Rome is burning. And if you look outside, it might be a neighborhood near you.
I can’t say I’m surprised. This is the exact situation I pictured when Trump was elected. It just took a pandemic, massive corruption, and finally a racist systemic killing to drop the proverbial straw on the camels back. That was 4 years of the system tearing it apart from the inside, so that when the shell finally had a tear, it’s falling apart completely.
I doubt there will be leadership-there was no leadership during the pandemic which caused 100,000 needless deaths and it’s still counting. There are more impassioned speeches from a rapper, than there are from the “dear leader”, who’s best solution so far is to rant against the social media he uses so much while also using it to cite racist rhetoric from 1960’s IN THE DEFENCE of the killing of a black man in Minneapolis. And by that statement, I meant he used racist language-“when the looting starts, the shooting starts”, while also saying “honor the memory of George Floyd”.
That rapper, Killer Mike, had a great speech-pleading for peace. I thought about this the other day, coincidentally. Would we see the annuls of history the same if Martin Luther King, Jr, got violent? Would we see Malcolm X, if his words had turned into thuggery? You wouldn’t because you have a dog whistle there to protect yourself. “Well, we WOULD have respected black people if only they hadn’t burned down the local target”. It’s only furthering the distrust and racism now.
“Those savages, why can’t they just respect the memory of a dead man??!!”
Here’s the thing though. Not to use Killer Mike’s other words against him; “
‘Bout to turn this mothafucka up like Riker’s Island, bruh
Where my thuggers and my cripples and my blooders and my brothers?
When you niggas gon’ unite and kill the police, mothafuckas?
Or take over a jail, give those COs hell
The burnin’ of the sulfur, God damn I love the smell
Blankets and pillow torchin’, where the fuck the warden?
And when you find him, we don’t kill him, we just waterboard him
We killin’ ’em for freedom cause they tortured us for boredom
And even if some good ones die, fuck it, the Lord’ll sort ’em”
Which is moving in the sense of the lyrics and the meaning. I agree with pretty much everything except the last two lines. And I’m not sure they’ve gone far enough. There’s two sides so stay tuned.
I don’t advocate the killing of anyone. But the message being sent should be clear. Everything has gone far enough. Once they clean up the city, will they (we) realize that the faceless corporations will claim the insurance, rebuild and go back to the way things were unchanged? Or maybe leave it like a husk, like Detroit, and empty for the people as well. When will we as a people realize that THEY (which is classism instead of racism, the rich vs the poor and mostly white versus black honestly) don’t care about people, or pretty much anything except money? The system is put into place, and people are a cog in the wheel-the easily replaceable are expendable. The dumbest part is that everyone thinks that they are part of this exclusive club. The normal people are nowhere near this club. You are much closer to the protests in the street than even sniffing the afterthoughts of the people in this club. The lowest common denominator want a president who’s a billionaire, who could never relate to them, who makes and enforces policy that just allows a tiny stream of shit to trickle down that won’t satisfy anyone, and yet they lap it up because they think he’s “one of them” or even someone to aspire to. So they should be upset, they should be mad, and they should be taking it out on the faceless corporations that can afford it. Those same corporations are the ones that bought and paid for the government, the rich to make themselves richer, and it’s so blatant today I think our forefather’s heads haven’t stopped spinning (I could expound a ton more on that also). So to that aspect, I would say that the protests haven’t gone far enough. I think people are fed up, and this needs to be heard and seen. I also wonder aloud that if we have the strength and stamina to keep this up. When the looting starts, people get their fill, and then they go home. The price of freedom and change is greater than getting a new T.V…
Here’s the other side of the coin:
All the small businesses driven away by the fires and violence, never to return to their beloved city? That bar burned by the protestors in Minnesota was owned by a former black firefighter who paid for pretty much all of it out of his pocket, and he didn’t get any insurance so it’s pretty much a store and retirement lost. The people whose lives were ended because Americans were quick to violence, or wanted to settle a grudge in the streets instead of in the courts. I can’t fully blame them for not wanting to use courts, but I do blame needless killings, deaths and the excitement our species gets for tribal savagery. The same corporations that will move away, and cause the neighborhoods to become empty vacant lots, devoid of substance and the real people who lived there and depended on their services need more assistance and have to do without. The actual cost of this effort, is going to be real. The struggle is only temporary, and most won’t feel the effects until much later. The sadness that I feel from that alone, is the difference that the ones who need the most help are typically the ones who will suffer the most.
Another thing that I’ve also thought about is the book “Atlas Shrugged”. If you haven’t read it, please do so. It’s a fantasy, and I’ve come to understand both of the sides in the book. The basic gist is that the “freeloaders” reap the benefits that the “geniuses” create, and in the ensuing power struggle, they should “shrug” and let the world fall, teaching the “freeloaders” a lesson to respect them. This is represented by the “geniuses” who are business people, the people who run the railroads, and create metals, etc. The “freeloaders” are the government, and the people in between are sheep, listening to the government and demonizing the people who create value. The irony is that the ones who so often quote this book are the people in power, doing the exact same thing that they claim they’re rallying against. Anyone who quotes this book in a non-sarcastic way has never pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, let alone become a “titan of industry”. The corruption is rampant and real, much like the book, and the attitudes they mirror and imitate are incredibly ironic. Also, the people that create value, don’t exist anymore, they’re already shrugged. Jeff Bezos doesn’t actually create a metal that helps the world. Or creates a transportation system that’s incredibly important. Rather, he drives other businesses out, and replaces them as cheaply as he can. He helps facilitate the lowest bidder, and in doing so, creates the worst value while extracts the most. He helps replace local industries with foreign industries that abuse workers to get the lowest possible price. It’s capitalism at its finest, and it’s what happens in unchecked market regulations, all made possible by those exact same politicians. They are the villains in their own favorite stories. And so, within this rant, I leave this sentiment to the reader, if you’ve read this far:
Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times. Hard times create strong men.