Touring the Valley

Minneapolis

Renee Nicole Good, as recorded by her killer moments before he fired his gun.

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” ― Margaret Atwood

It may seem weird that the regime thinks the ICE goon's own phone video somehow proves him innocent, when, in fact, it supports his guilt. But remember that their defense of him includes the assertion that the murder was actually self defense because he "felt threatened". He probably did feel something.

All throughout the most recent election campaign, It was Republicans who repeatedly told us, "Fuck your feelings" and reiterated, "Facts don't care about your feelings." Apparently their feelings are now considered facts.

A pleasant lady smiled and said she wasn't mad at him, and that drove him into a red-hot rage. How dare a woman - a woman! - not fear him and not take him as seriously as he took himself and his violent, authoritarian role-playing? Oh, yes, she was a threat - not to his physical safety, but to his fragile sense of self, his belief in his own importance, and to his and this regime's requirement that women must be subservient to male authority.

His snarled curse, after he wiped out her life, says it all -- "Fucking bitch." This is what the domestic abuser says about the woman who disobeys, who tries to escape. This is what the disgruntled male employee says about a female supervisor. This is what the sex-pest says about a woman who doesn't want him to buy her a drink, who rebuffs his demand for her time and attention.

The regime's presentation of this video as exoneration tells you what their position is. The woman who doesn't appear submissive, who doesn't instantly comply with screamed demands, the woman who cannot be controlled, whoexpects to go about her own business (as she has every right to do) -- that woman is a threat, and if she gets away with it, his very existence will implode. So of course, he had to kill her.

They want us to agree that any woman who isn't adequately humble and subservient deserves an instant death penalty.

Random Thoughts

Photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash

Some kids feared the school bully. A few thought he was a joke. Most ignored or avoided him. Nobody respected him.

ICE agents have been permitted to act like criminals, so it's no surprise that criminals impersonate ICE.

Your front doorbell chimes. And just then, the phone rings. At that moment, someone starts pounding on the back door. You see someone peering in your window and tapping on the glass. Your laptop starts dinging because a bunch of emails just came to your inbox. Your neighbor is on the sidewalk, shouting your name. A notification beeps to let you know there are social media messages for you. In the next room, the smoke detector starts beeping due to a low battery. You hear an unidentified crash in the bathroom. You notice water leaking from under the kitchen sink. Just then, the dog barfs on the living room rug.

That is "flooding the zone" and it works because it overwhelms your ability to respond, leaving you confused and unable to prioritize.

Nearly every day - sometimes multiple times per day - donald does or says something that would have been considered scandalous for a real president prior to 2016. Often, his actions would likely have led to impeachment and conviction for pre-2016 presidents. Yet most of these things go by with little public attention, unreported by "major" news organizations. Those who should know better, who should take responsibility for holding public officials accountable, who should - at the very least - inform the public, have blandly accepted a criminal madman as the country's leader.

I visited donald's blog, to fact-check whether some of the posts recently attributed to him are real. It's a mess. Aside from being a stinking swamp of lies and hatred, it is poorly designed, difficult to navigate, unsearcable, and really ugly. In other words, appropriate.

People in government used to believe they were required to act within legal boundaries. The lawbreakers hid what they were doing, because they believed they'd be held accountable if caught. But then they found out that the people who could and should say no to donald (and by extension to his minions) weren't saying no, and that no one was willing/interested to hold them accountable. So they began doing the bad stuff openly, because that was easier than hiding it, and they became more and more confident that no one would stop them, no one would punish them. They have crossed so many lines that they are in new, weird territory, a Bizarro World where NOT being corrupt is seen as a bad thing. Where "making America Great" means destroying everything that is actually great. Where decency is a joke, and cruelty and perversion are role models.

Whatever happened to the "Age of Aquarius"?

Terrorist Tactics

In 2015, if an unmarked van blocked your car, and a group of masked men emerged, smashed your window, threw you to the ground, zip tied your wrists, tossed you into the back of the van, you and any witnesses would naturally assume you were being kidnapped by a ruthless criminal gang. Now, everyone just assumes it's the government.

It's Weird Out There

Photo by Jakob Rosen on Unsplash

It's not about arresting "the worst" criminals, or even about criminals at all. They can just grab you if they don't like your looks, or if they need a couple more victims to meet their quota.

Imagine that your cousin is hoarding spoons. Her kitchen drawers are full of spoons. She has crates of spoons stacked in the garage. When you comment that she has more spoons than she can possibly use, she says, "I might need them someday." Then you find out that her neighbor also hoards spoons, in some kind of competition to see who can own the most spoons in the county. Between the two of them, they have actually created a local spoon shortage, making it difficult for folks to obtain spoons for their families. They know this, but they keep obsessively hoarding more and more spoons, setting world records for spoon accumulation, while other people are reduced to using sticks to eat their pudding.

Why do we think it's crazy when it's spoons, but not when it's dollars?

Once upon a time, crooked politicians had the dignity to do their corruption and bribe-taking in secret.

Imagine a department manager in the company where you work, who often admits he doesn't remember orders that he issued, has never heard of company policies, doesn't know what people in his department are doing, admits to making important decisions based on the vague opinions of "many people", can't explain the reason for directions he gave to employees, often seems unable to remember events he was involved in just a few days or a few hours ago. That guy would be fired.

People who are unimaginative and without skills, unable to create anything interesting or valuable, make themselves powerful the only way they can, through destruction.