The Thick Blue Line

We thought we were going to talk about Tulsa.

There’s a lot to say about Tulsa. How it was supposed to be the Tyrant’s triumphant return to public life. How he would once again ramble on before an adoring crowd. How it was originally deliberately scheduled to step on Juneteenth, in the city where a racist massacre happened a century ago. How his campaign hyped the registration numbers, which were wildly inflated by kids monkeywrenching the online signup. How, in the end, the 19,000-seat arena was only a third full.

There’s a lot to say, but we didn’t know where to start.

And then we saw this photo.

“Police in Florissant, Missouri, protecting people while they paint a blue line over a BLM street mural,” reads the caption.

That’s not quite what they’re doing.

Specifically, what they’re doing is this: Covering the large block letters of BLACK LIVES MATTER with blue paint.

The blue, of course, representing the police.

As antifascist commentary on a recognizable subset of citizens using state violence to obliterate another recognizable subset of citizens, you can’t do much better.

As antiracist commentary on whom the police serve in a community — and whom they do not — you can’t do much better, either.

As an illustration of why the police as an institution needs to be defunded, if not abolished and reconceived from the ground up, well, that’s pretty much it: This is what police have become. Some folks will say this is what they’ve been all along — and show you the receipts — and we’re only just noticing it now, those of us who haven’t been subjected to it since birth.

And they wouldn’t be wrong.

We can’t just do it that way, of course. We can’t just rip out the police by the roots and wait a year or two for something different, something better, to take their place. Our ship is at sea, and we need to stay afloat while getting it into drydock.

You can recognize this. You can acknowledge this. You can see the necessity of replacement while understanding the difficulty involved. Unless that’s not what you want to do, in which case you concoct a ton of excuses why we shouldn’t even try.

You can just paint over the problem and consider it solved.

We were going to talk about Tulsa. We were going to talk about the cracks in the edifice, how maybe, just maybe, the Tyrant won’t be able to steal two elections in a row.

But the problem isn’t the Tyrant, it’s the tyranny. It’s the people who enable the tyranny, people who over generations have built an edifice that perpetuates it, how the tyranny will remain after the Tyrant is gone.

Donald Trump isn’t the cause of our problems. He’s the result of them.

nojo
12:29 pm • Sunday • June 21, 2020
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10 Comments

ManchuCandidate

3:35 pm • Sunday • June 21, 2020

Fucking Authoritarians.

It really is just fortunate that when US Amercia gets a case of it that it is the most incompetent and stupid variety.

¡Andrew!

12:25 pm • Tuesday • June 23, 2020

@ManchuCandidate: People from the 1940s would be completely mind-fucked knowing that we’re praying for Germany to save us from AmeriKKKa’s psychotic Christofascists.

5:41 pm • Thursday • June 25, 2020

@ManchuCandidate: Congratulations on the successful reopening! While a second wave is always a concern, you have a lot to be proud of in the way that your government and fellow Canadians endured, supported each other, and managed through this ordeal. Your nation is truly a model to look towards for inspiration.*

*Excluding serial killer eyes/secret American Andrew Scheer, Canuckistani Tr666p blimp Doug Ford, and Alberta oil incubus Jason Kenney, obviously.

7:59 pm • Thursday • June 25, 2020

@¡Andrew!:
Thanks…?

We also shut down the morons screaming about masks and freedumz. However, we still have our share of idiots (many who live in the COVID hotspot where I live.)

Your media takes morons more seriously than ours does.

9:36 pm • Thursday • June 25, 2020

@ManchuCandidate: I sincerely find great solace in knowing that there are honest, decent, competent people in charge, at least in other countries. This is why I get my serious news from foreign media.

And really in truth, Washington State isn’t too different than Canada City. Along with Oregon and California, we actually have far more in common socio-politically with our British Columbian counterparts than the rest of the United States. It must be weird watching your next door neighbor collapse into total chaos.

9:48 pm • Thursday • June 25, 2020

At the risk of going on (yet another) rant, this is what I hate most about the US: Our entire society is set up to amplify and empower our worst citizens.

The sociopathic racists, the insatiably greedy 1%, the ammosexual gun-humpers, the soulless lying con artists, and forever the religious nutz. Stupid, spiteful, hateful assholes down to each one; our worst citizens are always in charge. Lacking any critical thinking skills, they are grossly overrepresented in politics, the media, and society-ruining, non-stop national disasters, and they’ve found their idolatrous Messiah in Prezirapist AntiChrist.

Technological innovations only seem to make it worse: Facebook and Twitter are just intolerable online sewers.
Comment threads are mostly toxic.
Dating and fuck buddy apps are full of flakes.

I know the good, kind, caring, honorable people here could break free and build a great society, but like an abused spouse, we just can’t seem to escape.

10:16 pm • Thursday • June 25, 2020

Executive summary/lost Prince title track:
It takes a nation of dumfux 2 hold us back.

11:10 pm • Thursday • June 25, 2020

On the + side, the rage workouts that I enjoy after reading the news in the mornings have given me some fairly decent muscle gains ; )

4:40 pm • Friday • June 26, 2020

/in other news/

Curbed LA: Dead.
Even worse: The carcass has been purchased by New York Magazine. The new blog will be called “I Spit on Your Grave.”

4:42 pm • Friday • June 26, 2020

Tulsa CoVID cases spike upwards this week. I can’t imagine why.