hate

Posted on June 24, 2022 by greg

I’ve resisted hate. At least I’ve tried to resist hate. I told myself that hate is a pointless, futile emotion, that it only gets in the way, that it warps the process of thought, that it clouds judgment and leads to bad decisions. I’ve told myself that hate harms the hater more than the hated.

I still think that’s true. But I don’t care anymore.

It was difficult at first, but I came to accept the fact that I hated Donald Trump. I don’t need to list all the reasons for hating him — you’re probably aware of them, they’ve been pretty clear for most of his life. But man I resisted admitting to myself that I hated him. Actually hated him. I still hate him, of course. Hate is fucking hard to turn off. But that doesn’t matter, because I have no desire to stop hating Trump.

One of the problems with hate is that once you get the hang of it, it’s easy. It gets harder to resist. Trump taught me to hate. Today I hate Republicans. Right now, as I sit here and type this, I hate Republicans. Not just the Republicans who’ve voted in ways I disagree with, not just Republicans who hold public office at any level, not just the Republican Party — right now, this moment, I hate every person who voted for any Republican in the last five years, Make it ten years. I don’t think this hate will be as persistent as my hatred for Trump; I suspect this generalized hatred will subside over time. But right now, at this particularly painful point in time, I hate them.

They’re all complicit, every Republican, every one of them. The epidemic of gun violence in the US, that’s on Republicans. The erosion of civil rights and liberties, that’s on Republicans. The rise in hate crime against Asians, Jews, Women, Black people, trans people, Muslims, gay folks — that’s on Republicans. The rise of asshole billionaires, that’s on Republicans. The health care desert that so many people live in, that’s on Republicans. The collapse of representative democracy, that’s on Republicans and I fucking hate them for it.

I’ve learned to hate. I’m ashamed of it, but there it is. I’ve become a hater. I hate that they’ve taught me to hate. I feel diminished by that hate; I feel tainted because of it. I hate, but I’m still resisting being hateful. It’s bad enough to hate, to act on that hate…at that point, you’re probably lost. I know it’s possible to come back from that, but it wouldn’t be easy.

Working to defeat Republicans, however, isn’t hateful. It’s just necessary. If your foot becomes infected and gangrene sets it, you don’t amputate your foot because you hate it. You do it because it’s necessary for survival. Republicans are political gangrene; they are necrotic tissue on the body of representative democracy.

That’s where I am now. Right now. Today. I hate Republicans. But that’s not the reason I want them removed from political power and authority; I want them removed because that’s the only way to salvage democracy in the United States.

in facebook jail

Posted on June 17, 2022 by greg

I’m in Facebook jail this morning. I sorta deserve it. Not for the reasons given by FB, but for another reason. I’m prevented from commenting or posting on FB for a few more hours today, and for the next 29 days my group posts will be moved lower in the Feed (whatever that is). Why? Because I apparently have “repeatedly violated our Community Standards” by advocating violence.

How did I do that? My first time was back in March, during a discussion about Wordle of all things. I don’t recall the exact context, but I made a comment that I’d have to put a dollar in the knife jar. Somebody asked what the ‘knife jar’ was, and I told them the concept was similar to a swearing jar — when somebody is trying to stop cursing, they put some money in a jar every time they say an obscenity. The knife jar is based on that idea, except it’s when I feel the urge to stab something. It was obviously a joke, and everybody understood that. Everybody except FB. I was restricted for ‘advocating violence.’

Yesterday, while commenting in real time on the January 6 hearing, I complained that both Greg Jacob (former vice-presidential counsel) and Judge Luttig were responding to questions in excruciating detail, often repeating things they’d said earlier in their testimony, even repeating things they’d said earlier in the same response. I was especially irked by the slow, deliberate, very judicial responses of Judge Luttig. I commented that what Lutting was saying was critically important, but he didn’t need to consider every word before he said it. I commented that Liz Cheney could “stop them from repeating the same things over and over and over” if she “choked them with her pearls.” Again, it was obviously a joke, but again I was restricted by FB for ‘advocating violence.’

Here’s the thing. I do deserve punishment. NOT for advocating violence, but for being a jerk about Judge Luttig’s way of speaking. I learned this morning that Lutting may have suffered a stroke recently, which could account at least partially for his slow, deliberative speech. I don’t know if that’s true, of course, but it really doesn’t matter. The judge was under no obligation to speak the way I wanted him to speak. I, on the other hand, had a positive obligation to be patient with his way of speaking. I wasn’t patient. I was annoyed by the constant repetition, but I was also annoyed at Lutting for making me be patient. I was…let’s face it, I was an asshole. Mocking somebody for their manner of speech is an asshole move.

So yeah, I deserve to be in FB jail. Not for advocating violence but for being an asshole. Judge Luttig deserved better from me.

quick note on bill barr

Posted on June 14, 2022 by greg

It’s important to remember that Bill Barr was Comrade Trump’s hand-picked Attorney General. He replaced Jeff Sessions who, if you’ll recall, was fired–well, asked to resign–by Trump because he properly recused himself from any investigations relating to Russian interference to aid Trump in the 2016 election. Barr was selected because he was more willing to accede to Trump’s questionable legal practices.

Barr, in videotaped testimony, can be heard referring to Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results as “rubbish.” He also called it “nonsense” and “garbage.” He called it “crazy” and “annoying” and “idiotic” and “stupid.” He called it “bullshit.” He even suggested Trump may have been “detached from reality.” But he never called it “criminal.”

Criminal is exactly what it was. Not the lying, but the financial profiting from the lie. Barr has been around the block long enough to know that’s fraud. Fraud is “the deliberate misrepresentation of fact for the purpose of depriving someone of a valuable possession.”

The Attorney General of the United States was essentially witnessing a crime in progress. He didn’t report it, he didn’t act on it, he just tried to dodge any responsibility for the mess by resigning his job. Bill Barr doesn’t get any credit now for speaking out now. He failed to do his job, he failed to do his duty, the most senior law enforcement officer in the nation failed to perform the most basic function of law enforcement.

Fuck him in the neck.

liz cheney will get you

Posted on June 13, 2022 by greg

I confess to having high hopes and low expectations from the January 6th Insurrection Committee hearings. I fully expected to be underwhelmed by last week’s prime time hearing and was surprised that it was as well orchestrated and effective as it was. But I seriously doubted this morning’s hearing would be as organized and productive.

I was wrong.

This committee is different. They’re actually focused and disciplined. In most congressional hearings, the members use the time relegated for questions to make political statements, score political points, and create sound bites in the hope of getting a moment on the evening news. These committee members have somehow found the strength of purpose to sit back, shut the fuck up, and let one or two people run the show.

This means we’re getting a coherent narrative, one that everybody on the committee agrees with and supports. It’s also a compelling narrative, and they’re presenting it in a way that trial attorneys will appreciate. At the beginning of each hearing so far, they said, “This is what the evidence will show.” Then they’re using each hearing to show individual elements of the evidence. And at the end, they repeat, “Here’s what the evidence we just presented means.” Structurally, the hearings have been beautiful.

I did NOT expect to learn anything new from the hearings. But again, I was wrong. I learned that Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry had been in touch with the White House after the insurrection to seek a presidential pardon, and that “multiple other Republicans” had done the same. Multiple. Now I want to know which ones–and I think there’s a good chance the hearings will produce the names.

I learned Jared Kushner, the lizard-brained son-in-law of Comrade Trump, dismissed threats by White House lawyers and DOJ legal staff to resign if Trump followed through on various blatantly illegal/unconstitutional schemes. He said the most Jared Kushner thing ever:

“My interest at that time was on trying to get as many pardons done, and I know that he was always, him and the team, were always saying ‘Oh we are going to resign’. So, I kind of took it up to just be whining, to be honest with you.”

That’s right. He was too busy arranging pardons–around 120 pardons in the post-election period–many of them for Trump cronies who were involved in crimes aiding Trump. So busy he assumed resignation threats by multiple legal staff from multiple agencies claiming Trump was knowingly advocating criminal acts was just ‘whining’. Lawdy.

Trump should remember that Liz Cheney’s dad once shot a friend in the face with a shotgun, and the only person who scares Dick Cheney is Liz.

But the most astonishing thing I learned was this: Liz Cheney is Keyser Söze. If you’ll remember from the movie, Keyser Söze was threatened by a Hungarian drug gang, told to get out of the drug business. When he refused, they took Söze’s family and threatened to kill them unless he gave up his drug business. To prove their point, they killed one of his children. Instead of giving in, Söze then shoots and kills his own family and he kills all the Hungarians holding them–except one. Then…

“He lets the last Hungarian go. He waits until his wife and kids are in the ground and then he goes after the rest of the mob. He kills their kids, he kills their wives, he kills their parents and their parents’ friends. He burns down the houses they live in and the stores they work in, he kills people that owe them money.”

Liz Cheney was threatened by the GOP hierarchy, told not to cooperate with the 1/6 Committee. When she refused, she was stripped of her committee assignments and her leadership position. When she stood her ground, refusing to go along with Trump’s Big Lie, she was booed on the House floor by some of her colleagues.

Big mistake. She’s almost certainly burned her political career to the ground, and now she’s in the process of hunting down the insurrection wing of the Republican Party, the ones who forced her to make the choice. Donald Trump probably twitches when he hears her name. She’s on her way to becoming a myth, a spook story that Republicans tell their kids at night, “Rat on your pop, and Liz Cheney will get you.”

criminals don’t obey the law

Posted on June 9, 2022 by greg

It could have been almost any Republican who said it. I mean, they’ve probably all said it at some point. But this time it was Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie.

“Every single one of these bills is unserious and unconstitutional and suffers from the inherent problem that all gun control bills suffer from, that is that criminals do not obey the law.”

There are a lot of really stupid arguments made by a lot of stupid (or disingenuous) people against common sense firearm safety legislation. But the stupidest argument of all–and this is just my opinion–is the criminals don’t obey the law argument.

Sure, it’s true. But it’s also stupid. Deeply, profoundly stupid. Stupid at the cellular level. It’s stupid in so many ways you’d need an abacus to count them. It’s stupid because it suggests criminality is a binary condition. People are either Criminal or Not Criminal. Criminals don’t obey the law? It’s like saying sober people don’t get drunk. It’s like saying people who are standing don’t sit down.

Dude, you’re standing until you sit, you’re sober until you get drunk, and you’re not a criminal until you break the law. You’re not a mass murderer until you kill lots of people.

Mass murderer or 2nd Amendment Asshole? Who knows?

We all know–and this includes that fuckwit Massie–most of the recent mass murderers legally obtained the guns they used to murder lots of people. That’s because it’s pretty fucking easy to legally obtain a gun. Especially a long gun, like a rifle. Yes, if you buy a gun from a federally licensed gun dealer, you have to submit to a background check, but it’s a fairly cursory check. And in most states you can dodge that background check if you buy the gun from an individual–a friend, a relative, a neighbor, some guy you met at a bar–so long as you live in the same state (well, so long as the seller has reasonable cause to believe the person buying the gun is from the same state). Hell, somebody can just give you a gun as a gift. All perfectly legal.

So you can easily acquire a gun and be Not Criminal.

In 44 states, it’s also perfectly legal to openly carry a long gun–a rifle or shotgun. Seriously, in most of the US you can just walk around town openly with an AR-15 strapped to your shoulder and still be Not Criminal. In three of those 44 states, it’s illegal to openly carry a long gun IF it’s loaded. But, of course, you can’t tell if a rifle is loaded just by looking at it. And police officers would need probable cause in order to stop a person carrying a long gun to check to see whether or not it was loaded. Only a few of those 44 states that allow you to wander around toting a rifle have restrictions on large capacity magazines (generally considered to be a magazine holding more than ten rounds).

And hey, guess what? In most jurisdictions, you can walk around wearing body armor IF you’re not pretending to be a member of law enforcement. So in most of the US you can buy yourself an AR-15 variant, load it with a large capacity magazine, dress yourself in generic military gear, and wander over to the local supermarket and you’d still officially be Not Criminal unless and until you started shooting people.

And that’s a problem, isn’t it. You can’t tell the Criminals from the Not Criminals until the bastards start shooting, until you have to start running and ducking and screaming. You have absolutely no way of knowing if the guy carrying his AR-15 into the coffee shop is a mass murderer or just another Second Amendment Asshole.

Republicans are okay with this.

Here’s another very basic fact that Representative Massie and his fellow GOP fuckwits fail to understand: law exists to regulate human conduct. We know we can’t ever completely stop people from doing stuff we don’t like, but we institute laws to discourage certain unwanted antisocial behaviors. We don’t expect trespassing laws to completely stop trespassing, but they discourage it. We know stalking laws won’t prevent stalking, but they give stalking victims some small measure of protection. We know sensible firearm safety laws won’t put an end to mass murder, but they can reduce the butcher’s bill. They can moderate the body count.

But c’mon. We know that’s not important to people like Massie. These people will claim they see firearms as nothing more than tools, but the truth is they treat guns as tangible evidence–as undeniable proof–that they’re strong and independent and courageous and free. But that’s bullshit. The only people who need or want to carry guns in public are people who are afraid of the world around them or bullies who want to intimidate others.

People like Massie are just afraid. They feel their world–the world in which they’re powerful and dominant–is slipping away from them. They fear a future in which they’re not powerful and dominant. They seem to think guns and the Second Amendment will somehow magically protect them, will allow them to hold on to their current position in society, will grant them the measure of respect they think they deserve.

And they’re willing to sacrifice shoppers, office workers, random civilians, and school kids to keep their own place in the world.

You cant tell a mass murderer from a 2nd Amendment Asshole until the shooting starts, but you can tell an accessory to mass murder by the way they vote.

first through the door

Posted on June 5, 2022 by greg

I give no weight to the claim by the Uvalde, TX police that they couldn’t breach that classroom door because it hadn’t been authorized. No weight at all.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m fully willing to believe that whoever was in charge of the situation (and it was such an astonishing jurisdictional fuck-up that it’s hard to say who was actually giving orders to whom) refused to authorize the breach. But I don’t believe that’s what actually prevented the police from entering the classroom. And in fact, it appears the final decision to breach was made despite orders not to do it.

I strongly suspect the reason for the delay was that nobody wanted to be the first person through the door. They knew there was somebody on the other side of the door with a semi-auto rifle. They knew that person had already shot and killed a bunch of kids; they knew he wouldn’t shy away from shooting at police officers. They knew the first officer through that classroom door would be targeted. They knew there was a very good chance that first officer through the door would be wounded or killed.

I’ve never been in that situation, though I’ve been in something similar. Years ago, when I was working as the counselor for the Psychiatric/Security Unit of a prison for women, I occasionally found myself standing outside a cell in which an inmate had either obtained or fashioned a knife. Obviously, you can’t allow prison inmates to have knives, which means somebody has to take it from them.

Because we had a duty of care for the inmates–and we actually believed in it–that meant finding a way to take the knife from the inmate with the least amount of damage to the inmate. Not the least amount of damage to the unfortunate volunteer who had to enter the cell, but to the inmate. That’s what a duty of care means; you have an obligation to try NOT to hurt the people under your care or allow them to be hurt.

The very best resolution, of course, is for that unfortunate volunteer to try to talk the inmate into surrendering the knife. As the unit’s counselor, my job was to be the unfortunate volunteer. Open the door, go in the cell by myself, try to convince an inmate to drop her weapon. You go in by yourself because that’s less threatening.

I’m not an idiot, though. I always had a team waiting outside, out of view, ready to rush in and help me if/when things went sideways. It made going into that cell a little bit less terrifying.

Talking worked maybe half the time. Half the time the inmate either refused to drop the knife (in which case I had to act to take her knife away) or she attacked me. I trained for this, of course, and practiced techniques for defending myself against a knife attack. But it was still pretty awful waiting outside that door, knowing I’d have to go in and maybe have to defend myself. The longer I had to wait (for example, if the backup team hadn’t arrived), the harder it was to open that door and step inside.

It has to be a LOT scarier to stand outside a door knowing the person inside has a semi-auto weapon and has already killed people.

But here’s the thing: that’s the job. You train for it. You practice it. It doesn’t necessarily make it easier, but it’s your job to put aside your personal safety. If you can’t do that–or if you’re unwilling to do that–then you should leave the job.

Over the last several years, the attitude of police officers has shifted away from that. It began with that mantra “It’s better to be tried by twelve than carried by six.” More and more we’re seeing police officers put their own safety ahead of the public’s. We see police officers shooting suicidal, knife-wielding, psychiatric patients–because it’s safer for them. We see police officers shooting people suspected of possibly having a weapon–because it’s safer for them. We see police officers shooting people out of fear for their own safety.

That’s perfectly understandable. Nobody wants to get hurt, nobody wants to get stabbed or shot, nobody wants to take unreasonable risks. But that’s part of the fucking job. You train and practice ways to reduce the risks, to minimize the risks, to limit the damage you will very likely have to take. But those risks are hard-wired into the job.

As I understand it (and lawdy, there is SO MUCH confusion and misinformation about what actually happened in Uvalde that we still can’t be sure what took place), the first person through the door was grazed by a bullet. He could have been killed. But had he (or some other law enforcement person) had been willing to take that risk 45 minutes earlier, there’d be fewer funerals of children held this week.

The police culture needs to change. They need to be reminded about the entire point of being police officers. Protect and serve. Protect the public, serve the public. Do that even at the risk of your own safety. If you can’t or won’t put the public ahead of yourself, go work security at some shopping mall.

840 thursdays

Posted on May 27, 2022 by greg

On April 20, 2006–a Thursday–a friend issued a very minor challenge in the Utata group on the photography sharing site Flickr. She said, “I’m going to go for a walk and take a few photos; join me.” And what the hell, we did. Virtually, of course, since the membership of Utata is scattered all over the globe. We went for a walk, we took a few photos, and we shared some of them in the group.

That was 840 Thursdays ago. Utata has been walking–and shooting a few photos–every Thursday since. That’s just over sixteen years of Thursdays.

Sixteen years of people walking and shooting photos. Sixteen years. Not everybody in the group walks on Thursdays, of course. And of those that do walk, we don’t walk every Thursday. But every Thursday, somebody in the group is walking somewhere and taking photographs.

Of those 840 Thursday Walks, I’ve participated in nearly 300 walks. I’ve walked on other Thursdays, but I haven’t always submitted a photograph to the project.

My favorite thing about the Thursday Walk project is that it’s so flexible. There are no rules, no guidelines. You take a walk, you see something that interests you at that moment, and you photograph it. Subject–doesn’t matter. Aspect ratio–doesn’t matter. Color or b&w–doesn’t matter. DSLR or mirrorless camera or point-and-shoot of Polaroid or cell phone–doesn’t matter.

Walk. See something. Photograph it.

I often combine my Thursday Walk with an errand. A run to the market, say, or a trip to the Post Office. But the flexibility of the project extends way beyond that. A bike ride can also be safely included as a Thursday Walk. A visit to a fair or an amusement park, perfectly legit. A bus ride, close enough. It’s not the actual walking that matters; it’s getting out and looking at stuff.

As far as that goes, since the membership of Utata is global, we’re flexible in terms of time zones. For the purposes of the project, Thursday includes Wednesday morning to Friday night–because somewhere on the globe, it’s Thursday.

So my Thursday Walk images are a hodgepodge of color and b&w, of alleyways and farm fields, of interiors and exteriors, of cityscapes and landscapes, or people and trees, of bike paths and bridges, of mornings and nights, of floods and dry creekbeds, of rainstorms and sunny days, of strangers and friends and selfies, of small towns and deep woods and suburbs and ice cream shops and market shelves and lawn ornaments.

The only thing that unites them is they were taken on the extended Thursday of Utata. And to me, that’s much of the joy.

It’s such a simple thing, and yet it’s completely wonderful–and I mean wonderful in the old sense of the term. It leaves me full of wonder. There’s no logical reason for people all over the world to do this–and yet they’ve continued to do it for more than sixteen years. I should say we have continued to do it for more than sixteen years.

I have to stress the we because I stepped away from the group for a while. For a couple of years, in fact. I’d been the managing editor of Utata for most of its existence, and I ran some of the group projects–until I became burned out. Then I stepped back a bit and let others step up. Then I stepped away almost completely.

But now I’m beginning to miss the group again. I miss the people and I miss the interaction and I miss walking on Thursdays. I can’t say I’ll be actively engaged with the group again, because I probably won’t. Certainly not like I used to be. But spending time with smart, creative people–even virtually–is a treat.

However, here’s the thing: what I need to do, if I want to engage with that group again, is make photography part of my ordinary day again. I have to make it habitual behavior. I have to start thinking about it again. Which is why I’m writing this. If I say it in public, I’m more likely to follow through.

Probably.

the gop is okay with occasional mass murder

Posted on May 25, 2022 by greg

I just counted. Since I started writing this blog, I’ve written 31 posts about mass shootings and murders. This will be the 32nd. It won’t be the last. Hell, there were so many blog posts on mass shootings I had to create a tag for it; another mass shooting.

The first was in August of 2012, the Sikh temple mass murder in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Remember that one? Probably not. Seven dead; eight counting the shooter. The shooter generally isn’t included in the butcher’s bill, because he’s not an innocent victim.

You know who else isn’t innocent? Republicans. Republican governors, Republican state legislators, Republicans in Congress. They may not be actively guilty, but they sure as fuck aren’t innocent. Now, I’m not saying these people are okay with routine sporadic mass murders, I’m saying…

Wait. No, I AM saying Republican lawmakers are okay with routine sporadic mass murders. And hey, let’s also include Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema as being okay with routine sporadic mass murders. If these people weren’t okay with it, they’d have done something to prevent it. At the very least, if they weren’t okay will mass shootings, they’d have done something to reduce the body count.

But they haven’t. They haven’t done a goddamned thing. And they won’t. We know they won’t. So yeah, Republican lawmakers (and a pair of asshole Democrats) are okay with routine sporadic mass murders. They won’t admit that, of course. Because that would make them sociopathic monsters.

Wait. They ARE sociopathic. They may not be actual monsters, but clearly they meet the diagnostic criteria for being sociopaths. They have a weak and limited capacity to feel empathy and remorse. Some of them may, it’s true, be sincere when they mouth the phrase ‘thoughts and prayers’. But they don’t feel enough empathy or remorse to actually do anything constructive about it. So fuck them and their thoughts and prayers.

I don’t know how many people have died in Uvalde, Texas. First they reported it was two kids. Then ten. Now I think the butcher’s bill is 21, mostly kids. Oh, and the shooter shot his grammy too, though she didn’t die. Well, not yet. The body count may go up; it so often does. Second grade, third grade, fourth grade kids. Eight, nine, ten-year-old kids. Shot dead.

Here’s another horrible thing: we’re not hearing about wounded kids. We’re not seeing pictures of ambulances pulling up to hospital trauma centers. We’re not hearing about kids in surgery. That suggests the victims weren’t just shot, but were shot to a degree that there was no point in transporting them to an emergency room.

There are…wait. There were just under 600 kids enrolled in that school. So about 3% of the student body were killed today.

=====

I wrote that last night. Couldn’t finish it. Didn’t want to finish it.

This morning we’re learning the names of the victims. Last night they were just generic victims. Today we’ll find out more about them. We’ll see photos of them, we’ll hear from their friends and family members and teachers. Politicians (including Republicans) will mourn them in public. They’ll offer the usual thoughts, the usual prayers, and they’ll say we must never forget them.

But we will. Oh, their families will remember them. So will their friends. And the kids who saw them gunned down, they’ll never be able to escape those memories. But for the rest of us, in a few days they’ll just be included in the roll call of generic mass murder victims.

It’s tragic. It really is gut-shattering massively fucking tragic. And the tragedy will be compounded by the fact that nothing will change. Nothing will chance because Republican lawmakers (and a couple of asshole Democrats) are okay with routine sporadic mass murder. They’re basically okay with a few hundred kids being shot to death every year.

So are the people who vote for them.

Yesterday was the 144th day of the year. There have been at least 212 mass shootings in 2022 so far. Republicans and Republican voters are okay with that.

EDITORIAL NOTE: By the way, SCOTUS will be handing down a ruling on gun rights in the next few weeks. It’s almost certain they’ll make it easier for more people to carry more guns in more places. We can thank Republicans for that too.

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