Tag: riots

Twozdaz Wandering Political Thoughts

Stuff from around the web.

Ha, ha, remember when Kristi Noem said this? My goodness, those Trumpers really lack memories, conscience, and principles, don’t they?

More of the same, Stephen Miller edition…

Trump’s actions are not popular. Is the country heading in the wrong direction? You bet! Will that stop him? No, because he’s locked into an alternate reality.

Priorities, priorities, priorities.

I don’t understand. Why would ICE agents go to a restaurant in a war zone?

Country Star Zach Bryan Divides Fans With Anti-ICE Ballad

Once again, from Trump’s alternate reality…

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Just A Little Pause to Wonder

The New York Times featured interviews with Trump supporters to see what they said about current events such as ICE tactics, the protests in Los Angeles and deploying the National Guard there. This fellow had me wondering and laughing.

Brian D. Kozlowski, a lawyer who supports Mr. Trump, said on Thursday that the president responded appropriately to the protests in Los Angeles.

“It was necessary, given the riots,” he said.

“If you’re the governor of a state and you’re not cooperating with the law and federal agents, who are then getting attacked by citizens of the state,” he said, “then at that point, the federal government has every right to step in.”

“I don’t know what world you live in where you think you can attack a law enforcement officer,” he added.

The demonstrations in Los Angeles were generally peaceful, but there were pockets of violence, including protesters who kicked and threw objects at law enforcement vehicles, and officers have used tear gas.

Mr. Kozlowski said it appeared to him that Gov. Gavin Newsom of California was playing politics with the protests, allowing them to continue without requesting help from the National Guard so that he could cast himself as a foil to Mr. Trump.

“It certainly seems like there’s a lot of politically motivated decision-making taking place — or lack of decision-making,” he said.

Mr. Kozlowski said Americans should not be surprised that the Trump administration was following through on aggressive immigration enforcement, since Mr. Trump promised during the election campaign to do so.

“How did you not see this coming?” he asked.

So, Brian Kozlowski saw it coming. As the riots seemed to be important to Brian, I wonder how he felt about those Trump-inspired riots on January 6?

You know, the ones where Trump didn’t call out the National Guard when the police were being attacked.

I think you’ve shown your true colors, Brian.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music, “Every Breath You Take” by the Police (1983), was an obvious and unoriginal choice. Coaxed out of the cerebral cortex by images on the TV and net of law enforcement officers watching and attacking protesters, it works on multiple levels about watchers, watching, and being watched. Besides those confrontations, we’re watching COVID-related numbers, election events, and government actions as we gyrate about the best course to kickstart the money machines and normalize life as the case numbers rise.

The Police’s stalking song feels about right on this day in 2020.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

This is one of those days when I awoke and for some unknown reason have some song snatch in the stream. Does this happen to others? Am I the only one with a playlist in my head that goes click when I get up and start thinking?

Sure, I’m not. These aren’t the same as earworms, mind you. Sometimes they are earworms, which is a song that’s stuck in your head. There’s a different feel to earworms than just a the mental jukebox flipping something on. These songs aren’t necessarily stuck, just present. I’ll heavily bet that they are related to some auditory cortex wiring, though.

Aside: remembered this WebMD post from a few years ago and dragged it into the light: “Songs Stick in Everyone’s Head”. It mentions reasons related to neurosis and obsessions, and the cognitive itch. As a writer, I become obsessed; that’s a large part of being a writer for me, getting obsessed with ideas, concepts, stories, and characters, and trying to wring them out of my head and into the world in a way that the rest of the world might understand.

Today’s song, “What’s My Age Again?” is from 1999 and a group named Blink-182. I really liked the album name: Enema of the State. Good play on words? With many people and orgs battling ‘the state’ for a variety of reasons, maybe that’s the cognitive itch that supplied my stream with this song.

Or maybe the cognitive itch is the song’s year, 1999. Seems like things really began spinning weird with Bush v Gore and the Florida hanging chads (which could be the name of some kind of group) in the next year. 1999 was a good year for me in my world. Maybe my mind lauds it as the last good year.

Well, here it is. The song, I mean, not my world. It’s a video. I’d not seen it before today, but it’s amusing to watch three naked men (except shoes and socks) running around.

That is all.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Fed the cats, used the restroom, woke up (yeah, that was the order, to the best of my recollection, your honor), and realized I was humming “My Hero” by the Foo Fighters (1998). Thought it a good song for these times, when people need everyday heroes to manage commonplace matters.

[Chorus]
There goes my hero
Watch him as he goes
There goes my hero
He’s ordinary

[Bridge]
Kudos, my hero
Leaving all the mess
You know my hero
The one that’s on

h/t to Genius.com

Find a hero. Find yourself a hero. You don’t need to worship them; just support them.

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Are You Outraged?

Someone else wrote a blog titled, “Are You Outraged?” And I thought, am I outraged?

Let’s see. I was born in 1956, eleven years after WW II, but while the conflict in Korea was happening, and as the U.S. was getting drawn into Vietnam.

The Cold War was going strong. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. were ready to launch nukes and drop nukes at the slightest provocation.

1960 began strong, with John F. Kennedy getting elected. He promised to put a man on the moon. Meanwhile, protests and riots began. The 1960s were full of blood and smoke. Kennedy was assassinated; so was his brother. And Martin Luther King, Jr. Many blacks were lynched and murdered. Battles were fought over segregation, “Separate but equal”, and desegregation.

As races fought for equality, so did women, but the Equal Rights Amendment stalled.

The arms race sucked up resources and attention. Korean and Vietnam were ‘ended’ as conflicts, but more conflicts sprang up. War has not ceased in my lifetime, despite the fall of the U.S.S.R. Instead, it’s intensified.

As has the battle for equal rights and the ideal that skin color, sexual orientation, religious preferences, and genders should not matter, that we, as a nation, are only as strong as the weakest among us, so we must protect them.

The battle for the environment has intensified, too, and with it, the understanding that this is one world, and once again, in order to survive, we must survive together, and protect our planet, or we may all suffer, and many of us will perish, bringing our civilization to our knees.

These seem like self-evident truths, but instead, another war has arisen, this one about what constitutes truths, facts, science, and evidence. The way that numbers and words are spun to create division and distraction spins my head.

Am I outraged? Fucking yes. After a lifetime of this, I thought we’d be further advanced. But as I watch the police brutality and government response to the murders and protests, echoes of history reverberate. I’m reminded of the tanks in Hungary in 1956 as the Soviet Union crushed an uprising.

I’m reminded of the Watts riots.

I’m reminded of Tienanmen Square in 1989.

I’m reminded of the Berlin Wall.

I’m reminded of Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, and Detroit, Michigan.

I’m reminded of the American Civil War.

I’m reminded of the rise of Solidarity in Poland.

I’m reminded of Ferguson.

I’m reminded of the Democratic National Convention in 1968.

I’m reminded of Kent State in 1970.

I’m reminded of countless sit-ins and marches against war and for peace, against injustice and for equality.

I’m reminded of so many events that I’ve seen and read of in the narrow focus of my short life, and I’m reminded of so many who live in fear and suffer at the hands of those who are supposed to serve and protect.

Am I outraged?

I watch the news, play the viral videos, and read the articles this week and wonder why so many fight against others’ equality. I wonder how so many can be so cruel to fellow humans. The outright cruelty and disregard demonstrated as police officers spray, beat, shoot, and mistreat their fellow citizens, their fellow humans, horrifies me.

Am I outraged?

I am sickened. I am saddened. I am furious.

Yes, I am outraged.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Back to life for today’s music.

Reading, hearing, and thinking about many black people’s comments yesterday and this morning, I realize (again, sadly) how often they live in tension and fear.

Yet, so many whites do as well – as witnessed by them recorded on videos calling police on blacks just because they’re black.

Blacks have a foundation for their fears; we’ve seen too many videos of police applying unnecessary force and violence on black people, or white people getting away with violence against black people, because, white…black.

As we watch and protest, counter-protest, or hold our breaths and wait, I thought about people and praying, and stumbled into Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer” (1986). The song is about a couple who have nothing but each other, who are hoping to make it together. As noted many times, the song was written during the Reagan era as trickle-down economics were touted. As we know, trickle-down is a bullshit theory that enables the wealthy to get wealthier and provides a cop-out to others, permitting them to issue tax cuts to the wealthy without remorse. (Yeah, and it certainly worked during the coronaivirus in America, as the wealthier managed to increase their wealth while a huge swath of Americans struggle between buying food or paying rent/house payments.)

Anyway…

Seems like, with high-unemployment, a corrupt Republican administration, continuing police brutality and militarization, protests, looting, riots, and then natural disasters AND the novel coronavirus, many in the United States are living on a prayer.

And that’s why it’s today’s theme music.

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The Dream Whisperer

It was late November in 2015, just a few days after Thanksgiving. Prompted by a dream, he sat and write. It seemed so outlandish and shocking, he shared it with nobody.

His dream said that Donald Trump would be the President of the United States. At that point, many were laughing at him and his crude, ridiculous bombastic declarations as he demanded President Obama’s birth certificate, and lied. It seemed impossible that he would be POTUS, but the dream whisperer said, “It’s gonna happen.”

In 2020, an epidemic would sweep the world, the dream whisperer said, forcing people to wear masks and stay inside their homes; businesses would shut down. “It’s gonna happen,” the dream whisperer insisted, continuing, that some, driven by the President Trump’s false promises, scoffing remarks, and refusal to heed the advice himself, would disbelieve and refuse to follow the science and medical advisors. The nation’s divisiveness would increase, shocking the citizens and the world.

The final nails would come from escalating violence, the dream whisperer said. As President Trump bullied, so his followers bullied. As he called for violence and to be tough and cruel, so his followers did as he said, acting under the umbrella of being Christians, while demonstrating nothing of traditional Christian principles.

So he saw in 2015, scenes in dreams that shock and dismayed him. Still, he’d written them down, mostly in amusement back then. Surely, it would never be that bad.

But one early June night in 2020, he had another dream. Driven awake, he pulled out the vision from 2015 and reviewed its contents. He’d not be able to believe it; it seemed so stunning and impossible, like a throwback to an earlier era of troubled times in the United States. Hadn’t they evolved past all of those things? Yes, he’d believed they had; that’s why the dream was so difficult to believe. Yet, here they were as a nation…

And now he had a new dream to write, one where he saw where they’d be in 2024. It seemed so different, so impossible because of where they were now —

But that’s exactly how he’d reacted in 2015.

And so, he began to write. History does repeat itself. Sometimes, some of it is good.

At least, that’s what the dream whisperer said.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music is an Queen song from 1970, “Keep Yourself Alive”.

Keep yourself alive was my reflection to watching protests grow into riots as police and others escalate the situation. It’s been an ongoing mutter in my head as we deal with the novel coronavirus situation. Why practice social distancing, masking, isolation, and good hygiene? Well, to mitigate spreading the virus, to gain time to understand it, to gain time to allow our healthcare systems the chance to cope with it, and well, to keep ourselves alive until a vaccine can be found.

Thought it works well on this first day of June in the year of the riots and COVID-19.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Watching the riots remind me of my youth. Born in 1956 in the U.S., we had riots frequently in the sixties.

This month’s riot began when George Floyd, a black man, was apprehended by police, and died, allegedly for something involving forged documents.

Death by police officer is surely the response for such a heinous suspicion, right?

Watching police brutality in 1971, Obie Benson questioned what he was seeing. With Al Cleveland and Marvin Gaye, the thoughts were put into a song that became a Marvin Gaye hit. At that time, protesters were standing up against the Vietnam War. Police, demonstrating the restraint that we’ve come to know well from them, waded in, resulting in what became known as “Bloody Thursday”.

We’ve seen it many times; protests arise. Unless you’re white and armed (see Michigan this year), the police are gonna come hard. (Didn’t help that the POTUS (ever thoughtful and considered in his response) said, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” quoting the Miami police chief from the 1967 riots).

The government is by the people and for the people, until the people speak up against the government (unless, again, you’re armed and white in the woke United States) (witness the frequency of armed white males killers with automatic weapons being peacefully apprehended), then look out, people.

Marvin Gaye’s song says it well:

[Verse 1]
Mother, mother
There’s too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There’s far too many of you dying
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some loving here today, yeah

[Verse 2]
Father, father
We don’t need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some loving here today

[Chorus]
Picket lines and picket signs
Don’t punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what’s going on
What’s going on
Yeah, what’s going on
Ah, what’s going on

h/t Genius.com.

BTW, this post was created with the new WP editor. Initial question: WTF did it need to change? Evolutionary improvements, I understand. I thought the other was an intuitive system. Now they want me to ‘insert blocks’, which include such common blocks such as ‘paragraphs’. Christ.

Their little floating block editor jumps in front of text, forcing you to navigate around it to see WTF is going on.

Grrrr.

Here is “What’s Going on”.

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