Chauvin/Floyd Justice

Pretty much the world knows the circumstances. 8:46. Counter arguments state 8:15. As if the precise elapsed time from Chauvin’s down presser knee to George Floyd’s tortured death is pertinent, that the 30 second error somehow mitigates the outcome of death by police (as if relevant, sources now say more than 9 minutes).

Perhaps, with a deeper perusal of the available video, a reporter or two, covering for sides staunchly supporting brutal responses to any activity construed as illegal-willfully oblivious to deadly circumventions of the principal of presumption of innocence-will perhaps note, in Chauvin’s defence, that at the 1:49 mark his eyes tracked to a butterfly passing and became so entranced that he lost touch with what his knee was doing. Perhaps a Red Spotted Purple or an Aphrodite Fritillary? On a funny note…

Will Derek Chauvin get off? My gut says, yes. Not completely but yes. Maybe a lesser sentence followed by staged moments of media remorse, a restrained, “justice is served” pageant (including footage of a van carting Chauvin to a detention facility) ending with a short but ubiquitous reminder of his family’s 27 million dollar settlement and America moving forward through God’s love (cue Black preachers), then on to the next story. A year or two or five later Chauvin is on the street, paroled because…or maybe things have changed…I mean, maybe?

If a country’s legal system, its ideology of justice vaults pugnaciously from a justification of genocide, theft and enslavement what justice will the decedents of the genocided, the ghettoized, those cordoned off in pockets of destitution, be served? If the founding values of the country are matrixed in the glorification of acts of savagery as brutal as any cycling down the toilet of human horror shows, umbrella-ed by the rhetoric of 17-18 Century, blinkered pontificators of Enlightenment, what presentment of justice will follow?

What this trial, and so many of those preceding it, marks is the place a fractured nation state, scotch taped with an origin story of race supremacy and sustained by fits of transcendent violence, has come. Will the executors of American justice attempt a compromise on a hitherto evangelical adherence to a rotting race narrative and furtively attempt to navigate adamant shoals of nurtured division? Or will it exhale, damn the consequences and faith-fall into that shunned greatest promise sermonized by vilified and sainted dreamers? Or has the butterfly’s wings flapped long, long ago? Who can say? Certainly not I.

Auras

Patrick Ewing, Spike Lee, Charles Oakley at Madison Square Garden, Masai Ujiri at the Chase Center, famous Black men treated as instigators of conflict, aggressive transgressors storming sanctified systems of order and propriety. Belligerent agents of catastrophic change. I and most Black folk know this judgement raying from the eyes of those offended by our reach, our demands, our rise in a system they refuse to examine for plagues. In Brazil, Bolivia, in New Zealand, Australia, Western Europe and most tragically throughout the world, the eyes of bestial judgement pierce the flesh, engendering anger, rage, a raying back, a loop, a mask concealing the tripped circuit of our shared textures.

Every day I focus face to confront the gaze. My projected aura is not centered in fantasies of human goodwill, human empathy, the goodness of my species. It is structured, marshalled, swaying from, “I am not a threat” to “Not worth your time to fuck with”. Occasionally it will break, sugar glass, to fleetingly acknowledge a gaze not tossed with fear, suspicion, or suppressed malice. Those moments are memorable.

It is a harsh presentation developed over decades, years immersed in negative to strained neutral. It is not me, this aura, it is my fearful defence of self against the aggression you deem your right. You think it screams beast? Lol. It is a call and response and you are the preacher. It reflects the ruthlessly narrow gaze impacting, the silent shade you throw.

But am I/we/them/us/others not also locked in auras of defence? Throwing gaze like bullets of finality? Butterflies crushed between the cause and effect?

There is a white woman approaching. She sees me. She crosses the street before I’m too near. I taste fear diffusing wind. A shift, a glance at another woman and her lips’ curl. Cut eye, dismissive, projected loathing. She is black. But having faced the salivating gaze of men from adolescence, the entitled encroachment, smirking right to intrusion, violation of peace, of space marked safety, I will judge her aura forged in a shit-shined gaze of lust, of hostility, arrogance demanding shackled servility?

I have projected that gaze from the bubble of my aura. These streets. More complex than I wish to acknowledge.

I throw what I blame. Locked, I sit in the chaos of fires burning, concentrating on a match, willing it lit, careless of encroaching conflagrations.

Journeys

I am looking back at close to 65 years of life

I was raised in an oppressive cultural vacuum. On one hand I was taught the consciousness of the

the culture of the white/western European settler, the iron fist of the conqueror wrapped in the velvet glove of the civilizer. The cultural virtues of white men. Puissant, powerful, determined, forceful, tough and triumphant. These were the values that white men should uphold. And I was a failure according to these valued virtues. I was not strong or forceful. I was incapable of obtaining these virtues. I was diminished in my own mind. I realize now the impossibility of me carrying these virtues because I was also from early childhood on taught that I was antithesis of values due to my race. That I was both the conquered and the civilized, that I was darkness the savage the primitive inferior in all ways the white mans burden the shadow a darkness that must be ever kept from the light of European purity, the shining temple of European superiority that has since morphed into white civilization. I was taught by films, television, parents and the children I was raised with that I was the stain that proved their superiority I was burden by settler myths of their own superiority and the manifest obvious inferiority of a lesser spieces. I battle that insecurity that trembling anxiety of my worthlessness every day. It is a battle to breath, to stand, to shift the shackles enough to find moments of freedom of self worth. It is a battle I do not welcome but I will fight it always. I have no choice.

The Documentary: "The 14th Amendment" and Native Folk

I just watched Will Smith’s, The 14th Amendment. I am still recovering. Crushed, ripped by tears, knotted to rage, sorrow, pride and a bitter-sweet hope but mostly crushed. This is why.

In the first episode, a harrowing documentation of the fight to establish, arguably, the most significant legislation codified into U.S. law, an origin story, of sorts, on the evolution of American citizenship, there was not one mention of Native people. Complete, echoing silence. I could not contain the hollow emptiness and gut-wrenching heartbreak the conclusion of episode one brought me. The tears are still falling.

I imagine the bitter anger and feeling of abnegation this complete passing over of the struggle, the still rolling juggernaut of oppression grinding and piercing Native demands for even a moment’s recognition, a sustained glance, and I am profoundly ripped by an exclusion that screams out the fundamental failure of our species to create an inclusive tapestry of our interlinked and vastly painful narratives. An amazing first episode, brilliantly focused leaving vast vistas of overlooked stories, raging to be told.

It is time. Let our stories, collectively and intertwined, sing or pain to find a freeing joy.

There is no mention of Native people in any of episode synopsis of The 14th Amendment. Not one.

My Species' "Truths"

There are sectarian truths which make me wonder about the biochemical processes and/or environmental influences responsible for the germination of “belief” and the proliferation of “truth”. Sectarian beliefs and truths that percolate damn near everywhere and are to-the-bone frightening if you’re on downslide of them. Three in particular have me head-stubble scratching their rise to pre-eminence. They are: guns don’t kill people, people kill people, you’re taking away our history/culture, it was a Republic (the U.S.) that became an Empire. These three memes are examples that have lead me to meditate on the interesting-if often deadly-formation of cultural “truths”.

Guns don’t kill people, people kill people

How did the perfect meme for gun control become an entrenched right to blast fuckers who scare you? Is there a blunter way to say, fuck no! You ain’t giving you the right to hold my life in your hands! Get your damn hands away from me! Especially that damn index finger! It succinctly states why people should almost never be allowed to carry or own a gun. In fact, it’s why gun totting cops are less of an issue for me than humans with guns…Sorry, guys with guns. I will never trust any guy, anywhere with a gun. Because he’s a guy. I know this because I have a dick and know what it does to me...

It’s our history/culture they’re taking away

This one is a gut wrenching, eye buggin’ bit of lunacy. My people are the progeny of escaped slaves from the U.S. who fled to a less oppressive oppression in Canada. For my ancestors who stayed or were unable to make it out I have to wonder this; how is their generational enslavement, disenfranchisement, mutilation and murder by those held up as bastions of your culture, torchbearers of your history, your history and not theirs? What insanity leads you to believe that your ancestor’s viciousness against them is a history that should not belong to them? Is it your belief that only the oppressive side of the dominant/suppressed equation earns voice? ‘Nuff said.

The U.S. was a Republic and everything changed when it became an Empire

So the westward slaughter and theft of autonomous, Native lands was not an empire-building exercise? From the first invasions of origin-state, fleeing colonists to the establishing of a voracious and savage nation the U.S. was an empire bent on expansion. The level of dismissal of Native civilization, agency, history, on and on and on, is breathtaking.

While these frown-inducing truths are worthy of a deeper dive than presented here, I will refrain. There are an endless parade of others, trumpeted on the stages of every nation state, choruslining vaudevillian truths to bedazzled lovers of gaudy, culture ditties. Myopic, focused, self-serving, tribal truths spanning all of human history, simplifying and distorting broader truths to the detriment of the species. Just look at what I wrote. A pretty good example.

“Truths” are still schismatic and self-serving. Even those truths touted as universals are universals only until someone, eyeing someone else’s shit, needs to justify taking it from that someone. That’s when that glowing universal begins the downward slide to a shit-stained, partisan doctrine.

Leadership and Elites

A thought came to me while perusing the rooms on the audio app, Clubhouse. Is the concept of leadership now coupled to elite paternalism? Are Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos the heirs of Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela? Can leadership be decoupled from the upper echelons of hierarchical systems or is leadership now the purlieus of the wealthy? Pray not.

China Blocks Clubhouse...Duh.

China blocks Clubhouse… Like that was unexpected. And queue the messaging.

I admit to admiring the Neolithic gangster-cum-prophet who cunningly conceived the idea of the massaged message; i.e. shaping a self-serving and simplistic message into a consumable nugget, propagating it endlessly until the self-serving layers dissolve, to reveal a core message judged true and tasty by the targeted tribe.

A modern variant goes like this; China has gone from post WWII, machine age tyranny to high tech authoritarianism, once again proving that censorship is geo-specific to the benighted masses who have never experienced the opportunity to express-anything. Yes, concepts like freedom and equality are alien to these poor (but growing annoyingly richer), downtrodden folks while those of us living in Western democracies can speak with passion and insight on any issue regardless of the opinions of our largely benign elites or amicable neighbours.

Damn, I love a good sales job. It’s like living in a never-ending Superbowl commercial, as sponsored by Dupont. Of course, that’s if you’re doing well. Don’t start flaming, bitches. Breathe.

Yes, as a bougie, black male, i have on-paper rights which are the envy of countries and regions without those paper rights (although a shitton do). And beyond those specified on paper are my walk-around-rights which are enormous. In fact I enjoy freedoms that were unheard of in Canada in the very recent past. Like very, very recent past. So recent that I still have to put on a mental pair of gumboots to grape stomp nagging fears that me demanding those rights will black bag me back to the social conventions of my youth when rights of any kind were much more attenuated and grapes weren’t the only things stomped.

In my lifetime alone I’ve seen workers rights for Anglos rise (after a certain amount of bloodshed), 50s multiculturalism bring economic opportunities to the outlier tribes of west, West Asia (with a certain amount of bloodshed). The 60s ship in blacks and people of colour to the Less White North (making me feel much less lonely and yes, bloodshed.), Native folks resurrect a movement that wasn’t about to forget a cesspool of foul-play (lots of blood), all the way to the present where Gay Rights has expanded to cover an array of identities (and blood). In there somewhere white supremacy was challenged but that’s another babble blog.

Today we continue on, a raucous, embattled parade of intersecting and not-remotely-in-love bands of suspicious clans with pickaxes, out to maul the supports of a collapsing and gassy strip mine of conflicting narratives. And as anticipated a beige contingent has brought out the portable drill rigs to help along an era-defining and possible extinction level demolition.

Anyway, I’m bringing age and timelines up because I’ve seen and experienced things that will always cramp my freedom jig when the democracy and freedom parade marches by. I mean I can appreciate the pageantry but the music can be a bit loud. And China, like almost the entire world, has issues that will be dealt with in the traditional manner. Cause pitchforks may be obsolete as a technology of change but the idea of behind their use remains as cogent as ever.

Barely Upright Monkeys Knowing Shit: A Monkey's Analysis

One. I don’t know if “evolution” is a big T truth. Like irrefutable knowledge. Interesting premise, explains a lot but it’s kinda in the realm of mansplaining for me. The reason why I’m not running with it and screaming ignorance at alternative thought is cause I’ve looked in the mirror and walked around outside for a few decades and my experience with self and my species is, we like to talk and we don’t know shit. Literally. Studying shit didn’t get off the ground until the 1800s in the West Asian states of Europe (according to the West Asian states of Europe.) Up to then we just threw it at each other. Even the psychological study of scatology revolves around the nasty shit we do-with shit. This has influenced my thinking on the centuries intellectuals and profiteers have spent babbling about our “intelligence” and big ass, big “T” truth.

When people talk about how intelligent we are, how brilliant that person is I’m like, “Do you have a second opinion on the premise of human intelligence?” How often are accolades of brilliance based on the utility and profitability of that individual’s or groups’ ideas for those lauding that brilliance? More importantly, has any other species weighed in on the supposition of human intelligence?

Case in point: any one yet have a meaningful, intellectual conversation with a dolphin, a gorilla, a patch of moss? Anyone speak shark? Until we get a second opinion on our intelligence from another species, here or off planet, it’s all hubris. Us babbling on about us. That’s why, until that happens, I’m not taking anything any of you fuckers or myself say seriously. Unless you have a gun. Then you right. Spit that fiery oratory!

All the bedrock beliefs we hold as fundamental truths are based on some fucker or group of fuckers’ ability to physically exterminate alternatives. Change happens when the conqueror’s club, spear, musket or nuke no longer has the power to exterminate or at least dominate thought. Then shit gets crazy and fuckers frantically search for a new, upgraded baseball bat. I’ll call that my small “t” truth. Mainly cause I don’t know shit. But back to evolution.

Whether it’s a big “T” truth or not can we acknowledge that there will be missed nuances or theory shattering discoveries yet to come and shut the fuck up about how bad ass and brilliant and “knowing” we are? Cause when I look at the shit I’ve done and what the rest of us are doing I’m going with the idea we a bunch of barely upright monkeys, looking up at the stars with awe, while trying to figure out what to do with all that poop.

Knowing

The word "realize" means more to me than the concept of "knowing".

Stand Your Ground

As long as, “Stand your ground” means standing on my prone body I will find no legitimacy in your stance. I will never see my suffocation as your “right”. When we are linked in arms against oppression, bound to each other in professed humanity, then will I stand with you, shouting defiance, pursuing our mutual right to life. In memory of dead bodies and spirits bound to love.

Marlon Craft - Gang Shit (Official Music Video)

When artists see through the fog of division and speak hard truths in an endless drive to bring caresses to our species it is a bitter sweet joy to witness. Joy in a denied truth shining through, bitter in the growing brawn of the fog. To light.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqo-hyxjCYE

Shrooms for Geriatrics

Ok, so we went to a dispensary, ostensively to buy Spawn a grinder for their weed. Sure. That’s it. A grinder.

Actually it’s an activity many of us with covid protected jobs engage in. Shopping for oblivion. Crushing the anxiety of a dystopian future that much of the world is already experiencing.

Chewing, smoking, chugging (sipping if you’re bougie), bonging or snorting our way out of facing a future we’d rather not ponder just now. Some of us, well my generation, have the weirdly confusing luxury of knowing we only have a decade or so left, like we kinda have a hall pass to the fuckery that is sure to sink our progeny.

Our only fear is suffering such a catastrophic loss of privilege that we are forced to experience what Western propaganda has assured us we will never experience as long a we follow the mandated protocols of excess and binge without question.

So in aid of maintaining a 1950-esque delusion of Western security, shroom tea anyone?