Be Objective

Rebecca and I got together to talk about Ferguson on Sunday afternoon. It felt like things were getting less rugged out there and we had a full week's worth of news to digest. She said that she didn't know how to talk about it, and I suggested a timeline. Suggested is light. I said timeline and then went and yelled about what happened at what particular times for six minutes uninterrupted.

And that's good training from journalism and philosophy. (Yelling at a coffee bar notwithstanding...) Check your work, take individual pieces one at a time and not in big gulps, make connections from one piece to another, always. Back up what you say with facts. All well and good. Little pieces give you a thing to start on and build from. You build long enough like that and you'll have something that'll hold.

It sounded good and felt good on Sunday afternoon. Then, of course came Sunday evening, and it whatever good feeling I had from the conversation disintegrated. A hate group with a long history of murder that I won't link to announced they're going to show up to protect white businesses, whomever the police are this time around (normal St. Louis police? Ferguson police? Those MO state police that actually talked with people?) brought back their military weaponry and the same grisly play happened again.

As I write this, more anarchist collectives from out of town are coming in looking for a fight, against the wishes of the Ferguson community and just no. Please. no. Allegedly, Anonymous said they had something that would "blow up" Ferguson and I can't handle how terrible that statement is. Things down there are pretty blown up enough already. I don't think Ferguson, or the story of the murder of Mike Brown needs more blowing up. It's at that point that "something that'll hold" doesn't feel like enough.

How fucking objective do I need to be when I know that police are pointing guns at innocent people because they can't or won't do the work to walk into the crowd without pointing a gun or brandishing a weapon and distinguish peaceful protesters from looters and opportunists?

Some Luther Arkwright panels say it better than I can.

We've been objective. We know what this is. This is a convergence of:
1) a community knowing that X number of dollars worth of cigars is worth more than a black man's life (paraphrased from something El-P retweeted, IIRC)
2) that same community asking, peacefully, for a meager measure of justice and getting none (paraphrased from something Greg Rucka retweeted, IIRC)
3) the police escalating at almost every single opportunity
4) the police using that escalation as an excuse to crack down with their shiny new anti-terrorism toys
5) the mayor and the governor giving public statements that were either not enough or downright insulting
6) the police choosing to employ anonymity in an attempt to insulate themselves from accountability

Be objective feels like a sick, cruel joke at the expense of the person it is directed at. I don't know who said it was okay, but I just want it to stop, and be objective, it seems, does not get it to stop.

And I know that the careful collection of facts and their dissemination is what gets the bastards. Whomever they are. I want the people who said it was okay for the police to deploy with tear gas and rubber bullets to face a real inquiry. I want the people who gave the order to use those things to face a real inquiry. I want the officers who didn't interview any witnesses to face a real inquiry. I want the officers that used LRADs on those protestors to face a real inquiry. I want the people who decided for these police actions, the officers would go out without their badges or numbers on to face a real inquiry. (And so many more...)

And be objective will help get us there, but right now, God help me, it doesn't feel like enough.

"it's not too late! our kingdom is the earth and sky!" We make the road by walking. Aluminum Union by Strike Anywhere.

America. (Positive Post. Promise.)

I've written for the most part, about what I hate about America. It's not anything special, just a restatement of the principles that perhaps cutting people's feet out from under them and then asking them to jump is not entirely fair. You can come up with an example where America has loudly squawked about human rights or "justice" on an international stage while undermining them just behind the curtain. It's not hard.

But this post isn't about that. The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are holding a rally in DC and it would be the kind of thing I would drop everything to be at, were I in America, and of course: I'm not. My instinct is to dismiss it as something that's bound to fail. It's not affiliated with a political party, though the projected crowd probably skews left, it's on a Saturday afternoon, and they're doing all the things that aren't supposed to be done if you want people to show up.

It's a rally about being reasonable and rejecting the hyper-toxic media landscape. That said, one encouraging sign is Fox News. They're terrified of this thing, which means at least they believe it's something that's gonna have an impact that will be felt. That's a good tea leaf to read.

Yes, the Huffington Post will be there, which is not encouraging. They're the leftist Drudge Report, which is…no good, and they've pledged to have "as many buses for as many people want to go." Hoo boy. But whatever. In honor of the hope of the Rally To Restore Sanity working out, I'm going to talk about an American thing I'm proud of. For me, America's the ability to make yourself in an image you choose and the terrifying freedom of possibilities that comes with it. That, and as a beacon of hope and charity. Thus, I'm going to be talking about a German born mutant with a tail and pointy ears.

Nightcrawler, (left) is a teleporting, blue-skinned X-Man with horns and tail. He died recently in current continuity. (Explaining how will take us off track.) He was born in Germany and worked as acrobat, until his mutation and then he became a freak show. A Catholic, the X-Men picked him up after his mutation and he subsequently saved people literally and figuratively as a matter of course. It was in America that he was begrudgingly accepted and joined a group with a mission where he turned the negatives of his life into positives. America, took him in and set him among like minded people so he could do good.

I mean, yes, the outreach and the kindness based in solidarity is...what I want from America. Not in front of you, or behind you, but next to you. And Nightcrawler is the best example of that. He's not the incredible, Kryptonian strength of America, but the kindness and the terrifying freedom that comes with being able to rewrite your life. He's an immigrant (obviously) that's accepted by America and does amazing things in it. That's why he can stand as an X-Man next to scared mutants who have been shunned and attacked and shot at and say it's going to be okay. He's been through it himself.

That's what I want America to be, for God's sake. I want America to be a terrifying blue monster that can appear anywhere with the smell of brimstone and the sound of BAMF. I think you know what I mean, though. I want America to be that outstretched hand, reassuring the terrified and paranoid that it's going to be okay, a voice that knows this not from believing it hard enough but instead from having lived through it first.

That's what Nightcrawler is, though. He's a guy that's lived through persecution and now helps other people escape it, reassuring them, as kindly as he can and absolutely sincerely, that it's going to be okay. That's an America I can believe in.

Today's song is Rocket From the Crypt's My Arrow's Aim. RFTC is a band that plays traditional rock and roll like it was always meant to be sleazy and toxic. Think an evil Screaming Jay Hawkins, backed by a band of enablers, having just hotwired the vehicle of their careers. Got that image in your head? Throw it away. Here's all the words you need to know: "My arrow is shot. My aim is you."

This is a live version of the love song, meant to played full blast from whatever speakers you've got. Go.

Faster Faster Faster

Today's update is rather scattered.

The Daily Show is taking shots at Fox News for deliberately editing videos to remove the context from President Obama's statements. (They turned If the Bush plan stays in effect, taxes will go up for everyone to I will raise everyone's taxes.) It's bad and disingenous, but kind of expected. Far better was the Staten Island Supreme Court piece (by Wyatt Cenac with John Oliver guesting) that seemed like it was edited down a little too much.

That's only an entree to Jon Stewart's interview with Meghan McCain (promoting her new book Dirty Sexy Politics, one of the most generic titles I've ever heard), daughter of well, duh. Mr. Stewart, I thought, spent too much time trying Meghan McCain as a proxy for her father and not enough talking to Meghan McCain. I would have liked to hear more about Meghan McCain's experiences with the Republican image consultants, who said she dressed like a stripper and was hurting her father's campaign. Maybe it's a little voyeuristic, but hell, these image consultants are often just bitter punch lines that hearing about them from someone my age who seems like she's saying something she believes is interesting listening for me.

Ms. McCain is an interesting person in her own right, as someone who is obviously out of step with the GOP machine and the daughter of a former maverick and presidential candidate. How much is her and how much is her father's influence or how much is her father's friends who still believe in the party? I wish that, also, had been explored. Sadly, no dice. Most of the time was taken up with Mr. Stewart being funny and both people trying to work through the awkwardness of the interview.

Being in what is a Mediterranean paradise with few worries or responsibilities reinforces something: I miss hardcore punk shows more than I let on. And it's almost impossible to explain this to my peers without the experience sounding like a punchline. "So you want to go to a concert where you can't sit down, you might get jumped on or punched in the head? And these things are positives?"

Yeah.

In other news: Last night I was invited out, just as I was about to get on the city bus to go back to campus, to an Irish pub. I declined, mostly because I didn't want to feel like an American that late with not enough money for a cab ride back. But, it raised a question afterwards: Should I have said yes? Yeah, yeah greener grass, but the point of this trip is new experiences, right? If this is true, then going to a supposedly Irish bar would count, since I don't go to any back home.

And, honestly, it's not every day that I feel adventurous and really able to go out on my own. Sometimes, not being adventurous is okay. My operating procedure out here is not being adventurous should happen less often than being adventurous. Anyway. This Irish pub has a place and a time, which could have been last night, but wasn't.

I've been having trouble sleeping, still, so I've been listening to Till Days Shall Be No More by Strike Anywhere pretty much every night, hoping it'll settle me down. The second half of the chorus is the best and the outro is surprisingly listenable. I usually dislike outros, but there's something so relaxing and surprisingly tender about it that it makes the cut.