Am I Blue..?

One of the Portland newsweeklies is doing a worthwhile civic service; turning the paper over to members of Portland's Black community to talk about The Oregon Problem Which Dare Not Speak It's Name; systemic i.e. "institutional" racism.

Of all the places in this country I've lived Portland (and Oregon) is the whitest place I can think of. The racism is baked in, going back to the original Oregon Constitution of 1857. Here's the Oregon Encyclopedia on the subject:

"Incorporated into the Bill of Rights, the clause prohibited Black people from being in the state, owning property, and making contracts. Oregon thus became the only free state admitted to the Union with an exclusion clause in its constitution."

Hell, I wrote a whole post about it a decade or so ago. 

Oh, and I love the part about the Oregon Bill of "Rights" being clear that while you had rights to trial by jury, free speech, and from not having GIs in your guest bedroom, you didn't have a right to be Black and Oregonian.

Nice.

One of the most visible, and intractable, pieces of this racist history that isn't just history is the Portland coppers.

They were lethally racist fucks then, and by and large they are now.

We've gone through a covered-wagonload of schemes to change that and it hasn't worked. Portland's Thin Blue Line is both racist and lethal to people of all colors; as the first linked article points out, they killed 78 people over the past four years up from 51 between 2014 and 2018.

But mostly Black.

So I'm with Mr. Smiff, the goatherder of the Mercury piece; the problem is the cops, and the problem is bred into the whole outfit's bones. It's not "reformable", it's not "redeemable". The only real solution is to burn the fucker hull and sticks, break up the ashes, and start again from scratch.

Call it "defund the police"? Fine. The point is that this blue village has to be destroyed in order to save it.

Then...what do you do?

And there's the big question. Because here's my theory: Portland police aren't bad just because they're lethal racist fucks. they're lethal racist fucks because of policing.

At least the way we here in Portland (and much of this country) do policing. And that, to a massive extent, is because of who we Americans are.

 

Specifically, the "occupation" model of policing - a relatively small number of coppers racing around in cars responding to emergency calls - means that the cops themselves typically only work with:
1) drunks and dopers,
2) belligerent assholes, and
3) poor people.

And many of these people are armed; indeed, the number of guns lying around means that if you have to try and deal with whatever fucking thing they're doing you kind of have to start from the assumption that they're strapped.

That's kind of it. 

People don't call 9-1-1 when they're having a nice day. They don't need cops when they're being friendly, or happy, or peaceful, or content. The cops only get involved when somebody's mad, or whacked out, or scary, mean, violent, or some other form of assholery, and as often as not with a deadly weapon.

Lots of these people are poor, and lots of them are Black because it's way more likely that you're poor when you're Black; that's how we roll here in the Land of the Free. And poor people don't have the options that better-off people do, especially if they're on the street, but just in general it's harder not to end up breaking the law which forbids rich and poor alike to steal bread if you're poor.

And there, told to enforce that law, on "those people", are the cops.

Think of how you'd feel about your work, and your co-workers, if it meant constant irritation and aggravation dealing with assholes?

After not too long you'd probably conclude that most people are assholes, many are dangerous assholes, and that almost all poor, Black, and poor Black people are dangerous assholes that you'd need to shoot first to stay alive. 

In other words, you'd be a lethal racist asshole.

Even if you didn't start that way, the way the United States works now goes a long way to ensuring you'd end up that way.

So how do you change that?

My only thought is that you'd effectively have to change 1) U.S. society, and 2) how we police it.

You'd have to get rid of the fucking guns, for one thing.

If any interaction with an asshole, or even just someone having a bad day - angry, depressed, even suicidal, argumentative, irrational, out of control - might involve a firearm? Then anyone whose job involved stopping that bad day would have to have lethal force, if not in hand at least at hand, and be mentally prepared to use it.

That's the kind of hypervigilance that produces "combat stress" and PTSD  in soldiers. Until the cops don't have to start from there? Every cop incident is going to have the potential to go lethal pretty quick smart. With the expected consequence of the cop starting every incident halfway to drawing down on someone.

Then you'd almost have to have a cop living, or at least walking around, in every street in every neighborhood.

Because the other part of this is the "working with nonstop assholes" thing, remember?

To change that the cops would have to interact with other kinds of people; happy, peaceful, friendly, non-asshole people. They'd have to see the good side of the people around them, instead of seeing them as random "civilians", randos they jump out of the car on, who are either useless NPCs, or assholes that need a beatdown.

Remember "Officer Friendly"? Yeah, well, it's kind of hard to be friends when you only drive in once or twice a year to thump some asshole and haul them off to Detox. 

And then there's the whole "right of the people to peaceably assemble" thing...

...yeah, that. 

This is a long way around to get to the part where I say "I don't see any simple, easy, straightforward way to fix the cops".

Do we need some sort of police? Yes.

Do we need the police we have now? As I think I've made clear; no. The current cop model is broken. It doesn't prevent crime. It doesn't solve crimes, not very often, and often not correctly, given the number of people whose convictions turn out to be mistaken or, worse, deliberate frame-ups.

But ISTM that "fixing" that involves "fixing" a huge chunk of modern American life; society, economy,  politics...and we can't even agree to get a fucking ketamine-addled Afrikaaner's fucking long nose out of our collective governmental pocket, or send a corrupt and predatory grifter and former real estate slumlord to the pokey instead of the Oval Office.

WASF.

Petard

 So you might recall that over the summer we here in Portland were In Flames!!!

The antifa hordes were rampaging through our streets, the dead were rising from their graves, dogs and cats were living together, and only the Thin Blue Line of Portland Police Bureau was holding us back from being - even though we were, mind you, the President hissown self said so! - an "anarchist jurisdiction".

But...remember back in June? 

When I asked you whether we would face the brutally obvious reality that "policing" in the United States fucks with and kills poor and dark and mentally disturbed people at a ridiculously inflated rate? What we would do if no amount of "reform" had changed or would change that? What we would do now, after decades of useless wanking had left us with a Police Bureau that is a sort of Proud Boys Local #432 only all with blue clothing?

And I answered my own question with:

"I know for a fact that Portland Police Bureau has been the home for wannabe Klansmen and Nazis for decades...I knew perfectly well (that this) was so baked into PPB that the only way to "do something" would be to do a Saddam's Army on the whole outfit - just fire 99% of the sonsofbitches, burn the bastard to the ground, and start over?

Will we do anything about those problems now?

Don't make me laugh. You know better and so do I. We'll throw clubs and gas and "non-lethal" rounds at whoever makes a fuss. Christ on a crutch, we can't even do anything semi-intelligent about a fucking Plague, you think we're going to do anything sane about this, the miserable way we've treated our poor and our former slaves and current subjects, and everyone else who can't play the "get out of jail free" card?

Nope. I got nothin' for you on that."

And, as surely as the sun still rises, we - we here in "anarchist jurisdiction" Portland did...

Nothing.

Instead we re-elected the empty-suit-cop-fluffing incumbent mayor instead of his lefty challenger who promised to take the fucking cops by the stacking swivel. A large part of that was because us commies, once again, managed to form up the circular firing squad - another local activist, Tessa Raiford, ran a very organized write-in campaign that siphoned off about 13 percent of the vote, all from the Left - and shot ourselves dead square in the ass because it was in a race that the OTHER lefty candidate, Iannarone, lost 40 to 46 percent.

Do the math.

Fuck. We're our own worst goddamn enemies.

So the end result of all that protesting and voting and clamor for justice is that we're stuck with the same bunch of useless bastards that sat around with their collective thumbs up their collective asses while the Portland coppers went all kinetic on the BLM protestors.

Surely as the sun rises even the hardest-core street radical can see the brutal facts in front of her, so the protests drizzled away with the autumn rains.

The summer of BLM is over and the fucking cops won.

The usual suspects - the rich white people in the West Hills and the Portland Business Alliance - voted for the empty suit in droves, terrified of the propaganda spewed by the Thin Blue Line of Bullshit and the idiot news stations. 

The same idiots are fulminating about our homeless explosion - imagine, people are losing their squats in a Plague that is killing businesses and low-wage jobs! Whoodathunkit? - and want the empty suit and his cronies to "do something"...as if anyone can "do something" without a massive infusion of tax dollars and social and actual engineering - build cheap goddamn houses, you fools! - that the richie riches and the PBA will never accept or agree to.

Which will just mean more "homeless sweeps" where the coppers kick the hoboes out of wherever they are. They will just rise and scatter like a flock of scruffy starlings to land in someone else's tree until the sweeps come through again. It's the homeless version of the whack-a-muj that worked soooo well in Southwest Asia only with fewer command-detonated mines.

Nobody is willing to think their way out of this, largely because the actual stuff that works is difficult and expensive and time-consuming and even here in Portland we're Americans, by God, and we don't do difficult and expensive and time-consuming. Fuck that noise, we're cowboys and we think with our six-shooter. 

Meanwhile we're marinating in the Plague just like the rest of you, and our wingnuts are as wingnutty as the ones all over the country, squawking and clucking about freeedummmmm!!! while the 'rona tickles their nostrils and they strut around with their festering uncovered meatfaces belching their disease all over the rest of us. The dumb fuckers have invited Mister Grenade to the party while the rest of us try to just stay in cover long enough to duck their goddamn shrapnel until the vaccines arrive.

I'm just tired.

I'm tired of the Plague. I'm tired of missing my old life; my friends and my little joys and my city, tired of being worried and afraid and nervous as a cat around crowds, wondering which one is the fucking numbnuts is that's walking around shedding the virus like rain.

And I'm really tired of this country, which has such a bright and shining promise, which has the potential to be so good and great and one but instead is dominated by the selfish, the small, the weak, the stupid, and the willfully ignorant.

I'm tired of trying to be decent and intelligent and thoughtful and careful and judicious only to look across the way at a bunch of four-year-olds squalling in a tantrum triggered by belief in utter nonsense so transparently obvious delusional foolishnessthat even  a poop-flinging monkey would sneer.

And I have no good and happy answer to how to change all that except the answer of any siege; watch and wait and keep my head down and kill the traitorous bastards trying to open the postern and try and ensure that the other sonsofbitches don't get over the wall all the while knowing that it's usually us who get blown up by our own goddamn petard.

At ease, cats. Back to grim politics.

By now you've probably all heard about the Antifa/New Black Panther riots savaging my city, and held in check only by the mad riot control skilz of Portland Police Bureau and their support echelons from the Federal Agencies That Shall Not Be Named. As you know, we white folks are huddled in our basements, eyes red from the tear gas smoke, dreading the knock that means the BLM Revolutionary Guard has arrived to deliver swift and final Social Justice.

It's true. It's all true, and I have pictures to prove it.

See? There he is! There's 's the black-clad Antifa terrorist, surveying the site of his next atrocity.

It's hell, I tell you, a dystopian hellscape, the American Carnage our President warned us about three years and more ago. We're all doomed.

Ooookay, now, let's quit kidding around and talk some simple facts.

No, there's no mad riots going on downtown. No, there's nothing that Trumpy and the Junior Freikorps need to "save" us from. He's full of shit, they're full of shit, and the Portland Police Bureau is, as usual, full of shit.

No, here's what's going on:

That's the "Wall of Moms" confronting our heroic Law Enforcement Heroes with...a lullaby.

So of course the fucking cops and feds shot them with tear gas and flashbangs.

Here's what you need to know about Portland cops; they're shit, and they've been shit for decades.

Triggerhappy? Check. Racist? Check. Brutal n' stupid? Check. Nazis? Ummm...yeah. That, too; a Portland copper who had a Hitler fetish back when he was a sergeant in the Nineties and Oughts? He made Captain by the mid-teens when his youthful Nazi...ummm..."indiscretions" were erased in 2014. He retired/ with a full pension and some sort of cop medal, presumably to go with his Iron Cross.

So people here in Portland are reeeeally sick and tired of these worthless coppers. We'd like them to be less stupid, brutal, racist, and generally worthless, but we'll settle for burning the fucking plague ship to the waterline, hull and sticks, so something more useful could be built in it's place.

That's why we're SO done with them.

I'm not sure what Trump and his cosplay Guardia Civil want, but my guess is just red meat for the base. He's completely screwed the COVID pooch, so he needs to distract the rubes from the fact their kids are wheezing and Gamma's dead...so, look! Antifa! Ooh! Bad! Scary! Evil!

On the other hand...there is a precedent for this sort of damn thing, paramilitaries doing the dirty work the caudillo can't trust the police or the Army to do for him. The brownshirts - and before them, the real freikorps, in Germany and the blackshirts in Italy. The "dignity battalions" in Panama. AAA in Argentina.

These feds don't have the sack to bring on the Ford Falcons. Yet.

But if you're a small-r republican, you should be alarmed and infuriated that your supposed republic is flirting with making it's very own little Falangist Civil Guard.

I sure as hell am.

But, sadly...I'm too old , too slow, and too liable to the plague to be out there beside the Moms. So you're not going to read a "Letter from Wapato Jail" from me anytime soon. I'll stay boring and safe in my little house in my little job doing my boring little things.

Just wishing the moms and them the best of luck. It's not that I don't WANT to be out there.

Because fuck the worthless goddamn Portland Police Bureau and all its works.

And - this is a larger political point worth making here - it's really time to break up the damn "Department of Homeland Security" (and as an aside I think we can all agree that "Heimatsicherheitsdienst" sounds better in the original German) and restore it's Frankenstein parts back to their original pieces; FEMA to, well, FEMA. The Coast Guard to Transportation. Customs back to Customs, The INS back to Justice (or, better yet, to Labor where it really belongs).

There's no real reason for this monster to exist other than the stupidity and panic that resulted from 9/11. In it's existing condition it is entirely too useful for some Mussolini wannabe like Trump to turn into his goon squad, and it's too sprawling to be useful for actual "security", as the recent goon squad adventures in my hometown show quite plainly.

So while I hunker down in North Portland, let's all see about defunding the damn Portland cop and dismembering the damn DHS.

Time and past time, I'd say...

Acting 1SG Lawes reads the morning formation announcements.

Attention! At ease. Okay, listen up. Coupla things here.

First.

All this horseshit about how kneeling during the playing of "To Anacreon in Heaven" is somehow spitting on the graves of soldiers?

Get over it. There hasn't been a single fucking American soldier who served, fought, was wounded, or died for "freedom" since 1953 (and that was the freedom of the people of the Republic of Korea, people, know your fucking history).

There are a handful of living veterans of Korea and WW2 who might qualify and you're welcome to ask them THEIR opinions, but all the rest of us fought for "national interests"; we helped secure a tank of gas, or navigation through the Panama Canal, or for diddly-shit Great Power games in the Middle East.

The U.S. of 2017 uses armed force like any Great Power, people.

This isn't 1776.

Grow the fuck up.

Second. I've seen fellow GIs get all whip out their DD214 on people who haven't served to beat them over the head with the "right" to be all pissy about people protesting the fact that coppers are WAY more likely to kill your ass if you're not White Like Me.

That's a dick move, brothers.

Those despised "civilians"? They're OUR FUCKING BOSSES.

If they want to protest, or shout at us, or dance naked in the streets...our job, our ONLY fucking job, is to salute and move out smartly. THEY are the true "guardians of liberty", not us. We're here to keep the outside out. THEY are there to make the "inside" truly free, truly just, true to the promise of "liberty and justice for all"...or not. It's up to them, and not us to lecture or hector them about what they do or how they do it.

S&T Platoon. Imma see your ass in the motor pool after this formation and we're gonna talk about your fucking Conex.

That is all.

Platoon sergeants, take charge.