A Disgrace of a Nation Disgraces The World

Summary: Perhaps I should have known earlier in the week that events weren’t going to go as smoothly as I’d hoped. Given that all the adults were vaccinated, we decided to risk getting together for our youngest child’s birthday only to be reminded that, oh yeah, there were reasons we didn’t do that before the pandemic put everyone in quarantine. It was a minor infraction in the grand scheme of things, but in hindsight, it serves as a red flag that the rest of the week wasn’t going to get much better. We watched the Derek Chauvin trial end defense testimony on Thursday without the defendant taking the stand, wondering what that might mean. Then, after going to bed early Thursday evening, we woke up Friday morning to the news that there had been another mass shooting, this one a mere 17 miles from my front door. Eight people dead, including four from the <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/548795-four-members-of-sikh-community-among-victims-in-indianapolis-shooting">Indianapolis Sikh community</a>. My heart immediately sank as we waited with everyone else in the city to see if anyone we knew was among the deceased. Then, we discover, well after the fact, that a 13-year-old boy, Adam Toledo, was shot and killed by a police officer in Chicago. Bodycam footage gives the officer no defense for the shooting. He said stop and the child stopped. He said “raise your hands” and the child raised his hands. There was no gun. Sure, there may have been one somewhere back in an alley, but it damn sure wasn’t in that baby boy’s hands. And still, the officer shot. I’m not sure what else I can say at this point that I haven’t already said one place or another. The past four weeks have all addressed some aspect of gun violence in our culture, a culture that is wholly unique to the United States. No other country in the world has the strangely obsessive gun culture that we do. <a href="https://www.charlesiletbetter.com/no-police-no-prisons-no-violence/">We’ve talked about police</a> and the impossible situation we find ourselves in trying to balance public protection with the reality of a racist, militarized, and too often corrupt police force. I was listening to Ari Fleischer on NPR’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/04/15/987793080/the-thin-blue-line-in-minnesota-plus-tell-them-i-am">It’s Been A Minute</a> this morning, and heard journalist O’nika Nicole Craven talk about her interview with a 60-year-old black man, the same age as I am. He told her how that looking at the atmosphere of the 60s and comparing it to now, he doesn’t see any change. All the marches, all the activism, all of it has resulted in nothing of substance, largely because of politicians who systematically dismantled any gains made. Ari then talked with The Marshall Project’s <a href="https://twitter.com/MauriceChammah">Maurice Chammah</a> who discussed the racist and militaristic origins of the phrase, “thin blue line,” and how the symbolism has come to represent a level of white supremacy within policing that poisons the entire system all across the nation. One might see a glimmer of hope when one of the world’s top three publishing houses, Simon and Schuster, announces that it <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/04/16/988024774/simon-schuster-reverses-wont-distribute-book-by-officer-in-breonna-taylor-raid">won’t distribute a book</a> about the Breonna Taylor case written by one of the cops who participated in her murder. But the company isn’t the original publisher of the book. The book’s publisher is <a href="https://posthillpress.com/">Post Hill Press</a> which has a long-running history of perpetuating false and misleading information in its books.

A Disgrace of a Nation Disgraces The World

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