Tag Archives: Police

The Dangers of Political Complacency

I remember a time, as a young man, that I was utterly uninterested in politics. It felt far removed from my everyday life, a game of backstabbing and machinations that highbrows played in courts and halls; it was difficult to see how one president or another could really make all that much of a difference. I grew up in England in the era of Tony Blair and the Labour Party, and the things that were discussed then – even whether or not to go to war in Iraq – seemed of little consequence. Sure, people fought, people died, but everyday life carried on, as it always did, and I actually never voted in England, because it felt like there was no point.

Even when Bush Jr. was elected in 2000, and Al Gore seemed like an ideal candidate to align with my own personal beliefs about topics such as climate change, it didn’t feel like a moral degradation of society. It just felt more like the ‘other guy’ won, and that despite the then-presumed emphasis on business, tax cuts for the rich and oil, it never seemed as though the communities I lived in would really be affected all that much. And arguably, the Bush administration responded to the 9/11 attacks – despite the rapid-fire counterstrikes that seemed almost entirely unjustifiable at the time – better than Gore might ever have been able to.

When Obama was finally elected in 2008, it felt like there was a subtle shift in morality in the country, and when I returned to the United States in 2010, things felt, well … progressive. We had a black president, an intelligent, well-spoken and charismatic president, someone who seemed to have his finger on the pulse of my generation, and who actually seemed to stand for positivity, tolerance, and civility. I voted in 2012, but again, it felt a little pointless – a reinforcement of what it seemed like society at large was ready for.

When Barack Obama was reelected in 2012, I don’t recall anyone really thinking forward to the subsequent election that would obviously follow in 2016; no one really wondered if someone might come along and undo the progress that had seemingly been made over the previous four years. I remember laughing, like most people, when an incompetent, bumbling oaf threw his hat in the ring for the Republican candidacy – surely it was just a joke, an attempt to find a candidate that was as unlikely as possible.

Even when Donald Trump secured the nomination, things didn’t necessarily feel wrong – not yet. Bizarre, yes; unfathomable, certainly; but there wasn’t too much hint at the potential danger that was to come. It wasn’t until he started campaigning hard as the Republican candidate that red flags started showing: the vacuous, borderline-hateful rhetoric, the casual sexism and misogyny, the outright racism and mockery that came across as childish, petulant and crass were all deeply unsettling warning signs.

That was the first time when it truly felt like being politically active mattered; that a thing I could do, a choice I could make, could actually make a difference to the country I lived in – because it was becoming rapidly clear that Donald Trump himself was capable of making a difference – to great harm. There were people in the world who thought like him, who felt like him, and who not only believed his words, but saw them as validation of their own prejudices that, for years, they’d been told were wrong.

I get it – no one likes to feel like they’re wrong. No one wants to be told the way they perceive the world is harmful. There’s a comfort in nostalgia for the past, and Trump brought with him the idea that grown adults could act like children and get away with it. That there was nothing wrong with the old games of Cowboys and Indians, that calling someone names because they hurt your feelings was okay, or that it was totally normal to dislike people who were different from you. He made people feel like their own feelings and perceptions of the world were valid, and that what we were told as children was, in fact, not wrong.

But somewhere along the line, a line was crossed. It began when people with true social power – police, judges, politicians and lawmakers – began to believe they could act on these childish emotions without consequence, because the man they voted for – the man with the highest authority in the country – could do the same. It isn’t a question that more ‘bad’ things happened under Trump’s administration than under Obama’s; don’t forget, Brock Turner got away with rape six months before Trump was elected, and the massacre at Sandy Hook happened only just after Obama’s second term began. In both of these cases, there was raging debate about who was to blame and how it could have been prevented, but when a world leader comes along and says things like “there are fine people on both sides”, it does incredible damage to the moral fabric of society.

Instead of denouncing horrible people as the villains they are – for there will always be villains amongst us – Trump at best failed to speak up at all, and at worst defended these people through words and through actions. When George Floyd was murdered by police in broad daylight, he didn’t condemn his killers, but made it seem as though Floyd’s death was of his own making – that the police were justified in their actions.

And those same people who initially saw Trump’s words as an excuse to erase progress and fall back into old, hurtful ways now took his words as an opportunity to speak up – and speak loud – that they were being oppressed for not being able to “tell it how it is”, or for voicing controversial opinions on race, gender, and so many other things.

And somehow, throughout all of this, there remained an enormous number of people who continued to feel the way I used to – that life for them carried on as it always did, that the squabbles and race riots didn’t apply to them, and so it really didn’t matter – it wasn’t that big of a deal. In an ideal world, a Republican candidate should be able to align with a large portion of the country based on the merits of their beliefs and policies, and I think that a lot of those who voted for a second term for Trump did so out of the notion that even if he might be a deplorable person, he represents the party that they most identify with.

The people who rioted in the Capitol last week represent a tiny minority of right-leaning conservatives – I don’t believe that most Republican voters would laud them for their actions. They are the far-right, unjustifiable in their beliefs, and deplorable in their behaviors. The problem – what any sane-minded politician would recognize – is that whilst there will always be these people in our society, they must be allowed to act out their hate-fueled rhetoric. These kind of people are the worst kinds of cowards, and they would not have acted with such violence had they not believed they had the encouragement, and indeed the approval, of the man they believed represented them.

Let’s be clear: Donald Trump does not represent anyone but his own self-interest. He is a power-hungry man-child who most likely believes, deep in his heart, that he is owed all the fame and money in the world. He doesn’t care at all about the people he governs, and his words following the DC riots show this perfectly: had it not been for the danger of impeachment and presidential protection being removed, he would certainly not have condemned the rioters – even as weakly as he did.

But the complacency of the Republican Party is was allowed last week’s riot to take place. The belief of millions of conservative voters – who have every right to be conservative – that it just doesn’t matter that much – is what led to the insane far-right to summon the courage to march on Capitol Hill and break down the doors to the Capitol Building, beating a police officer to death in the process.

Complacency is what allowed Hitler to rise to power; it’s what allowed Trump to nearly secure a second term. And if it continues, it will only lead to further discord and unease between political parties in the United States. I’m not exaggerating when I say that as I walk in public today, I look at the people around me and wonder quietly – is that person capable of the kind of violence we saw last week? Could this person serving me coffee, or getting their phone fixed at my work, be a rabid far-right conspiracy-theorist? I’m not exaggerating when I say that I actually feel a deep, unsettling fear simply stepping outside my front door, because Trump has allowed a very small number of people to believe that they can act without consequence. And although those people are few and far between, they are very, very dangerous.

So please – come the next election, whether you lean Democrat or Republican, whether you are conservative or liberal – please consider your candidate with more care and caution than in 2016 and 2020. Please ask yourself if this person might enable dangerous, violent people. If the answer is even “maybe” – then you’re voting for the wrong person.

Politics today is no longer about the candidate representing the party you most align with. It’s sadly become about the candidate that can do the least harm to the country. If that means that, as a life-long Republican you find yourself having to vote Democrat, so be it. The alternative is what we’ve just witnessed in Washington D.C., and what we’ve seen seeing for the past four years.

That complacency is extremely dangerous. And the United States can’t afford it again, because next time the person you vote for might not simply be a self-serving, bumbling buffoon: they might be a cold, calculating power-seeking dictator in the making. The United States, the shining example of democracy for the world, is not impervious. Without even trying, we came this close to losing what we claim makes us so great; imagine what would happen if someone tried to undermine the country’s democracy with intent.

Voting absolutely matters. And it absolutely matters who you vote for: not Democrat or Republican, Libertarian or Green Party, but rather between a seasoned politician who knows how to govern, or an egotistical, self-serving megalomaniac with no concern for human life. This cannot – cannot – happen again.

If it does, it could be the end of the United States as we know it.

Imagine dying from traumatic asphyxiation. No, actually imagine it.

Cause of death: Cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.

Hennepin County Medical Examiner Press Release Report on the death of George Floyd

I want you to do an exercise with me. Trust me, it’ll be fun.

First, find your carotid artery. It should be easy – it’s where your gym teacher used to tell you to check your pulse after running around the track five times (you know, on the side of your neck just below your chin). Make sure you can feel your heartbeat. What you’re actually feeling is the carotid sinus, just before the artery branches to supply blood separately to the brain and the face.

Now, press gently into this nodule. You should feel your heartbeat a little stronger; you might feel a little uncomfortable. You’re starting to restrict blood flow to the brain and face now.

Try pressing a little harder; see how deep you’re willing to press into this artery before you can’t take it anymore. You might start to feel a pain in your chin as you affect nerves; you might start to feel a little light-headed, even.

Personally, I couldn’t take it for more than a few seconds.

Now imagine not a finger, but a knee, in that same spot. Imagine not a gentle pressure, but the weight of an adult male pressing into that artery. Try, if you can, imagining that this pressure is sustained for eight minutes. Imagine, if you can, the panic you might feel, the desperation, the utter despair as you realize that something is deeply, terribly wrong inside your body, as your sight narrows to a tunnel and eventually fades out, and yet you can still hear the people screaming around you to let you go.

There were two independent autopsies performed on the corpse of George Floyd; one by the county medical examiner, and one privately commissioned by his family. The above quote is the lighter of the two findings; the independent report found he “sustained pressure on the right side of Floyd’s carotid artery impeded blood flow to the brain, and weight on his back impeded his ability to breathe.” It also found he died at the scene, and not in the ER as the official report suggests.

With all that has happened since the death of George Floyd, the protests, the riots, the sustained militaristic police brutality and the despair that is sweeping the country, the one thing I haven’t to any great extent is a sense of compassion, of understanding, of the last eight minutes of George Floyd’s life.

You see, it’s easy to understand a dead person. They’re a corpse, a body, a bunch of dead flesh. They’re a thing. It’s also easy to understand a living person – we interact with them, they can speak, talk, love and laugh and cry.

But the in-between is glossed over. Nobody likes to think about the process of death, what it must feel like, what thoughts go through your head as you fade from the world. It’s a difficult thing to imagine, of course, because most people who pass through that experience don’t come back to tell us about it.

George Floyd didn’t come back. He died on the streets of Minneapolis in handcuffs with another man on his back, a knee in his neck. I wonder what he was thinking as he died. I wonder if he thought about his family, and whether he would ever see them again. I wonder if he thought to himself, I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe I’m dying.

But there’s one thing I don’t wonder about. I don’t wonder whether he saw himself dying with his face pressed into the pavement and his chest and throat crushed. I don’t wonder if he was at peace with his death. I don’t wonder if he would rather have died as an old man, in his bed, surrounded by his family and loved ones.

Please – I know it’s difficult, but try to imagine what his death must have felt like. Not to the bystanders – not to the living left. To him. He was a person, a human, a living life that was violently and slowly extinguished, and I can’t stop thinking about what his last moments in this world must have felt like.

No one deserves to die like that. No one should be treated so cruelly by another human being. But most of all, no black person should have to fear that this could happen to them for no other reason than because they are black. No black person should have these thoughts running through their heads simply because of the color of their skin.

George Floyd’s death is tragic, yes; but it is also a cruel, horrific, unimaginably painful way to die, and the person who caused his death might have been better served putting a bullet in his head. And the people responsible are far more than Derek Chauvin who killed him. They are the people who allowed this country to get to the point where such a thing could happen at all. They the leaders, the people in power who continuously turn a blind eye and tell us that they deserved to die, that they had it coming, that they shouldn’t have resisted … you know the story.

Not only did George Floyd not deserve to die, he most certainly did not deserve to die so horrifically. Please – celebrate his life, remember his death, and do anything and everything you can to ensure no black person ever suffers so cruel a death again.

Selfishness Is Killing the World

Those of you who’ve been with me for years know that I’m not usually one to get overly political, but with the way current events are unfolding, I can’t stay silent. I see so much hurt and pain in the world, and particularly in the United States where I live, and the longer I think about it, the more I can only come to the conclusion that this is the result of jealousy, greed, and selfishness.

Let me explain why.

COVID-19

Let’s start with what the world started 2020 with: COVID-19. As news about a novel, highly infectious and deadly virus spread, so did a lot of fear about exactly how to deal with this new disease. Later, rather than sooner, the United States chose to shut down to try and limit the spread of the virus, and millions of people found themselves without work, income, insurance, and possibly even without homes.

This isn’t an easy decision to make, of course. Being laid off by something invisible, something intangible, that you can’t see or feel, might well feel like a personal attack, and I can understand the resistance, the frustration, and the anger that would likely arise in these scenarios.

But those with the loudest voices against the shutdown have not been those who are suffering. It hasn’t been those who are without a job. It hasn’t even been those who are critically ill and dying of this new disease. It’s those who think that no one should be allowed to tell them what to do, how to work, and how to interact with their fellow human beings.

What infuriates me about this is that the mandate to wear masks, to stay home, to not go out to enjoy yourself, is about protecting other people. The biggest argument I hear against these precautions is that ‘it won’t affect me’, or ‘I need to get a haircut’, or ‘I lost my job’. How freaking selfish can a human being be? It was never about you! It was about keeping people you don’t know, people you’ve never met, from dying.

People have chosen to ignore these restrictions, have protested, have taken up arms and defended businesses from law enforcement to show that they aren’t going to be pushed around. For fuck’s sake – no one was trying to! We were trying to stop millions of human beings from dying, you selfish pricks!

Sorry for ranting there. But the point is that the spread of COVID-19 has been largely propagated by pure, utter selfishness, a complete absence of basic sense and care for our fellow humans. In countries where it is endemic to care for each other, where people actually look out for one another even if they don’t know them, the spread of COVID-19 was reduced significantly sooner, and significantly faster. Nowhere is perfect, but in the United States, it is simply appalling to consider that we have such disregard for other people’s lives.

Moving on.

Karens and the Age of Self-Entitlement

A recent meme that has been popularized across the internet is the concept of a ‘Karen’ – a middle-aged, self-entitled white woman who believes that the world should revolve around her. I think this is a grossly unfair assessment of this demographic, but the concept – that of someone who truly just doesn’t understand that there are other points of view in the world – is becoming increasingly pervasive across the country.

I also don’t believe this to be a generational device; I’ve seen Millennials, Gen Xs, Baby Boomers, all equally guilty of this sort of behavior. It’s at the root of everything I wrote about COVID-19, frankly – the idea that your personal wishes, desires and needs are somehow more important than those of anyone else. It’s easy to mock and make fun of the genders, the haircuts, the look and feel of a ‘Karen’, but the truth is that this sickening attitude is visible at all levels.

Perhaps one of the reasons that it’s become focused on the middle-aged white woman is because of the stereotypes involved; when a man pushes forward his own agenda without regard for others, he’s usually considered ‘strong’, or a ‘leader’ (look at our leader today). When a woman does it, she’s a ‘bitch’.

Regardless, the belief that is at the root of this behavior seems to be that if you want something, no one is allowed to stop you from getting it. I want that double-mocha frappucino; I want that haircut; I want that man to leave me alone.

I think this stems from a deep misrepresentation of what it means to live in a ‘free’ country. Freedom does not mean freedom to act like a selfish toddler; it does not mean ‘me first’; it does not mean I’m more important than others. In fact, I think a great deal of this behavior stems from a bizarre jealousy of the attention given to those who, ironically, don’t enjoy those same freedoms.

Think of it this way: when a parent favors one sibling over another, the other will often act out – not maliciously, but out of a desire for equal attention. This happens when the siblings are on equal footing, of course, but if one genuinely requires additional attention – perhaps they are ill, injured, or have special needs – the remaining sibling can begin to actually blame the other for their own deficit in attention. If allowed to continue, that sibling can eventually come to believe that they are the marginalized party – even though they have literally every option open to them, when their brother or sister may not.

This is one thing to expect this in children; however, to see this in grown-ass adults is, frankly, sickening. When a man complains that women are taking all the good jobs because of ‘egalitarianism’, he’s ignoring the thousands of years of marginalization and inequality that women have only begun to crawl out of – often with little to no help from men at all. When a white person argues that ‘nobody cares about the whites’, and that ‘all lives matter’ (god how I hate that phrase), they are willfully dismissing the centuries of slavery, persecution and cultural destruction that black people have suffered – and, clearly, have not yet escaped.

George Floyd and Black Lives Matter

This is where things get truly, devastatingly enraging for me – and should for you too. This sense of jealousy, this cultural selfishness and retaliation that is at the heart of phrases such as ‘blue lives matter’ and ‘all lives matter’ is like poison injected straight to the heart of society. Let me break it down for you:

All lives do not matter equally in the eyes of society.

If they did, Black Lives Matter would not be a thing. If all lives were truly held equal, from the streets to the highest level of government, no one would have to argue that their own lives matter. This problem would not exist.

When I see someone reply on Facebook to a Black Lives Matter comment with ‘all lives matter’, what I see is someone who is willfully or ignorantly blind to their own racism. You just don’t get it, do you? Claiming ‘all lives matter’ in response to Black Lives Matter is literally minimizing the horrific injustices that black people suffer every single day.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the most recent egregious act of police brutality that killed George Floyd. An unarmed, unresistant black suspect was pinned by the neck for over eight minutes by a white cop until he passed out and died. Anyone who can wholeheartedly argue this didn’t happen because of race is at best an utter fucking ignoramus, and at worst a cruel, evil-hearted outright racist. If George Floyd was white, he would still be alive.

What makes this worse is the fallout from the act itself. Rightly so, black people the country – and world – over took to the streets, in some cases with fully-justified rage in their hearts – to protest. To say ‘enough is enough’ (isn’t is sad how often we hear these words – racism, school shootings, police brutality – it never ends), to make their voices heard, to demand justice, not just for George Floyd, but for black people everywhere.

And then, just as these people step forward with their earned right to rage and anger, white people appropriate the protests. White people begin riots. White people step in and say hey – you’re not allowed to protest without us. ‘What about the whites?‘

Jesus Christ – shut the fuck up! This isn’t your day. This isn’t your time in the spotlight, it’s not your fifteen minutes of fame. The president of the country calls the original protestors – the black ones, mind you – thugs. I’ve heard no equal condemnation from anyone over the white rioters, the ones who are arguably causing the most damage – both physically and societally.

For fuck’s sake, white people – can’t anybody else have something without us coming in and sabotaging it? Can’t black people have a moment – just one fucking moment – to have their voices heard uninterrupted?

This is the time for white people the world over to shut their mouths, silence their complaining, and just listen. Listen to what we’re being told. Listen to black people about the injustices they suffer. Listen to the fear they live with daily – to how when they’re pulled over by a cop, they fear they won’t see their family for dinner. Just. Fucking. Listen.

And yet, I just know we won’t. When Trump called Floyd’s brother, he spoke. He spoke, and spoke – and didn’t give the man even a moment to speak in return. The highest power in the country isn’t listening – how can we expect anyone else to?

This really isn’t hard, people. Please – for the sake of George Floyd, for the sake of black people, for the sake of gay people and women and minorities the world over – just shut the fuck up and listen. I know it’s going to be hard to hear – no one wants to learn they’re an intrinsic part of a cultural system that abuses power and privilege, where being born white gives you a real, tangible advantage.

But if we don’t take even just a moment to hear others out – and take to heart what they say – this world can never heal from the damage that has been wrought to it over decades, centuries, and millennia. This isn’t about apologizing; it isn’t about making things right. There is no making things right. The past will never be changed, and nothing could ever be done to atone for the centuries of persecution and violence done to so many.

This is about moving forward in peace. And that peace can only come through an acknowledgement of what we have done – every one of us. Don’t sit there and think your exempt because you’ve ‘never had a racist thought’, or because you ‘have black friends’; this starts with you. It starts by every single one of us privileged whites, us privileged men – we who run the world – taking a knee, a step back, a seat, and saying: speak, and I will listen. I will not judge you, but myself. I will answer for the sins of my forebears, and I will give you the spotlight, because you deserve it.

So please, I implore you – shut up. Just … shut up. For once in your life, listen to what’s being said, to what’s being asked for. I think you’ll find that, once you get past the fear and the violence and the hate, you’ll find that actually giving black people an equal voice isn’t so hard.