The thin line between love and hate

First and foremost, there are no blue lives, this ain’t Avatar. Being a cop is hard, it is also a job. A job that is built on and out of white supremacy – upholding laws and status quo for and by white cis hetro men, for the most part. Therefore, if you choose to become a police officer, you are choosing to join a white supremacy organization. White supremacy is what allows police officers to think they are separate from society. They believe they are the thin blue line that separates society from chaos and order (note they are not part of society then). Well, they are doing a pretty bad job. I don’t really know anyone who feels better when armed police officers are around. 

Cops like to argue that they put their life on the line every day. They put citizens’ lives on the line every day with a license to harass, profile, assault, confiscate, and kill. As it has been said by many, we are supposed to comply with officers, yet they are allowed to make lethal mistakes with virtual impunity.

What about the thin line of mental health access, or quality education for all no matter your zip code or test scores. What about the thin line affordable housing, food deserts, segregated schools, and redlining. Abolish the police. Pay teachers. Abolish the military. Pay poets. 

Democracy Can't Die

 

Well, we made it, well some of us made it. Too many died. Too many have been made to suffer. And we are starting where we left off, bringing that same energy of Biden running down the halls cheering that marriage equality became the law of the land. A more perfect union.

 

The racist terrorist thought they could overturn democracy by breaking windows for the gram, but the broken windows theory has been proven to be bs. Democracy doesn’t lie in a building, burn it down, it won’t matter. It will hurt, it will horrific, but it won’t kill democracy. If anything, it will make it stronger, as it has. Democracy is these cracker terrorists on no-fly lists, going to jail, losing their jobs, families and friends. Democracy don’t die, we multiply. We the people. Not what the founders intended, but what we tend in our hearts – the love of one another.

 

Even these mayonnaise Bettys. Their ignorance is so infuriating, because it goes against their own self-interest. They are hurting themselves and that in turn hurts us because we love them too. You most certainly don’t like a motherfucker. But you do love them. That is if you haven’t bought into white supremacy or capitalism (same/same btw).

 

 

Little Bits' Loud Bits

 

I hope that like most people Little Bits will experience the joys and sorrows of life in stride, yet so far I’m not sure if this will be true. Sure she can be sweet agreeable courageous and kind, and much of the time she is not. She is a stubborn flighty cantankerous B much of the time, much like me. We all hopefully want our offspring to be better than us, and she, but there is so much turd parts of me in her that the shit thrown back at us covers the family in a foul stench.

 

Us: hey you have 5 minutes left then it is time to get offline

LB: okay

Us: it’s been 5 minutes time to get off

LB: okay, one moment

Us: it’s been 3 more minutes

LB: okay, one moment

Us: No, it’s time

LB: I know I’m stupid! you think I’m stupid! (throws device) why don’t you want me to have any friends! I’m sorry you hate me!

Us: None of this is true

LB: yes it is! you hate me! you think I’m stupid! (starts shivering like we pulled out a switch) sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry …

 

This goes on for the 20 minutes or so, something shifts her attention for a moment, then she acts as if it never happened. Can even ask her about it, and she probably won’t remember.

 

This happens several times a day. And low and behold, sheltering in place is not helping. The collective trauma that world is experiencing will need space and time to heal. And although we have adults in the room now, it may be too late to ever get out of shelter in place. Anti-vaccers with anti-democracy will kill us all. The revolution may not be televised but the fall will. 

 

 

Nag the Twitch

 

Sat down to write this morning. It’s later now. Was nagged into cleaning passively – I guess I’ll have to clean because I’ll have to ask you too many times to do it. Do you got receipts? Have you run the data analysis? Damn. Seriously. Responds I’m just talking out loud. But why does it feel that I’m being undercut and you play the role of the martyr? We clean. She’s annoyed, I know because she is whistling to herself.

 

I pout too. As I hold it in my nose twitches. Not my whole nose. Just the strip where breathe strips go. The twitch is more an irregular bounce. It happens more and more, the burying of emotions into twitchy muscles. Healthy outlets are few. Unhealthy options are plenty. Options, not outlets. Options keeps burying, ignoring, and isolating the truth. Guess the twitch is the truth wanting to get out, but I’m too caught up in my feelings for that.

 

 

The Age of the Moderate is Over

 

I’ve pretty much stop listening to the news. Never really watched it besides the PBSNewsHour anyway. Since March, since the question how are you doing now only causes existential dread, I’ve been off NPR. The two sides of the debate of how we got here, why people support Donnie Rump, or the evil that is Mitch the drip, has no place in a public forum. All of it is very clear and logical, it is racism – the pinnacle of ism, where all other isms flow from and too.

 

This morning NPR reported that security officials missed the insurrection by white supremist because they just didn’t believe this violent crowd directed by Rumpy would actual be violent. Huh, why is that? Why did they so readily believe that peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters would turn violent? Racism 101. Instead of calling it what it is NPR reported that it was a simple bias error, a blind spot if you will. No I won’t. This is despicable and dangerous reporting. This disavows the deep, violent racism in these officers (over-seers), in law, in American democracy.

 

Even before alt right, it was just the right, including most moderate lefts, and much of the left at that that held up and continues to hold up imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal values (thank you bell hooks). The alt-right are not necessarily radical, as logical. If your society preaches these values, they are simply following them to the logical conclusion. Why doesn’t this happen to everybody then. I hope that it is critical thinking, I hope that love is prevailing, I hope that 10 commandments etched on our hearts is enough of a compass to bypass man made ideas of power. We must be extreme in our love. I may not like you, but I love you.

 

Maybe we spend too much time liking and not loving. Too much time on the surface and not enough time with the core. Too much time wanting to be liked and not enough time loving ourselves. And since I am breathing and you are breathing and we are still breathing Caesar’s last gasp – to love ourselves is to love existence completely. This love requires action and is painful. This love requires to call out imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal values as anti-love, anti-existence, anti-you and me.

 

 

So I'm trying to write every now

I’ve spent the last month trying to find something new because I’m unemployed once again. As a part-time community college instructor who has not risen to the height of full-time instructor, our classes and our income can be cut for under enrollment. Every period I am assigned classes, re-employment preference of some sort (more like torture at this point), yet up to 2 weeks before class those classes can be cancelled. This time the news came the week of Christmas followed by several well wishes to enjoy the break. So happy holidays you broke bitches?

To get out of this unstable cycle of never knowing if I am going to work, if I going to have income, if I can make future plans, I have tried to look for other work. Shift careers I suppose. I’ve applied for well over 50 jobs in the past year and none have called back. So fuck it.

Now I’m going to do what I do, write, think, talk, listen to records. I am going to promote myself. I so deeply desire validation, often allowing people devalue how I value myself, leading to depressive entrapment. Allowing grumpy trolls to infect my value. I won’t say no more, but I will say validation is internal. So bye dirt on my shoulders, bye linkedin, and hello me I guess.

 

 

40ish and Cantankerous

When I was a teen I told people that I wanted to be bum, and by the time I entered college, I thought I would be dead by 23. No reason, just couldn’t see or imagine my future. 23 came and went and the future seemed possible simply because everyone I knew was broke and still waiting to make real moves, or so I thought. 

 

Mediocrity is my operating system. Being white, cis male in America, the definition of mediocrity, the future is not for me. Yet I’m still here, failing into the middle. The middle of success, the middle of happiness, the middle of satisfaction, the middle of life. An ineffectual contributor, despised by many, loathed by more. I know, stories we tell are stories not truth, but I haven’t found any other story. I’ve tried to make moves and all lead to no, so what story am I left with but this.

 

We’ll try again tomorrow cuz that damn sun keeps coming. 

 

The hospital where I was born