Ranting and Raving (v6): If You Think This is OK...

I want to scream.

We watch another heartbreaking video of a black man being killed, having the life squeezed out of him under the knee of a white police officer, and we watch the comments coming in saying all of the standard stuff - if he hadn't resisted, if he hadn't have done something illegal, if he had only listened to the police, if he only... if he only... if he if he if he if he if he only...

If you think this is all the fault of George Floyd - say his name, say it out loud - George Floyd - if you think this is HIS fault, if only he hadn't (fill in the blank), if only he had (fill in the blank), then you think these things are OK, too.

• Me, dying under the knee of a police officer, for shoplifting a $5 ring from a gift shop on a school trip in the 7th grade (peer pressure is a wonderful thing, isn't it?); 
• Me, being shot in the back by a police officer, for running (along with several friends) when we were discovered under-aged drinking on a nature trail in the woods behind an elementary school;
• Me, being shot repeatedly in the chest after stumbling arm-in-arm with the "'love of my life that week" off a bench and towards a police officer who was yelling at us for smoking pot and violating the open container law in a Wisconsin park after hours? (And is a goat-skin bag an even an open container?) 

And yet, here I am, decades later. 

Still here. 

Still living. 

Still breathing. 

Still remembering these and countless other crazy things I did that I'll likely never share. 

Is it because I'm lucky that I didn't run into any of the police officers who have been involved in - and most, absolved of - the murders of black men? 

Maybe; obviously, every black man who has an encounter with the police does not die as a result of the interaction. Only way too many of them do.

But the other reason I'm still here, still living, still breathing, still remembering, is because I am a white female, not a black man. Of that, I have absolutely NO doubt. 

I have the privilege of being allowed to live, when I commit minor violations of the law. 

A significant number of people - fellow citizens, friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and total strangers don't have that privilege.

George Floyd did not have that privilege. Eric Garner did not have that privilege. Philando Castile did not have that privilege. Amadou Diallo did not have that privilege. And dozens and dozens of other black men - and a lesser number of black women - did not have that privilege, and are dead because of it. 

They are dead because capital punishment is handed out not by a court of law, but by police officers. 

If you think it's OK that George Floyd and the others are dead at the hands of the police, you can't think it's OK that I'm still here. 

If you think it's OK that I'm still here, then you can't think it's OK that George Floyd and the others aren't. 

You can't have it both ways: Wish me dead, or be angry that they are. 

Wondering on Wednesday (v92)

Another Wednesday already?  Where does the time go?

As I expected, talk about everyone 'coming together' in the wake of the shooting in Alexandria lasted only a few news cycles; now, we get a very brief update on Steve Scalise's condition, and we move on to the latest severe weather threat.

I did have to wonder what on earth the punditry thought was going to happen when the Dems and Reps got ready to play their charity ball game? Were they expecting them to stand on opposite baselines glaring at each other or something? Did the multi-million dollar talking heads forget that this game has been played since the early 1900's, without rancor, to raise money for charity?

What was up with all of the amazement shown when the two teams knelt in prayer before the game began? And why was it seemingly so hard for people to understand that maybe the Congressmen (and women) are human beings, regardless of how different their opinions and ideas? Of course, that makes me wonder, if this had been a contest between the gangs from Infowars, Breitbart and Fox News on one team and The Washington Post, The Rachel Maddow Show, and CNN on the other, what would they have done under the same circumstances?

Last week also had me wondering about three widely publicized court cases: the Bill Cosby trial, the Jeronimo Yanez trial, and the Michelle Carter trial.

In the first case, the jury of five women and seven men deadlocked after some 50 hours of deliberation, and a mistrial was declared. The prosecution vowed to try the case again, but I wonder if the outcome will be different. That dozens of women have claimed Cosby did to them what he did to the alleged victim in this case - drugs as foreplay followed by unwanted sexual advances - may not matter when push comes to shove about sending America's Dad to jail. It's not just that those other women cannot bring criminal cases themselves, due to statutes of limitations, but even if their stories do come in as indicative of a pattern of behavior, it's that they might not be believed, anyway.

The second case involved the police officer who shot Philando Castile less than a minute after pulling him over for faulty brake lights, or because he resembled a suspect the police were looking for. Either way, Castile ended up dead after Yanez fired seven shots into the car (five of which hit their intended target) in which Castile's girlfriend Diamond Reynolds and her four year old daughter were passengers. The police video released after the trial was the second one to become famous in this case; the first was the one that captured the aftermath of the shooting, filmed by Reynolds. Yanez was found not guilty of second degree manslaughter and intentional discharge of a firearm that endangers safety.

Finally, the last case involved the Massachusetts woman who was charged with - and convicted of - involuntary manslaughter because she encouraged her boyfriend to commit suicide, after he had threatened to do so many times.  There were thousands of texts between the two teens presented as evidence, but it was phone calls the night of the suicide that led a judge to find her guilty. Carter, now 20 years old, could be sentenced to that many years in prison in August.

I can't help wondering how we can see a police officer acquitted of involuntary manslaughter after firing seven shots in the close quarters of a vehicle's driver's seat, while a woman is convicted of the same charge for firing only words across a communications network.

I have not been able to wrap my arms around this, and to be honest, I'm not sure I want to.