Nurse the Hate: End Times

  These appear to be end times.  Cops are executing people for no good reason.  People are now shooting cops.  Trump is talking crazy winning over our uneducated masses, making anyone with sense very afraid.  The President continues to be “concerned” that we are becoming a Third World Country.  Congress does nothing but bicker.  Nobody really knows what to do.  It’s like 1968 but with shitty music all around us.  There are no easy answers.  Hell, most people aren’t even aware of the problems that need the answers.  They are too busy streaming Netflix. 

For example, a 28 year old black male friend of mine showed me his social media feed.  It is post after post of outrage, call to action, call to peace, and everything in between.  Meanwhile my social media feed is filled with baby pictures, amusement park outings, and the occasional “wtf?” post from my lefty musician pals.  Suburban white America has no idea the scope and reality of the issue here.  I would suggest that if the Minnesota couple had been suburban Brad and Jessica with their daughter in their Range Rover and Brad got a couple slugs to the chest more might have happened than the promise of “an exploratory commission” or whatever bullshit.  People in Bay Village would be out in the streets with torches and pitchforks with armies of lawyers, PR specialists, and assassins.

Here is what happened to my friend the last time he got pulled over.  He was driving on West 9^th street on a Tuesday night and dropped a friend off at her apartment after a movie.  The street was under construction so he had to carefully weave his way around exposed drains.  The police pull him over.  They come over to his car with guns drawn.  “Get your fucking hands on the wheel where we can see them!”  His father has trained him for this situation, so when they ask for his ID he explains very slowly and carefully that he has to undo his seatbelt to get his wallet.  Sir?  Is it ok if I do that now?  “Do it fucking slowly!”  He moves as slowly as possible while making eye contact with the cop with his gun drawn to his face.  They take his ID and tell him to “get out of the fucking car”.  They slam him down on the hood and frisk him.  They then put him in the back seat of the cop car and call in his ID.  He has no outstanding issues and no real reason to have been pulled over.  They hold him in the car for 20 minutes.  “You know why we pulled you over?”  I have no idea.  “You were swerving.”  I was driving around those exposed drains and construction cones.  “You getting fucking smart with us?”  They give him a ticket for not wearing the seat belt he asked permission to undo and a citation for swerving.  $235.  He was terrified the entire time of being shot in the face.  He could have gone to court but his feeling is that it could have gone even worse.

The last time I got pulled over went like this.  “Sir?  Do you know why I pulled you over?”  No I don’t.  “You sort of rolled through that stop sign.”  I’m sorry.  It’s just that there was no traffic in either direction…  “OK.  I am going to let you off with a warning this time.  Be safe out there, ok?”  He waved and let me go on my way.  Beep beep!  Have a nice day!

These are radically different experiences.  At no time was I concerned about being shot in the face.  It never would occur to me.  It would never occur to most of my peers.  That’s why they are posting pictures of cupcakes and puppies.  They have no idea people get treated like this.  Meanwhile, I understand why cops are trigger happy.  They are doing a risky, often thankless job where they can get shot by our gun toting population at any moment.  They have to assume everyone is crazy and has a gun.  Hell, I would too.  I could go off on a tangent now where it seems logical to me that if everyone wasn’t fucking packing heat that maybe everyone wouldn’t be shooting everyone else, but why get bogged down by simple logic.  As we all know it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun.  Or in the case of the Dallas sniper it took a robot with a bomb to stop a bad guy with a gun to kill the good guys with guns who were protecting us with the bad guys with the guns.  Of course we will soon need bigger robots with bombs to take care of the bad guy’s robots with bombs that are trying to destroy the good guy’s robots with bombs that we need to kill the bad guys with guns that are trying to kill the good guys with the guns who we need to protect us from those bad guys with guns.  Looks like we are headed in the right direction.

So here I sit in Cleveland waiting for the good times of the Republican National Convention in a week.  Every crackpot from the four corners of the earth is headed right for me with their crazy agendas and wild ass plans to get attention.  Meanwhile I would assume a very on edge law enforcement community is grinding their teeth in a “putting up with no bullshit” mood.  When The Establishment puts on a party, they do not want anyone dropping a turd in their punch bowl.  The army of goons that they will ship in has been gathered to make any protester quake in his boots.  I know I’m already quaking in mine.

This whole thing is lining up bad.  These are End Times.  It’s every man for himself.  I just have to get through to the other side.