Category Archives: Political Rants

Political Rants

Whiteness.

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Full disclosure: I’m a white person. No big surprise there. (Just listen to my music.) And while I don’t consider myself a racist, I know that a traditional American racist world view is woven into my consciousness as a white person. I grew up around racist white people throughout my entire youth, spending a good portion of that in a virtually entirely white school system (in New York state). My third grade teacher said openly racist things in class; chastised me for taking exception to them. My grandfather said racist things, my dad occasionally said things that were borderline racist (as deeply opposed to racism as he was). That is the murky water in which I was steeped, as were so many other white people.

Hey, I'm busy sucking here!And like most honest white people of a certain age, I admit to the fact that sometimes, when there are only white people within earshot, other white people will sometimes say racist things. For most of us, there are a lot of opportunities for this to happen, since many of us inhabit a world made up mostly of people who share our skin color. This is a persistent source of disgust, particularly when the comments come from people who do not by any means consider themselves racist. (Every gaggle a Klan rally, right?)

It’s this sort of insular communion that people like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly have with their audiences. Their broadcasts are like enormous around-the-water-cooler kvetch sessions about dark people of every description. That’s why they can get away with promoting a white resentment line that includes frequent alarms about “reparations” and the like. Limbaugh went so far as to sing the virtues of slave-owning white society, claiming that white people enslaved fewer people than any other race, and crowing about how we “fought a war” to end slavery, unlike other slave-owning people. This is, to my mind, the equivalent of holocaust denial, but barely a peep about it beyond MSNBC and other liberal outlets.

You can hear echoes of this in the comments of that first Zimmerman trial juror who spoke out publicly to Anderson Cooper. Not so much the presumption of innocence as the presumption of good intentions. We’ve all got a little bit of this at least, and it has got to go, or it will kill again.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Assumptions.

So Zimmerman walks. I can’t say as I’m surprised. It is now apparently legal to kill people in Florida, particularly if your victim is black. I should say not exclusively – my neighbor spends half of his time in Florida, and he told me about a “Stand Your Ground” case at his retirement community wherein a Vietnam Vet shot his wife’s lover dead and got off based on Stand Your Ground. The victim was white, but from another country, so that may have been “other” enough for the law. It seems like if your intention is to kill someone, all you need to do is get them alone in Florida and give them the gun, so to speak. So long as there’s no witnesses, it’s your word against theirs.

That aside, let’s consider what this verdict says, in truth:

Not suspiciousKiller Sidewalks. The Zimmerman trial introduced the concept of the sidewalk as a deadly weapon. I suppose this means that any (black) person strolling down the sidewalk can now be considered armed and dangerous. Amazing what legal and logical gyrations we go through to exonerate a white guy who just shot a black guy dead. Who says he was unarmed? He had that deadly sidewalk! 

Thirty Yards. The prosecution failed not only to discredit the defense’s story but to communicate in concrete terms an alternative story that fit the facts.  Martin’s body was found something like ten yards away from the sidewalk. How could Zimmerman have been in mortal danger when the “deadly weapon” (see above) was that far away from where he shot the kid? Why wasn’t the prosecution all over this like a cheap suit?

Silent Witness. Ultimately, the defense put Trayvon Martin on trial. There is one person who knows what happened that night, and he was sitting in that courtroom wearing his stoic wannabe cop face. Sure, he has a constitutional right not to testify. But I don’t see why the prosecution couldn’t have made more of a point of his reluctance to testify.

The Video. I think the item that defines the core issues in this case is the police station video of Zimmerman being processed by the cops after the shooting. He is not only ambulatory, he seems positively casual. The cops treat him at worst like a crime victim, but really more like a colleague. It’s this assumption of innocence in the face of overwhelming indications of guilt that speaks directly to how race plays a role in the outcome. Based on those assumptions, Martin’s body was not properly examined for forensic evidence, the crime scene was not properly protected … the case was lost then.

Note to John Roberts: racism still appears to be alive.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Permanent rule.

I’ve heard a lot of commentary in recent days about the state of affairs in Egypt, in Russia – about the primacy of the military and the intelligence services in the political life of those countries. Not as much about our own permanent government. I’m talking about the national security regime that persists independently, it seems, of what administration occupies the White House or runs the Congress. It’s a little hard to pass judgment on others when we ourselves have accommodated to something less than democratic rule.

It’s not that this is totally new. We had the Vietnam war, for instance, through Democratic and Republican presidencies, fought with comparable levels of savagery. The latest cycle, which started on September 11 2001, just nine months into the new century, seems much more pervasive, opened ended, and unquenchable. We invaded Afghanistan and still haven’t left. We’ve expanded our expionage and “homeland” security apparatus to encompass literally thousands of federal and contract installations, employing millions of people. We are spied upon in a way that makes the cold war East German state seem amateurish by comparison.

Is this the problem? Really?Even something as seemingly simple as closing Guantanamo. It would have enormous symbolic value, of course. But even though the president professes to want it closed, it remains open. Why? Why haven’t those cleared for release been released? Why haven’t the ones determined innocent / not a threat been moved to some residential setting that isn’t a prison cell? It’s almost as if that policy level is beyond the reach of democratically elected officials. We seem frozen in place since 9/11, unable to adjust our course, unable to accomplish practically anything aside from blowing things up, assassinating people, and spying on their ass. Hunger striking inmates are force fed, even though the president – a constiitutional lawyer – knows that that is abusive and wrong. Can’t change it.

We have to take power back from this permanent government, even if it means standing in the street and facing it down.

luv u,

jp