Channeling My Inner Good German

[mallorys_camera]

White privilege in action:

Police arrested a CNN reporter and his support crew early this a.m. at the scene of the Minneapolis riots.

The arrest took place about a block away from the police station that had been set ablaze. The CNN crew identified themselves and told police they would move anywhere the police wanted them to move.

The police arrested them anyway.

Later, police claimed the crew hadn’t identified themselves, had refused to move.

But the reporter’s camera, which he’d set on the ground, had continued to roll, and so, the actual incident had been caught on tape.

This CNN reporter is black and Hispanic.

Another CNN reporter at the scene was also approached by police. He identified himself, and police told him, Okay, you’re allowed here.

This CNN reporter is white.

Doesn’t get more blatant than that.

###

The situation in Minneapolis is practically unbearable—not just because of what it is but also because of what it resembles: the ’92 Rodney King riots in LA.

The cop who killed George Floyd reportedly worked with George Floyd at a place called the El Nuevo Rodeo Club, so it’s hard to imagine that he didn’t recognize Floyd when he brutalized Floyd, hard to parse the incident in any other way than that he was using his official position to get personal revenge on Floyd—for what, I wonder?

My imagination sez they had a heated conversation about Colin Kaepernick, and the NFL, and taking the knee. I mean, just the way that cop brutalized Floyd—who the hell kneels on someone’s neck for eight long minutes? This is not a maneuver that’s taught in any Police Academy. So where did it come from?

And why haven’t they arrested this man?

###

I keep looking for the spark that’s gonna burn this whole thing down.

The tinder is everywhere.

I look at things, and I think, France in 1788. Russia in 1916.

Forty million people unemployed. A plague that mostly threatens the lives of minorities and the economic underclass.

When it happens, it happens fast…

###

The awfulness of it all is practically paralyzing.

Makes it very difficult for me to focus on anything.

In one of my more poignant exchanges with my mother as she was dying, she told me, “I sit, and stare out of my window a lot. Watch all the people living their crummy little lives. That’s all I’m asking for, really. The chance to live my crummy little life.”

That’s what George Floyd wanted, too.

That’s what I want.

That’s what everyone wants.

I’m a current events junkie, but at this point, I’m thinking it would be wise to insulate myself from all news. It’s just so uniformly horrible. No Heisenberg Effect in evidence, either: It goes right on horribly happening whether I’m aware of it or not; my observation of it is not a force for good, changing it for the better.

So why do I have to know about it?

Maybe this is how those Weimar Republic Good Germans desensitized themselves in the buildup to the death camps: They stopped tracking news.

I totally understand the temptation.

Meanwhile, I have a long list of Things To Do. I don’t feel like doing any of them. But needs must.