Last Week

If you’re like me, you couldn’t keep up with it all. Or even process everything. What a week that was. I’ve never seen anything like it and nothing in my memory can compare to it. And yet, George Floyd was not unique in that horrible way he died. So people asked, “What’s so different now?”

I looked at the TV. I looked at videos and read articles. With a thrill of nausea and lots of dread, I saw the tear gas used on protesters, saw crowds running, saw the church burn on Sunday night, then, Monday, a debacle the likes of which I’ve never even imagined as Lafayette Square was gassed and crowds charged by cops with shields and riot sticks.

Which was followed by a bizarre speech by Trump with an open threat and a singularly bizarre walk by Trump and an unbelievably scary entourage to the burnt church. The fucker used a church and an upside-down bible as props for a photo op. No shit, and it’s still hard to believe.

Then, in a blinding speed, images and sounds like nothing that could be real, but was.

A 75-year-old man shoved. Lost his balance because he was shoved. Immediately bleeding from an ear and the posterior skull. Listed as serious but stable condition. But how serious? That’s a severe concussion and probable skull fracture you’re seeing. He could have died.

Surrealism: a reporter and his crew fired at as they try to retreat. Cannisters and rubber bullets. Two Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawks buzzing protesters, a maneuver someone called “dusting”, which is basically terrorism. The twin engines and the monster blades of the Blackhawks are weapons at low altitude. If you’re beneath them, you’re getting hit by particles of dust, small debris and anything they feel like dropping. You better tuck into a ball and cover your face. No shit. Whoever justifies this shit is stupid.

But there was no shortage of that. It didn’t begin or end with Trump’s bible modeling. He was asked if it was his bible, and he really answered, “It’s a bible.” Translation: “I don’t own a bible.”

While Reverend Al Sharpton gave a powerful and simply perfect eulogy for the family of George Floyd, others were beginning to fall away from supporting Trump. A number of former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs were vocal in their disapproval of his threat to use regular military personnel to police the streets of any state he chose, and Joe Biden failed to tell officers not to shoot at suspects. Instead he suggested that they aim for legs instead of center of mass. Joe wants to win, but waffling is not a good strategy. There’s no middle ground in a firefight and nobody aims for legs, but then again, that’s if someone else has a gun and can, or is shooting back. You aim center of mass unless you’re the highest tier in an elite sniper class. Then you can try for headshots, but even that’s mostly Hollywood and videogame bullshit. If you’re forced to shoot, you’re forced to kill. Fuck around, and you’ll be the casualty.

Besides, you know how easy it is to hit a major artery in the leg? If a shot goes astray and you score a leg shot, your high velocity round will be very likely to cut or sever the femoral artery. That’s still a kill.

Why all the stupidity? Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Diblasio are not handling things. The tear gas. The pepper balls. Vehicles running into a crowd.

The result: officers shot by anarchists or just plain dickheads using brute force against civilians as an excuse, which makes everything worse.

The police have been less than honorable in every city where protests took place save one, Newark. What are they doing different?

Hitting kids over the head with riot sticks has nothing to do with law and order. It has everything to do with wanting to crack his fucking skull open.

In my life, I’ve seen and been the victim of things nobody should ever see or endure. But though I’ve been bitter about it, there wasn’t enough evil in me to act on it. Oh, when I thought about shooting my parents, I was well and truly capable. I would have been convicted of first degree murder, too. But I’d have saved my nephew from things I knew he was already having done to him. Cops kneeling on a man because he had a rap sheet until the guy dies isn’t done to save anyone.

It’s done out of racist hatred and a disregard for civil rights and the sanctity of life that chills my blood. Watching George Floyd die is to watch a part of your own soul break off and die. Seeing that cop with a hand in his pocket, squeezing the life out of Floyd and smirking is to watch a cold-blooded, first degree homicide. That’s exactly what it was, straight murder. Other officers watched. And it doesn’t matter that one said something. It doesn’t matter because they all stood around and watched a bully cop with a bad record commit murder. Now they’ve been photographed in orange, and they should get used to that color. Other cops are pissed. They’re striking out at people because a “brother officer” is “guilty of doing his job”.

Meanwhile, honorable police officers are lumped together as assholes and murderers. That’s not cool, but what’s less so is when someone says, “If you get a bad hamburger it doesn’t mean McDonald’s is bad.” Speaking about police officers to a crowd. That’s not the way to handle this. It’s degrading, simplistic and grossly condescending.

Trump, on the other hand, notorious for not wearing a mask, toured a plant where swabs for covid-19 tests were made. In there, he alone wasn’t wearing a mask. The entire batch made that day are confirmed as contaminated and we already did not have enough.

Then he claimed based on flawed numbers that the economy was doing great, and that George Floyd was looking down on him and smiling. African American jobs were up, he said. Which confirmed, if anyone had any doubts remaining, that Donald Trump is a racist idiot who is so self-serving and egotistical that he would actually talk like that while the nation was caught up in protesting the man’s murder, his family was grieving, and he was standing there mocking them and perfectly happy to risk more unemployment when the coronavirus spreads.

Covid-19 is not over, is not slowing, and will continue to spread. There won’t be any second surge in the fall; we’re already into June and there’s no reason to believe next month will automatically be free of COVID-19. That’s unreasonable, unrealistic and too close to Trump’s lies and delusion than anyone should be.

Fortunately I have just the man to properly explain all of this. If a comedian can’t be funny right now, it’s not because he’s not willing to try. It’s because laughing at this shit is unthinkable. He gets in a couple of jibes, but this is the most serious episode he’s ever done.

Colin Powell and others are now openly calling Trump a liar. Why the fuck did it take three and a half years?