Derek Chauvin Stabbed in Prison

 

BREAKING Derek Chauvin stabbed in federal prison: report https://t.co/1vLjsSdfnv

— Raw Story (@RawStory) November 25, 2023

Is there a ten minute video of how that happened or no? Because I watched ten minutes of this SOB more than once and it didn't make me actually feel any kind of way about the sort of things that just might happen to him in prison. It led me to suspect there were lots of ways people would be prejudiced as hell about his ass in prison. And AFAIAC, this outcome is not unexpected. I am not offering an endorsement. I am just saying--

This is not unexpected. 

We Can't Look Away Although We Want To

 

Videos purportedly capturing the moments before the shooting death of a double-amputee man holding a knife after a stabbing attack are raising questions about whether police used excessive force in Huntington Park, California https://t.co/Gt6GUBfpsc pic.twitter.com/0WCf7xfRPI

— CNN (@CNN) February 2, 2023

I didn't intent to watch this video. I did though, and the sight of a man so terrified of the police that he tried to run off on legs that no longer existed, and that the law enforcement people there saw no other solution to his existence than to shoot him multiple times, is so horrific to me I want to shut down my mind. 

They did this even though there was no way they could have believed that this handicapped man could throw a butcher knife at them with artery-piercing accuracy and ninja-like speed. I saw this, and the unreality of seeing it, a man so clearly harmless, so clearly being killed because of some weird idea of the threat he posed--not anything realistic, is just going to haunt me forever. 

Knowing he lost his legs in a previous interaction with law enforcement is so horrific. It informs our understanding of the trauma he faced, once again being in the crosshairs of the police. Why he tried to flee on the memory of the limbs he once had. 

I don't know how what I saw is fixable--I only know it has to be.

Mayberry RIP

 

I know this was a rerun, but I did not see it in its original airing, so it struck me with a weird kind of uncanniness--the CBS Sunday Morning show did a piece on Mount Airy, NC, which is sort of acknowledged as the model for the fictional town of Mayberry, the home of The Andy Griffith Show.  It originally aired 9 months after 1/6.  I knew at once I wanted to blog about it. 

I live in one of the big cities that one of the Mount Airy people seems to believe get "burned down every day". It does not. No big cities are getting burned down every day by either BLM or antifa. We are very intact, thanks! If we were not, we are not stupid and would move or something. We would extremely fund the police. We'd be electing really harsh prosecutors. Actually, when they find the arsonists fucking up stuff during BLM protests, it's false flag shit from white supremacists. 

My Nostalgia Is Acting Up

Eminem defies NFL and kneels in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick during Super Bowl halftime show https://t.co/XDI07ULqDk

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) February 14, 2022

They told Slim Shady to please stand up, but Slim Shady said God sent him to piss the world off.

There was a lot of commentary on Twitter about how this half-time show was about my generation, and frankly, we never did say we were going to die before we got old. We said don't you forget about me. And we are getting old, and I wish more of us were getting wise. 

The fucking kids aren't all right. Charlie Kirk thinks the half-time show was full of sexual anarchy. This dumb man-baby must have been peeing in his diapers through the Janet Jackson and Prince half-time shows. He literally comes off like John Lithgow's character in Footloose.  That's two Footloose references I've made this month. I may be getting old. I repeat myself. Matt Walsh, middle aged but younger than me, doesn't know "woke" means aware, and Marshall Mathers is aware he's a white guy who owes a fuckton to Black music and Black people. That he's supposedly making amends for anything else is Walsh's own bullshit. 

I'm glad the convoy asshats didn't come to LA to fuck with the Super Bowl despite what loons like Wendy Rogers and Senator Rand Paul wanted. That would have been a shitshow--all those Confederate flags in LA. I don't think those two remember how things could go, because they forget that urban America is also real America. They think it would scare the shit out of people who live in the cities that right-wing dumbasses think have been burned down by BLM. They forget riots that have happened not even thirty years ago. 

I don't, The truckers don't, either, and they probably know that unlike Ottawa or Windsor, if you go to LA or NY or Philadelphia, you might meet with an entirely different atmosphere that isn't going to wait for police action because nope. Residents will find a way. People have turned out en masse for deceased kids they didn't even know, and some jackasses want to disrupt the shelves at Acme and whether our own kids get fed--are you for real? 

The Content of Their Character Is Showing

The family of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and their supporters marched in Washington urging passage of a law to protect voters from racial discrimination https://t.co/5NvZYMy5St

— Reuters (@Reuters) January 18, 2022

Yesterday, a lot of politicians were "busted" quoted MLK, Jr.'s words while doing nothing to support the goals of equality, even some who actively work against them. In order to participate in the day, it would appear that a sanitized and color-blind version of King gives them comfort, but they misconstrue the body of his work. Were he alive today, their criticisms would be similar to those made of today's Black Lives Matter activists--and we know this because we can read the criticisms from that time and compare them.

(There are also people in this country who seem to think "sanitizing" bookshelves will somehow improve upon race relations--a version of "not seeing color" that means not seeing the work of or knowing about the lives of people of color.)

But to put it simply, it's very duplicitous to praise someone for articulating a dream and then working against what would make it a reality--such as equal access to the ballot. In actuality, I would consider it very revealing of the character of those that would do so.

Sincere Believers in Their Own Bullshit

 

Just a little bit in advance of Mark Meadows being held in contempt of Congress (unless he realizes that he has little choice but to, shall we say, be less contemptible?) and interesting item comes to light from the trove of documents already handed over the the 1/6 Committee: an email indicating that the National Guard was to be put on standby to protect Trump supporters. From whom?

Just to put a pin in the whom question--this is what Former Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller already testified that Trump told him. They were to protect Trump's demonstrators. 

From the hordes of antifa super-soldiers bearing soup cans and malice, once has to assume. After all, it was goldurn liberals and whatnot who were going to go hog wild according to the Claremont war games, and the police would need to take shocking bloody measures to put them down. Especially the antifa and BLM elites in their upper middle class urban enclaves.

That's what they were counting on. Outlandish stereotypes detached from reality. Their own people were the thugs, but they never thought that was how Trump supporters would be viewed.  That's how sincerely they believed their own bullshit.

UPDATE: And I will not stop laughing that part of the referral for Meadows' contempt charge is due to his having written a book partially covering the subject matter. It's just very choice. Stable genius, even.

My Eyes Don't Deceive Me

 

The opponents of critical race theory, not more than a handful of months ago, were telling us it was a damn shame that Dr. Seuss was being cancelled for racial caricatures in a handful of nearly-forgotten children's books (yes, I do believe the Venn Diagram there is exactly a circle) but I wonder what they would say about the banning of books by Black authors in a school district in Pennsylvania. To me, it looks an awful lot like my impression that the criticism of CRT is actually a way to demonize a very specific kind of Black history (the kind that comes from Black voices and is heard from even when it isn't February) is pretty much the mood being catered to. 

The reason certain people want CRT to be minimized, want to discredit the 1619 Project, want to talk about All Lives Matter instead of why Black lives need to be discussed, why Latino/a/ex lives need to be discussed, why Asian lives need to be discussed, all within their contexts, is because the context doesn't show white culture in a positive light. Because it shouldn't. 

In discussing policing in the US, it's hard to divorce law enforcement from the slave patrols charged with keeping the peace (for a very racially-biased version thereof) in our early history, and about as hard to separate our Border Patrol from the same. 

So when right wing people talk about caravans and the gathering of Haitian refugees (just like the "threat" of Syrian refugees) and think of course violence will turn them away because who even are they? I don't think my eyes deceive me. I see human beings who deserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But I know those other folks don't and I see what they are, too. And it's not so much that I want to emulate our nation's founders--I think we could do better. 

We are not free if we don't believe in these principles for all. All. One runny pimple on Montana's ass just got upset at the notion of a mere 75 Afghan refugees resettling there, some very small quantity of a huddled mass of people yearning to breathe free.  Sure, 75 human beings, with hardly nothing to their names, women and children included, are going to overrun your whole dumb gun-toting red white and blue-blooded state.

I'm not a Christian, but I believe what you are willing to do for the people with the least is your whole job as a human, because you need to know that could be you, too.  Politics and weather and poverty and all the shit fate throws at you permitting. But there's a very good label for what my eyes see when I see CBP deploying whips (or whatever your sensibility prefers to call the lash or the strap) on Haitian asylum-seekers. 

And it's the very word the anti-CRT folks want to pretend very much the US isn't about anymore, but you know what? Maybe we still live with that history and need to recognize and confront it. And we shouldn't fear people fleeing from danger so much as to hate, revile, and punish them on top of their own tragedy. 

Trump Just Sounds Ridiculous

Here's Trump in Ohio claiming that Joe Biden is "against God."

"No religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God. He's against God," Trump says. 🙃 pic.twitter.com/IwAjgbkEyB

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 6, 2020

So, this Joe Biden is against God, now? Seems like a stretch. Either Trump is watching too much Fox News again (likely!) or is having another one of his little identity crises, but no, that just sounds ridiculous.

Loeffler Earning a Loss

Dream and Mercury players are wearing “Vote Warnock” shirts to their game today.

Raphael Warnock is running against Kelly Loeffler for Senate. Loeffler is a co-owner of the Dream and said she opposes the Black Lives Matter movement.

(via @sportsiren)pic.twitter.com/w1INikFQPQ

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) August 4, 2020

The athletes of the WNBA are wearing shirts in favor of Rev. Raphael Warnock because GA US Sen. Kelly Loeffler, in addition to being a ghoulish insider trader on COVID-19 info (the dropped charges don't mean a damn thing in TrumpWorld, thanks!), is going full-racist, giving an interview to another racist to talk about what a bummer it is to be called out on her racism.

Criticism against Loeffler doesn't necessarily affect her where it counts, for her. I mean, political office pay is peanuts compared to what she could net from her daily grind--unless she was using her office to advance the lot of rich white people and welp. I guess we can draw our own conclusions about what staying a US Senator means to her, and also conclude it doesn't have as much to do with representing regular everyday Georgia residents as she wants to purport. She wants to talk nonsense about Marxism while collecting money for investing in COVID futures. I think she should be done with that level of psychopathy. I hope GA voters feel the same.

President Bunkerboy Has a Theory

In Trump's stable genius mind, a 75 year old man would crack his skull on purpose to make the cops look bad:

"He fell harder than was pushed."

And was apparently doing some antifa super soldier stuff to police radios. Because why not?
Also, he tags in OANN: to back up this nonsense, I suppose.

His mind is a series of trapdoors--just when you think Trump can get no lower, there's just more and nastier below.

UPDATE:  Oh. It's disinfo. Got it.

Operation Do Something

This is President Trump, with his trademark hair pancake, wearing his most serious facial expression, holding aloft, to be clear, "a Bible, not his Bible", in front of a church he did not go in, having gassed peaceful protesters to get there, to vow he'd do something. Because if he didn't do something, why! How useless he'd seem, right? 

Except he still hasn't actually performed the leadership the moment calls for, really. I mean, okay, swirl around, as multiple Twitterati have noted, a book one hasn't read, to stand in front of a building one has no use for--to declare a threat of martial law (posse comitatus, anyone?) against protesters and vandals alike, which is kind of not very Constitutionally-oriented? 

To what purpose? Did the protesters get anything from that other than the certain knowledge they have been told their point of view doesn't matter? Did he show understanding and mastery of the situation? He earlier berated governors to "dominate" the protesters so that they did not "look like jerks."

That feels like a bit of projection, really. He's yelling at them because he thinks the protests make him look bad, just like he berated governors over the COVID-19 response. He wants them to make a violent response happen because he doesn't know that this would make things worse and because he wants to feel less impotent. And he's clutching the Bible like a crutch to--

Explain why he'd play Pontius with every protester body? (Whatever you do to these, you do also to whom?) Isn't using the Bible and the church this way a mockery? Isn't urging others to act a verification that he relies on others to make himself look better?

See, I get why propagandists at Fox News (or Scott Walker, former WI Gov, because he's no better than)  might think his exiting his gopher hole in the White House to perform "in-chargeness" is an act of bravery, because I assume it's in their contract to. But when I see this image:

President Trump pumps his fist as he walks between lines of riot police in Lafayette Park across from the White House while walking to St John's Church for a photo opportunity during ongoing protests. More photos from Washington: https://t.co/latl1eCZTE 📷 @tombrennerphoto pic.twitter.com/qlkVltyXKR

— Reuters Pictures (@reuterspictures) June 2, 2020

I see a man so insulated and protected he has no reason to fear but who lives in fear regardless, because, in a nutshell, he has bad dreams.  Anything at all disrupts his ambition--not in the least, anyone lifting up the curtain to notice he isn't great and powerful at all, at all.  And who will attribute to him the brain, the heart, the courage, to do what we need?

He should click his heels and go home already. Resign!

Pence and Nonsense

So, VP Pence flew to Indianapolis to show up at a game he had no intention of staying at to make a BS point about "an event that disrespects our soldiers, etc.". I guess that went better than the last culture war-signifying event he "had" to leave.  But I think the grotesque thing about this was how very obvious his display actually was. He even had the press pool wait while he made his little show because he knew he wasn't going to be that long.

Every bit of it was kind of obvious. The Tweeting of a three year old picture like "Whheee, I love some sportsball!"  Being just shocked that the 49ers, who've had players kneeling since the beginning, were still participating in silent protest. And of course, not having enough time on his actual itinerary to stay for the whole game since he had things to do. Like fundraise for Dana Rohrabacher. I mean--I'm sure VP flights don't take as long as commercial flights, but even straight-through commercial:

And this was not a cheap stunt either--think about the taxpayer-funded flight and the Secret Service coverage and all that...

But of course, the real giveaway that this was just some culture war-signifying was that Donald Trump says it wasn't. He Tweeted:

Just marvelous. You can almost imagine wee Donnie playing hide'n'seek as a youngin', crowing from his hiding spot "You won't find me, because I have the best, biggest, most beautiful hiding space!" He thinks this is brilliant political work, and wants credit!

Of course it's a damn distraction from the mutiny over the Bounty towels, the questions arising from the Tillerson not-quite disavowal of calling Trump a "fucking moron", and who know what all else. The health care reform clusterfuck, the bad jobs numbers and crappy polls. Trump and Pence seem to think that if this display gains a news cycle, we will all forget the other stuff (North Korea? Iran?) and just hate on people taking a knee to protest...

Police brutality and racism. Not the flag, not veterans. Police brutality and racism. Screw Pence and Trump for this game. There are real issues out there that should occupy their time. But this trifling is where they prefer to linger. Lying about honest protesters to make up a BS concern of their own as a distraction. 

UPDATE: And apparently, Trump is still very proud of his stunt in the wee hours of the morning:

"Long planned." A stunt. Just remember who to thank/blame!

This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag is For Mad Men

Sometimes I think that when Donald Trump says "Make America Great Again", he really means something like "Make America the 1950s Again". You know, that Leave it to Beaver vision of white suburban neighborhoods where kids got into shenanigans, but wives were wearing the dresses and pearls in the home doing random stuff, mostly in the kitchen and the Daddies went to work. It just so happens he's about to start off with a Korean War to get us there...and maybe exhuming McCarthy while he's at it. 

Which sets us up for the theme of this TrumpWorld Grab-bag:  Mad Men. This isn't the first time I've referenced Mad Men here on the blog, but that was in reference to a small web-consulting outfit that sometimes did some stuff for Republicans--low-key, you might call it, but I like the in-joke name for the advertising side of it. 

That wasn't the least bit of the Trump web-advertising dollar (or ruble), it looks like. One of the most fascinating things about trying to figure out what happened during the 2016 campaign has been to just look at social media. Like, Facebook and Twitter posts and ads. The stuff that was all over the place, and we might not have necessarily thought was weird because, like fish, we only get aware of the "water" once we're out of it. 

Imagine ads calling Trump our "only viable option", implying somehow that Trump was seeing a reality that no one else did. (The ads at the link are revolting and push specifically racist buttons. They were intended to incite racially-motivated responses.) Or ads that specifically highlighted racial tension regarding Black Lives Matter demonstrations, aimed at denigrating the movement as threatening and violent. Imagine Russian-sponsored ads that basically touted "Anyone but Hillary Clinton".  Imagine stories and ads pushed to indicate Muslim support of Clinton at an exactly wrong time. 

This is the level of highly button-pushing and divisive rhetoric that we experienced during that campaign last year. It was dangerous, because it didn't just influence elections--it incited people to violence. It incited people to feel more concretely satisfied about either being just a bit white supremacist, or maybe way too liberal for a neoliberal hack like Clinton. This Russian-funded campaign told people it was great to be appalled at people agitating against police brutality and for equal treatment under the law. (Speak up--are you pro-police brutality and actually against equal treatment under the law? Inquiring minds want to know. Because if you also think police brutality is terrible and everybody should get the same treatment under the law, which is what the Constitution says--hey great! Abandon the fucking anti-BLM or anti-antifa shit. Hate acts of violence against people--but don't smear people for their ideals. We are Americans together, just trying to live up to the Constitutional ideals and not actually being overt racists and shit. If you love the Constitution and the Republic constituted by it for which our flag actually stands, you might even consider taking a knee understanding that we are Americans by grace of our founding documents and the ideals contained therein, and not necessarily by place of birth or parentage or ethnicity or even religion--and we all deserve the fundamental protections found in that Constitution our president swore to defend. Even if I swear he doesn't understand it. )

Now, we know Russia paid for these kinds of ads.  What we aren't sure about is the level of coordination between the Trump Campaign and their Russian "assist." Some of what we know is pretty well-researched by investigators and is liable to lead to indictments, soonish, for Paul Manafort.  (He's also nearly up for a public Senate Judiciary hearing--this would be a good day for me to C-Span and not chill when it goes down.)We know Roger Stone Twitter-bragged about backchannels to WikiLeaks. Now, he's going to pretend he doesn't know anything? 

I don't know what this all leads to. I know IRS is now in the mix. Mueller, unlike the rest of us, has Trump's and others' tax returns. That might be interesting. 

And then there's Jeff Sessions, who might be just as under threat of getting the sack as Bob Mueller, just saying some stuff about how the Trump Russia investigation is trying to nail people for completely everyday stuff. Does he mean like perjuring oneself at a confirmation hearing kinds of normal things? Like meeting with Russian "diplomats" and not mentioning or actually averting one did not even do so even if it wasn't even the specific question asked? 

Anyhow, this TrumpWorld Grab-Bag business still looks like it's going somewhere.  And I begin to think about how the principal figures have behaved (like the private email business) and mentally conclude that they might just all be mad men. Angry. Or Insane. Choose your adjective.

To Serve and Maybe Protect

Charleena Lyles, 30, a distraught woman with babies in her house and pregnant with another, called the police in fear because she believed there was an attempted burglary of her house. She was carrying a knife, and the officers discharged their weapons because this unnerved them, and they killed her. She was afraid and she armed herself. And this was no protection. She was afraid and called the police--and that was no protection.

Maybe she wasn't thinking clearly--maybe she wasn't. Who does at all times? When your home and your kids are threatened, and you have stressors and wonder if some thief in the night is going to take away something of yours, what is clear and logical thinking? She called the cops--that's what you're supposed to do. She worried what would happen if they didn't come on time, which can happen, too.  She armed herself with what she had at hand. That made a kind of sense, too.

And it killed her.

Calling the cops shouldn't have killed this young woman with so much life ahead of her. I don't know what training tells cops they have to shoot to kill someone who is agitated and scared and armed and might not even be thinking straight. I wish every training about how to be human in this world would have told them to just stop and think first--not "police training"--just being human training. She deserved that as a citizen. She deserved protection from harm. Her death is a disservice to the public.

I share in mourning with her family and lift her name up in my thoughts. Charleena Lyles--we'll say her name. But that is not enough.  Maybe if we learn from her loss how to understand victims, the mentally distraught, the unpredictable, but harmless caller for help--maybe that makes her death a little less in vain.

But she still deserved better. Her family deserved better. And better can definitely be achieved.

They Let off Philando Castile's Killer

I thought they would let off the officer who fatally shot Philando Castile, just like they let off the killer of Alton Sterling.  I don't like it, but that's how it was.

What is a man's life? These men were and then were not. Lived and then did not. I feel like this is not justice and I do not know where his people can go to find it. I think of that baby who watched a man shoot Philando Castile, and I can't get beyond mad. Because that innocent baby watched an innocent man die, and lives a life knowing this is a thing that happens, to innocent people. Like law isn't even for everyone.

It should be. But this decision says otherwise.

Oh Fine, Pepsi, I'll Go

Yeah. Pepsi has me linking to the ad but I don't even mind, because I survived the cola wars of the 1980's and I sleep like a baby. All my readers need to know is I only drink water, tea, and booze. That's it. I couldn't tell you the last time I had a Pepsi product or even Coke and Jack. So, I have nothing to say about what this ad has to do with Pepsi. This is a New Generation Pepsi-type ad. (Not to be confused with a "New Power Generation".) Trying to say one's flavored, carbonated beverage is hip with the kids is nothing new--I mean, talk about Dr. Pepper trying to co-opt everybody:



But I think that the cultural signifying here went beyond Coca-Cola signifying levels:



Because, although we don't know if the protest that Kendall Jenner, rich white lady, co-opts, is about Black Lives matter or is just a pussy hat riot or some other thing that a multi-cultural group of millennials might be protesting about, conspicuously including an Asian cellist male and an hijabi photographer, we do know that it is meaningful that this model sheds her blonde wig to reveal she is brunette and woke as all hell (and gives her blonde wig to a black lady). So woke she marches right to the middle of things to give a soda to a police officer. To symbolize--"He looked thirsty-m'kay?"

Huh?

Even the intro to Watchmen made more sense:

The handing of a soda to a policeman only makes sense if, somehow, there was a law against cops drinking soda. Otherwise, I feel like we are lacking the context that makes a brunette model giving a soda to a police officer the solution to anything--but then again, giving the world a Coke probably wouldn't have done anything either forty+ years ago. I think giving the world a few gin and tonics might be great--especially if it included me--but beverage choices pretty much aren't sufficient politics in the face of all the shit we deal with. See Temperance Movement, for context. This isn't worse than all the attempts to link flavored carbonated beverages to youth movements before. This is just weirdly obvious in a particularly media-savvy age. But I guess that's no reason not to drink Pepsi if that's the sort of thing you like.

I Really Don't Like Sean Hannity

Question of the Day: Should the mainstream media apologize for spreading the fake news "hands up, don't shoot" lie? #Hannity

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) December 9, 2016

This was the testimony of many people who observed the shooting of Michael Brown.  The MSM reporters were discussing what actual people were alleging. Maybe it was right, maybe it wasn't, but sometimes reporting means hearing out people whose stories aren't always 100% accurate.

Sean Hannity knows full well that activism isn't about straight journalism, because he has never been about straight journalism himself.  What irks me about this question is that sometimes hands really are up. Maybe we can't verify the eyewitness accounts of so many people in Ferguson. But there are nonetheless accounts of police brutality elsewhere, and better vetted. But if journalism is about uncovering stories--is it not true that sometimes a story in the midst of being unraveled isn't 100% accurate? What matters is how the reporting is managed once the actual facts are revealed.

I don't think MSM reporters are wrong for covering what sparked the movement--because they had to honestly admit that something did.  That it might have been more complicated was also covered. It was not "fake news" so much as a difference of opinion. But it is still a pretty valid opinion that cops shouldn't really just shoot dead vaguely threatening unarmed black people because they can. I'm pretty much going to stick with this opinion.

Alton Sterling

Another police slaying has been caught on video--and no, I don't need to disseminate the video--you can find it, and I am tired of watching human beings die on video, and while this is getting DOJ attention, I guess I will keep my expectations low about what will be accomplished--the standards for proving a person of color didn't have to die at the hands of law enforcement seems exceptionally high, based on, for example, the trials of the LE officers who took Freddie Gray for his last ride.

I am not here to support Alton Sterling, who in death doesn't need my support, even while my sympathies are with his family.  I do not think his prior record pertains to the issue of whether he was wrongly slain by the officers present because that wouldn't and shouldn't have had any bearing on what they knew and why and how they responded. I support a future in which law enforcement doesn't summarily execute people during what should be routine responses to call-outs. I don't see a reason why this man had to die.

There have been so many names, so many videos, so many cases where people simply met up with LE and that was it. I just can't imagine the mindset that sees all these situations, and still finds reasons, and never sees the scenario as questionable.

This was not just questionable--this guy's prone position and the swiftness of his execution are damnable. And I don't know if his family can expect justice. I just don't know that anymore. And that resignation I feel is shared by many, and not a good thing for LE and community relations anymore.

A change has got to come. It can't be so easy for a man to die selling CD's, or carrying a weapon when gun rights are so enshrined in this country. It shouldn't be so easy for a man to die, and so difficult to see changes to LE made to accommodate a world where more people do not die so easily.


(And also, gun rights seem only to be rights for some people, and some other people carry and face a serious penalty for holding an otherwise lawful weapon under the letter of the law. Where is the NRA for this man's rights? He died, and his name was Philando Castile. )

Zimmerman Sells His Gun

I do not know or actually care what George Zimmerman's current financial or employment situation is, but I have to suppose it isn't especially great since the notoriety of killing a 17-year old followed by having his personal history of aggravated hotheaded shitbaggery aired to the public isn't really great to have as the unspoken part of one's resume, and legal fees are a biatch--amirite?

Still and all, it must trouble him to think that he is parting with this particular symbol of his ability to crash into a moral dilemma, fuck it up, and walk away physically unscathed, because this particular shooting iron bagged the most unusual prey--didn't it? And even amusing oneself by rubbing salt in the wounds of the young man's parents probably isn't quite the same as having that little fetish item hanging around where he could feel the kind of security only a gun lets you have. The security to get out of your truck and confront a suspect-looking black kid in a hoodie because you know you got Mr. Problem-Solver on you. The kind of security that, if Mr. Zimmerman did not have it, he would not be in this situation--and his victim would possibly be in college? Or graduating this year?