May 31, 2020 (In The Year of the Trump Virus)

May 31, 2020 (In The Year of the Trump Virus)

Things are moving fast, but at the same time, it is going slow-motion. The world is a series of horror incidents that seem to come from a 1950s Science-Fiction B-flick with paranoia touches, which is consistently a downer.  There is no good news on the horizon.  At times, I can say, "there's sunshine around the corner," or "it will get better."  The truth is it won't get better.  I think we are dealing with either the death of a culture (which can be a good thing) or the world is ending, and no one gets out alive.  Or, something in-between those two categories.

The uprising or riots, or whatever one wants to call it, is an event that is still happening as I write.  It can start one way and end up in another category as well.  I suspect that we will never know, because perhaps it began with passion, and then ends in boredom.  A brutal murder takes place in front of a phone camera, and the world shakes.   What upsets me the most is not just the death, but the fact that someone has the power over life and death, and chooses death for that person.   For many, sickly, it's acceptable for that police officer to do something like that.   On a daily basis, a Black person gets murdered by the police, and we are shocked in that manner of people getting shocked on Facebook or Twitter,  and then go on to another spectacle.  The obscenity of these people getting murdered for no reason than that they are black is the shocking aspect of it all.  We become accustomed to these men and women getting killed in front of cameras that it becomes wallpaper after a while.  One thing that the mainstream and underground media have in common is that they love to fetishize death.

I have met many good police officers, but then again, I'm white, so what do I know?   It seems that the police department is very much set up to be as a gang, where the occupation becomes an adopted family. You watch each other's back, even when a murder by a fellow police officer takes place.  The three other cops surrounding the killer is doing what it is trained to do - protect the family; in other words, the gang member, meaning the Police Department.  There's no reason why a man has to die for a counterfeit $20, or bad check, under the Police control.  If even, there was a crime being committed.

Still, it seems history repeats itself but also gets worse.  The Trump Virus is very much part of the social landscape where people are dying when they don't have to die.  Yet, a significant portion of the population is OK with either the death of a black man or woman, as well as someone who comes to contact with the virus. Freedom is very much a subjective desire or object.  One can be free from an illness or choose to spread their infection, without a care in the world.   One can dig their head into the sand, but you also have to come up for air.   Everything touched in this world becomes our property, and we don't take care of it.  Like dominos, you flick one, and they all come down.  - Tosh Berman.