Pressure's gonna drop on...

  Toots Hibbert died last night. He went into the hospital last week with problems breathing. Last I'd heard, his family said he was showing some improvement. Life is fleeting and death comes quick.

 I don't remember when I became a fan of Toots, really. For the longest time, like a lot of white boys, I thought reggae began and ended with Bob Marley. Going to college in the mid '90s, his greatest hits collection Legend must've been handed out at high school graduations because I could recognize every note by the time I finished up at UF. It sort of burnt me out on reggae, I'm not going to lie.

 It was probably the first time I saw The Harder They Come. That movie revolves mainly around Jimmy Cliff and the title track is legendary, but there's a scene where Toots & The Maytals sing "Sweet & Dandy." You rarely see that much joy singing. I never got to see him live, but I'm told he was like that when performed right up until the end. He dug what he did the most, and I always, always, dig on that.

 In my own personal pantheon, he's up there with Junior Wells and Otis Redding. They're singers who, for me, epitomize vocalizing joy in their genre. Soul music and the blues sound celebratory when they sing, and it was the same with Toots. For the record, probably my favorite album was his Toots In Memphis because it brought those two worlds together.

 Willie Nelson probably does it for country music, best I can tell. Moreso than even the blues, country music is Buddha's First Noble Truth - life is suffering - if it has any substance at all. Of course, that's just me being an old stick-in-the-mud lost in the past. I may not be all that turned on by modern country radio but I can't find much more tedious than hearing yet another dingbat get snooty about "real country music." There's always been reaching for pop in country music. Look up George Morgan, for cryin' out loud.

 I've wandered off-topic. That's okay, though. I still don't have too much to say, not really. COVID-19 continues to ravage the country and the unwashed horde continues to be shitasses about it. Momma asks me about once a week why people get so angry at people who chose to wear a mask and, every time, I remind her that to do so, they'd have to admit they were wrong about something. That is just not something America does.

 The fires out in Oregon and California continue to rage out-of-control, displacing almost half a million folks in the Beaver State. Despite the pleas of firefighters, the FBI, and the local police, Twitter dingbats are still trying to say a motley collection of teenagers and young adults who don't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of are doing this for... reasons. The logic is since they're "burning down Portland and Chicago," it's only natural they try to destroy a state that's mostly cool with them living there.

 Which is a stupid thing to say for two reasons. One, you can look at the local news in both places to see that neither Portland nor Chicago is anything but what they always are and are certainly not apocalyptic wastelands. Secondly, and this is the hanger for me, they want me to believe they actually give two shits about Portland or Chicago or the people living there. And I simply do not believe that, not after paying attention to the last 20 years of American politics and the wingnuts therein.

 Yesterday was 9/11. Someone on Twitter mentioned that it's a hell of a thing that people who hate New York City 364 days a year pretending to give a shit about what happened there 19 years ago for one day before they go back to hating it. What's really funny is how many chowderheads this set off. "Well, that's why we hate New York City and New Yorkers." Not helping disprove the original argument, kiddo.

 Trump was asked about the killing of Michael Reinoehl, the man under investigation for shooting Patriot Prayer thug Aaron Danielson. He called it "retribution" and that is simply not encouraging. It's especially rich coming from a guy who claimed he downplayed the danger of COVID-19 initially because he "didn't want to cause a panic." There are wingnut a-holes in Oregon stopping people trying to get away from the fires because they think Antifa or Black Lives are doing nefarious things regardless of a total lack of proof. They saw it on Facebook somewhere and everyone knows you can't lie on the internet.

 It's been... relatively quiet since the Danielson killing, but I wonder how long it's going to last. The other day, some police organization in, I think Boston it was, said someone at a Home Depot made a "bacon" crack in a cop's presence and was roundly mocked. Rightly so, too, given how many times the police have flat-out made up instances of abuse against them just this year. There's still a lot of dick-wagging and mumbled threats, mostly from the right but the left is talking plenty of shit, too.

 I wonder if it's avoidable. It doesn't have to be like this. Two of my cousins' kids - cousins themselves - have to be quarantined because of exposure to COVID-19 at school events. It didn't have to be like that. The closer we get to the election, the more worry there is that Trump will in some way or another try to nullify the results if he loses. He isn't helping things by going on Twitter and telling North Carolina voters to, essentially, vote twice. All the while, he's still trying to undermine mail-in voting and insinuating that the only way he could lose is if the Democrats cheat.

 At the same time, the actual government is finding evidence of tampering in the election by agents connected to China and Russia, except on the Republican side. The GOP is also spreading around that liberals - who they consider weak and cowardly, mind - will riot if Trump wins again. There's almost a sense of hope in the claims like they're looking forward to having an excuse to open fire on political opponents. On the flipside, a lot of liberals and leftists - which the right falsely connects because they can't be bothered to pay attention - are locking and loading right along.

 So who knows. It didn't have to be this way, history is not an inevitable tide and a story that can only be told. Existence just is. It doesn't have to be this way and doesn't have to go further. But here we are and it will probably get worse.

 Americans can never admit they were wrong about something, after all.

Are you feeling all right? Not feeling too good myself.

  I really should've written this last night. I was full of piss and vinegar, fire and brimstone last night. But I was tired, had already put down 1,000 words of Actual Paying Work, and went to sleep early, and well... I guess it mellowed me out a bit. I'm still pissed off but it's back to the usual mellow boil.

 It's probably for the best, though, that I didn't write this down last night. Yes, I'm talking about the 17-year-old kid who decided to play vigilante and killed two folks in the demonstrations in Kenosha last night. More specifically, I was wound up about the wingnut reaction to the shooting.

 And I still am, because it was almost across-the-board positive. They dug it. They think it's great. They think it's justified. They think he was defending himself. They think he turned himself in. Now the story is they think he was hired by the auto dealer to protect the carlot when the auto dealer has said that was decidedly not the case.

 None of this is altogether all that shocking because conservatives have been warning of an armed revolt against anyone who doesn't think they have the morals or common sense to govern since before Trump got in office. They weren't concerned by the guy who was sending pictures of pipe bombs to media folks and Democrats. They did think it was prudent that last year's El Paso shooter did what he did because of hatred of migrants.

 Make no mistake, this isn't because of Trump. He may be acting as the catalyst, something speeding it up, but this has been Mainstream American Conservatism at least since the early Bush Jr. years. They called us the moral equivalent of fundamentalist clowns who murdered 3,000 people just trying to get paid because we wouldn't support the Iraq War. Or the president's education plan, whichever was the issue of the day. Calling your political opponents terrorists was a remarkably malleable political tactic.

  So that's where we are. This kid fired the first shot in what probably won't be a full-blown civil war, but very well might be a long, bloody clash between differing ideologies. Maybe both sides will back down if Biden wins, but I really don't see the Trump Base every doing anything but worship him. Furthermore, we've got Q promoters up for election in Congress and his brand of "fuck you, you didn't vote for me" politics is definitely a popular thing among younger Republicans.

 They want to tie the Democratic Party to AntiFa and Black Lives Matter, but that really doesn't groove like they think it should. The mainstream of the party and its left-wing can barely get along, and a whole lot of the people we're seeing in the streets don't have much use a'tall for the Democratic Party. The Right doesn't believe that and won't be persuaded otherwise, but they think Joe Biden is a red-eyed Marxist revolutionary. There's no hope for them.

 I think maybe the main issue is that not only are there enough people who're willing to brave brutal cops, an out-of-control pandemic that's killing more people every day than died on 9/11, and now gun-toting fascist lunatics who think they're the Praetorian Guard with licenses to kill and the explicit permission of law enforcement. Which they sort of have already, if you want to cut through the bullshit.

 So where will this go? That's a good question. The Right thinks it's the only one that has guns, and that is patently not true. They think AntiFa and BLM will fold at the least amount of pressure, and that is patently not true. They think the radicals they dismiss with a sneer don't have the right or the sand to defend themselves and fight for what they believe in, and that's patently not true.

 It's going to get wild, this I'm convinced of. It doesn't have to be, it's not an immutable law of physics. We're not over the brink yet, I don't think, and it's still possible to turn around before there's blood in the streets and families destroyed. I don't think we have it within ourselves - the maturity, as a culture - to do it, but it's not so far out of reach.

 None of this is "how things are supposed to be". There's no such thing as "how things are supposed to be". There just is, just life. Maybe we should actually start acting like we really believe life, all lives, matters, that all are created equal and free like we've claimed for so long.

 Because we're certainly not doing it now.

I might live a thousand years before I know what that means.

 Running late today, my apologies. I stayed up fairly late last night doing my Actual Paying Work and, of course, defending humanity from alien invasions. Overslept this morning, and by the time I was done editing and brushing up the APW to send it to the Chief, it was past 3 p.m. I wasn't feeling my sharpest, so I decided to take a nap and here we are.

 Anyhow. I've been keeping an interested eye on these "autonomous zones" that have popped up around the country in the wake of the nation-wide protests against police brutality. Of course, there's the first well-organized one in Seattle, and because there was a mass walkout of police in Atlanta to protest that one guy getting fired and charged with murder for shooting Rayshard Brooks in the back as he was running away. I'm not sure if that counts, though. One was started on the northwest side of Portland yesterday evening but apparently the cops shut it down fairly quickly. It was set up outside the mayor's house, apparently, so it makes sense the law would be Johnny-On-The-Spot there. One's trying to kick up at the Capitol Square in Nashville - which the protesters have renamed "Ida B. Wells Square" - but the Tennessee governor's giving dire forecasts should it become a permanent thing.

 It should be noted a lot of this revolves around how the cops are reacting to the protesters. In Portland, for example, they cut that to the quick, while the thing in Seattle is flourishing basically because the local precinct emptied out the first day. No cops, no worries. In Atlanta, it's more a case of the "blue flu" by petulant po-pop even though Garrett Rolfe has turned himself in. They're not protesting or walking out on the job so much as a bunch of them all turned up sick this morning, amazingly enough. Given one of the issues the protesters have is the out-of-control militarization of the police that's both dangerous to the people and police while being more or less useless for dealing with crime, if Seattle or anyone really wanted to wipe folks out, they could.

 And that's part of the problem, really. Full disclosure, I've never had any real problem with the police. When I was 18, I was detained for four hours because a cop thought I was a guy selling drugs at a popular teen hangout area in Tupelo. Once in New Orleans I was pulled over because I was on the Westbank after midnight giving a black co-worker a ride home, and apparently that's suspicious behavior there. I was shocked, my co-worker and boss (who I had to call for the cop to believe us) were not. More naive me.

 The handful of times I called the police for assistance, I got the distinct impression they resented me cutting into their donut time. Granted, nothing I called for was all that interesting. A broken window or a stolen tag, little stuff like that, and the only reason I called was to have the official paperwork to deal with insurance. Nevertheless, every episode ended with me feeling like they thought me expecting them to do their job was a bit presumptuous. Beyond that, I've got a cousin who used to be a cop and I've had pleasant evenings hanging out and drinking with cops. I wouldn't call any of them "friends," but there you go.

So, I'm fairly ambivalent about cops and having them in general. I understand why some sort of order-keeping force might be useful in a large, varied society. I've generally gotten along with them when I've had to be around them for extended periods of time, but I generally get along with everyone. I've seen with my own two eyes cops abuse power and actively harass the black people they're supposed to be "protecting and serving". And I've spent enough time in the journalism trenches to hear all sorts of horror stories, some told by the cops themselves.

 I understand what the push to "defund the police" means and I don't know if it's an example of bad branding. That small-town police departments the size of Tupelo have twice the riot gear they have as cops as well as armored personnel carriers is ridiculous. This has been an issue since the '90s, as police budgets are often tied to how much they spend. If they don't spend all their allotted one year, they get less the next.

 And there is something in the whole "warrior" mentality we're seeing in police that desperately needs to be nipped in the bud. That they're using the Punisher's logo, despite Gerry Conway's objections, is worrisome. That they see the people they're supposed to be "protecting and serving" as "the enemy" is, well... we've seen how that works out. For me, I don't trust people are packing heat and that includes the fuzz. In my perfect world, most police work would consist of traffic control and keeping the flow of public moving smoothly, & dealing with crimes after the fact. That cops are sent on wellness checks or to deal with potentially suicidal individuals with no more training than they get - usually six weeks at most - is just not working.

 I don't have answers to fix the problem with out-of-control police brutality. I have told the aforementioned cousin that if the police want to repair relations with the community, especially the black part, stop treating black folks like criminals before the fact and especially stop shooting them whenever you feel the least bit threatened. You don't make yourself look better or trustworthy or worthy of respect when you amp up the behavior that got people protesting in the first place.

 But I'll tell you what most unnerves me about this whole deal. When reading about the Atlanta walkout or the autonomous zone in Seattle, I keep seeing conservatives gleeful at the idea of chaos raining down on the ungrateful city dwellers and actively hoping for a city in flames because it won't bend the knee to police violence. I don't believe either Seattle or Atlanta had a particular uptick in violence, but right-wingers are not only convinced  it's inevitable they're actively looking forward to it and encouraging it.

 The same people keep saying society is in danger of collapsing, but I got to say if this is the society they want, I'm fine with it collapsing. If you're cheering the idea of people being crushed under governmental heel because they don't agree that they should be subjugated and second class, you are the bad guy. Full stop.

I feel a storm, all wet and warm, not ten miles away approaching my Mexican home.

 Getting a late start on this tonight. Or a normal one, depending on how you look at it. In any event, it's 9 p.m. and I need to get something in the can for today. Before we get on with the business, links to this week's News.

Monday

Wednesday

Friday

 I'm particularly pleased with Friday's effort. As a part of the general thing the country finds itself, in re: dealing with systematic racism, there's a serious movement in the Mississippi Legislature to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag. I went into a little detail of why this is a big deal and why we're waiting until 2020 to make anything happen. A little history and a little background, that's what I'm here for.

 Wednesday was pretty good, too, as a look at the mess that was the Georgia primary vote and what it bodes for November. In short: nothing good as the GOP will use all at its means to decide the election. Monday was a fairly bog-standard wrap up of the weekend's events concerning the protests across the country in reaction to the murder of George Floyd, the growing discontent among some higher ranking Republicans with Trump's chances come November, and a little bit about Tropical Storm Cristobel, which thankfully turned out to be not much of nothing. A good piece for what it was, though.

 I've been keeping my eye on what's going on in Seattle, the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone" or "CHAZ". In all things, I recommend eschewing the national press and paying attention to the folks who actually live in a place that's in the news. I've long been a fan of indie magazines, having written for several, and The Stranger is considered one of the very best. Plus, they're keeping a solid look on what's going on without the bias and ignorance of some of the national publications.

 It seems folks in Nashville are trying to kick up a similar "autonomous zone" type thing, as well, despite dire warnings from Gov. Bill Lee. I don't know what he thinks he's going to do. I do believe that apart from the hard-core authoritarian types, any sort of government heavy handedness, from state or federal forces, doesn't go down as well as they think. It's interesting that a lot of the voices that have been screaming about government tyranny or Second Amendment rights - from the Bundy-types to the NRA - have been pretty quiet when the rubber is hitting the road. Undoubtedly, since this is happening mostly to black folks and left-leaning types, they're all of the sudden down to the ground with an authoritarian government ignoring basic civil rights.

 Anyhow, The Nashville Scene is a pretty good magazine, as well. Full disclosure, they paid me less than $50 for a story about someone, I think either Slobberbone or The Drive-By Truckers, nearly 20 years ago. As I said, I've always preferred those sort of magazines and have worked for a couple in the past. They never pay well or, indeed, enough to live on - this is indie journalism, after all - but it's always much more fun.

 Me and Momma had a fairly heavy conversation about all this and what it implies the other night. My mother is a very intelligent woman, but she is - by her own admittance - happily provincial and a bit naive about how the world outside Itawamba County actually is. She's also old fashioned and conservative. What I'm saying is she will listen but you have to take a hammer to her if you ever want to get anything through.

 Plus, while she understands what I mean when I tell her about being an atheist who leans towards far-left anarchism, she really doesn't like those stances. I think I got it through to her why this autonomous zone business wasn't the popular perception of anarchy but rather the political connotation of anarchism. That is, a rejection of unearned authoritarian groups as someone automatically obeyed. If your "leadership" fails to the extent that it did the folks in Capitol Hill, or so they consider, feel they're justified in telling them to piss off and taking it over on their own.

 If I get Sarah Thompson to understand that anarchism is a viable political ideology, I'll consider this a life well lived. Anyhow, that's plenty. I intend to keep the weekly stuff done in the morning (or as close to morning as I get) but anything goes for the weekend. In the meantime, keep safe, wash your hands, maintain social distancing, and don't let the bastards grind you down.