Some Thoughts on a Monday

I was mostly managing any anxiousness about the current state of affairs recently. Outside of an ugly week or so in late April where the whole "everything is closed down" situation got in my head really badly for some reason, I've felt mostly OK with my status in the pandemic.

My concern's still focused on my parents and my friends, since it's pretty easy for me to stay isolated. My mom's had family business that requires her to be around people who aren't being anywhere near as cautious as her, and my dad's stressed about vehicle issues and dog health issues, but both are OK so far. Alex is actually able to work again in the last week or so. That alleviates my concerns about his financial situation slightly (I know I can afford to be his financial backstop for a while longer, but I'd rather not), but increases my concerns about his health situation. People who visit Lake of the Ozarks to drink and hang out in pools are not worrying about social distancing.

Alex swears up and down he's wearing a mask at his gigs, keeping hand sanitizer at the ready, and not allowing anyone up on stage. But I know that even while he's taking precautions, he's glad to be back at it. Alex busted his butt building his rep and his business, and he took this setback pretty hard. Made him feel like a decade of work got erased, so improvement's a good thing.

And now the country's on fire. More than it was already.

The part that's the most maddening - not surprising, but maddening - to me is how the police were perfectly capable of remaining calm when confronted with all those heavily armed cracker dipshits demanding the right to go to hair salons and Applebees, but now it's like they're a bunch of angsty teens going nuts in Grand Theft Auto. Run over those protestors! Push down the old man with the cane! Pepper spray people who are on their knees not resisting or are holding signs!

I mean, that sign might give someone a papercut, or eyestrain if their handwriting was poor. Clearly a major threat.

Whatever limited and ineffectual fetters there actually were on the police are entirely gone. They can't even bother to maintain an illusion they're tying to "serve" the public. Nobody with any authority is reining them in. Trump is actively encouraging the need to "dominate". I don't see how the police applying greater amounts of excessive violence and brutality to large numbers of black people and other minorities is going to curb demonstrations about the police applying excessive violence and brutality to black people and other minorities. Unless they just start mass slaughters, which would not surprise me, but even then, not sure it'll go like they think.

People are understandably pissed off and don't see any reason to respect a system that has never shown any respect for them, or even considered them people. At some point, a person stops giving a damn what that system tells them to do. Following the rules doesn't make it safe for them. Black people get killed buying cigarettes, or for walking or running away from people pointing weapons at them, or any number of other innocuous activities.

The few interactions I've had with police over the years have been uneventful, but I was always on edge that I was going to say or do something that the cop was going to take offense to. Then I'd be handcuffed and thrown in the back of his cop car and who knows from there. But I'm white, so I don't think I ever had any fear those cops were going to shoot me, or even beat the shit out of me, for whatever it was I was somehow going to do that pissed them off.

(Alex was another matter, because he's much more outspoken if he thinks someone's being a bully or an ass. Especially if he drank too much. And especially when he was younger, and more prone to getting himself in situations where the police might be summoned. He's a great friend, but sometimes he's exhausting.)

I don't know how this is going to play out. I like to think - in my brief moments of wild optimism - we'd see some kind of systemic reforms in law enforcement and the judicial system, but the whole thing seems so completely fucked I'm not sure where you start. Reducing the number of crimes that result in jail time? Prisons run by private companies for profit seems like something to be abandoned (fewer prisons in general probably wouldn't hurt). Taking away all lethal weaponry from police (and all those ridiculous assault vehicles that look like something out GI Joe?) Not that they can't kill someone without it - see the people choked to death in recent years - but at least make it as difficult as possible. The cynical part of me expects "oversight committees" that will give the appearance something is being done, but will function mostly as a perfunctory rubber stamp of approval for any action the police take.