WOW... That Last Paragraph...

[calimary]

31. I don't condone it either. We've seen it in the rise of the teabaggers. Acting out.

And it's just as destructive.

We were talking about this just a few days ago. We. Have. GOT. TO. Look. At. The. Causes. Of. This. GOT TO!

Otherwise it's just gonna keep happening and keep happening and keep happening.

What happens, for example, when you operate in close quarters with one or more people who have bad colds. They come to work or school and don't stay home or go to the doctor or otherwise get treatment so they can get well. They stay in place, and you keep getting sick. So does everybody else who has to operate in the same close quarters with them.

We were talking about 9/11. I remembered the very first thing that crossed my mind when I woke up that morning and saw the coverage and the one building that had already disappeared and the other that was on fire: "WHAT ON EARTH would make someone hate so much that they'd feel the need/urge/desire to do THAT?" "WHAT MADE THEM DO THIS?" "And shouldn't we get our asses in gear and LOOK AT THAT, SERIOUSLY, if we want to keep it from happening again?" Instead our country went out like Troglodytes with rocks and clubs - like the saying describing "if all you have is a hammer, then everything around you is gonna look like a nail." So it's just HIT HIT HIT HIT HIT. With no regard for the causality, what brought this on to begin with, what provoked this behavior. NONE.

It's like we don't even want to deal with that. Especially if it means we have to look very closely, painfully, realistically, and honestly, at what WE did, ON OUR END, to provoke it.

This stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. There's a causality that nobody seems to want to bother with, although we ARE hearing a wee bit more attention paid to the causality in this civil turmoil we see now, breaking out all over the country because of Baltimore. Oh yeah, because of Ferguson. Oh yeah, because of New York City. Oh yeah, because of Tulsa. Oh yeah, because of Cleveland. Oh yeah, because of ... W.T.F.???????? HOW MANY incidents of the same ridiculous, incomprehensible, and murderous police overkill have there been since Michael Brown was killed? HOW MANY? And repeatedly. And nothing's learned. NOTHING is learned. The police get a free pass, and more victims are brutalized. And then the police get another free pass. And hey, kids! Get ready for the NEXT round! Because the only thing the civilian population can reasonably expect and count on in the future - is that there will be more brutality. And that the police will just continue on their merry way with impunity. There will be no consequences, no example made, no justice, no checking of bad behavior. Hell, I'D be furious too!!! Screw that - I AM furious!!!!

This shit is just gonna keep happening. More unarmed black men will be killed. More unarmed black teens will be hauled off to jail and appear in court the next morning in leg-irons - for doing very little and in some cases just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, congratulations, young man. You've got your first offense on record now. You just had your "coming out party" like some bizarro debutante, presented to society as a young criminal. You've just begun that merry journey down the sewer pipe to Hell. W. T. F. ???????????

I've written here before about that aspect of human nature that I've noticed through the years - people are LOATHE to admit they were wrong. Nobody wants to admit they were wrong. It's like we can't do that anymore! We don't DARE do that anymore! For Pete's sake, what would it do to our precious self-esteem? As a nation, I think it means that damned accursed "American Exceptionalism." As a people, it means the refusal to move forward and recognize we live in a different era and we can't just rewrite history to pretend that the shit in the past didn't exist or somehow was somebody else's fault. We see it in the climate change deniers. We see it in those wishing to turn the clock back on marriage and on women's rights, on civil rights in general, on VOTING rights!!! The right to VOTE!!!!!!!

THIS is what has to stop. Before any of this other stuff can stop.