I’ve never not paid attention to what’s going on in the world. It was never obscured from my view as a child, and I never decided that i’d disengage as an adult. My earliest memories, besides dancing to Paul Simon’s Graceland, are at my grandparent’s coffee table with the Sunday Boston Globe. I’d be reading Calvin and Hobbes, and hearing the adults talk about the political happenings of the time, which I think was the shock of Dan Quayle not being able to properly spell “potato”, if my memory serves me correctly (which it tends to).
I may not get in fights with Trump supporters on Facebook like I once did, but trust me, i’m still abreast of what’s happening.
It really feels like the baddies are winning, at present.
This week the NYPD opened fire in a subway station on the L train, hitting 4 people. One of them died, another was an NYPD officer. From all of the accounts that i’m getting (I may be in some kind of anti-cop feedback loop), the reason for this shooting was the common crime of fare evasion (which I have done more times than I even know, and continue to do). It costs 2.90 to ride the MTA here, and honestly I don’t always have 2.90 available to me for that purpose.
So, someone was shot and killed over less than 3.00 in the city where I live.
I don’t know if you know this, but the police aren't supposed to kill anyone, for anything. That’s not how it works on paper (the US constitution being the paper i’m referring to.) This isn’t Judge Dredd.
I know that wouldn't happen to me, i’m white.
I have this odd thing about me, though… I can imagine what it’s like to be other human beings, and try to understand, and even empathize with them. I know that it’s quite the opposite of how society is moving toward rugged individualism as a core value. like “well, it isn’t me, so I don’t care”.
I took the L train on Saturday. I think I even evaded the fare. I’m trying to wrap my head around what it would be like for gunfire to ring out in a subway station, as a bystander.
Which is what I feel like, a helpless bystander, way beyond the five boroughs.
There’s still a genocide happening in Gaza, it’s being paid for by the same tax dollars that are granting the NYPD 5.8 billion dollars a year to go after turnstile hoppers with deadly force. Your tax dollars. The NYPD actually has an office in Tel Aviv, and NYPD SWAT team members are trained by Israeli operators.
This week, personal electronic devices that were rigged with explosives months ago started exploding in Lebanon. Killing civilians, including children. Guess who rigged and detonated them? Mossad, Isreal’s version of the CIA. Guess who funds Mossad? Your tax dollars.
Here’s the thing that concerns me, it’s Foucault’s boomerang. It’s the idea that repressive colonial empires will employ the methods of control that they use on their colonial interests to exert control on the citizens back home.
It’s not far fetched. It’s quite realistic. Mossad already trains the NYPD SWAT teams.
I don’t fancy myself a conspiracy theorist. It’s just a lot to think about, and there are a lot of connections between the things that are happening. I’m troubled by the implications… I guess this is what I get for paying attention.