I've been saying it for years.
The so-called Land of the Free is a defacto police state.
A mere five per cent of Earth's population holds behind bars about a quarter of the world's incarcerated, many of them merely non-violent offenders.
The decades-long drug war, a monumental failure in criminal policy that was founded upon a mountain of lies, has served nothing more than to fill for-profit prisons that provide what amounts to slave labour. Populations of those in jail have exploded since Nixon's infamous reign of rampant corruption, his policies later exacerbated by Republican and Democratic presidential successors like Reagan and Clinton.
Finally, with peaceful protestors being maced or thrown violently to the ground by bellowing, power-tripping and heavily armoured riot cops, perhaps more people are going to see this reality.
The so-called president of the U.S. even ordered peacefully assembled demonstrators, including members of a church congregation, tear gassed and cleared for a photo op of himself awkwardly holding the Bible as though he'd never before held a book in his hands.
One cannot make this up.
The Tweeter in Chief has removed all veneer — if he ever even had any in the first place — of being a morally dignified commander. One who leads by example and demonstrates empathy and compassion for all people, not just those he goads on at his farcical rallies.
Peacefully protesting football players are hatefully derided as sons of bitches, while gun-toting weekend warriors who occupy government buildings and scream in police officers' faces are very fine people.
But the so-called president is merely a product of a diseased society that for decades has ignored metastasizing symptoms.
It would seem far too little has changed since MLK Jr., the inspiring and exemplary voice of non-violent civil disobedience, was assassinated. After all these years, injustice remains unaddressed.
If things have changed, one could argue for the worse, as the police become increasingly militarized and comfortably protected by a system that more often than not shields them from accountability.
Even with cameras recording video every second as Floyd gasped, begged, and pleaded to breath, at one point even calling for his deceased mother, the officer fully consciously and confidently without fear of reprisal applied pressure on the back of his neck for nearly nine minutes.
I'm still not sure who's worse. The offending officer, or the three other enablers who stood by, shielding him from concerned citizens urging him to remove his knee?
Five or six minutes in, Floyd is no longer even responsive, yet still the cop — whose manslaughter charges were eventually upgraded to second-degree murder — stubbornly stays kneeling. The sordid scene almost reminded me of the big game hunters who proudly kneel on their felled prey.
And for what?
Floyd didn't have a perfect track record.
But he was no cold-blooded murderer, robber, mugger, drug dealer or pimp. The police report was over a fake $20 bill during a time when people have not been so desperate in decades.
So, we have to reframe the conversation from, "It's horrible that black men are being killed by police, but burning property has to stop" to, "It's a shame that property is being destroyed, but killing innocent black men has to stop."
Besides, I wonder how peaceful protest would have worked for the French revolutionaries, or the American patriots who were tired of British oppression. Anyone seriously think the monarchs of those empires would have actually listened to their legitimate grievances, let alone lifted a finger to alleviate their concerns? Let's be honest with ourselves, given the chance, they'd have had the lot of "traitors" executed.
Of course conservative media will tirelessly be spinning its wheels in overdrive shamelessly attempting to scapegoat people who, pushed up against a wall and into a corner after decades of injustice, have reached wit's end and have decided to push back.
To quote Malcolm X, "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed, and loving the oppressors."
Whose side would be preferable to stand on, the oppressed, or the oppressor — the police state, or the wrongly persecuted?
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