I couldn’t give a fuck about Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, etc.
Most of us do not.
It’s gross that people who are literally in fear for their lives and the lives of others or saddened to see that their neighbors have been completely robbed of everything that they’ve worked their asses off for 10, 20, 30 or more years get reduced to “CRYING ABOUT TARGET”.
Yes, I am ALSO saddened to know that thousands of people who relied on such stores for access to resources or access to a paycheck are now fucked, but most of the stores and facilities being destroyed are not some billion dollar corporations. And our bigger concern is the ACTUAL harm of living human beings. People ARE being beaten savagely for the crime of telling criminals (I will not honor them with the title of “demonstrator”) to please leave their laundry/electronics/produce/shoe/whatever store alone. And most of the people doing such savagery have fuck all to do with anything remotely concerned with justice or civil rights. They’re opportunists, and no, they are not just black either.
If anyone who is supportive or complacent in the destruction actually understands the systemic racism that this country is built on, they will also understand that it is NOT the billionaire corporate fat cats who suffer from all this destruction. They’ll be just fine as they always are. This shit is passed down to the bottom, always. It’s the average Joe and the people who are hanging on by a thread that will be pushed down even more.
We got locked up for three months and people put out of work and unemployment is at a level we’ve never seen. We’re told before all this that we’re a trillion billion (no, I don’t care to look up actual figures or try to make sense of them, so don’t cut hairs here) in debt . . . . yet we give out $3 Trillion of checks to “stimulate the economy”. What the fuck are we stimulating when everything is closed? Amazon, Costco, Walmart, and Target will laugh all the way to the bank every time because they’re the only game in town and since it looks shady as fuck for the government to just trade money with such corporations day to day in full view they pretend that they’re giving it to the people.
Sorry, I got off track and forgot where I was going, haha. Anyway, cities in general are broke as fuck now. And the cities that struggled before are going to do even worse now. The pie is less and the people who were crying for just a sliver before now get nothing. No funds? Oh, okay, we’ll cut the library, cut after school sports, cut this, cut that, cut the grants that would have helped the minority-owned small businesses BEFORE they were burned to the ground because now what’s the point.
This is the America we live in, and yes, it’s a fucked up pile of shit that has a huge problem of racism. But guess what . . . it’s OUR racism. The problem is everyone points at “THEM”. I don’t just mean Sally Buttondown turning her nose at the so-called thugs and troublemakers. I mean ALL of us choosing each day to demonize everyone around us instead of talking to each other.
Grumpy is right in highlighting the nation’s division and seeing a population who, after being crushed under knee and gun so many times eventually exploded. But for anyone to sit back and play armchair quarterback and pick out good guys and bad guys based on how much they align with their own ideologies and attitudes is still counterproductive.
We’re a nation run on mob mentality. It’s in the streets for those stuck there, and for those fortunate enough to be safely removed, it’s on the Internet. People don’t define their own social goodness by what they’ve DONE for a community, but by how loud they can scream against someone else.
America is not THEM, it’s US. Let’s stop trying to spotlight ourselves and think about actually improving ourselves. I see a lot of skinny white boys who drive in from Encino to wear black hoods on their faces and smash glass and write “ACAB” on buildings where they don’t live, and certainly which they won’t pay for. Does that help anything? I hope that such people, when they see the destruction we’ve all made, will reassess and help REBUILD.
Let’s hold police accountable. But let’s also understand that if we expect to have the “service” of them we need to invest ourselves and take ownership. They are as much a part of US as the looters. I’ve taken a lot of personal review and admit I’m not super proud of my own performance in this country and in my community either. I’m working on doing better. That doesn’t mean shouting down and attacking everyone that disagrees with me. I don’t know what the point of saying my beliefs and emotions are if I don’t listen to others’.
I like to be challenged and I want to be held accountable too.
I don’t want to be part of a so-called two party system that fails time and time again to find commonality . . . especially when they are really no different from each other. We “bailed out” corporate America under Obama and we do the same under Trump. And the common political narrative will now be sold is that if someone doesn’t vote for Biden then they are siding with racism? Why is the “non-racist” side represented by yet another rich old white guy who TELLS other black people that their blackness is defined by HIS reality? And let’s not forget that the rich old white lady that felt ENTITLED to be our President last time called everyone else “deplorable”.
Fuck it all. People are not deplorable. They’re broken. If we don’t try to work with our redneck doofus neighbors to show them that they are just as at stake by the wellbeing and safety of our black brothers as anyone else is, we’ll never get anywhere. But instead, all sides divide. Sure, some people are just going to be dumb shitheads regardless, but if we don’t show examples of what is BETTER, how are they going to think differently?
Anyway, I just see a greatly divided country and I see the same people who shout about coming together are just as against that togetherness as anyone else. At least there’s a recognition of the long historical disparity of economic opportunity and justice with respect to different groups (ethnic and otherwise) but I would like to see the people that decry it also own it. It’s not possible to just stand up and demand a country to be different, but we can certainly choose to ACT differently in our own lives and in our own communities.
I saw a Sheriff just outside my house who was moving a bunch of barricades, so I went out and helped him move them (it was comical at first, since I didn’t know how they were built and I ended up inadvertantly causing more damage at first, haha). I didn’t do this because I support “dirty” cops or even a system which is overall quite problematic, but because these are MY cops, and also because I saw them act on Friday night with incredible self-control and care as they managed a crowd which also had a heavy contingency of people screaming at their faces and taunting them, clearly TRYING to get them to do exactly what they claim to be protesting against. They kept their cool and kept EVERYONE safe. But then about 15 minutes later I heard a black guy outside who was having a conversation about economics and tension and injustice and such (I was inside and only heard fragments without context). I went outside and introduced myself to my neighbor, Paul, who I’d never met (we really don’t know many of our neighbors AT ALL) and while we didn’t have any deep intellectual discussions about anything, we made an agreement that we’d look out for each other’s places and if either needed anything, all we had to do was knock on the door. This isn’t anything radical. But I just want to try to be a guy that talks WITH people and not for them or at them.
We can oppose racism and still oppose crime.
We can understand that there is a larger context of the destruction while still having empathy for victims thereof. Understanding the existence of and damage of white privilege should also come with the responsibility of owning and managing one’s own.
Sorry for all the babble, but I really think we can ALL do better.