Business and Government--Inverted

In the United States, “we” have given enormous power to our businesses. If you're a Republican, you feel this is a great and good thing. If you're a Democrat, probably not so much.

We is in quotations because no one asked us—the American public—if we were okay with that. It was just done. Case in point was the 2010 Citizens United decision, which had nothing to do with citizens or unity.

Ostensibly about campaign finance reform, it served to weaponize Republican's biggest advantage (money) and removed any and all constraints from corporate campaign donations. This because in the words of our friends across the aisle, corporations are people, too.

And that being the case, deserve their first amendment rights, also. 

Sniff.

This not only further entrenched the culture of special interests and lobbyists in Washington DC, but made running for office a whole helluva lot more expensive. You are no doubt shocked to learn a Republican-majority in the Supreme Court found in its favor.

As the U.S. economy has moved from one based in manufacturing to one based in more nebulous things like buying and selling stuff like debt and data, it has moved out of brick and mortar structures into cyberspace.

It has changed more-quickly than the government can adapt to it. Tech entities like Apple, Google, Twitter and Facebook frequently operate in an unregulated environment that often leaves them to (gulp) police themselves.

Which brings us to Facebook's suspension of Donald Trump.

I'm convinced one-hundred percent of us know Donald Trump is a shit. But only fifty-percent of us will admit it because denying for Donnie has become a cause. A declaration of contempt for people who see things differently than you do.

For those of us not in the cult, Donald Trump is a cancerous skin lesion. Left untreated, it will envelop the body and kill it. And unlike most cancers, the best and most-effective treatment for this strain is silence.

Unplugging the lie machine that seeks only its own affirmation even at the expense of a nation. 

Republicans can yammer about freedom of speech til they turn blue. (Heh heh heh.) Donnie can cry “It's rigged!” til his BMI is appropriate to his age, weight and height. But as they so often do, Republican's own actions hollow-out even their most-pointed accusations until they're nothing but empty shells.

Much like Republicans themselves.

Until government catches up, we are most fortunate to have tech entities like Facebook that realize the greater threat, and have acted accordingly. Ironic, isn't it?

What's Playin'?

With The Square Peg having been more or less hijacked by police shootings for the better part of the last month, I felt it time I posted a bit about music.

While so many interests have waxed and waned and then waxed again over the years, music has been the over-arching constant of my life. While life in a post-rock world has meant it's harder to find the music I love, it's not impossible.

Thanks to the Internet, newspapers, word of mouth and of course, the radio, I'm able to piece together bits of information about releases that are conceivably of interest to me. And after all these years I've gotten pretty good at it.

So when the question “What's La Piazza Gancio listening to these days?” is posed at your next soiree, you may answer thusly:

Jessie Ware –What's Your Pleasure? (2020)

Moby – Everything Is Wrong (1995)

Lana del Rey – Chemtrails Over the Country Club (2021)

Tune - Yards – Sketchy (2021)

Chris Stapleton – Starting Over (2020)

Moby –18 (2002)

Kathleen Edwards –Total Freedom (2020)

I also can't stop listening to an old Ray LaMontagne track, Beg Steal or Borrow. Funny how some songs appear at a certain time in your life and express the very things that've been rattling 'round your head.

Yep—life without music is life in black and white. (And not the Ansel Adams kind, neither.)

 

The Sad Constant

I've just begun standing-on-my head lessons. I need lessons because as a child, I was even more hopeless at gymnastics than I was at traditional sports. Thankfully, this period of my life pre-dated popular use of the word “spazz”.

So, yeah. Lessons.

My instructor is a nicely-muscled Oriental woman named Lexi, who prefers to be called Flexi. I know, I know. Her choice, right? Anyway, she's adept at contorting her body into all sorts of unnatural poses. For her, inverting the carbon-based life form's upright posture is as easy as spending money.

Me? I may as well be attempting to nail pudding to a wall.

So. You may well be asking yourself why does he even want to stand on his head? Especially at his age!

I seek this to better understand the rapidly-shifting world around me. You see, in my eyes the world is off its nut, and the best strategy towards understanding this new normal is to invert my own.

Capisce?

Take our new litmus test: police shootings. Like the conflicts they stem from, they happen all over, all the time.

This being 2021 America, 49.5% of the population feels they are entirely justified, all the time. The other 49.5% of the population believes they are wanton acts of race-based brutality and are never, ever justified.

Which leaves me and a few others in the one-percent who feel police shooting don't fit into one-size-fits-all categorization. That they originate from a hugely diverse set of circumstances and are subject to an ocean of factors that by their nature, often demand lightning-like responses.

Before going any further, I want to say I think it is a good thing we are examining them so closely. The taking of a human life, especially by an entity ostensibly there to protect them, isn't anything to take lightly.

In Chicago, we have the shooting of a thirteen year-old gang-banger caught in the act of, well, gang-banging. While I rue the influences and choices that led Adam Toledo to be firing at cars at 2:30 AM on a Monday morning, I can't quite bring myself to feel this is an unspeakable loss of human life.

The media has taken a millisecond of film in between Toledo's covert disposal of his gun and his turning to face the pursuing officer with hands raised and the officer's firing of his gun and turned it into a poster of police brutality and murder. A moment frozen for all of eternity.

For the one-percent of us still in possession of our faculties, we understand that given the conditions of the event, there was no way the officer could have known Toledo had disposed of the gun and was in the act of complying before he was shot.

This because we are talking about a tiny, infinitesimal fragment of time. And let's not forget, Toledo was an active, legitimate threat to public (that's you and me) safety.

But to 49.5% of the population, the officer may as well have blindfolded Toledo, tied him to a post, popped a cigarette in his mouth and shouted “Fire!” before dispatching the entirety of CPD's arsenal into his body.

If you say so.

Then we have the sixteen year-old girl in Columbus, Ohio, Ma'Khia Bryant.

Bryant, for unknown reasons, ended up a foster child. Despite this speed bump, she was liked and made her high school's honor roll. She posted videos about make-up and hair which were widely shared.

None of which explains how she ended up with a knife in her hands attempting to stab two co-residents of her foster home after an argument over house-cleaning. But she was. And did. The confrontation continued even after police showed up.

Again, my apologies for not belonging to either of the majority populations. But um, Bryant was in the act of murder. She was actively stabbing another person. Again, even after the police showed up. She showed no signs of abating.

Naturally, after the event ended bystanders (who, it should be pointed out, had done virtually nothing to sidetrack or end the confrontation) turned on the police. One of those assembled said “She's a (expletive) kid. Damn, are you stupid?”

Hmmm. Let's look at that real hard.

Granted the officer, after showing up, should have paused the confrontation long enough to make proper introductions and confirm the participant's ages. Then refreshments should have been served before the festivities were allowed to continue.

But the stupid cop, acting as stupid cops do, came upon what I'll call an active stabber. Bryant was in the act of stabbing someone, and after pushing them to the ground turned on another bystander and began assaulting them.

Bryant repeatedly ignored the cop's requests to cease and desist. She had a knife and was bent on using it.

Sadly, the thought-impaired bystander didn't offer an opinion as to what kind of response he would have preferred had Bryant been attacking him when the cop showed up. I'm going to take a crazy-ass, out of left field swing at this, but I'm guessing he wouldn't have wanted the cop to have first inquired as to Bryant's age before subduing her.

Am I right, bro?

Apparently, 49.5% of the population needs to hear this: a gun and a knife are dangerous, regardless of the age of the person wielding them. In fact, as Adolph Hitler himself learned through his infamous recruiting of the Hitler Youth, they are even more dangerous in the hands of someone given to black and white thinking.

Someone without a fully-developed sense of reason and consequence.

Predictably, the reaction to Bryant's death has been hysterical and extreme. Blind. Wildly inaccurate. She is innocent by virtue of her age—and nothing more. Her survivor's predictably rosy portrayals nonwithstanding, who was Ma'Khia Bryant? How did she end up in foster care? Why was a knife an acceptable response to an argument?

I pull back even further when I read the suggestions of Sheila Bedi (a civil right attorney) on how the Toledo foot chase should have unfolded. Her thought? The chase should have been abandoned. Yep. In essence, Toledo should have gone free since he is a victim of quote-unquote “society.”

Uh-huh. (It goes without saying that Bedi's was not one of the cars Toledo and his pal were shooting at that night.)

Jason Van Dyke and Derek Chauvin were clearly guilty of murder. The former should be serving a prison sentence commensurate with his crime. Hopefully, the latter will be.

But the cops who responded to the calls regarding Toledo and Bryant? Nope. By virtue of their profession, they were dropped into situations demanding immediate responses. I am confident neither is going to look back on their participation with the slightest sense of satisfaction.

Indeed, they will more-likely be haunted by them.

Can we simply mourn the tragedy of kids with no emotional center, be it a loving family or a strong parent or a true and good friend? Can we do that without shredding the people forced to respond to the worst in them?

Putting police into a position where they're all-guilty-all-the-time is as dangerous as anything a Republican could concoct. So is cloaking them in law enforcement's version of diplomatic immunity.

Police shootings need to be examined on an individual basis—not stuffed into all-or-nothing decisions that only serve a single—and highly politicized—demographic.

Oops! Gotta go. Lexi—I mean Flexi's—here. 

Wish me luck. I'm going to need it.

Minneapolis: the Un-Chicago

 Five and-a-half years ago, I watched in disbelief the video of Laquan McDonald's murder at the hands of Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke. Given the obviousness of the event, I assumed a conviction and a long jail sentence were forgone conclusions.

What I failed to remember was that this was Chicago, where the fix is always in. While it's true that Van Dyke was convicted, he received a slap-on-the-wrist sentence of just six and three-quarters years for shooting McDonald sixteen times in the back.

(Which I think you'll agree is what you and I would have received had we done the same.)

Even more stunning was the dismissal of all charges by judge Domenica Stephenson for the four cops central to the police-sanctioned cover-up. Combined, these cases represented an abyssal failure of justice, and if Chicago cops didn't feel immune from prosecution beforehand they certainly did afterwards.

So I am relieved that Minneapolis was able to conduct a trial unblemished by political influence and pandering.

Of course, it helps that the circumstances were very different. McDonald's murder came late on a Monday night on an empty stretch of Pulsaki Road. Floyd's came mid-afternoon in a neighborhood populated with stores—and shoppers

While the Chicago police sat on the McDonald footage until a court order forced its release, that was never an option for the Minneapolis PD. Cell phone video was posted to social media within minutes.

And finally, the defense's argument that Floyd's medical conditions killed him—not Derek Chauvin's knee pressing on his neck for nine minutes—was ludicrous. Seriously? Turned inside-out, that argument implies George Floyd would have died that day even had he not encountered Derek Chauvin.

Wow.

They must've thought they were addressing a CPAC convention, because I can't imagine another forum where such lunacy would be given a second thought. Never mind a first one.

The mind reels.

So congratulations to all concerned. Again, it is deeply satisfying to see reason and evidence triumph over political expediency.

With so much yet to be done, I fear this post is premature. Chauvin has yet to be sentenced (as a first-time offender with only a second-degree murder conviction, he's probably looking at a little over a decade in prison) and the trial of his accomplices won't happen until August.

As a hard-bitten cynic I'd say plenty of track remains for this train to go off the rails. 

But it is my desperate wish that communities of color and the police departments who serve them could meet, speak honestly and discover a mutual sense of respect and understanding. Of when police need to do certain things and why, and perhaps even discover a better way forward.

 

Holy Toledo?

Perhaps the best and worst feature of photography is its ability to suspend time. To forever freeze a moment. A personal favorite is the exuberant sailor who spontaneously grabbed a nurse in Manhattan on V-J Day and kissed her deeply.

The unbridled joy of war ending never had a better expression.

Not so joyous is the image of a young man, caught in the glare of police lights and suddenly appearing as a vulnerable child just moments before he was shot to death.

In the face of a hysterically over-reactive population, this tiny moment, just milliseconds long, will act as permanent condemnation of the Chicago Police Department and the officer who shot him.

Some background: Chicago police, reacting to gunfire in the city's Little Village neighborhood, came upon Adam Toledo and twenty-one year-old Ruben Roman, fresh from firing their gun at cars.

As gang-bangers are wont to do, Adam had custody of the gun since he is—in the eyes of the law—a child. A foot chase ensued. As one officer closed in on Adam, he was told to drop the gun and put his hands up.

It's critical to note the officer was over his left shoulder.

At a gap in a high wooden fence, Adam, holding the gun in his right hand, made a barely discernible underhand toss of the gun on the side of the fence not visible to the officer. Even in slow motion the action is hardly visible—never mind at a full-tilt sprint down a shadowy alleyway at two-thirty in the morning.

Having relieved himself of the gun, Adam begins to turn towards the officer, simultaneously raising his hands.

It was while doing this that he was shot.

If you're a member of the portion of society that acknowledges reality, it's completely likely that given the angles at hand, the pursuing officer never saw Adam dispose of the gun. With his last bit of visual data being that Adam had a gun, his turning toward the officer could only be construed one way.

If it is true with us, it is doubly true of officers in the pressure-cooker of a pursuit that we are rarely afforded the luxury of a slow motion replay before we make critical decisions. The officer didn't wantonly assassinate Adam Toledo. He was reacting to a lethal and immediate threat.

With canonization seeming set for this week, popular opinion sides overwhelmingly with Adam and his aged-based innocence. Mentions of his age far outweigh recitations of the fact that just minutes earlier he was randomly shooting at cars and was in possession of the gun.

Also lost is the fact that Adam decided to run, thereby initiating the chase and had disposed of the gun in as secretive a manner as he could manage.

Ask yourself: how would this story be different had Adam tossed the gun on the side of the fence visible to the police officer? It was a light-colored fence and the airborne gun would have been clearly-visible against it.

But Adam didn't. He was thinking like a gang-banger and sought to hide the evidence.

Also keep in mind this sequence played out in real time, not slow motion. Over a period of—perhaps—two seconds. It was a perfect storm of circumstance.

But before we re-name everything in Toledo's memory and declare March 29^th a national day of remembrance, I hope we give a few seconds to the realization that Toledo and Toledo alone set these events in motion when he decided to hang with Ruben Roman.

Once and for all it was a pitiable decision by a boy who had no business making it. But he's hardly the first person to die as a result of a bad decision. And he won't be the last.

Heartless? Maybe.

But I reserve my deepest, most gut-twisting sorrow for murder victims who are innocent. Which sadly, cannot be said of Adam Toledo.

The Shimmering Sentience of the Social Media Commentariat

In defiance of practically every 2021 social norm, they act as one. United in their unswerving belief that they alone know. That they alone understand. That they alone possess the power to divine the true nature of a given incident.

Yes, even in the absence of facts they are somehow able to puzzle-out what really happened, based on—I don't know—their biases? Their prejudices?

In the aftermath of the shooting death of a thirteen year-old Latino youth by the Chicago Police Department, social media exploded with accusations and finger-pointing. This is another example of systemic racism! This is another example of a police department out of control!

As a sign at a subsequent demonstration read “Stop Killing Us!”

Seriously? Is that what we're doing? Am I permitted an eye roll?

As actual facts have been made available, it has become apparent that Adam Toledo wasn't the virginal innocent Black Lives Matter and other activists have painted him as. He wasn't a “baby”. He wasn't a “victim”.

He was a wayward youth embarking on a path that predicted his violent death.

You see, young Adam had just entered into a gang-banger internship. That's why he was out at 2:30 AM on a Sunday night, accompanied by an over twenty-one accomplice and shooting at cars. The gunpowder residue on Adam's gloves proves as much.

Gang-bangers like to employ young'uns because they are far less culpable.

After a prolonged foot chase, young Adam chose to turn towards a police officer with gun in hand. Acting in kind, that police officer shot Adam in the chest. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Go ahead. Call me a hater. Call me a racist. Even worse, call me a podium-pounding law-and-order Republican.

But I can't get too broken up about the death of a gang-banger-in-training. Sorry.

The intuitive geniuses on social media clearly know better. You know, the kind who believe that every police shooting of a person of color is unjustified and absolute proof of systemic racism. The kind who carry hysterically overblown signs reading Stop Killing Us!

I wonder if it has ever occurred to them that they act as blindly and as recklessly as the police they accuse.

I pity the decisions young Adam made. I pity the Chicago Police Department officer who will have to live with this memory for the rest of their life. I pity Adam's parents. I pity his family. No one is doing a jig.

And yet, Adam is a victim only in the sense that he fell prey to the world's worst role model—the ghetto. He was seduced by illusory images of gang life as being fatally and tragically heroic. That dying young would make him a martyr. 

I regret he will forever be unable to apply its final lesson.

Instead of making false and wildly misguided accusations, let's combat the reason why kids find gangs so alluring. Let's give them a sense of belonging that isn't centered on murder and mayhem.

Ya think?

The End of an Error?

 As we collectively crave a return to normalcy, one indication we're nearing that ideal is—ironically—one we don't want to acknowledge: mass shootings. Unless you manufacture and/or sell guns, ammunition or are in the emergency medical supplies field, mass shooting are something most of us turn away from.

What we should keep in mind is that most of us is different from all of us.

Republicans and the National Rifle Association see mass shootings as an inevitable byproduct of their rigid and inflexible support of the Second Amendment. Their support is a black and white, all or nothing gambit.

To his credit, President Biden has taken the first step in what is sure to be the most contentious trip of his presidency. He has announced several executive orders which chip away at the iceberg which threatens our already fragile notion of safety.

If there's a twitchier band of people than those who constitute the NRA, I would love to see them. The mere rumor of even benign gun control measures inevitably lapse into the hysteria of “Clinton/Obama/Biden's gonna take away your guns!”  And the gun crowd falls for it every. Single. Time.

Democrat's biggest mistake has always been their attempts to mollify these un-mollify-able folk. Nay, it is impossible. The gun crowd are a car alarm set on maximum sensitivity in a crowded urban area.

Yes, it's going to go off a lot.

Yet as we quickly learn to ignore that car alarm, we rarely do so with the gun crowd. And we need to. Now. They have established themselves as people in strident and unwavering opposition of anything that doesn't facilitate a complete and unregulated torrent of guns into the United States.

They are the customer who is never happy. And as the sentient portion of our society Democrats need to understand that. We need to let them stew in their paranoia and cower in the dark recesses of their fear. It is what they want, and if I'm going to be brutally honest, likely all they're capable of.

As Democrats, we need to stop appeasing them, couching our legislation with wording like “common-sense” to avoid waking the sleeping dog. Trump never worried about offending Democrats. We should learn from that.

The unmitigated slaughter of U.S. citizens taking place before our eyes is the result of the NRA and Republicans dictating gun policy. They have single-handedly enabled a nation with more guns than people. It's certainly noteworthy how this condition undermines the gun crowd's number-one contention that the more guns we have, the safer we'll be.

Really? Is that what we're seeing?

However much I'd love to see the manufacture, sale and possession of assault weapons declared illegal (as they have been in more-civilized nations where public safety isn't determined by an industry trade association), this is unlikely to happen.

More effective would be to strip away the immunity gun manufacturers and gun sellers enjoy. In a nation driven by money, the loss of same provides a very powerful incentive.

Let's make them liable for the destruction and the trauma their products inflict on Americans in the same way cigarette manufacturers were made liable for the toxic effects of their products.

Let's face it: the gun trade and their Republican hand-maidens have won the gun battle and profited handsomely. Wildly. And exorbitantly. After decades of unfettered government-sponsored largesse, it is time for them to bear the weight of consequence.