Please don't tell me how the story ends.

 I don't know, man. I just don't know. It's going to be a long summer, I think.

 So, the protests that started in Minneapolis over the murder by police of George Floyd for spending a possibly fake $20 bill in a grocery store have spread across the country. Atlanta, Los Angeles, Memphis, Seattle, Louisville, Houston, hell, even Tupelo. They've gone as far and wide as Toronto, London and Berlin. That's right, our embarrassment of a law enforcement system is a world-wide shame.

 Before we get too deep into it, links from the News of the week:

Monday

Wednesday

Friday

 Monday is basically catching up after a rough personal weekend, and Wednesday's talking about how Bill Barr's Department of Justice is letting insider trader and Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler off the hook. Turns out having your husband - CEO of the New York Stock Exchange - make a million dollar contribution to the President's Super PAC goes a long, long way in the interest of justice. Imagine that.

 Friday, well... I don't want to say I'm proud of it, but I do think it's a good piece. It's about the details of the Floyd murder and how the protests are becoming what they are. I didn't like having to write it, but here we are. Still, whatever it is I do, it's a primo example of it.

 That all being said, the protests have definitely changed. I don't know if it's a natural evolution or if they've been hijacked by people and groups (organized or otherwise) who're taking advantage of the confusion and anger of Black America at yet another murder of another black person by the police to advance different agendas.

 All of that sounds bad. Maybe it is, I don't know. Anti-rent groups, anti-government groups, anarchist black bloc folks, those "Boogaloo" goobers, Proud Boys, soi-disant socialists, radicals of every stripe, and people who just like to see the things burned have been accused - credibly in some cases, others not so much - of escalating the protests into riots by giving the cops a reason to turn violent. And then there are credible accusations of the police meeting peaceful protests with pepper spray and batons right out of the gate. There's been plenty of accusations of cops doing some "agent provocateur" business, and in some cases, the cops' attempts to deny it have come off... well, let's just say they're not due the benefit of the doubt and leave it at that.

 Me, I don't know. Here on my hill in Peaceful Valley, 15 miles from the nearest gas station, it's hard to tell. I am a little surprised Tupelo held a rally, but the Lee County police's reputation with the Lee County African American population is spotty to say the least. This is Mississippi, after all, and old times here are not forgotten at all. I don't really do protests anymore, mainly because my social anxiety doesn't want to be around a large group of people having a good time, much less one telling the Man to eat shit and daring him to do something about it.

 I'm not proud of it, but there you go. I do what I can, even if it's just acting as a chronicler of the times. Something is in the air, though. I mentioned the "Boogaloo" thing earlier. From what I understood, it was an outgrowth of the whole Pepe/groyper/kekistan balderdash of disaffected right-wing white kids from the suburbs who think not getting laid because they have a lot of guns is enough to wage another Civil War.

 However, according to this elucidating thread by J.J. MacNab of George Washington University, it isn't that black and white. McNab studies anti-government extremism and has shown herself to not only be a reliable source of information but also one of the more insightful chroniclers of the world of sovereign citizens, anti-tax protesters and other assorted pissed off white dudes. Some Boogaloos support the police, some detest them. Some support the military, some detest it. Some support Trump, some loathe him. Some are explicitly white supremacist, some are explicitly racist. Age, economic status, race, all of that is secondary to an anger and resentment that's looking for an outlet. It's as varied and lacking in coherent ideology as anarchism is. Some explicitly call for violence, while some merely warn that it's inevitable.

 Me, I don't know. I will never understand why we all can't just be nice to each other and have a good time. Corporate America doesn't have to be a soulless, empty hole of mendacity and greed, and the government doesn't have to be crooked, small and greedy. The masters of the internet don't have to be craven bootlickers to power who sell their soul for 30 pieces of silver and stock options. The cops don't have to be violent and thuggish, and the military doesn't have to bully the rest of the world at the behest of business interests. We don't have to screw each other over and horde all we can just to survive or, if not that, feel worthy of respect and admiration.

 I've said before that as much interest as I have in anarchism, I've never really felt welcome by any of the various strains of thought. Being a weird old writer on a hill suits me more, in that if no one wants me around, I'm fine by myself. Maybe it isn't that drastic, but I'm too tired to care and have too much fun doing what I do to risk screwing it up. Part of me wishes I could be in the thick of things, as I wonder if this is how the air smelled in the late '60s in places like Chicago and Berkeley. Only now, you don't have to actually be in those cities to be a part of the ride. The wonders of modern technology have put us all on the front lines if we want to be there.

 Again, I don't know, man. It's all too big for me. And on top of that, we're still seeing an unchecked, raging epidemic that's killed 100,000 people and shows no signs of slowing down. Be nice to each other. Have a good time but not if it comes at the expense of someone else's enjoyment of life. Don't trust the government, the cops or even the media. Trust yourself and be able to make decisions.

 Above all, get a helmet and buckle in, neighbors. It's going to be a bumpy ride in this long, hot summer.

Praise the Lord and Pass the Tambourine.

 Weird. This is a new layout for the posting page. We'll see if it's just cosmetic, but I will say I don't like the left-hand side all the way up against the edge of the screen.

 Goddamn internet's still acting up. Had a guy come out and look at it, and while I hate to be mean, he was as useless as tits on a rooster. The replacement modem he gave me didn't work. Furthermore, I learned the local telephone company that provides the DSL - which, at its fastest clocks in around 12 Mbps at best - has to reuse and repair equipment. They only cover Itawamba County and only provide DSL to my area because someone with ties to the owner wanted it. They're putting in fiber-optic cable, but they're going to stop a good five miles from here. On the upside, Tombigbee Power is coming from the other direction with fiber optic, so hopefully by the end of the year, this will be a thing of the past.

 Okay. So much for that. I'd usually wait until the weekend to shine on the News at the WordPress site, but I think yesterday's monster is particularly noteworthy. Because it wound up being so long before all was said and done, I broke it up into two chunks each concentrating on one topic. First is a rundown of the frankly risible welfare scam currently afflicting Mississippi and further weakening Gov. Tate Reeves' stroke in Jackson. While poor folks in the poorest state in the union getting shafted once again by conservative politicians and crooked rich people isn't something to laugh at, this involved Christian wrestling organizers and that just cracks me up. Don't know why. Plus, it goes over all the other dirty deeds by Republicans currently befouling my fair home state.

 The second isn't much funny at all. It's concerning the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man, by two white men in a predominantly white neighborhood in Georgia. I think I did a particularly good bit of journalism, so please do read for the lowdown. In a nutshell, Arbery was running down a street in this neighborhood, and Gregory McMichael and his son Travis chased him down, tried to get him to stop and "talk" to them, got involved in a physical altercation with Arbery involving Travis McMichael and a shotgun when he didn't, three shots were fired and two hit Arbery in the chest to leave him dead in the street. The McMichaels claimed he fit the profile of someone they thought had been robbing different houses in the neighborhood and claimed to have seen him look into the window, alternately using "stand you ground" and "citizen's arrest" as justification. Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper, said her son was jogging and indeed had jogged through that neighborhood before.

 This all happened Feb. 23. The original prosecutor had to recuse herself because Gregory McMichael used to work as an investigator for her office. The second prosecutor had to recuse himself because his son worked in the first prosecutor's office. The second prosecutor was ready to drop the charges, citing Arbery's high school arrests for shoplifting and having a gun on school campus and claiming he had "mental issues," though without any proof. The case only really got due attention after a video of the shooting - filmed apparently by a friend of the McMichaels - surfaced on a Georgia radio station's website and became viral on social media earlier in the week. The case is now in the hands of a third prosecutor from a county 70 miles away and he's announced he intends to fully investigate the shooting and, if necessary, bring charges against the McMichaels.

 Now.

 As with every time this sort of thing happens, legal geniuses on Twitter and Facebook who claim they're either "waiting for all the facts" or that for some reason, shooting a man dead because you think he might be someone who might be a robber is okay because he reacted poorly to two white men with guns chasing him down is perfectly reasonable. Either way, they're infuriated if you call either the shooter or them racist, and bemoan how liberals have tarnished the word because blahdy-blah-blah. Seriously, you sort of wish they'd get a new tune.

 To refresh everyone, I am a white man who was raised and currently lives in the South. Mississippi, in fact. Furthermore, I've not only lived in Georgia but I've never lived anywhere other than the South, either in a rural area, a college town or New Orleans. What I'm saying is, I feel very confident on making a judgment as to whether anti-black racism played a part in this, as well as the overall white supremacist leanings of both Georgia and the United States in general. For the "all the facts" crowd, I think there are enough for me to render judgement without fear of being unfair.

 This is nothing but racism. Aside from the judges' bullshit - and the first judge made the news last year for aggressively prosecuting a black woman who voted in the wrong district because she was given wrong info - the shooting itself was racist. The McMichaels are racist. Now, they may not be cross-burning, fully paid up Klansman. They may have black friends. They still thought a black man running down their street was not only probably the guy who they think had been robbing the area, though even that said robber's black is an assumption, he was worth going after armed and intending to shoot, if necessary, to make a citizen's arrest. Even then, a citizen's arrest is only valid if one sees someone committing a crime or has personal knowledge of a crime committed. Records show 911 was called, but all the McMichaels did was say "There's a black guy running down the street" as justification. Indeed, even the claim that Arbery looked through the window is supposition on their part.

 Furthermore, if you're trying to find why the McMichaels were justified in chasing down and shooting a man for no discernible reason, you yourself are racist as hell, white robe in your closet or not. That's a lot of the problem with American racism. We've relegated it to toothless hillbillies and made it almost comical, when it's a real thing most People of Color deal with almost constantly. Particularly black people who, if you read your history with an honest eye, know we as a nation have royally fucked them other from the days of slavery until the days of James Byrd, and did so with vim and gusto. No, you don't have to drop n-bombs left and right and, no, you don't have to have a Rebel Flag hanging on your wall.

 But if you think it's okay that two random yo-yos shoot someone because they think he's a burglar because he's black and running, then yes, you are as racist the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Maybe even worse, because he's at least honest about it. We pretend anti-black racism ended with the Civil War or, if we're generous, Martin Luther King's work or, if we're stupid, Barack Obama's election to president. But that just ain't so. Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, John Crawfod III, Philandro Castile, and now Aumaud Arbery and Sean Reed are all dead because we're a racist culture that doesn't care if black people get killed and white people get away with it.

 Doesn't matter if they have a gun permit. Doesn't matter if they were minding their own business. Doesn't matter if they needed medical care. Doesn't matter if they were in their own home. We as a culture are fine with white people shooting black people and suffering no consequences for it. And if you try to justify the shootings, either as a natural part of police work or people who're defending themselves, you're saying you're fine with it, too. You can try to deny it and claim all the black friends/relatives/sex partners you want, it's still so.

 Some say racism, particularly anti-black racism, is America's Original Sin. That may be so, but a large part of it is the different rules we hold for white people and everyone else. Last week saw armed and masked "protesters," many kitted out in ill-fitting combat gear, demanding to be allowed in the Michigan capitol to scream in cops' faces about how unfair it was they couldn't get a haircut. The same sort of people regularly parade around with their high-powered weaponry, going to shopping centers or even gun control rallies. These same people protested a recent vote on a gun law in Virginia and were so unhinged they ran a pro-gun Libertarian state senator into protective custody because they didn't understand the bill being voted on.

 Not a one of 'em gets shot or even asked to maybe not go to Starbucks loaded for bear. Indeed, we're told to be thankful that these "protests" don't turn into violent blood baths, the implication that maybe we shouldn't push them too far. But gun control is another issue, and really doesn't concern the police nor the law enforcement system. Both are not only riddled with racists, active and passive, but both were in large part designed in such a way to keep black people "in their place". One of the largest gun bans ever passed was by Gov. Ronald Reagan in the '60s once Black Panthers started walking around strapped and loaded. Morons claim Jim Crow wouldn't have happened if black people had access to guns, conveniently ignoring the fact the reason they didn't is because the racist white power structure set the law up that way. Black people who couldn't find work were charged with vagrancy, making finding a good job to keep them occupied that much harder.

 This isn't just a conservative issue, either. Mainstream liberals regularly ignore the black female voting block that often decides elections and as often as not, soi-disant leftists dismiss the concerns of the black community as "identity politics" not as important as universal health care or American foreign policy. We say "pimp" and "ghetto" and "ratchet" and "sleep" and don't care how a black person might feel hearing us throw those words around to describe nothing important.

 When it comes to racism, especially against black people, we are all guilty, we are all culpable and we are all responsible for fixing it. Stop asking black folks to "meet you halfway" or to "understand where you're coming from". They don't owe you the benefit of the doubt. We done pissed that away, neighbors. Stop saying you don't see color or that you judge people by their merits. You do and you don't, and neither does anyone any good whatsoever.

 All right. I believe I've made my point and, no, I don't care if you disagree. You'll have to either learn to live with being wrong or maybe reassess your behavior and ideas. As for now, I think I'll take a nap and then play some Phantom Doctrine. Cold-war era spy in an XCOM-like set up. It's pretty decent and Steam is offering it for a killer price, 80% off. Otherwise, wash your hands, cover your face and stop being shitty to service industry workers who ask you to not cough on them.

Thursday, January 2, 2020

 The rain's set in and it's been pouring down all day. They're getting it worse south of us with some wind and thunder, and as soon as I wrote that out a not-insignificant peel of thunder rolled through. Otis is not allowed to go outside, though, and he is in high dudgeon. So, let's go.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

 Lazy Sunday coming down. Lazy week ending, now that I think about it. That's not a bad thing.

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

 Man, hasn't it been a weird day? In among the never-ending parade of, admittedly, "weird days", this one has been particularly hard on the nerves. Not so much mind-breaking, just petulantly unpleasant.