"It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity". ~Martin Luther King Jr.
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"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press
While I was getting ready for work last night, after I'd already written my previous post, I saw that Derek Chauvin got stabbed in Federal Prison yesterday.
I have no sympathy.
In fact, I have less than no sympathy.
The motherfucker knelt on the neck of a helpless man for almost nine minutes, while three other cops just stood there and watched. In so doing, he committed a crime that basically lit half the country on fire. I spent a good amount of time in May and June of 2020 writing about this shit.
I was a United States Air Force security policeman, if a United States Army soldier, or a United States Marine treated a captured insurgent in a battlespace like Derek Chauvin treated George Floyd, it'd be a war crime.
The offender would certainly go to prison, very likely for life. And the military would see to it that a life sentence meant just that. Had I done what Chauvin did when I was a young, tough Security Police troop I'd still be in prison...and I'd deserve it!
There's one reason...and one reason only...why American cops are not held to the same standards as America's Airmen, Marines, Sailors and Soldiers.
Racism.
Well, that and the creeping fascism infiltrated into America's police departments by Republicans since 9/11 and the open militarism and militarization supported by agencies like the Department of Homeland Security. It was never about terrorism.
And this was done because the military is by law and tradition apolitical, with strict statutory limits on how armed force can be used domestically. Like I wrote back during the George Floyd protests, in this post, Republicans knew a time would come when they'd be losing.
We're just damned lucky they never recaptured the narrative.
So Republicans like Karl Rove got the cops in their pocket so they'd have at least
some armed force they could use. But if you look at how these so-called "Conservatives" treat Federal law enforcement...and any state law or agencies that might indict, restrain or punish men like Donald Trump...well "Use" is
exactly the word.
They don't actually give a fuck about the law...much less the people who enforce it...past their immediate political expediency to the same rich white men who use racism as a cover for stealing on a mind-boggling scale.
And, fun fact, a lot of those limits on the troops...who Republicans also "supported" until they didn't...were themselves imposed because of the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War and because later, during Reconstruction, the US Army's Seventh Cavalry under Major Lewis Merrill was too effective in running down members of the first Ku Klux Klan. America's soldiers are not "Race Soldiers." If you wonder why "Conservatives" suddenly hate the United States Armed Forces so much, that's basically why.
There used to be conservatives who weren't like that. I was there. Those fucking people chased all the rest of us out.
Bigotry and hate are...by choice, apparently...the glues that hold the "Conservative" movement together. The ability to make war based on that type of shit...well
that's what some of these fucking people think government is even
for.
In point of fact, they think that should be the only valid Power of the State, to enforce their bullshit and hate.
And as these fucking people lose the legal and political mechanisms and, more importantly, the cultural and social narratives to enshrine their hate and shitty beliefs into culture, law and society...the more likely they become to simply lash out with violence.
Why the fuck do you think these motherfuckers like Russia so much as of the last couple years?? (And I'm here to tell you, the recently-announced Russian ban on abortion and the open explanation that it's so they have more people available for military service in about 20 years will be like catnip to these motherfuckers.)
The newfound "Conservative" love of the Hammer and Sickle, KGB agent Vladimir Putin and more recently the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (in a faux-populist sort of way) came about only because Putin has spent the last decade or so making a calculated effort to appeal to the Western far-right in general, and to American "Christian" "Conservatives" in particular.
It's transparently blatant and obvious...but it works like magic on a certain type of personality. One of my old Sergeants went down that rabbit hole...dude was very much Anti-Bush like a lot of us in 2008 (but also discovering "Traditional" Catholicism at the same time) he went from voting for Obama to voting for Romney to voting for Trump to full-on support for Vladimir Putin in the space of a dozen years and I lost track of the progression of things because the guys who were still "Friends" with him on Facebook aren't so active on there anymore and all our Facebook groups kind of fell by the wayside.
It's not just conservatives that fall for this shit, either, though. Far-left people like film director (and US Army veteran) Oliver Stone and pacifist Noam Chomsky have also bought into this crap.
The idea is to play the far edges against the middle to cause division, and in the wake of the Hamas-Israel war...it's at least somewhat worked.
And the thing is, in a country like Russia, somebody like Derek Chauvin would...even if they had to be prosecuted and jailed...very likely not in spite of but
because of his potential for committing war crimes, a dude like that would
almost certainly be released and sent to the front...especially if, like Chauvin himself...they had prior military service of some kind. Atrocity really
is the kind of world these fucking people think they want to live in.
And goddamn, did they think they were gonna get that in the summer of 2020.
You can't reason with bigotry and hate, you can't (usually) reach these fucking people by being nice to them. You want people to not be Nazis? You punch Nazis. You want less racism? You don't tolerate racism at all in the first place! You want this shit to stop, you stand firm that it's wrong and you make it as painful, socially undesirable and unprofitable as fucking possible.
Some people will still do it, even then.
And perhaps more to the point, and I know this is going to be hard for some people to understand; Any empathy or sympathy given to dudes like Derek Chauvin or any of this fellow cops who stood by while he spent almost nine minutes murdering a helpless man will simply never be reciprocated.
These motherfuckers don't want to live in a society that doesn't involve them grinding somebody else down under their jackboot, and it really is that simple. These motherfuckers would gladly choke out even the very idea of freedom. MLK Jr. said that a riot was the language of the unheard.
I wrote then, that too many people wanted to go right on unhearing...and they're still doing that!
So no, I have no sympathy for a racist asshole like Derek Chauvin...and I never will.
And you shouldn't either.
We're either all Americans, or none of us really are.
Слава Україна!
Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on a race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength of the world. That is the American way. ~Ronald Reagan
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In Natal, apartheid is a deadly cancer in our midst, setting house against house, and eating away at the precious ties that bound us together. This strife among ourselves wastes our energy and destroys our unity. My message to those of you involved in this battle of brother against brother is this: take your guns, your knives, and your pangas, and throw them into the sea! Close down the death factories. End this war now! ~Nelson Mandela, speech at a peace rally, February 25th, 1990
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