupidly assume that Donald Trump's Twitter stream is so transparently insane and corrupt that it must be obvious that this platforming ultimately reveals his unfitness for office, rather than serves as a persistent argument for it.

My assumptions about what should reasonably fly are fucked. And the wordless argument is the video of protesters being thumped by the police--the protest against police violence being met with police violence. There is a mentality out there that will wonder why so much hate for what is patently illegal being done by these poor blue lives, when holy shit, the fucking violence. But they will look past bruises from non-lethal rounds and eyes put out, and cracked skulls and all, and ask why are you so mad about law and order? Why do you hate police who are first responders and do so much good?

What can anyone say? You either understand that right and wrong exist outside of who has the power to enforce behavior, and that human bodies and rights matter beyond the authority to use force, or you are wrong. People who are shit upon by law enforcement for existing and protesting matter. People who are not being protected matter. People who are not being served by their government matter.

And for his antics just a bit ago, Trump is being sued, because, didn't you know, tear gas is bad news. In contrast, "bad news" sometimes refers to the propagandistic bullshit some fuckforbrains believe.

I am not for protecting anything at all against the people brutalized by the sufferance of the state. We the people have jointly allowed black and brown bodies to be brutalized for far too long, and in the course of the response to these protests, have seen also brutalization of white bodies as well. First and foremost, all of our rights are to be respected. The charge of law enforcement is to investigate and arrest people who do crimes, not be them. Changes are surely needed.