Doug's Darkworld

Well, that headline sure sums up Trump in a nutshell. While he was giving his “law and order speech” yesterday,  police used mace, rubber bullets, and horses to disperse peaceful, lawful constitutionally protected protestors so he could walk across the street and pose waving a bible in front of a church. A church that vociferously objected, never gave permission for their church to be so used, and supports the protestors. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, responsible for the church that Trump visited said: “The Bible teaches us to love God and our neighbor; that all people are beloved children of God; that we are to do justice and love kindness. The President used our sacred text as a symbol of division.” Apparently Trump doesn’t have to obey the law even while he is insisting he’s the “law and order” president. It’s nonsense like this that makes the aliens fly right by. I should also note that if the president of one of our designated enemies did this, the GOP would be howling in outrage at the perversion of democracy.

Sigh. Notes in the margins so to speak. Observations and thoughts on the nation’s travails, struggling with a pandemic and widespread civil unrest. In a nutshell, police brutality has been an ongoing problem in the US for decades. The police kill like a thousand people a year in the USA, under 100 in Germany, France, and the UK combined. It’s a horrible level of police violence for a self-styled developed country. As long as that continues, protests and calls for change are going to continue. If someone’s cause is just, that some violence is done in its service doesn’t magically delegitimize the cause. And it most certainly doesn’t legitimize calling on the troops and police to quell the disturbance, as if people angered by decades of unjustified police killings and violence were somehow the enemy of the state.

It’s not like there are no reasonable solutions. How about cops being trained to much higher standards, like the rest of the developed world does? How about reversing the militarization of the police, bipartisan efforts are already under way in that regard. They’re freaking police, not an occupying army for God’s sake. How about admitting there’s a problem and trying to address it? Apparently that’s too subtle or too complicated for the great thinker in the White House to come up with. “The riots must be being orchestrated by my enemies, so they must be crushed.” Never before had a president in my life who made everything about him. Narcissism illustrated.

I had a thought I don’t recall being pointed out anywhere. The original George Floyd incident. OK, I spent decades going to little liquor stores in sketchy neighborhoods. And yes, a few times a customer tried to pay with a stolen credit card or some shit. The store owners refused to honor it and booted the customer, end of story. In this case, the clerk took obviously fake money, gave George his purchase, and then called the cops? Wouldn’t it be easier to not honor the counterfeit money in the first place? It sounds like the store owner was trying to create a confrontation and a problem. And this is the shit black people have to deal with regularly, people call the cops on them at the drop of a hat. This time the wrong cop showed up, though with his history of violent complaints, one has to wonder why he was still a cop? This gets back to what I said above, why the hell can’t we hold cops to a higher standard? And why the hell don’t cops support such efforts, though granted there are those that do.

One of my biggest fears now is the chaos engendered by Trump will “break” the system, and we will get a military coup or some such. IE there have to be all sorts of Dick Cheney’s working in the shadows, people perfectly willing and capable of using Trump’s chaos to further their agenda. Trump would make the perfect martyr to install a Christian theocracy for example. Scary days. Paranoid nonsense? IDK anymore. We’ll see how it plays out, but I don’t see any lights in the tunnel yet. At least none that aren’t train wrecks rushing towards us. Boy, just a few months ago I thought the Iowa caucus screw up was the big story of the year, if not the decade, that I would have front line seats to.

Let’s see, May brought us murder hornets, a horrible police killing, and the worst civil unrest and police riots since the 1960s. Still waiting for June’s treat. Asteroids? Ebola outbreak? Tigers? Whatever it is, I’m sure it will generate some hysterical memes. If things keep humming along, I might post every day for a while. To say I am upset and my concentration has been affected would be an understatement. I watch the news, I rage, I write. Rinse and repeat.

Stay safe, stay sane everyone.

Copyright © 2020 Doug Stych. All rights reserved.

(Image: Antififa activists storm ashore June 6 1944 in the beginning of the end for One of the world’s most evil fascist tyrants. How we got from all Americans  knowing fascism was bad to a POTUS defending Nazi flag waving thugs and demonizing anti-fascists is a mystery to me. Credit: Public Domain under US copyright law.)