#(the first day tumblr got polls i dreamt i got them too & made this one & woke up and saved it half asleep to my drafts)

[megacircuit9universe]

MOVEMENT

FRI JUN 12 2020

So, we’re nearing the end of week three, of the nationwide protests that began in Minnesota after the public execution of George Floyd and it has gone from scattered pockets of social unrest, to a full blown national uprising in which citizens of all 50 states have been clashing seriously with jack booted police in riot gear every single night... to a solidified movement against systemic racism and fascism in the US.

Officially known as the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) the latest battle cry has become, “Defund the Police,” and basically calls for law enforcement as we know it to to be disbanded and replaced with a much more compartmentalized system of different local agencies to deal with the multiplicity of different issues that, currently, all full under the blanket of gun-toting, badge brandishing cops.

And I fully support this idea.

One department to deal with homelessness. One to deal with domestic violence. One to deal with traffic violations. One to deal with mental illness. And, etc.

And the foundation of this infrastructure is already in place, with our current 911 emergency system.  If your grandmother falls and can’t get up, you call 911, and they dispatch EMTs in an ambulance to take her to the ER.  If your house is on fire, 911 dispatches the fire department.  

And for decades, we’ve all been encouraged to call your local police department (rather than 911) for almost every COP related task other than a grave crime in progress, like a murder, or a home invasion. 

If your neighbors are being too loud after midnight... call the local police department.  Not 911.  If you think you saw a shady character doing a drug deal down the block... police department.  Not 911.

In truth, most of what police do is take reports after the fact, and file paperwork about crimes and complaints.  Most of the arrests they make are either on the scene of a domestic abuse (arresting drunk guys) on the scene of a traffic stop (usually for expired or revoked credentials, drunk driving, or possession of contraband like drugs or guns) and... arrests for no other good reason than to harass minorities in poor neighborhoods.

That last one, however, has, over the decades gone from mostly intimidation and harassment, with brutality in small pockets... to widespread execution of black people on the streets in broad daylight in every major city, and some not so major cities.

It is true that smart phones have made this egregious conduct a lot more visible than ever, so yes, it  probably was worse in past decades than I think it was, but there’s also no doubt that racists have gotten a lot more bold under the Trump administration... sensing they can act on their deadliest impulses without fear of repercussions.

Racism has always been a deadly flashpoint in America, since it’s founding, but over the second half of the 20th century, we did seem to have made some real progress at putting the worst of it behind us. 

For a few decades there, racists... especially the violent ones... had to hide in the closet. In public, they had to behave themselves.  And white supremacist groups, and neo-nazis seemed like extremely fringe groups who we laughed about... just powerless nut jobs whining from the sidelines of history... watching helplessly as the world moved on without them.

I feel like this began to change after 9/11.  2001... beginning of a new century... and an unprecedented attack on mainland USA.  Not some Island we owned in the middle of the Pacific, like Pearl Harbor... but New York City, and Washington DC!

And who were to blame?  The browns!  The towel heads!  The Muslims!

9/11 gave racists a reason to come out of the closet again.  No, they couldn’t shit talk Jews, Mexicans, or Black Americans, but... they could spit their vitriol against the terrorist Muslims aloud without much push back.

And that breath of fresh air in their racist nostrils went a long way toward renormalizing the kind of open, flag waving jingoism society thought it had left behind with the McCarthy era.

Fox News, of course, was already around... and the internet too, was taking off it’s dial-up training pants and using the broadband like a big network.  Racists found one another... began to establish new codes to present their agenda in public, while establishing new dog whistles to signal one another over the same airwaves.

All through the Bush Administration, these newly coded racist and nationalistic viewpoints were given the full benefit of the doubt by the mainstream media... just, another side, to our grand political discourse. 

But the left, especially from my generation (X) were not idiots and not having it.  We called them out, and we created push back.  We created enough push back, in fact, that in 2008, we managed to get Barack Obama elected as our nation’s first black President... about fifty years earlier than anybody expected!

That was a MASSIVE slap in the face to the hardcore racists in the country who had only just begun to start feeling their oats again, and had all kinds of plans for how to wield the power they felt was nearly within their grasp.

They lost a lot of ground over the eight years of Obama... as Millenials grew up to wield social media in ways never before dreamt of... for normalizing very progressive social issues, from women’s rights, to black rights, trans rights, gay rights, decriminalization of marijuana, etc, etc... until we got the prize of the century, legal gay marriage in all 50 states overnight!.. again... about fifty years earlier than expected.

But while young Millennials proved themselves unmatched wizard masters of social media, putting old-hat conservatives, white nationalists, and xenophobes alike, completely to shame... they had one Achilles heel.

...They turned out to be totally useless in actual elections!

The young Millennial Left had done all of their magic under the protection of the Obama administration... and the technology it brought us... and the progressive political atmosphere it afforded us.

But it was a coalition of GenX and Boomers who, after having fought Bush for eight terrible years, gave them Obama, and reelected Obama again, while they were all still too young to go to the polls.

When 2016 came along, and it was their turn to actually show up and vote in the primaries for their boy Bernie... they didn’t show up, and Hillary took the nomination.

Then, in the generals, they again stayed home because... why are you making us vote for Hillary?  Fuck you!

The older lefties also dropped the ball.  After eight years of Obama, they’d become a bit overconfident, and a bit lazy.  Many, I’m sure, assumed the Millennials would show up in numbers that were... far higher than zero.

Trump, meanwhile, had played to those disaffected dregs of humanity... the racists... the white nationalists... the old-hat conservatives... speaking their code, and using their dog whistles.  Make America Great Again... not so much like the 1950s... but like the early 2000s... when they were respected!  

He not only tapped into their racism, but their hatred of the left... those goddam Millenials who stole the stage from them, and got gay marriage legalized. 

That’s how he edged out the nomination against all his more normal GOP rivals, and... when the generals came... of course they voted for him, because what did they have to lose?

Thus, the golden era of Obama, our first black President, was immediately answered by our worst white nationalist President since Andrew Johnson (who immediately followed Lincoln), and our worst President period.

And that brings us back to now... 2020.

Over four years, we tolerated all the repugnant tweets, the racist travel bans and caging of immigrants at the border, separating them from their children, then losing track of the children... the sympathy for Putin, and Kim Jong Un... the abandonment of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of natural disaster... because he didn’t respect the President of Puerto Rico (himself)... the lies, the hatred, the mass shootings condoned, the conspiracy theories, the crimes.

We tolerated, but we resisted, and we waited on the Mueller investigation.

In 2018, once again... Millennials failed to show up at the polls.  Despite all their grievances, the nightmare, as it was, wasn’t bad enough to get their asses off the couch to go vote. Easier to stay home and bitch on Twitter and Tumblr.

The rest of us did at least show up and flip a ton of State Houses, and Senates, and Governorships... and the US House of Representatives... to put Trump on notice.

And this resulted, not only in the legalization of weed in several new states, but also... Trump’s impeachment.  Not too shabby, for a salty resistance movement who couldn’t count on any support from the youngsters on election day.

In 2019, Bernie Sanders again, caught fire!  This time, not only with GenX and Millennials, but also GenZ... who were finally hitting voting age in time for the primaries of 2020!  It looked like we were finally gonna bust everything wide open!

But when the primaries came, in early 2020, not only did the Millennials not show up... but they’d passed on their apathy to the up and coming Zoomers, who, instead of going to the polls, stayed home to make TikTok Memes about, “Don’t make me vote for Joe Biden.”

Don’t make you vote for Joe Biden?

Don’t YOU make ME vote for Joe Biden, you spoiled, slack ass little TWERPS!  What are you talking about?  You have a vote now!  Bernie doesn’t win the nomination without it!  Without all of your votes, you... dancing to sound clip idiots!

Who taught you to think it was the old people’s job to hand you a general election candidate.... oh yeah.  Right.... the Tumbler Blog, YouTubing idiots you grew up idolizing.

WE’RE FUCKING DOOMED!

But just then... SarsCoV2 came to town.  It came to shut down the economy on the Millennials who were only just finally starting to get ahead after it shut down on them in 2008 (when they were graduating high school just like Z is now)... and it came to shut down the schools, to send all the Zoomers home for the spring... summmer... fall... eternity.

It also hit the elderly, minority, working, and poor communities especially hard, either by direct infections, or financial hardship, or the hardship of being a largely unprotected “essential worker” on the front lines.

And even as it became famous for forcing all Americans to wear masks... Covid19 also UNMASKED Americans in a way no calamity has in modern times... in their selfishness, as with the hoarders of toilet paper, and the protesters for haircuts... and in their science denying ignorance.

And it was only a matter of time before it would rend naked, the murderous culture of our police, in broad daylight, before a captive, nationwide audience with nothing else to distract them anymore.

No jobs to go to.  No classes.  No retail shopping to do.  Fed up with quarantine.  Fed up with Trump’s total failure of leadership on the pandemic.  Fed up with his do-nothing Senate resisting any financial aid.

Fed up with all the bullshit of the past four years.

And fed... the fuck... UP... with systemic racism, police brutality, fascism in general... and those god damn confederate flag waving, racist grandchildren of the losers of the god damn civil war, and all their motherfucking confederate statues erected to glorify the treasonous traitors in their family trees.

This week, not just in America, but in many other western countries, statues dedicated to racist slave traders, and confederate generals alike fell.  In some cases they were taken down by authorities, but in many others, they were toppled by mobs, beheaded, and rolled into the rivers.

The Black Lives Matter movement has become global now, and it’s got teeth.

Shark teeth.

Not only are racist statues dropping like flies, but the confederate flag is on it’s way to join the Nazi swastika flag in the halls of infamy... this week being banned by none other than NASCAR, as well as other organizations.

The US military is considering re-naming all bases currently named after confederate generals (we had those???  WTF???).

Laws are being passed to outlaw choke holds by police... to appease the angry populace, while full defunding and restructuring of law enforcement is totally on the table, and being taken seriously.

Across the country, governmental power is on the defensive, and in many quarters, conceding to demands... looking to negotiate... desperate to calm the storm that is the Black Lives Matter Movement... even while jack booted cops are still lobbing tear gas grenades and pepper balls at the protesters in the streets, beating them with clubs, and shooting rubber bullets at them.

Meanwhile, those gun-toting, 2nd Amendment ass hats who were protesting to get haircuts last month, are nowhere to be seen. They’ve gone back into hiding, and they’re quietly asking...

How are these lefties getting so much leverage, and so much change in such a short time?  How?  When we were winning?

The short answer?.. Numbers.

78% of the American public now supports the BLM movement.  

This is damn near an 80/20 split now, against Trump, and against all levels of fascist bullshit, Federal, State, and Municipal.  

The old, “silent majority,” they used to talk about in the Nixon era, presumed to be conservative... has now shifted much further to the left... and is also no longer silent, as of three weeks ago.

And never, did the silent majority of the Nixonian era come close to 80%.

NASCAR is scared.  The cops are scared.  Power... is scared.  This is dynamite. 

Nobody cares about 2nd Amendment loser with their guns. Clearly those idiots were brainwashed to vote against their own interests long ago... to hate science... revel in magical thinking... hate their countrymen based on superficial bullshit like skin color... child’s play to gaslight and manipulate that crowd.

But these other 80%?  Angry and taking to the streets?.. fearless?.. fed up?.. wide awake and ready to go to the matt now, on everything?  Fuck!  

Old and Young alike?  Fuck!  No holds barred?.. just beheading confederate statues and telling the southerners to deal with the fact that they lost and get over it?  Fuck!

Allies in every western country on the streets doing the same?

Even the Amish out there on their side?

FUCK!

HO-LY FUCK!

So... my first entry about this was entitled, “Civil Unrest.”

The next one was entitled, “Uprising.”

This one is entitled, “Movement.”

What they, in power, are now desperate to prevent... is a situation that I would end up telling you about in an entry entitled, “Revolution.”

We’ll see what comes.

Apologies for the long length of this entry, but... we’re living through interesting times.

Nonetheless...

It’s time for bed.