Week of 04/26/2021

 

It Should Not Be Like This
– by David Matthews 2

On April 21^st, 2021, a 12-member jury convicted former police officer Derek Chauvin for the 2020 murder of George Floyd.  It was a unanimous verdict for 2^nd and 3^rd degree murder and 2^nd degree manslaughter.

The trial was televised for the world to see.  Cities braced for possible violence depending on the verdict.

But it should not have been like this.

We should not have been sitting on the edge of our seats wondering *if* the jury would convict this disgraceful former officer who stained the badge he once wore.  This was a blatant case of murder, in the middle of the day, with eyewitnesses around them, and captured on cellphone video and later posted online for the world to witness.  This was not like the Zapruder film of President Kennedy’s assassination, with conflicting eyewitnesses and shaky coverage.  It was nine minutes of a man being slowly and deliberately murdered by a police officer, who knelt casually on the neck of his victim, with his sunglasses on the top of his head, and no fear or worry whatsoever as witnesses were forced to watch, unable to do anything to stop the murder from going through.

We should not have had to worry about whether he would be arrested, never mind convicted.  It was as blatant as the Saigon Execution of 1968.  George Floyd was restrained, prone on the street, unable to resist or to stop what was happening.  Even Chauvin’s own superiors in the police force said what he did was wrong!

I understand that attorneys for the convicted murder Chauvin had to question everything.  That’s their job.  They had to throw doubt and try to convince the jury to ignore what they saw and heard.  And they threw everything but the kitchen sink at the prosecution, no matter how asinine or unbelievable.

But what disgusted this commentator was how many people and how many media networks bought into the defense arguments, in defiance of the video, in denial of the eyewitnesses who were there, in denial of the medical examiner who examined Floyd’s body without being prejudiced by the video, in denial of the disgraced officer’s own superiors on the stand, in denial of everything broadcast for the world to see, and to proclaim the convicted murderer innocent and to say that George Floyd died of anything and everything other than Derek Chauvin’s knee on his neck slowly strangling him.  Their siding of a blatant lie in defiance of all evidence, both circumstantial and direct, is what draws this commentator’s ire and condemnation. 

They should be ashamed, but we know those people have no shame.  Many of those folks have been spreading lies and big lies for quite some time.  What’s one more whopper of a lie to them?

Even the police department that would later condemn Chauvin’s actions had initially fabricated a story of Floyd dying from a “medical distress” instead of what the eyewitnesses and a teenage girl’s cellphone saw.  And if not for that teenager posting that video to social media, that is precisely how George Floyd’s nine-minute murder would have been dismissed as... a “medical distress during a police interaction”. 

It should not be like this.

Derek Chauvin should not have been a police officer.  The numerous complaints made about him, many of which involved neckholds and accusations of choking, should have resulted in him being removed long before his fateful and final encounter with George Floyd.  But he wasn’t reprimanded.  He wasn’t even fired until the cellphone video of him murdering George Floyd was released.  That is the failure of the city and specifically of the police department, which is why they settled with Floyd’s family.

Now I know people are saying justice is finally being served, but let’s get brutally honest here... it’s not.  At least not yet.  Disgraced and abusive ex-cop Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murder and manslaughter, but, as of this column, justice has not yet been served.  He still faces sentencing.  Just because Chauvin faces up to forty years in prison, that doesn’t mean he’ll be sentenced for forty years.  Plus you know that the case, his conviction, and the sentencing will be appealed.  Too many fascist supporters of police at all costs will demand his conviction be overturned; selling yet another big lie that Chauvin was “sacrificed” for the supposed fear of riots.

Let’s not also forget his accomplices, the other officers that were there with him and helped him carry out the slow murder of George Floyd, still have to face their days in court.  Chauvin was the clear murderer, but time will tell if his accomplices will also be convicted, never mind spend time behind bars.

I also disagree with those that suggest that Chauvin’s conviction is in any way a turning point in resolving systemic racism.  This is but one conviction in one case.  A conviction that can still be overturned.  The only way it can be a turning point is if there are other convictions in similar cases.  If abusive and racist officers and their enablers are actually held to account from this point on.  If the number of police killings of unarmed people come to an end instead of escalating, as they have been doing since George Floyd’s murder, then we can say Chauvin’s conviction was a turning point.  We are clearly far from that point.

Yes, we should be relieved that an abusive and disgraceful former police officer was convicted for the blatant slow murder of George Floyd.  The justice system worked... this time.  But what about the next case?  What about the next Derek Chauvin casually killing the next George Floyd?

It really should not be like this.  Not at all.

Week of 04/19/2021

 COVIDiots and A Woman Named Mary
– by David Matthews 2

You know, folks, I am done worrying about the COVIDiots.

I know cases are spiking as more state leaders make the stupid decision to open everything up after a year of this pandemic.  But, even before then, the COVIDiots were throwing knock-down screaming infantile tantrums about having to wear masks and socially distance from others.  They were going about like there was no pandemic, because a good percentage of them believe that it’s “all a hoax”.  They’re still showing up at gatherings and political rallies like everything is normal.  They’re spreading the virus around like it was syphilis, not caring if they or someone they know will get sick and/or end up in the hospital and/or die.

Yes, we have vaccines.  This commentator is even in the process of getting fully vaccinated as of this column’s post.  There are plenty of vaccination places, from drive-through stations to pharmacies, to grocery stores and even in big-box stores.

But the same crowd that refuses to wear masks and refuses to socially distance and refuses to stay home and throw temper tantrums over it are also the same crowd that refuse to get the vaccine.  And they come up with all sorts of excuses as to why.  They claim that they don’t want to be “test subjects”.  They falsely claim that the vaccine has aborted fetal tissue.  They falsely claim that it’s “the Mark of the Beast”, or that it puts government trackers in you.  (Hello?  You have a cellphone and you are on the Internet!  You’re already catalogued and categorized and tracked!)

Yes, there are legitimate reasons why some people should not be taking the vaccine.  But none of them involve genetic manipulation or stem cells or government tracking or anything out of the delusional apocalyptic fever dreams of an exiled man named John hiding from the Roman Empire.  And you damn well know it!

So I am done with you COVIDiots.

I am not going to argue with you that the longer you are pulling your tantrums means that the spread of the disease will continue and that hospitalizations and deaths will continue to go up.  You don’t care because you have it in your heads that it’s a hoax and that it won’t affect you.

I won’t appeal to you about wanting to mask up and stay home unless you really have to or to take the vaccine by telling you that doing so will hasten the time when we all can go about without masks and without socially distancing.  You’ve been carrying on like nothing matters anyway, and you sure as hell don’t give a crap about the rest of us.

I won’t tell you that the reason why there are all of these COVID variants out there and that they’re getting stronger and affecting people harder is because of you lot and your refusal to either mask up and/or take the vaccine.  It won’t matter because you think that it’s a hoax, and a variant of a hoax is still a hoax.

I am done with you.  I have previously referred to you as “Dead Idiots Walking” and that is what you are.  You probably hate being call that but that is what you are, and it will be by your choice and by your hand and I will not attempt to dissuade you from it.

Instead, I’m going to tell you a story about a woman named Mary.

Mary Mallon came from Ireland.  She was somewhat attractive.  A lot of you COVIDiots would’ve liked her.

Mary started off as a maid, but she really liked to cook.  She was well-known for her culinary skills among the well-to-do.  You know, the kind of folk that today would be opening up states for business.

But then those wealthy folk start dying.  They didn’t know why, until they discovered that they all died the same way and they all had Mary as their cook.

Mary was an asymptomatic carrier of Typhoid Fever; the first documented case of it.  She didn’t get sick, but she could and did spread it to everyone that she was in contact with or fed through her food.  And it didn’t help that she didn’t wash her hands before handling food, because back then that was considered by many to be “unproven science”.

Mary was arrested and sent to an isolated hospital on an island, where they discovered she was badly infected with the typhoid bacteria, but she wasn’t affected by it.  She also didn’t believe that she was infected.  She thought it was a “hoax”.  She was eventually released on the condition that she never cook for anyone again.

But... you know that she would go back to cooking for wealthy people again.  After all, she never believed she was infected with typhoid, never mind a carrier, so why would she stop doing what she loved to do?  She did under various surnames because the name “Mary Mallon” was too toxic.  But, everywhere she went to cook, people again started dying, and they could all be traced back to her.

Mary was sent back to the isolated hospital, this time for the rest of her life, where she died of pneumonia at age 69.

That was a century ago, and you best remember Mary Mallon, the somewhat single and attractive cook, as “Typhoid Mary”.  A name that she reportedly found offensive but stuck with her because she continued to spread the disease.

Now... if we could do that to one woman who refused to believe the science, who refused to take even simple measures to protect others like washing her hands, who knowingly and willingly spread her disease to others, what makes you think that we can’t do that to a whole group of folks?

I’m not the one to advocate it, never mind support it, but let’s get brutally honest here... there may come a time in the not-so-far future when the argument will be made that maybe the best way to stop the spread of COVID-19 and allow the rest of us to go about without masks would be to quarantine those COVIDiots out there who refuse to either wear masks or take the vaccine.

It was just a generation ago when the demand went out to exile and quarantine those with HIV and AIDS.  Thankfully, we didn’t go down that rabbit hole, but we could have.  We did, however, arrest and throw people in prison who knowingly had AIDS and were knowingly spreading it to people.  The same arguments to arrest and quarantine Mary Mallon were used then, and they could easily be used on the COVIDiots today.

Something to think about, people. 

A good percentage of us are doing the right thing with COVID.  We’re still wearing masks and socially distance ourselves and washing hands and we’re taking the vaccine when we’re able.

The rest of you... the COVIDiots out there... you’re on your own.  You are “free” to get sick and be hospitalized and to possibly die.  And, perhaps to borrow from Charles Dickens, you are “free” to do so, and to do so quickly in order to decrease the surplus population.

One way or another, we will get out of this whole pandemic.  It’s just a matter of how soon and whether the rest of you will help.

Week of 04/12/2021

We Need To Fix Our Rotting Home
– by David Matthews 2

One of the things that both amazes and disgusts me is how we can get used to dilapidated homes.

I’ve been in and lived in homes that were quite literally centuries old.  When I lived in New Hampshire, I lived in a house that was first built in 1720 with the second story built in 1800.  It took a lot of work over the generations to keep it going, and, yes, my family had to make serious revisions to two of the rooms while preserving much of the original framework, right down to the old wooden “attack” shutters.

But that’s the thing: every homeowner and resident in that home over the past two centuries took care of that home since 1720.  The railings put in 1800 were replaced.  The stairs were replaced when they cracked or broken.  The swimming pool fence had to be repaired and even replaced a few times while we were there.  But it was a constant effort.  That’s why it was still very functional and livable when we eventually moved out.

I’ve also been in homes that were only a few years old that already started breaking down.  Some because of shoddy construction, but also some because the people living there just didn’t take care of their homes.  You smell the mildew, you see the cracked and broken floorboards, the carpet that has just worn down, the furniture that barely holds together, and the pipes and electricals that just don’t work.  And people will live in those conditions for years.  Not “biding time until we can afford to get repairs made” but “oh that’s just the pipes, they leak through the ceiling from time-to-time”.  People will actually live in dilapidated conditions, with the pungent mold and the insects and critters, and not think for a second about repairing or replacing or even finding someplace new.

Everything rots.  Everything gets old and cracks and breaks down.  If you ever get a chance, watch some of the “Life After People” docuseries to see just how easily our greatest structures fail without us taking care of them.  Even the things that we said “were made to last” eventually fails.

That brings us to our current problem... and, really, it’s been an ongoing problem for quite some time.

Our collective house is falling apart.

Yes, I mean America.  The supposedly greatest nation on the planet with the wealth and the companies and the technology... we can build big things, gaudy things, really expensive things.  The problem is... they’re all falling apart.  Because everything rots.  Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but down the road, everything rots.  Everything needs to be either repaired or replaced.

We’re talking roads, buildings, bridges, water and sewer lines, electrical lines, cable lines, satellites and satellite equipment, computers and computer software, phone lines, homes, government buildings, jails and prisons, schools, hospitals and hospices, traffic lights and even streetlights.  Everything.  Everything needs to be either repaired or replaced.

And it’s not something that just magically popped up.  Brutally Honest readers can remember that I said the same thing more than decade ago, during the Great Recession.  I pointed out constantly that we needed jobs, that we needed money going to infrastructure so our bridges won’t collapse and our highways won’t become pothole nightmares and also so that people who have been out of work will have jobs that would keep homes over their heads and food in their bellies and bills paid and spending on services, which would have sped a real recovery instead of the lie that was foisted on us about a “jobless recovery”.

The problem never went away!  Ever!  There was no infrastructure solution.  Instead, Washington and state governments doled out tax cuts and tax breaks for corporations on the fraudulent delusion that it would somehow “trickle down” to the rest of us in forms of jobs and higher wages... which never happened.

But things still rotted away.

How many times can you fill a pothole before it becomes a waste of time?  How long can you drive across a bridge that is slowly deteriorating before it collapses completely?  How long can you overuse phone and cable and power lines before they fail to perform?  With some of the bridges that I’ve driven over or boated under in my part of the Atlanta/Athens area over the past quarter-century, I am honestly surprised that they’re still standing.

I know from personal observation that counties and cities here in this part of Georgia have an absolute piss-poor record of dealing with growth and population changes.  They don’t respond to increased growth until after it becomes a serious problem.  They don’t add schools until the current ones are overcrowded and unmanageable.  They don’t build new prisons; they just jam more people in there.  Atlanta’s water and sewer lines have been a rotting boondoggle that was kicked down the road year after year after year, and they just kept paying the fines imposed by judges instead of spending the money needed to fix the problem.  The Department of Transportation in this state will not allow a single traffic light to be put in needed intersections until “enough” people die at those intersections.  We need to approve “special local option sales taxes” just to fund needed road expansions, and then vote to keep those SPLOST moneys going to pay for the “next” road project, often to repair the ones that keep deteriorating.

And if you want to know why our country has not been able to fix our rotting infrastructure, it is because of one man.  Senator Mitch “The Bitch” McConnell.  His blatant abuse of the filibuster as Senate Majority Leader prevented President Barack Obama from spending money on infrastructure and instead doled out tax cuts and tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.  He wasn’t even liking the infrastructure ideas from his crime-lord savior Narcissist Trump.  And now that he is the “minority leader”, he has already pledged to do everything in his power... everything... to keep President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill from becoming a reality.

The reason?  He wants all of us... the hard-working Americans who are already getting fleeced and struggling to make ends meet and getting nickeled-and-dimed at every turn... to pay for the infrastructure.  Not those rich corporations, many of whom are already not paying taxes.  Certainly not the millionaires and billionaires who get tax cuts and tax breaks.  Nope, Mitch The Bitch wants us – the struggling and fleeced – to pay for it all.

Let’s get brutally honest here... we need our rotting home fixed.  And not piecemeal.  Not just one rotted bridge after it collapses or just one road that is gridlocked and made up of potholes and repair plates.  It all needs to be repaired or replaced.  Just like our economy needed a boost, so too must our infrastructure.

Fixing our infrastructure will mean jobs; jobs that we still need because of the global pandemic.  Jobs will keep houses over our heads and food in our bellies and bills paid.  It will mean money spent on goods and services, both to upgrade our infrastructure and also from those workers who will be able to buy more things instead of worrying about the rent and insurance and the other bills.  It will mean more people getting newer cars and newer clothes and newer electronics, and eventually newer homes and newer furniture.  It means more people getting out of poverty instead of into it.

Oh, and debt?  Yeah, funny how that’s only a problem when the criminal party, the party of bloody insurrection, the party of racism and bigotry, is not the party in power.  Yeah, keep crying “wolf”, red hats.  You lost your credibility on that subject after your narcissist crime-lord blew the debt up and you said nothing about it for all four of those years.

Everything rots.  It is that simple.  You can either fix it before it fails, or you can let it fail and spend a whole lot more money afterward and quite possibly some death and misery in the process.  It’s up to you to decide which you would rather deal with.  And that, by the way, *is* the responsibility of the government.

Week of 04/05/2021

Revenge of the Trump/Q Party
– by David Matthews 2

It is said that one of the key conditions of authoritarianism is that of the one-party rule.  Historically, that means the elimination of any other political party in that country or region.  This was the case in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the 1920’s and 1930’s, and also during the totality of the Soviet Union.  They simply outlawed any political party other than their own.  You had no choice in those regimes.  It was either support their party unconditionally or you ended up in prison or dead.

But the condition of one-party rule does not have to mean there is only one political party.  In fact, it could easily be said that America has been under a one-party rule for quite some time, and I do not mean just during the four-year reign of a certain narcissist crime lord who found himself elected President of the United States.

How can this happen?  Simple.  When you have one party wielding so much power and control in government that nothing can be done without that party’s approval, even if that party is not actually sitting in the seats of power.

This was certainly the case during much of President Barack Obama’s eight years in office.  Even though he was able to get key parts of his agenda passed in the first two years under Democratic control, the remaining six years were stymied in political sabotage by the then-GOP-controlled Congress.  Bills would be filibustered into oblivion, the government shut down repeatedly, judicial appointments would be kept empty, even a seat in the United States Supreme Court was intentionally kept vacant in 2016 because of one person… the then-majority leader of the United States Senate.  One party, controlling one-third of the government, was able to halt all government activity. 

And then, when that same party took control of the White House, they moved like gangbusters to fill every vacancy and pass almost everything in their agenda, even going so far as to bypass any traditional means to stop or slow down their progress such as filibusters or quorum rules.  The very parliamentary tools they previously used with glee when they were the “minority”, they brazenly bypassed with sheer psychopathic arrogance when they were in the majority.  Even the promises that they made on their very careers in 2016 concerning said Supreme Court vacancy they arrogantly reneged on just four years later to rush through a third justice of their own choosing.

What used to be the “GOP” – or, fraudulently, “Republicans” – have clearly become fascistic authoritarians in the recent years, especially during the reign of their cult-leader con artist, Narcissist Donald Trump.  One party, able to either speed through or shut down legislative and government activity depending on simply their partisan whims.  That is the very definition of one-party control.

But something strange happened in 2020… Americans were sick and tired of the party that has now become the Trump/Q Party.  And they came out in force to vote.  Even during a deadly global pandemic, people showed up in record numbers and waiting in long lines to vote, and to vote against the Trump/Q Party.

In November, more voters voted for Joe Biden than for Narcissist Trump.  And, unlike 2016, they also voted for Biden in just enough states to ensure an Electoral College victory.  And then in January, voters in this commentator’s home state of Georgia voted for Democrats to fill both seats of the U.S. Senate, giving the slight majority to the Dems.

Narcissist Trump lost.  He lost.  And he lost in states that he thought he would prevail in, including Georgia.  States that have a strong Trump/Q Party control of in their state governments.

As a student of history (and we should all be) and a political cynic, I knew what would come next… revenge.  Trump/Q fanatics would carry out payback for all of us “uppity” people daring to vote against them and against their self-serving messiah.

Even before his loss was official, Narcissist Trump set the stage for his false victimhood status.  “Fraud!”  The claim he was making as far back as 2016 was “voter fraud”.  The supposed “biggest case of voter fraud in human history”.

Funny thing this “fraud”… when the narcissist won in 2016, all the claims of foreign collusion and meddling were immediately dismissed.  Even when he openly challenged foreign governments to meddle in the election, he then turned around and said “no collusion”.  Because, you know, he won.  He won by what he would gradually call the “greatest margin ever”.  But… when he lost in 2020 by the same margin, he not only claimed that the election was full of “fraud”, but that he actually “won”.

And isn’t it strange that it was only the presidential election that “fraud” happened?  Not the House or Senate races.  Not the state or local elections.  All of those Trump/Q Party people who got elected or re-elected supposedly did so fair and square on that same day by those same voters using those same machines... but not their messiah.  Only he was supposedly “cheated”. 

*Only* him.

That’s not how fraudulent elections work!

“Fraud” was the big lie spread by the cult-followers.  “Fraud” was the big lie spread through the narcissist’s myrmidons and enablers and propagandists, even though not one case of it was proven in the trials that they demanded.  It was “there”, they claimed, but could not prove it to a judge.  Not one.  Not even to the judges that were hand-picked and sworn in by the Trump/Q Party.  “Fraud” was even the claim they made to justify a bloody insurrection on January 6^th. 

A big lie that was just that.  A lie.

But it’s also that lie that is rallying the revenge in state and local legislatures.  Just like “fraud” was the rallying cry for Dems to change election laws in Florida after the 2000 Fiasco, “fraud” is the rallying cry used now for over 250 bills to change the law in state and local elections across the country.

The first shot was made here in Georgia... because, of course, it’s where Biden’s victory was clinched, first in the Electoral College and then in the Senate.  And also because Georgia’s elected grifters and shysters get their legislative BS done at the start of the year.

Among the various changes – which targeted the ways African-Americans in the state voted this past year – was one very tyrannical change.  It gives the Trump/Q Party in Georgia’s legislature the power to override both the Georgia Secretary of State and those of the various counties when it came to elections.

Think about that.  Your vote – no matter how long you waited to vote, no matter how legitimate it was – could be negated at the whim of the one-party-dominant state legislature.  If this was put in effect a year earlier, Biden’s win in Georgia would have been negated, because the narcissist would have demanded that 11-thousand-plus votes he wanted and would have gotten it from the ass-kissing members of the state legislature instead of being denied by the Secretary of State (who, by the way, voted for the narcissist).

Yes, this law also stinks of racism and white supremacy, because that’s the Trump/Q base, and also because Biden’s victory came from a certain demographic that voted in ways that they never did before.  The fact that lily-white male Trump/Q Party supporters surrounded the Trump-kissing governor for the signing with a painting of a slavery-era plantation in the background, and an African-American female state legislator being forcibly removed in handcuffs by equally lily-white male State Police officers just puts the hood on the whole Klan imagery.

But let’s get brutally honest here... even without the white supremacist overtones, this law is tyrannical and the very opposite of anything that America is supposed to represent both here and around the world. 

We invaded Panama in 1989 because their criminal dictator negated the will of the people!  Manuel Noriega lost his election and he enacted a coup and threw the true winners in prison.  And he claimed “fraud” as well.  We had to invade that country because of his criminal acts and restore the rightly elected leaders!  And here we are in Georgia with a dominant political party codifying that very crime today!  And with other states to follow.  And all based on that same lie of “fraud”.

The Trumpians are claiming that this law provides “election security”.  They’re even claiming that it “expands voting rights”!  What a load of Orwellian blackwhite bull!  The only “security” it provides is their own entrenched dominance.  The only “rights” they expand upon is their delusional “right” to maintain power at all costs.

The truth is that the Trump/Q people are in the minority in America, and they know it.  And that terrifies them.  They lost the White House and the U.S. Senate because people voted in record numbers, and more of those people voted against them than for them.

And now businesses are speaking out against this law as it is being challenged in the courts.  Major League Baseball pulled the All-Star Game and the Baseball Draft out of Georgia.  Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines also condemned the law... albeit too late.  The Trump/Q thugs are now demanding payback for that as well.

This commentator says... break them.

If this is the hill that they want to rhetorically die on, then so be it.  This is not the first or the last battle, but the first in over two-hundred, all on this very same cause based on this very same big lie.  A lie that says that the sore loser “won” in an election that was supposedly “fair” and “true” for every other race... except for just this one.