Convergence

A population driven mad by months of relentless anxiety. Isolation. Job loss. Rumor. Fear. Divisiveness.

A cop.

And a black man passing counterfeit bills.

It shouldn't have gone this far. But it did.

I am aware that black people do not trust law enforcement to the degree that white people do. And yet, I find myself still needing to ask this question: why do so many black men and women resist police? Why do so many fight law enforcement every step of the way in each and every encounter?

Has no one ever told you that when you come across an agitated dog the worst thing you can do is run? That this is only excites the dog's chase instinct and increases the likelihood that you will know what it's like to have a portion of your anatomy inside a dog's mouth?

I often wonder if there's a cause-and-effect problem at work here. Do black people resist because they fear the worst in any encounter with police? Or do cops get tough with blacks because they resist so frequently?

I have had encounters with police, too. And let me make this clear: I don't harbor unconditional love for law enforcement. They are a necessary evil. But if you're smart, you chill. You put a lid on it. You clench. 

Believe it or not, you're in control. You can either agitate the police or you can de-escalate the situation.

For all police know, you're Crazy Luther. And you've murdered seventeen people and cooked 'em over a spit by the railroad tracks.

Show them your ID. Tell them what you're doing in this part of town. Again, chill. The cops are only doing their job. You want to sleep in your own bed tonight, right?

Of course, if you are Crazy Luther, you won't see this as the best way forward. And your actions will scream “Guilty!” to the police. They will react in kind.

The snippets of video I've seen indicate that prior to being put on the pavement, George Floyd was combative. He provoked law enforcement's chase reflex to find, subdue and arrest the bad guy.

Before you nominate me for an honorary membership in the Klu Klux Klan, let me continue.

Derek Chauvin was a cop. And like the rest of us, he was probably feeling pretty pent-up himself.

We Americans react very poorly when we are told we can't do something. It is (or was) Derek Chauvin's job to keep us on the straight and narrow.

As a cop, he is lied to regularly. Every person he detains is innocent. Every person he restrains can't breathe.

George Floyd was just another belligerent black guy trying to manipulate him and the circumstances of his detention. What reason did Chauvin have to believe that Floyd truly couldn't breathe after hearing “Wolf!” so very many times before?

Chauvin's fatal error was in not realizing that Floyd couldn't breathe. That Floyd's pleas were genuine. The hardened cop kept his knee on Floyd's neck for upwards of eight minutes. Deprived of oxygen, Floyd died.

We have here the intersection of massive stereotyping. Prejudice. Floyd's assumption that as a black man he would only receive the worst from police and not be given the slightest opportunity to prove otherwise.

And Chauvin's assumption that Floyd was lying. And that since he continued to resist, he required severe tactics meant to lock-down his detention.

It is a book of sorrow.

Stir in an agitated population rife with cabin fever and anxiety and looking for something, anything to take the edge off and along comes a made-to-order disaster.

Yes, the death of George Floyd was cause for a civil rights demonstration.

And it worked. All involved have been fired from the Minneapolis Police Department. The lead culprit has been arrested and is facing second-degree murder charges. Let's hope the ensuing trial doesn't turn into the farce a similar trial did here in Chicago.

Okay. So the object of your derision is in jail. You got what you wanted. Go home.

But you couldn't. And didn't.

Too often, a demonstration is an excuse to burn stuff and break windows. And if the broken window happens to be at a department store, that entitles you to a free pasta maker. Or sheets. Or a case of giardiniera.

Whatever you can get your hands on.

I used to work in downtown Chicago. And I happened to be returning to work after lunch when the news broke that Harold Washington (Chicago's first black mayor) had died.

Let me add he wasn't hung from a tree by guys in white robes. The cause of death was a heart attack.

Nevertheless, a small-scale riot broke out. Windows were smashed. Cars were stopped. Windows and sheet metal were banged on. A liquor store's windows were shattered. Bottles were snatched.

I watched in disbelief.

This wasn't an expression of grief. It was an excuse to act like a shit and get free stuff.

So I find myself in the awkward position of kinda sorta agreeing with (gulp) Donald Trump's tweet. Demonstrating doesn't mean complimentary consumer goods. Ever. I feel no empathy for those exploiting this event to burn and loot.

But whatever our view of Trump, we are a nation riled-up by him. He thrives on that. Distraction. Sleights of hand. Provocation. Feints. Loud voices. Anger. Chaos.

It is what he does best.

Ensconced in the hot house bubble of a pandemic, we are even more susceptible to him. And while we're screaming at each other, Trump wants to forbid the government from issuing economic reports until after the election. He is issuing executive orders prohibiting social media from fact-checking him.

“We're here today to defend free speech from one of the gravest dangers it has faced in American history” he said last week without a trace of irony. Even as he demands his lies go unchecked and his failures as a president stay hidden and unreported.

Toxicity has never been so transparent.

If you're white, you need to acknowledge something: if America weren't a sexist and racist nation, Donald Trump would not be president. He....this....is the price of our hatred. Our prejudice.

We are a nation in desperate need of healing. Two groups of extremists who need to back away from the edges.

But how do we do this? Where do we begin?

Maturing would be a good start. You know, acting like grown-ups. Adulting. Realizing that the definition of 'tyranny' so many of us are throwing around is the equivalent of a tween calling his parents 'fascists' after their smartphone privileges have been revoked for a weekend.

Oh that we should ever know real, honest-to-God tyranny.

It's easy to hate people you don't know. It's even easier to reduce them to one-dimensional caricatures. Like I do with conservatives and folks who belong to the NRA.

Which is why I advocate for leaving our hyper-demographic social media bubbles. Engaging with whomever we define as the enemy. Get to know them. And find another way forward.

Because this isn't working. In fact, it will likely destroy us.

Death by Republican

Dear Lockdown Protester,

Suffering this tyrannical assault on your civil liberties must be very painful. As are the tyrannical measures which kept you alive. Let me say how very sorry I am.

How thoughtless of the rest of us.

To paraphrase a sign seen at several protests: “My health doesn't end where your impatience begins!”

Reasoned, well thought-out measures were put into place by people way smarter than us to simultaneously protect us and prevent the spread of this highly-contagious virus. Measures like requiring a state show a sustained, two-week decline in COVID19 infections before it be considered for re-opening.

But someone on Facebook told you that was stupid—even fearful, so it is.

We have yet to test even two-percent of the population. Again, people way smarter than us feel capriciously re-opening densely populated urban areas because we're anxious and bored amounts to posting I heart COVID19 memes on our social media accounts.

You don't want it to leave. You want it to stick around, like it was Tom Brady or Laura Ingraham that dropped in and you can't bear to see it/them depart. How will normalcy ever be the same after a celebrity crush has popped in?

Look on the bright-side. Your president has mandated that meat processing plants remain open despite being confirmed hot spots for COVID19 infections. You can feed your death wish by consuming all the pork, poultry and beef these plants can crank out, and your survivors won't be able to sue thanks to your president's generous offer of immunity.

What a great leap forward towards the dystopia you so obviously crave.

I haven't seen a breakdown, but I suspect most of you are Republicans. Again, I apologize for your continued existence. I am as unhappy about it as you are.

To the woman who said “We can't pay taxes when we're dead”, I offer this: We won't be able to engineer a better, safer way forward, either.

I pray we are able to manage the second wave better than we did the first. Practice, I am told,  makes perfect.


Sincerely,

La Piazza Gancio

Co-existing with COVID19

As a frequent critic of America and Americans, I am forced to set aside my misanthropic tendencies and remark on the amazing-ness happening all around us.

Many businesses—open by necessity to the public—have done a remarkable job of adapting protective measures for their employees and customers while still remaining accessible and open for business.

Take the simple genius of designating one set of doors as entrance-only and another for exit-only. This allows pedestrians to avoid face-to-face encounters, which I'm guessing are the most-effective at spreading the Coronavirus.

One-way aisles are another. And for the same reasons as dedicated entrances and exits. Some stores are even limiting the number of patrons at any given time to ensure that social-distancing is not theoretical.

And lastly, we have the surgical masks presumably supplied by employers for the safety of both their employees and their customers. While you could argue these masks have a higher purpose in ERs and ICUs and other medical settings, preventing the spread of infections is likewise critical.

Gay, straight, black, white, male, female, boomer or young Z Gen just beginning to make their way in the world, we all go to the grocery store. (It is perhaps the last thing we have in common.) It is obvious that preventive measures should be in place not only there, but up and down the food chain.

Trump and his rampant deregulation couldn't have offered a bigger target for COVID19 as far as this sector of the economy is concerned, and we are beyond lucky it wasn't impacted more-seriously than it was.

There are the trucks drivers supplying those stores, and the warehouse workers loading those trucks. Think of where we'd be without them.

Then there are the CNAs and nurses and social workers who do at-home care and continue to visit their patients, even at great risk to themselves. In a better world, they would receive automatic immunity for their selflessness.

The bank employees maintaining our access to our money. The postal employees making sure we get our mail. The restaurant owners and employees doing their best to offer us the delights most of us are unable to create in our own kitchens (if not for lack of trying).

Firemen and EMTs are still putting out fires and responding to medical emergencies. The police are still policing and making sure things don't get too far out of hand.

And then there are the doctors and nurses in the belly of the beast, working under conditions I can't begin to imagine. In hot spots like New York City, I don't know how they do it. How do they overcome the mental and physical fatigue? The mounting despair? The collective weight of desperate patients begging and pleading with them to save their lives? The needs and demands of their families? The conveyor belt of corpses?

Calling it overwhelming doesn't seem sufficient. And I haven't even touched on the shortages of essential equipment and supplies.

I wish I could offer something other than my eternal regard.

While we have seen the worst of us (the hoarders attempting to exploit the pandemic through online marketplaces, the senseless churches who confuse the restrictions on public gatherings as an assault on their right to practice religion and just about anything having to do with Donald Trump), we have seen the best of us.

We have the benefit of medical professionals who know what to do to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus. All we have to do is listen.

I mean, how easy is that?

Yes, tens of millions of people have lost their jobs. But unlike the Great Recession, the feeling here is that recovery will happen comparatively quickly. You should remember that markets weren't depressed for financial reasons. They crashed owing to a pandemic.

People cannot wait for things to return to normal. We will shop. We will eat out. We will go to the movies, watch ballgames and listen to music en masse. And attending these activities along with us will be our wallets and handbags. 

Americans are perhaps the world's most-impatient people, but if we can be the people we say we are on Facebook, this will be easy-peasy.

LPG out.