Gaslighting
December 7th, 2014 | 
Author: Virtually no one in America had ever witnessed such a horrific event live and free on television until then. It was simultaneously more violent, more chaotic and more disturbing than maybe anything we’d ever seen. A handful of burly peace officers bearing down in concert on a very large, black man who lacked the sense to merely stay on the ground.
Yes, Rodney King was high as a kite and it was incredibly hard to watch.
The digital age of instant information, gratification, persecution and judgement was ushered in by the video tape of those cops beating the living shit out of Rodney King. The flooding of our senses and sensibilities, the numbing of our brains, expectations and perceptions by a stream of profoundly disturbing sensory information like a a continuous pyroclastic flow, had begun.
And they didn’t even kill him.
Every time it happens and there are no consequences, no indictment, no charges, no trial or no verdict, it all gets reset. Even now, when we’re barely able to manage a breath until the next one. It’s not that things are actually occurring more often. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is how often it’s broadcast and just how anaesthetized and inured at least half of us have become.
So for the very latest, we are witness to an actual murder of an unarmed black man who had done nothing at all. Nothing. The whole thing on video. The coroner even ruled it homicide.
A grand jury still fails to indict anyone for any fucking thing at all.
And Peter King, a sitting congressman, is allowed to say it was Eric Garner’s fault for being overweight and out of shape without being pilloried, tarred and feathered and run out of town. I hate this prick.
Sean Hannity managed to somehow link the travesty to Benghazi while “technically” objecting to the term “chokehold” by virtue of his experience as a martial arts student. Idiot. Giulani spared no decency in characterizing Mayor de Blasio’s unusually articulate and compassionate response to the grand jury finding as “racist”. Dumbass. Rand Paul waltzed with the absurd in saying Eric Garner’s death was somehow the fault of an unfair tax. Dipshit.
This the modern, post racial GOP.
Tone deaf, stupid, bigoted motherfuckers.
“Get away [garbled] … for what? Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today. Why would you…? Everyone standing here will tell you I didn’t do nothing. I did not sell nothing. Because every time you see me, you want to harass me. You want to stop me (garbled) Selling cigarettes. I’m minding my business, officer, I’m minding my business. Please just leave me alone. I told you the last time, please just leave me alone. please please, don’t touch me. Do not touch me.”
” I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe,”.
Sheezus.
Seriously.
What the fuck?
With Trayvon Martin there was no video and and not any “credible” witnesses. Trial, but no conviction. He was a thug and George Zimmerman was a hero.
With Michael Brown there was no video and plenty of witnesses, but none of them “credible”. No indictment, no trial. Brown was a thug and officer Wilson did society a favor by getting rid of an animal who caused him to fear for his life even though he had no documented injuries and chose to exit his two ton vehicle to be better able to take aim and fire ten more shots and gun him down from somewhere between twenty five and a hundred plus feet away.
They never measured.
What the hell are they going to say 12 year old Tamir Rice did to deserve it?
Cliven Bundy faced down all kinds of local, state and federal authority with his very own “well regulated militia” and not a shot was fired. He committed actual crimes. He still owes the taxpayers over seven figures.
A single white man, armed to the goddamn teeth, opens fire in a theater in Aurora Colorado, kills twelve and injures seventy and he is taken alive. No video, lots of witnesses and lots of innocent people dead, injured and otherwise emotionally scarred forever. He was taken alive and unharmed. Afterwards the commentariat asks what happened to this fine young man? What went wrong?
Now these are hardly original thoughts on my part. They are on the lips of a lot of people. But so is the question, WHAT THE FUCK?
http://aattp.org/tim-wise-pens-brilliant-editorial-on-ferguson-most-white-americans-are-completely-oblivious/
Drinks for my friends.
Posted in Uncategorized
https://www.facebook.com/janilani/posts/10152566234636915?comment_id=10152566256711915&offset=0&total_comments=1¬if_t=share_comment
I just want to understand why? Why? Why?
Are we condemned to repeat this over and over? Rwanda was a holocaust yet no remembrance day. Over 20 million Africans never made the trip referred to as “The Middle Passage”. Not a word.
Why?
Well stated.
The police act on behalf of the one percent in our new gilded age of divide and conquer. The remnants of a blue collar, unionized working class can force the lower classes down prostrate on the cement and enjoy their sense of violent and determined superiority for moments at a time. It feels better to them than the boot of the elites stomping down wages, benefits and that old, outdated concept of pensions, let alone any sense of dignity in ordinary work.
Spot on, as usual … we will be our own undoing if we keep turning a blind eye and heart to these travesties … shame on AmeriKKKa …
Well said, Andrew.. At our families’ Thanksgiving dinner this year, when we went around the table to tell each other what we were thankful for, I looked around at the young people’s smiling, white faces and said ” I am thankful that my beautiful grandchildren are in the ‘privileged class’ in this country, so they will not be harassed constantly by the police.” They got it; they are in college now. it is a sad day for America AGAIN.
Glad you get it, Lois.
Michael, as always, you hit the story with the hammer of truth… and let’s not forget this white man https://www.facebook.com/notes/guido-colacci/would-the-police-have-acted-the-same-way-if-the-young-man-was-poor-or-black/769972109700798
Wow That was a mouthful of Dead On Target and Blow by Blow artfully connecting the scenes and judgements or lack of by race, suspect and or law enforcement or might I say Law Brutality? Very well spelled out from A to Z!
I still get tears in my eyes when I hear these stories. One of the high schools where I taught the majority of the students were quite wealthy — even the minority students came from educated and wealthy homes. Yet the boys would tell me how they were immediately followed by clerks in stores, how women would hold on to their purse straps when they saw the black male teens, or leave an elevator, or cross the street. It shocked me, woke me up even more than I already was, and left me totally without words to explain my sadness, my embarrassment and, even, my rage. I cannot even begin to fathom how it must feel for them!
Michael, thanks again for a compelling look at the serious issue of police violence in the USA. My parents, who live part time in Ghana, are disgusted. I have shared this with my parents, who are back to Ghana this Thursday for 6 weeks, so they can share with the world what is happening here. You are simply brilliant!
Rodney King (1991) – etched in my mind forever . . . a savage, ruthless, barbaric, brutal beating by the LA police . . .
a “BLACK” man too inebriated to fight a gang of bloodthirsty cops – those whose job is to protect us from harm . . .
We learned of man’s inhumanity to man from our history books, and on the nightly news. During the Civil Rights movement, we saw hosings and attack dogs used on demonstrators by the police down south.
But this? This was different and it was unreal . . .
. . . Four cops were indicted and then acquitted . . . .
Fast forward . . . 2012 – Trayvon Martin – a BLACK teenage boy walking home attacked and shot dead – for no reason – and after a lengthy televised trial, the killer walks free . . . .
Michael Brown – another young unarmed BLACK man killed by 2 gunshots to the head, 3 to the chest and 2 to the arm for stealing a few cigarillos . . .
So a Grand Jury is conducted by a pompous and condescending prosecutor – and because of many inconsistencies by eyewitness testimony, 12 people decided that the killer cop is above the law . . . .
In July of 2014, Eric Garner – a BLACK man standing on the sidewalk selling cigarettes, is confronted and harassed by the NYC police who instead of issuing a summons for some minor offense decided to brutally use a chokehold (Which is banned by the NYPD) to take him down and on the ground HE was unable to breathe. There were lots of people mulling around and NO ONE – NOT EVEN EMS – attempted to use CPR. Eric Garner he died at the hospital.
In spite of various videos clearly showing one of the saddest cases of police brutality that I have seen, on December 3, 2014, a grand jury decided not to indict the police officer. UNBELIEVABLE!
And finally, Tamir Rice – a 12-year old BLACK boy shot by a police officer within seconds of arriving on the scene because he felt “threatened” . . . .
Police brutality and corruption still exists – but there is a “pattern” here . . .
23 years later – NOT MUCH HAS CHANGED . . . HAS IT?
Please disregard a few typos in my above post . . .
Absolutely profound and insightful article. Share the link and copied the entire article on my Facebook page. Thanks you!
I LIVED THROUGH A SIMIALR SCENE IN MERCED COUNTY CA.
THIS INCOUNTER WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT IS THE NORM, IN AMERIKKKA. WITH A FEW EXCEPTIONS SAY IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE, ONE OF LAW ENFORCENTS PET.TYPE..NORMALY AN “ENTITED” WHITE MALE.
I HAD AN X SAN JOSE, COP AS A NEIGHBOR; HE HAD A HUGE PENSION SO SPENT HIS TIME WORKING OFF THE BOOKS TO HARRASS TERRORIZE AND FABRICATING SITUATIONS AGAINST PEOPLE. HE WOULD THROW HIS WEIGHT AND STATUS AROUND REGULARLY, STILL USING HIS BADGE,& AUTHORITY IN THE COURTS.
IN ABOUT 2008 A WHITE MAN IN THAT COMMUNITY, WHO WAS AN AVID GUN COLLECTOR HAD A DISPUTE, AND PLACED A RIFLE IN VIEW OF EVERY WINDOW OF HIS HOME TO SEND A MESSAGE. IT WAS A POLICE INCIDENT. I ASKED A LOCAL OFFICER WORKING OUT AT GYM; INQUIRING INTO THE OUT COME OF THIS. APPARENTLY NOTHING REALLY BECAUSE THEY NEW THIS GUY, THE GUN OWNER SO WELL…I’M LIKE ‘WHAT THE FUCK?” IN OTHER WORDS THIS MAN DESPLAYING THE GUNS WAS A “GOOD OLD FUCKING BOY”! NORMALLY THEY WOULD THROW PEOPLE IN JAIL FOR WALKING DOWN THE STREET IN THAT COMMUNITY. LITERALLY, YOU COULDN’T EVEN WALK YOUR DOG BEFORE IT WAS A POLICE INCIDENT.
SO, WHILE LIVING IN THIS AND UNDER THIS REGIME IN AMERIKKKA, ALWAYS ACT LIKE A WHITE COUPLE….
EVEN IF YOU ARE BROWN, OR BLACK ACT WHITE, AND BE WITH AN OPPOSITE SEX PARTNER,
WHO ACTS ENTITLED AND WHITE, IT MAY JUST, SAVE YOUR LIFE!
A LOT OF DRUG DEALERS ARE WHITE,YES WE DO HAVE A GIGANTIC INDUSTRY OF ILLEGAL DRUGS,THAT’S RIGHT!
CIGARETTES ARE WHITE,
BUT NOT WHITE ENOUGH CAUSE THEY HAVE A BROWN CORE.
SO BE CAUTIOUS STAY INSIDE BE POLITE, ACT VERY ENTITLED & WHITE!
YOU KNOW I’M RIGHT..ACT WHITE!
Thumbs up Michael!