What the hell is your malfunction?

It is difficult to articulate the inchoate rage and impotent frustration I feel as I read and watch my nation throw itself headfirst into the fucking COVID minefield.

Largely because, as I explained early on in this pandemic, it didn't have to. We the People and our national government have dealt with these sorts of huge national emergencies before. We know how to deal with them in ways that minimize the danger to the general public while still accomplishing the mission.

Instead, largely because the federal government in this timeline is run by fucking grifters, fools, and rabid Randite ideologues, we've managed to screw the COVID pooch like the smallest dog in the dog pound to the point where we're going to kill tens and probably hundreds of thousands of us, uselessly, while still destroying the national wealth and further detonating the political commons.

And the most infuriating part about this is that those of us who are doing "the right thing"; masking, staying apart, reducing our contacts and being prudent...are completely helpless in the face of the remainder of our people who are just completely fucking useless.

It's like, and excuse me if I drag Acting 1SG Lawes into this, you're the topkick and you have been savagely on your outfit, forcing the joes to dig in deep, to emplace the overhead cover, to pull security while doing all that, aggressively patrolling and wiring and mining your defense. And then you look to the companies to your left and right and they're just standing around with their collective thumbs up their collective ass and their brains in neutral, lolling around like queens, and basically just begging the enemy to pound the shit out of them with artillery and run through them like a dose of salts.

Was it Caligula that said something about wishing that the world had just one neck, so he could choke the life out of it?

Not that looney Romans are particularly great role-models, but that's how I feel as I watch helplessly as numbnuts all around me, ranging from the Chief Executive to rando wingnut whackjobs, prance around maskless in public meeching about freedom and liberty and not living in fear.

Fear, you stupid sonsofbitches? You're supposed to fear things like the enemy's artillery and getting overrun. They can fucking kill you.

That's why you dig in and interlock your fields of fire and lay out the wire. So you live through the next attack.

And any GI will tell you; it takes every GI doing all this stuff to make it work.

One company. One platoon dicking off, and the enemy is inside your perimeter grenading you in your holes and shooting you in the back.

And here we have entire states, and a huge portion of the entire nation, doing the equivalent of pouting because digging in deep is haaaaard and the wire cuts your fingers and, anyway, the enemy isn't really dangerous after all, right, so who needs to dig in and patrol and do all those nasty Army things, anyway? When we could be going to bars and beaches, amirite?

And there's not a damn thing I can do about that, and it's driving me up the fucking wall.

One neck, I swear.

WASF.

Thirteen Years

Thirteen years ago this coming July I started writing at this place. It appears that I promised to "...talk about politics, soccer and adoption.".

Well, I did that for goddamn sure. At the time, of course, we were in the middle of what was the then-tortuous process of international adoption, so that was a huge part of our lives. Now? Well, there's this salty Asian kid who for some reason lives in our house and leaves her shit lying around everywhere while she pursues her fascination with art and butterfly ranching and polaroid pictures. She's not "adoption", she's just our kid, whose connection to "adoption" is reduced to stuff like giving us a hard time for not forcing her to take Mandarin classes whilst skipping blithely over the fact that she was a total butt-pain when we tried back in the day.

She's a sweetie and I love her dearly, but she's also become a paranoid goober about my posting her picture here (as if any of you, assuming anyone actually READS this stuff which I'm inclined to doubt given the stats Facebook shows me, give's a rat's ass) so you're just gonna have to imagine what she looks like today.

Soccer? Not anymore. I've got a whole 'nother crib where I talk about the Beautiful Game.

Funny story about that, actually.

Back in...oh, some time around 2014 or so, I think, I ran into a guy who ran a little soccer site called Slide Rule Pass. It's gone, sadly, because The Internet, but back in the day is was one of the more thoughtful and incisive Portland soccer sites. I went on as a commentor, got into some give-and-take with the blog owner, and tl:dr ended up writing about the Thorns, the women's professional team here in Portland. Another long-time follower and commentor came on board to write about the men's team, the Timbers, and off we went.

A couple of years later - in late 2017 - along comes the guy who was the then-editor of the "big" Portland soccer site, Stumptown Footy, who poaches us away to do the same thing for his site we were doing for SRP. The original Slide Rule owner is busy downstate, loses interest, stops paying the hosting fee, and the site just dies.

So I end up writing a column called "Thorns FC" for Stumptown for the 2018 season while my compa writes "Six Degrees" - it's a fun column and it's still going. Here's a link to him, in case you're interested. Whatever.

Anyway, I do my thing, the same thing I've been doing all along; analyzing teams, tactics, and results, discussing what I think is working and what isn't. I call my shots, and this doesn't impress a lot of the club's officials or some players, and I don't really give a shit about the "newsy" stuff; I'd rather write a deep dive into league goalkeeping metrics or comparing the play of the Thorns' midfielders.

And this, apparently, isn't what the Stumptown editor wants (despite 1) me doing the same thing I've been doing all along when he hoovered me away from Slide Rule Pass, and 2) my having warned him that I wasn't going to change, and not changing). After the end of the 2018 season, I have the dubious distinction of getting canned from a non-paying hobby gig, which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it.

So I took my soccer ball and went...well, not home, but to another website, where I do the same irritating things only for myself rather than for SB Nation.

At least I'm still doing politics. Well...sorta.

The problem with "politics" as it currently exists in the United States is that they are effectively stymied.

"Politics" is, as bottom, simply the civic discussion about how goods and services are distributed. Who gets what, how much, and how that happens. In a rational polity that process is a sort of give-and-take, with the various factions agreeing, disputing, or (often) fighting over those questions. There's typically a "liberal" or "left" side that wants more distribution of a greater share of private wealth for public goods (meaning a more "level" society with more collective activity), and a "conservative" side that wants less of both, that is, less confiscation and distribution of private wealth (meaning more concentration of wealth, a more hierarchical society, and less collective actions).

But the "conservative" side of the U.S. public is no longer a "conservative party". It's a nonsensical cult addicted to magical thinking like "trickle-down economics" and "taxes are theft" that have been proved ridiculous any and every time they are actually attempted, as well as a lunatic cult of individuality that is perhaps best embodied in the utterly mad insistence on the Right of foregoing protective masks in the face of a lethal respiratory pandemic.

There's no discussing or arguing for or against that nonsense. There is nothing I can do, or say, that will ameliorate that sort of idiocy. The American "Right" is utterly lost, they are impervious to reason and discourse, they are obviously, openly, loudly out-and-proud looney cultists. You can see that as well as I can, nothing I can say will change that, and nothing I can say will help. They're just fucking nuts, and repeating "Jesus wept, they're just fucking nuts!" is the ultimate in wasting breath.

So I'm not really bothering anymore, other than the occasional snark at the idiocy-of-the-day, like the whole "Blue Lives Matter" bullshit I talked about the other morning.

What else..?

I'm still picking my way slowly through military history though I've largely run out of events that intrigue me. I'm thinking of adding one final entry to the "Imperial Japanese Army - What Went Wrong" series this August with a short diversion on "August Storm", the Soviet offensive through Manchuria in 1945, but beyond that...hmmm. Any other suggestions?

I try and keep this from being a daddy blog, so I don't see doing more family stuff, despite the brutal reality that I'm turning out to be a Suburban Dad. Yesterday, "Father's Day"? Moved the lawn. Cooked hamburgers on the grill while sipping a beer.

Christ, I'm a meme.

Portland and Oregon are great places, so possibly I'll keep posting about my Northwest home. One of the saddest parts of the Plague Year is not being able to get out and about the way I used to.

So that's kind of where this place has gone as an early teenager. At least I'm here and it's still here; long-form blogging is going the way of cuneiform, but I'm going to try and make it run as long as I can.

Any suggestions for subject matter, though..?

Oh, wait...

Cats!

Fort Loser

This is me in 1984, a perky young SP-4 waiting patiently for someone to auger into Sicily Drop Zone at Fort Braxton Bragg, North Carolina.

At the time I couldn't have picked Braxton Bragg out of a police lineup or told you what the hell he'd done to get a ginormous Army post named after him. But, then I was young and stupid, as young men often are.

Know I know better.

And now ol' Braxton is in the middle of a ginormous shitstorm revolving around the way my country spent a long time treating - and in a lot of ways still treats - those of Us the People a whole bunch of the rest of We figured were more useful as property than actual people.

And, of course, if there's a shitstorm there's a Trump stepping in (and stirring up) the shit:

I'm not going to even bother making an argument about this. The nonsensical notion of naming places where American soldiers live and train for people who fought against and killed American soldiers would be so far beyond ridiculously stupid that it would create an entire dimension of "ridiculously stupid".

These names are a living monument to the racism that has poisoned the nation for so long that they simply need to be cornered as quickly as possible and beaten to death with the dispatch you'd club a cannibal plague rat.

Plus there's a whole bunch of GIs who have already made the argument and more eloquently than I ever could.

So, nope, my point here today is just to recall that not only were these sonsofbitches traitors, not only were they murderous traitors, not only were they murderous traitors for one of the worst possible fucking causes in human history but that, as officers and commanders of traitorous troops they were massive fucking losers, and that there was no bigger loser in the bunch than Braxton Fucking Bragg.

Let me give you a quick taste (and a nasty flavor it is) of the man, from his Wikipedia article:

"In June 1862, Bragg was elevated to command the Army of Mississippi (later known as the Army of Tennessee). He and Edmund Kirby Smith attempted an invasion of Kentucky in 1862, but Bragg retreated following the inconclusive Battle of Perryville in October.

In December, he fought another inconclusive battle at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the Battle of Stones River, against the Army of the Cumberland under Major General William Rosecrans. After months without significant fighting, Bragg was outmaneuvered by Rosecrans in the Tullahoma Campaign in June 1863, causing him to surrender Middle Tennessee to the Union. Bragg retreated to Chattanooga but evacuated it in September as Rosecrans' troops entered Georgia.

Later that month, with the assistance of Confederate forces from the Eastern Theater under James Longstreet, Bragg was able to defeat Rosecrans at the Battle of Chickamauga, the bloodiest battle in the Western Theater, and the only major Confederate victory therein. Bragg forced Rosecrans back to Tennessee, but was criticized for not mounting an effective pursuit. In November, Bragg's army was routed by Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in the Battles for Chattanooga and pushed back to Georgia. Confederate President Jefferson Davis subsequently relieved Bragg of command, recalling him to Richmond to serve as his chief military advisor. Bragg briefly returned to the field as a corps commander near the end of the war during the Campaign of the Carolinas.

Bragg is generally considered among the worst generals of the Civil War. Most of the battles in which he engaged ended in defeats. Bragg was extremely unpopular with both the men and the officers of his command, who criticized him for numerous perceived faults, including poor battlefield strategy, a quick temper, and overzealous discipline. Bragg has a generally poor reputation with historians, while some point towards the failures of Bragg's subordinates, especially Leonidas Polk, a close ally of Davis and known enemy of Bragg, as more significant factors in the many Confederate defeats at which Bragg commanded. The losses which Bragg suffered are cited as principal factors in the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy."

So, in the course of about two years, this idiot:

1. Tried to invade Kentucky, couldn't whip Don Carlos Buell (who was a pretty conclusive nitwit himself), and ran away like a whipped dog,
2. Couldn't beat fucking Bill Rosecrans, who as a commander couldn't beat a carpet if you spotted him the bat and the carpet,
3. Then got outmaneuvered by Rosecrans, which is like winning some sort of Nobel Prize for "crap generaling",
4. Finally whipped Rosecrans in a bloody brawl but needed Longstreet, one of the best rebel officers to do it,
5. And when the U.S. finally 86ed Rosecrans and replaced him with a competent commander Bragg managed to get his ass comprehensively whipped despite fighting defensively in one of the strongest defensive positions ever held by an armed force in the history of combat (look up the "Battle of Missionary Ridge" sometime...).

Finally even Jeff Davis - not exactly a military genius - had enough of Bragg's incompetent ass and got him out of the chain of command.

This guy was a complete and utter military moron.

Taking his name off the Home of the Airborne wouldn't just be a recognition that We the People shouldn't "honor" people who betrayed our country for the notion that other people could and should be owned like a box of Cap'n Crunch.

It's be a recognition that this particular traitor was not just a traitor but a spectacularly incompetent one, at that.

Then rename the place for George Thomas, who said this:

"[T]he greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, equality, and all the calendar of the virtues of freedom, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for southern independence failed.

This is, of course, intended as a species of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of the government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains; a species of self-forgiveness amazing in its effrontery, when it is considered that life and property—justly forfeited by the laws of the country, of war, and of nations, through the magnanimity of the government and people—was not exacted from them."

Now that would be a perfect, chef's kiss, sort way of correcting the history books. Fort George Thomas.

Do it.

Now.

兜 を脱ぐ : Kabuto o nugu

The little phrase above translates as "take off the helmet". It has passed into Japanese idiom from the feudal period as meaning "admit defeat", or "surrender".

We the People have surrendered to the Plague, and, being a Plague, it will respond by killing thousands and tens of thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands of its' prisoners.

Because that's literally what plagues do.

It doesn't have to be this way.

I get that we can't stay locked down forever. People got no jobs. People got no money. People are going to have to get out and work...and that means they'll want to get out and play, too. And, being American and greedy and stupid, we don't "get" that we just can't go back to Dave and Buster's like we did before and not get the Plague.

But.

There are ways to get out, and ways to get out. We seem to have decided to get out the stupidest and most infectious way possible. We're mobbing back into public spaces and, most critically, breathing our infections on each other. Because, it seems, less-stupid-and-infectious would include one simple and effective way to do this better.

Wear a fucking facemask.

"Japan’s population is about 38% of the U.S., but even adjusting for population, the Japanese death rate is a mere 2% of America’s. This comes despite Japan having no lockdown, still-active subways, and many businesses that have remained open—reportedly including karaoke bars, although Japanese citizens and industries are practicing social distancing where they can. Nor have the Japanese broadly embraced contact tracing, a practice by which health authorities identify someone who has been infected and then attempt to identify everyone that person might have interacted with—and potentially infected. So how does Japan do it?"

It's really that simple.

Japan has a longstanding tradition of masking in public.

I've been out and about during the Plague because of my job. Almost no one is masked; easily less than half, and (except in places like the whole foods store) usually about a quarter. I am...but it doesn't help me. I don't have the Plague yet; I need the other people, who do, to cover their nasty diseased pieholes.

And what I hate about that is that a hell of a lot of that has a hell of a lot to do with this:

The Trumpkins are explicit in refusing to cover their faces during a plague because it's not manly, it's not "free", it's sissy...aw, fuck, who cares why. They're goddamn idiots and if they were only killing themselves they could happily go to hell in the same handbasket.

But they're not. They're killing you and me.

So maybe we're going about this all wrong.

Maybe what we need for these chucklefucks is this sort of mask:

Would all these heroes mask up if they could strut around behind a 面頬, a menpō, like a badass samurai?

I'm long past trying to reason with these numbnuts. If giving them a cool ninja mask would make them stop acting stupid?

Works for me.

But, sadly, no. It won't work.

Because the proudly ignorant sonsofbitches wouldn't do it. Not even for a badass samurai mask. Because they'd prefer to burn the place to the ground rather than do anything that might make some pussy lib'rul somewhere smile.

This is what they think wearing a mask means:

That's really it. That's all there is to it. I mean...look at the damn idiot cartoon. "I want safety, not freedom" Wha...freedom to catch the fucking plague? "I want medical tyranny"...medical...the fuck?

Just look at it.

There's no logic there, no sense, no real reasoning. It's just all loud-n-proud fuckyew! because we're a house completely divided, and if they can't do exactly what they want and tell us pinko commie lib-simp cucks to suck it, they'll dynamite that fucker and dance on the ruins.

So.

We're all just gonna get the fucking plague.

Hyacinthum hora

"The sun has set, but night has not yet fallen. It’s the suspended hour… The hour when one finally finds oneself in renewed harmony with the world and the light," (Guerlain)

The sun has set on the brightest promises of the American Experiment.

Night has not yet fallen, but the darkness is visible in the person of Tom Cotton, the Republican Prince of Darkness that Charlie Pierce likes to call the "bobbleheaded slapdick from Arkansas" whose editorial in Wednesday's New York Times went full Nazi. He is the competent fuhrer that the GOP thought they had in Trump only to find that, while the Leader can be capricious and inane He cannot be too openly a buffoon.

Cotton is not a buffoon.

Dangerous. Unprincipled. Rapacious. Vicious.

But not a buffoon.

But here's why I think we're done, a dead republic walking; the current protests.

It shouldn't take genius-level civics to understand that a land where the state is openly run by and for the wealthy, where a substantial portion of the "citizenry" are obviously not citizens but subjects, bound by the law but not protected, liable to be arrested, injured, or killed by the state at any time, is not, in fact, a democratic republic ruled by "equal justice under law".

It should be painfully obvious to even the stupidest of inhabitants that if "they" can do to "them" what police regularly do to "them" that there is no legal reason "they" cannot do it to you.

No. The only reason "you" are safe is structural, and that structure is founded on oligarchy and built of racism.

We the comfortable, largely white, majority have never been willing to honestly see - much less actively tear out - the dark pillar of race and the ugly beam of plutocracy that support our house.

To do so would have required long and painful years and even decades of sacrifice and humility to tear down and rebuild our nation without those things. Humans have never been good at that; it's not like we're some sort of uniquely awful nation.

But that remains a uniquely difficult task.

To do the things the protestors are demanding; to rebuild the large police forces (and courts and legal codes...) across the country to provide that actual equal justice, to rejigger the national economy to provide true equality of opportunity, would require an M9-seismic-event level of change.

In a sensible nation, in a true democratic republic, dedicated to ensuring that all people are "We the People" these protests would have caused a massive national reflection, would have sparked a balefire of action, of decision, to make the sorts of changes that would provide and rejigger and do all those things.

Instead, this is a nation where roughly four out of ten "citizens" - who were just weeks ago prancing around with military rifle knock-offs claiming that having to wear a surgical mask and order pizza to go was the most horrific tyranny since the rule of the tsars, mind you - are at best silent and, at worst, prepared to use those rifles on the others of their own fellow citizens who are now in the streets demanding that equal justice.

That part of the People who are huge Tom Cotton fanbois and fangirls.

And because we are in fact a house divided there has been, after nearly a week of nightly protests across the nation, no serious discussion, much less action, about the changes in our nation and in our laws and how they are enforced, that would address what these thousands of people are in the streets demanding.

So it's not so much the line of armed and armored police that stand across the road the protests are trying to open.

Behind them stands Tom Cotton like a colossus and around his feet all the little Cottons who refuse those changes.

And around them...all of those people, like me, who are unwilling or unable to make the sacrifice to bumrush the line and risk ourselves and our lives to make them change.

We the People cannot even force our government to act sensibly about the Plague. We know better, we know how we can save lives, but to do so would require some of us to make sacrifices, to act with humility and patience, to spend money we have in excess but are unwilling to part with.

We won't, because enough of us won't, because enough of us are Tom Cotton and refuse to accept any alternative but a full-on charge through the minefield, because waiting for the engineers and the flail tanks is for cowards and pussies.

If we can't do that - in the face of a pathogen that can kill or maim any one of us - how will we take an even harder and more difficult path to equity when inequity only harms some of us, and those largely "them", the people the Tom Cottons despise?

Here's what I wrote thirteen years ago:

A nation grown suddenly great, enlarged by war, troubled by disturbance abroad and contention at home.
A people divided, made complacent by wealth and power yet enervated by political strife and economic uncertainty.
A government given over to the wealthy, whose vicious infighting consumes their ability to make sound choices for the betterment of the People, or the nation.
A military made hard, and indifferent to democratic ideals, by decades of professionalism and unremitting war.
An economy dominated by great corporations, relentlessly pressing down the opportunities for the individual and the small company.

Even the very structures of civilization itself crumble as, it seems, the nation both implodes and explodes.

So.

No.

It's been a long time fading but now the light seems to be failing fast. The darkness just seems all the more threatening loured by teargas smoke and backlit by the light of the flares and the flash-bangs and the burning barricades.

While we are still suspended in this blue hour it is difficult for me to see anything but darkness in the falling night ahead.

Acting 1SG Lawes reads the morning formation announcements

Comp-ney, Atten-shun!

At ease.

Okay, listen up. Coupla things here, but we got a busy day so imma be quick.

Night bakers.

Can anyone here. Anyone? Tell me what the ever-loving-come-to-Jesus fuck inspired you people to set out what I am led to understand was a "deep fried Mars bar turnover" in the pastry tray yesterday morning?

Was it because you knew the battalion commander would be eating breakfast in our D-fac? And that he would be hosting the Brigade Sergeant Major, who is well known to covet pastries like a huge camouflage-wearing pizza rat covets pepperoni slices?

Because whatever the reason, I have been hearing from that pastry-fattened individual every hour on the hour since then about our dining facility, a circumstance which I am highly displeased with.

Goddammit, people. Donuts, maple bars, and apple-fucking-fritters were good enough for the Children of Israel as well as our hardy pioneer forebears and, as such, they are fucking good enough for our fucking mess hall. Whilst I appreciate your artistic flair and need for new challenges during what the Yadkin Road Ford dealership commercial last evening assured me were "trying times"...KISS, people. KISS. Keep it fucking simple. This is not fucking Kilmarnock and y'all are not standing with Mel Gibson facing down the fucking Sassenachs.

Donuts. And maple bars.

Fried Mars bars. Jesus wept.

Okay, only one other thing.

I am hearing talk about our being deployed to Charlotte or Raleigh to act in support of the civil power given the unrest there.

I am here to remind you that we are United States Army Airborne soldiers. We follow the lawful orders of our civilian leadership. If our national command authority through our corps and division and brigade and battalion orders us to load the riot gear into the 80-pax and hey-diddle-diddle up I-95 to stand around looking all billy badass, we will salute and move out smartly.

However.

Note that I cannot emphasize strongly enough the word lawful.

The Constitution that, if you people recall we all swore to support and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic, guarantees The People the right to peaceably assemble. It guarantees them the right to petition our government for the redress of grievances, and as such to speak freely, including the speech of act and deed. And in another foundational document our forefathers accused his royal highness King George of sending the goddamn redcoats to oppress them and deny them those very rights and that was cause for breaking the contract between citizen and sovereign government.

I am here to tell you people: We. Are. Not. Fucking. Redcoats.

You will need to rely on the Old Man. He is a stand up guy as well as a hell of a soldier and officer. He will not allow us to be used to beat the living shit out of peaceful Americans in the sort of shameful fucking ways that certain of our colleagues were used in the District of Columbia Monday night.

You will need to trust me to follow, and issue, only lawful orders.

I realize that requires a lot of trust. I hope that as your acting First Sergeant I have earned that trust. And I trust that you can and will behave in ways that will continue to earn mine.

But at the final remove you can trust me on this:

We.

Will not be the cause.

For breaking the contract between citizen and sovereign government.

On that you have my solemn fucking word.

That is...no, wait. One last item.

Remember; we are still in the fucking Plague Year. Keep your masks on and do not bunch up! If you do as surely as your doom followeth hard after you Mister Grenade will be there to remind you what a miserable buddy-fucker he is. Judas was a buddy-fucker, people, and look what happened to him.

Now that is all.

Comp-ney, Atten-shun!

Platoon sergeants, take charge.

Blue on Blue

I don't really have anything to add here to the rage exploding across my country other than, yeah, well, what did you expect?

We have, those of us with the attributes that signify "meaningful" in our country; wealth, economic position, political engagement, whiteness...we've been fine that many of our cities are policed in ways that range from unpleasant to onerous to lethal for those citizens that lack those attributes. We didn't have to worry about fixing that busted taillight because we knew we wouldn't get pulled over for not signaling the lane change.

Or, if we did, we wouldn't get yanked out of the car and roughly body-searched and, if we got a little arsed about that, tased or arrested or just plain curb-stomped by somebody who felt no need to stop his inner asshole from coming out to play.

For example, I know for a fact that Portland Police Bureau has been the home for wannabe Klansmen and Nazis for decades. What have I done about that, other than vote for commissioners and mayors who have promised, usually ineffectually, to "do something" about what I knew perfectly well 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?

Yeah, nothing. You, too? Thought so. Most of us who aren't a shade darker than that crayon color that used to be labeled "flesh" (and think about that for a moment...) haven't really been troubled enough to get het up over the problems.

So here we are.

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.

What I wanted to make a brief comment on, though, was one of the stupider and more irritating American affectations all this rioting and anger over killer cops reminded me of: the "blue line" thing.

You've seen it. Fucker has it's own flag, forChrissakes. Even here in the People's Republic of Portland you see the little blue-line-flag stickers from time to time, on cop cars and even some regular old pickups and sedans and SUVs.

Anyway, the point of this blue line nonsense seems to be to try and impress people that the coppers are the only thing - the "thin blue line" - standing between civilization and a howling wilderness of Hobbsean war-of-all-against-all chaotic savagery.

And, hey...who can blame the coppers for wanting to believe this LARPing fantasy of heroic defenders of civilization, and trying to sell it to the public?

Beats the fuck out of accepting the reality that your grunt-level street cop is basically an over-armed mall security dude with better transportation who spends most of his or her day dealing with crappy little problems that can't and won't be solved by policework (Gee. Somebody clouted your car? That sucks. Well, fill in this report. Bye!) or, frankly, assholes. Any sergeant will tell you that ten percent of your people are the ones who'll give you ninety percent of your problems, and so it has to be with policing. Most of the people your beat cop interacts with are probably assholes, either because they're high and/or drunk, have some sort of mental issues, or are, well, just assholes.

I can see how that would make me want to think that breaking up pukey drunk-fights and dealing with speeders flipping you shit was manning the ramparts of Civilization against the Dark Hordes.

But there's no reason that us Dark Hordes need to buy into this cop cosplay.

Because it's pretty simple; the actual "defenders of civilization" is everyone. You, me, your Aunt Louise. We are the "thin line", and not that thin, either, that keeps our community and nation and civilization going.

Because the reality is that if the vast bulk of human beings weren't quiet and peaceful and generally "law-abiding"?

No number of coppers could stop them from running wild, anymore than the village watchman of Podoloversk could stop the Mongols from tearing the place apart.

No. The "blue line" bullshit is designed to convince us groundlings that whatever coppers do is "holding the line" of civilization against the Darkness. So when they blow up someone's house trying to arrest someone else who isn't there, when they kill someone in the process of "arresting" them for selling loose smokes or just being an asshole - and, let's recall that if being an asshole was a capital crime there's a whole bunch of people, up to and including a fairly significant portion of Trump Adminstration, who're dead meat - or when they go wild and start beating and shooting people, as you do every so often, y'know...to convince us that all this shit we'd normally look at and go "...the FUCK!?" and get agitated about our tax dollars going to fund this idiotic and destructive-to-civil-order nonsense is really Defending Civilization.

But run the numbers.

It ain't.

If We the People wanted to tear the living hell out of "civilization" we could, and no bunch of blue-suited mall cops would be able to stop us.

And the mere fact that this "blue line" bullshit is floating around out there and hasn't been viciously mocked offstage? The fact that paid-for-by-your-taxes coppers are apparently bought into and trying to broadcast the nonsense? The fact that our political "leaders" - from both Left and Right, I'm afraid; this truly IS a "both sides do it" problem - aren't willing to cram down on these idiot coppers and their Dungeon Defenders idiocy and tell them to STFU and go be good public servants and wrestle the pukey drunks and arrest the assholes without turning this into a war between The Force of Law and the people who the law in its impartial majesty prohibits from stealing bread and sleeping under bridges?

Says something very, very problematic about us and the country we've created.

Which, if you've been paying attention, shouldn't be news at all.

I could go on. About the insanity of coppers going Full Metal Jacket on regular people but palling around and sucking face with armed traitors (Amon Bundy, c'mon down! Proud Boys, represent!) and the ridiculous position of the "conservative" talking heads who were foaming with rage about the kneeling during songs that warned us that this day was coming if we did nothing but rage about kneeling.

But what's the point?

You know as well as I what the problems are, what should happen, and what won't.

Nope. That moronic "blue line" flag is really the white flag of our country surrendering to the reality that if you White, you Right.