Subjects I'm Not Interested In
It occurs to me there are subjects I’m no longer terribly interested in. Chances are, I never was and am only now figuring them out–being known as a slow thinker.
It strikes me that the human race gets all wrapped around the axle, as D. likes to say, and about the most insignificant things. It’s also possible I’ve been on Lake Barcroft’s list serve too many days in a row. The caliber of exchange isn’t so high to measure –and so I have nothing to gossip about—or apologize for.
With wisdom comes age, and a bad back . So here’s my list:
• Why do some women worry about how they look when others really should?
• Why can’t they hide all that worry like men pretend to do?
• Why worry about what’s gonna kill you–it will anyway.
• Whigs are cheap; going bald ain’t so bad.
• If you can’t remember where you put it, you didn’t need it until a moment ago.
• If you can’t remember what you just wrote, you probably didn’t mean to.
• Why do women believe in fashions that only fit eighteen-year-old butts? Why do men of the same age chase after the young ones? Does the second question answer the first?
• Why do men over fifty feel comfortable wearing old, stained T-shirts in public?
• And why oh why did God create butt cracks?
• Why do liberals feel fraught by hearing people who disagree with their opinions, while conservatives run over their opposition in BMWs? Or is that backwards?
• Why do conservatives believe the world could always use stricter codes for their neighbors to live by and liberals hate their parents?
• Why do liberals have 1000-point check lists to ensure they’ve covered everything they need to improve on, apologize for, swear they’re better than their parents about, etc.? And conservatives like ice cream.
• Question: How is a stockbroker converted to more egalitarian thinking? Answer: Call the loan on his Manhattan condo.
• What’s the difference between male privilege and white privilege? Not too much unless the white men and their female enablers aren’t quick about it.
• What will we call the next one after the “Z” generation?
Stopped in at Starbucks
Today I got my first four-shot latte since last February. I’ve been deprived. Only one other customer for the three masked baristas, and there were no seats inside. Though driving home, the latte tasted good.
And I was wondering if the one-man coffee stand in Portland, Oregon has survived the Covid-19 shutdown. The nicely modern steel and glass coffee stand is near the downtown Hyatt by the Columbia River. When we were there last winter, Sean and I enjoyed the barista’s four kinds of vegan milk blends–which he set out for us to sample before making a selection. I’m not a fan of soy milk, and fortunately none of these were. Coconut, almond, peas and blends. He recycles everything, even composting the grounds. His to-go cups are Mason jars–recycled to be sure.
The barista said the coffee stand was crushed by all the crowds in the summertime on the linear park paralleling the river. Last February, there wasn’t a crowd, and it probably has stayed that way. Hope he’s still making it–for his sake and that of his wife and preschool-age son.
Things are quieter in the District this week. Lafayette Park is being reopened–with the fence still in place. Though, a large demonstration is being planned for August 28, the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington. I may join, though always being on the lookout for entitled police squads who like to knock down geezers and walk over them.
Ann Richardson, the last Democrat to be elected Texas Governor, was heard to say of George W. “he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.” But malapropisms aside, it doesn’t seem Trump can stay out of the way of his own shadow, let alone his foot. First, he sends William the Barr, affectionately known as “Fatty” by his friends, to order the Park Police to shoot tear gas (oh, excuse me, “pepper bullets”) and wield metal batons and mounted officers against the angry yet peaceful demonstrators in Lafayette Park. Then to make sure everyone gets the point about his being such a forceful leader, strides over to the shuttered St. John’s Church, waves a bible and forgets to pray or take a knee. The Episcopalian Bishop Mariann Budde said later she would have been glad to kneel with him to pray. Bishop Mariann Budde
It’s easy to hate people at a distance and impossible for some to actually listen to what they have to say.
“It is enough to make the whole world start at the awful amount of death and destruction that now stalks abroad… and it may be well that we become so hardened.”
William T. Sherman in a letter to his wife, Ellen, June 1864.
Yet the Civil War, the deaths of how many, was but the beginning. If the nation had foreseen how long this struggle would take, how many lifetimes, would we have even begun?
Ursula Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness delivers a still-timely lesson today:
“The novel follows the story of Genly Ai, a human native of Terra, who is sent to the planet of Gethen as an envoy of … a loose confederation of planets. Ai's mission is to persuade the nations of Gethen to join… but he is stymied by a lack of understanding of their culture. Individuals on Gethen are ambisexual, with no fixed sex; this has a strong influence on the culture of the planet, and creates a barrier of understanding [ie. culture shock] for Ai.”
from Wikipedia article
Perhaps at twenty, encountering a story about ambisexual creatures was sufficiently foreign to this reader. Still Le Guin obliquely delivered her point; it was crystal clear she meant to demonstrate homosexual love, if different from heterosexual in circumstance, was yet no different in its intent. It may not have been the first time I was challenged by the thought that gays were like straights in pursuit of love, but it was impossible to deny the power in how she expressed it.
And her broader point–despite the alien differences in their cultures separating the two characters from each other, they could come to love in spite of it. The story, at first uncomfortable, grew to one that reached a sweeter place–very convincingly so–and more than it first suggested starting out.
As keen a smell as we humans have for our differences, too often what we take as odors obscure better truths.
U.S. Park Police
Bijan C. Ghaisar, 25. (Family photo) (N/A/TWP)
Even before the latest brush-up in Lafayette Park—on orders from above—of late the U.S. Park Police don’t have a shining reputation in greater Washington, which is sad for both the police and the community.
I’ve always looked at the National Parks with affection–the parks and the rangers. I’ve never been accused of being a USA! rah-rah person, but the parks hold a special place with me as with most Americans. With the feeling that we—all of us in the country, black, brown, white—cherish these natural treasures and historic sites. Even cherish the long tradition of peaceful demonstrations in Lafayette Park.
But now?
The story that follows may not be as well known nationwide as it should be: November 17, 2017, U.S Park Police shot 25-year-old Bijan Ghaisar on Mount Vernon Parkway, heading northbound from George Washington’s home—as he tried to drive away from the scene of a fender bender. Ghaisar was shot ten times, though neither armed nor assaulting the police. Why he drove away after they first pulled him over remains the only mystery as he had taken neither drugs nor alcohol. He died ten days later. Those are the basic facts. (Don’t watch the video in this link unless you have a strong stomach.)
“Chief Roessler today stated, “As a matter of transparency to all in our community, especially the Ghaisar family, and as the administrative custodian of the video, I am releasing the in-car video of the U.S. Park Police shooting. The video does not provide all the answers. However, we should all have confidence in the FBI’s investigation of this matter as I know it will be thorough, objective and professional.”
from a press release by Chief Roessler, Fairfax County Police, December 4, 2017.
For those not familiar, that stretch of the Mount Vernon Parkway lies inside Fairfax County, Virginia. Chief Roessler said he felt obligated to provide the public what was within his power to do, while the Justice Department was ‘looking into it.’
Since it happened, I’ve read an easy dozen or more Washington Post articles reporting on the status of the case, which in a word, is stonewalled. There’s no other way to put it. Ghaisar’s family waited the year following his death; receiving no explanation, they filed a wrongful death civil lawsuit that may be the only relief they will ever get, assuming they can survive an achingly torturous judicial process.
Recent Washington Post editorial
Two and a half years later, the officers, having never been charged, remain on the force, and despite attempts by Senators Warner, Kaine, Grassley, and Representative Don Beyer, investigations conducted by the FBI have never been released to Ghaisar’s family, and the Justice Department refuses to bring charges against the two officers, providing no reasons why. Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano is continuing an investigation begun by his predecessor, while the Justice Department was ‘looking into it.’
The officers’ identity was only revealed on judge’s orders in the family’s civil lawsuit brought a year later; the U.S. Park Police had refused to reveal them. Beyond the initial killing, the U.S. Park Police have stonewalled and closed ranks, and the Justice Department has let them skate. They have provided neither charges against the two officers nor explanations why.
In addition to ‘driving while black,’ it seems ‘driving while the son of an immigrant’ needs to be added to the risks faced by non-white citizens of greater Washington, particularly as it relates to the U.S. Park Police.
This situation has been poisoning the Washington community’s trust in the U.S. Park Police since it occurred two and a half years ago. It seems incomprehensible, but apparently the Park Police leadership believes stonewalling is the best option.
One can argue that putting the police on trial via cell phone and body cams isn’t fair, and I’d agree; that’s not a fair trial. But NO trial, not even a solitary comment, how is that justice? These senior police officers, along with the Justice Department, are condemned by their silence.
Some argue that the police are under attack, but when the Buffalo police knocked down a solitary 75-year-old protester armed only with a cell phone, how is that different in intent to quashing a protester facing down a line of tanks near Tienanmen Square? If we know the Chinese hierarchy oppress their people, what do these kinds of actions say about our own?
“We ain’t been making this shit up.” Black protesters were right all along, and at least one immigrant and one senior citizen had that shot and beaten into them. With no ultimate accountability, how does a society–and its police–ever stay within rightful bounds?
Irresistible promotional poster released by Focus Films
Jon Stewart’s Back!
“There’s all this talk of being on the right side of history, but what does that mean? ‘The arc of moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ Who’s bending it?”
Jon Stewart interview with David Marchese, New York Times Magazine, June 15 ’20
I was talking to my son, Sean last Monday and somewhere in our typically meandering conversation he said “I miss Jon Stewart.” What we both miss is the man’s intelligent outrage, pointing out hypocrisy in real time. Being angry, ya’ll can do that, but being mad and able to say why–with a scalpel–that’s on a whole other level. The reason to pay for a subscription to the New York Times isn’t for bragging rights; it’s when they strike gold, like with this interview, so go read it.
“The police are a reflection of a society. They’re not a rogue alien organization that came down to torment the black community. They’re enforcing segregation… The police… patrol the border between the two Americas. We have that so that the rest of us don’t have to deal with it. Then that situation erupts, and we express our shock and indignation. But if we don’t address the anguish of a people, the pain of being a people who built this country through forced labor—people say, ‘I’m tired of everything being about race.’ Well, imagine how [fucking] exhausting it is to live that…
“But I still believe that the root of this problem is the society that we’ve created that contains this schism, and we don’t deal with it, because we’ve outsourced our accountability to the police.
“Poverty is poverty. The right will talk about poverty a certain way, and the left will talk about poverty a different way, but poor people are still poor… still without political power.
“But our biggest problem as humans is ignorance, not malevolence. Ignorance is an entirely curable disease… Ignorance is often cured by experience, by spending time with what you don’t understand…
“In the same way that Trump’s recklessness is born out of experience, so is my optimism, because good people outweigh [shitty] people. By a long shot.”
LIke I said, we miss Jon on the small screen, gently nudging us to do better.
BTW, Jon Stewart is releasing a new movie, Irresistible with Steve Carrel and Rose Byrne–to be digitally released through video-on-demand June 26, 2020, by Focus Features. No cows were harmed in the filming of this movie, nor in the shilling for it here.