JuliusGoat

JuliusGoat , 13 days ago to random

The kid was returning a BB gun to a mall, which is not something that carries the death penalty last I checked.

The man—who was a danger—decided the child—who was in danger—was a danger.

He was encouraged to do this by our dominant cultural narrative.

https://www.the-reframe.com/cruel-luxuries/

JuliusGoat OP , 13 days ago

Afterward, the story reported that the child wasn't following the man's orders.

The man, who saw himself as the protector of his community, decided that the child was a danger because he had decided that it was his job to decide who was dangerous and who was not.

JuliusGoat OP , 13 days ago

So the self-appointed community defender pulled out his people-killing tool—the ownership and use of which is seen as a fundamental right in this country—and issued some commands, and the child obeyed, because he was being accosted by an armed stranger.

JuliusGoat OP , 13 days ago

However, the community protector was unsatisfied with the child's compliance, so he killed the child.

This is also seen as a fundamental right in this country, provided you're the kind of person who is allowed by our dominant cultural narrative to appoint yourself a protector.

JuliusGoat OP , 13 days ago

In the name of community safety, the community protector shot the child six times in the back, according to the story, so this must have been an extremely dangerous-seeming child, especially the back part of him.

JuliusGoat OP , 13 days ago

I know framing the story like this is likely to raise objections from the gun-defender crowd, including a knee-jerk reaction against my calling a 17-year old a "child." It's one way I know using killing tools to execute teens is something that's seen as a fundamental right.

JuliusGoat , 1 month ago to random

(Excerpted from VERY FINE PEOPLE, 1st published October 2020)

We now know that—even though Trump is a disruption to the status quo in some ways—he isn’t only a disruption to the status quo. In many ways, he is a part of that status quo’s inevitable progression.

JuliusGoat OP , 1 month ago

He’s the result you can expect to see, in a society which believes that we have no shared society, that life must be earned, that profit is how you earn it, and that violence redeems.

JuliusGoat OP , 1 month ago

We can see that Trump isn’t a disruption to business as usual, but rather a purified concentrate of that business. Even though he spread supremacy's virus, Trump isn’t a virus. He’s the first unignorable tumor—for those of us comfortable enough to have ignored previous symptoms.

JuliusGoat OP , 1 month ago

Yes, he’ll have to be removed completely, but afterward things are going to have to be different. If they aren’t, then we’ll find ourselves here again.

And we may well find ourselves here again.

JuliusGoat OP , 1 month ago

Even many opposed to the spiritual virus of MAGA aren’t interested in quarantining or vaccinating against it. Some remain opposed to radical transformations to our lifestyle. Some want only to remove the tumor of Trump, then return to the exact situation that allowed it to grow.

JuliusGoat OP , 1 month ago

We’ve heard all the justifications for this, because we know them. We often are them. These complacent masses aren’t strangers, any more than the cheering red-capped throngs are strangers.

Often, they’re us.

JuliusGoat OP , 1 month ago

Happy, smiling, friendly, many of them. They love their kids. They go to church. They work hard. They pay their taxes. They walk their dogs. They love us, some of them. Yes, and we love them, many of them.

And if we seem so angry, perhaps the reason is that the anger we feel toward these friends and family and neighbors, while appropriate and honest, is easier than the deep sorrow and mourning, that those we love would so eagerly or complacently align with the pursuit of atrocity.

JuliusGoat , 2 months ago to random

Seven lessons learned from a quarter century in a war-oriented society.

It's 2001—the year the movies promised we'd make contact with aliens—and the United States has rather recently been attacked by terrorists who flew passenger planes into buildings.

https://www.the-reframe.com/war-or-nothing/

JuliusGoat OP , 2 months ago

I should explain the police to you. The police are our white supremacist standing army, accountable to nobody, who we use to wage war against our fellow civilians, neighbors who we treat as domestic enemies.

JuliusGoat OP , 2 months ago

You can tell the police are an army because we give them military equipment to do their jobs. You can tell they are accountable to nobody because whenever those who are supposed to have the power to check them try to do so, they respond with threats and violence.

You can tell we use the police to wage war against our neighbors because we fund them, and the more violent they get, the more money we give them. They eat over half our city budgets in many places.

JuliusGoat OP , 2 months ago

And if you want to know which of our neighbors we consider our domestic enemies, or understand why they are a white supremacist army, you just need to watch who the police menace and kill here in 2020.

JuliusGoat OP , 2 months ago

On that subject, a police officer was recently waging war in one of our nations residential occupied zones—an area that just so happens to be predominantly Black—and while doing so, he murdered a Black man named George Floyd.

Floyd begged for his life as he was being killed, but the officer killed him all the same, using practices that were standard practice for cops, we all later learned, which is how you can tell that murdering Black people is sort of standard operating protocol for police.