I almost wrote a Calm Thoughtful post about George Floyd

A St. Paul cop killed a defenseless, restrained black man in Maryland a couple of days ago. The department fired him and three other officers involved in the incident. Minneapolis is now an eruption of violent unrest. Just as I’m writing this, the same authority that backed the badges and actions of the institutions that killed this defenseless person have acquiesced and detained and charged the officer. Murder/manslaughter. The protests and backlash spreading across a country now filled with unemployed citizens with adjacent angst and pent up frustration thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic grow increasingly dangerous and frenetic. Things are going south in the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.

The Minneapolis/St. Paul PD dispatched officers to investigate George Floyd of suspected fraud. Passing a counterfeit denomination. In the process of Floyd’s arrest, Ofc Derek Chauvin placed his knee on Floyd’s neck and strangled him. The video of the incident shows the officer in lackadaisical repose as his suspect cries for help between gasps for air. As difficult as it is to watch so predictable is the outcome. We have seen this before. We have been outraged before. We know how this story unfolds because there is precedent.

However…

What we have not had before is the presence of a blatantly racist (he recently hailed the “bloodline” of Henry Ford whose anti-Semitism gave Hitler himself all kinds of world changing ideas) buffoon (told people to drink disinfectant, said he tested “positively negative” on a coronavirus test) like Donald Trump at the levers of authority. His “party” has looked the other way for over four years as he spews white supremacy from his megaphone. His lunatic underlings defend to our faces his unprecedented villainy as politics as usual. This is different. At least Nixon was afraid of the people. At least Dub Bush was afraid of his party. Trump is—to use his own vernacular—a symbol unlike this nation has ever faced before. Trump is a cult leader, whether he wants that title or not. For whatever reason—stupidity or insanity or indifference—this is different.

This calls for something new. New to this country, anyway.

The crowds stormed a police station in Minneapolis and burned it. This is justified. The crowds of newly unemployed people looted a Target. This is justified. Hundreds of years of slavery, dehumanizing, hate, and murder have left the doors open for violence. You perpetrate violence, you had better expect violence in return.

It is not my place—a person who essentially believes in pacifism at most levels of discourse—to tell an oppressed race of people not to burn down the local Autozone. There aren’t black cops crushing the life out of white guys on the news. It happens. In fact, more white guys have the life crushed out of them by “the cops” than any other race in this country… but that’s just math, as is the stark reality of the higher rate that black men have their lives taken by the police. The math tells a story only math can…

Wait. I’m not doing this. I’m not going to intellectualize this. Not this time.

Rise up.

That’s it. If you are young and without a family to mourn you, rise the fuck up, take to the streets and break shit. This one needs to hurt. They’re storming the Treasury Department today. Fine.

This petulant ass, Donald Chump, has done too much. This constitution we have been told to revere our entire lives is tissue paper in a bonfire. Go in there and chain this asshole to a truck bed. I don’t want to hear about what this will “mean for our future” or what sort of new precedent this will set. The entire judicial and legislative authority will be retooled after this thug is removed either by force or vote anyway. Let’s rip off the bandage.

I know what I’m saying. I know what you’re thinking. But none of it matters. Go in there and grab this piece of garbage and throw him in a dark hole where we can keep him fed grewl and sewer water until he is dead.

The end.