Embark on this journey of frustration, bias, and vulgar commentary as I take you deep into the depths of the world we’re living in today. It’s May 30th, 2020 although, I wrote more of this blog on May 28th, but felt I was still gathering my thoughts and spending too much time landscaping to post it. We’re about three months into the Corona Virus (CoVid-19) pandemic and I figured why not capture the moment? Life is incredibly fucked up right now. On a personal level, I’m lost and confused. From America’s perspective, things are beginning to look up (except for, you know, the unwarranted killing of black men, Donald Trump’s asinine behavior, a poorly equipped counter-candidate in Joe Biden, and the Call Her Daddy Barstool Sports scandal – I could quite honestly say I give zero shits about the last one). I’m beginning to lose track of the direction of this blog, but ultimately it’s whatever I feel like writing so I suppose if you don’t like that you can go look at TikToks or watch Love is Blind or some stupid shit that’s hip with the in-crowd of 17 year old kids. Go visit another page if you aren’t ready for the chaos that ensues. Seriously, I’ll even give you a link to Buzzfeed’s 20 Hilarious Messages of the Month (Yo Buzzfeed, you hiring?).
Let’s try to give this a direction by talking about what’s going on with me. How have I been doing? Well the short answer is not good. Everything is not “exactly where it needs to be”. Nothing feels like it’s “happening for a reason” and nothing feels like it will “work out in the end”. God damn, am I a pessimist now? If you would have told me at 21, indulging in my first legal-aged drinking experience that I would be on unemployment at 28 years old doing landscaping on the side for $16 an hour I would tell you this…
I’m currently covered in mosquito bites from a muggy morning on the job – they literally got to my ass three times (like how?), but that’s the work hard/play hard mentality I punish myself to live by. Except there hasn’t been much play. I can’t travel or go to a gym, so I haven’t really been myself at all. I laid in bed for about six days straight recently and refuse to engage in conversation with friends. If you know anything about me, this is highly uncharacteristic. I am depressed. This pandemic is depressing. Everyone feels like a victim to the Corona Virus (or as gay men working for American Airlines call it, Mrs. Rona). Over 40 million people are on unemployment, I had lost $7,000 in personal investments, sitting at about $5000 down still due to bad market recovery timing, and I don’t even want to talk about my Roth IRA or 401K. If you want to invest in something, please don’t ask me for my opinion. Robinhood newbies everywhere – come get a piece of the pie!
People went nuts over toilet paper at the beginning of this pandemic and hoarded to an extreme and now those same son’s of bitches are standing on the steps of Congress buildings demanding we reopen, after shunning every small protest that has ever occurred by minority groups in America. Hypocrisy is real – and that’s not even close to a good example. A better one would be President Trump urging people to wear masks around the elderly, but him refusing to wear/be seen in a mask, because he doesn’t want to upset the folks showcasing their guns on Congress property since we’ve somehow politically charged the mass pandemic. Or Trump accusing Twitter of obstructing his right to free speech by putting fact checks on tweets, but failing to recognize that Twitter also has the freedom of fact checking in a capitalist society. Or mailing in a vote, but saying it’s a bad thing because other people are more corrupt than him. Or calling black protesters thugs and white protesters good people. He’s wild. American politics are asinine right now. In my opinion, it’s safe to say that America’s handling of the CoVid-19 situation has been a joke in comparison to other developed countries. I guess that’s what happens when cheap labor and greed forces you to outsource jobs and fight with less testing kits and less ventilators for the first month of battle. And when you continuously deny that things are serious, but then claim you acted fast and heroic in every succeeding public address. I honestly do not understand how there is still support for President Trump. I get that I, or anybody for that matter, won’t change your beliefs if you’re a die-hard republican, but my god – this dude is not the answer. His rebut against diplomatic speaking has become problematic and someone needs to take the cell phone out of his hands. I never thought it would get to the point where I unfriend people on Facebook due to political posts, but I swear to god if I see another middle-aged woman post praise for Trump, support for Obamagate, or irrational conspiracy theories about fucking Bill Gates I’m gonna lose it (Don’t worry, I’ll still probably just block your posts instead of deleting you, Karen).
Now to truly understand how wild this time has been, we also have to take a deep dive into the current situation in Minneapolis, where a black man had his neck depressed into gravel by a white cop ultimately leading to his death. Not to mention this incident comes to light shortly after Ahmaud Arbery was chased down in Georgia by Ku Klux Heroes and shot dead for “suspicion” of neighborhood robberies. In 2020, we’re still talking about racism. And my guess is we’ll still be talking about it in 50 years, which is awfully sad. This incident is terrible and it’s terrible for a few reasons. The first being the racism involved, but the second being the possible sheer stupidity of this cop. After watching the video, I frankly think this officer was on such a power trip that he was too dumb to recognize that he was actually killing the man underneath him. There’s no excusing the racism here, after we’ve seen it lead to so many other murders of black men in America, but this officer had to be missing some brain cells thinking he was in compliance with policing by putting his knee on the neck of a handcuffed man. The video is atrocious, as you can visibly see him lean into his knee to depress George Floyd’s neck further. I won’t link any of these, because you’ve likely seen it and we no longer need to normalize black death. It’s hard to say the cop acted under the innate characteristic of racism, the intentional characteristic of hate, or the lack of empathy that goes along with a power trip. Nonetheless, awful. Minnesotans responded with some protests in the beginning, resulting in tear gas and rubber bullets. Not saying tear gas and rubber bullets were a great way to go about this considering the protests by conservative gun owners on Congress steps didn’t result in this, but I’m under speculation that these protests may have showed early signs of what was about to ensue – rioting and looting.
It’s tough to justify anyone that expresses their frustration in this way, but I’m beginning to understand it. A community is outraged by systemic injustice, so they loot local businesses and the police feel helpless. If you don’t feel bad for the police in these situations, you need to reevaluate, because 90% of cops are good people. It’s safe to say that’s the case with most things – nine out of ten people you know at work are probably tolerable and kind, but there’s that one asshole who always seems to grind your gears. Nine out of ten citizens abide by wearing a mask at the local grocery store, but there’s likely to be one who says it’s taking away his liberties. You get the point (I will say though, in politics only about 3/10ths of the people seen honest and trustworthy, so there’s an anomaly for you). The situation has exploded in Minneapolis to the point where a video surfaced of a looter being shot dead outside of a pawn shop by the store owner. These are the consequences of reckless action. However, when you look at the bigger picture issue here, it’s difficult to deny frustration leading to violence. Do I think it’s right? Absolutely not, but that doesn’t eliminate the fact that I can begin to understand why this might happen. Imagine continuously seeing people of your color mistreated. If you’re white, you get a feeling when you walk by a group of several black men in the middle of the night. It’s created socially in the America we live in and it’s probably innate if you’re alone, regardless of skin color. I compare this to the constant feeling black men and women have when walking by or seeing cops. Sure, we all get nervous when we see cops because “serve and protect” often turns into revenue generating traffic tickets, but it’s different for blacks. The people who are supposed to protect you constantly fail and that is utterly repulsive. In hindsight, I am in no position to speak for black men and women. I’ve seen many tweets and post from the community, however, that echo the way I feel.
I don’t believe being black in America is a death sentence, something that the Minneapolis Mayor stated shortly after this incident occurred. I do think it is very disadvantageous when you look at the history of America and there’s no denying that statistically you are more likely to end up dead or in prison when compared to whites. History tends to repeat itself and in this regard it happens far too often. I’ve spent a lot of time in Minneapolis over the last few months and it’s just difficult knowing that the Target bathroom where I took a shit three weeks ago has been completely looted. The area where this happened seems to be mostly low-income blacks. Driving by, we saw black men drinking in parking lots and even when I was in that disgusting Target bathroom the man in the stall next to me began bleeding onto the floor in what I believe was a demonstration of why you should not administer lethal heroin to yourself. Probably 10% of the protesting crowds in these communities are beyond thinking rationally about protesting systemic issues and have moved on to taking advantage of the lack of police control (see the law of 90%). You can’t call them thugs though, bad move Mr. Trump. There’s a great video of a white woman running out of Target with a lamp for every bedroom and I’m sure if this was the demographic the word “thugs” wouldn’t have been used. But I digress and leave you with this: how many times do black people need to get murdered before peaceful protest prompts change? We can all justify these riots.
I just felt I needed to get some words out. I kind of gave up on the linking, proofreading, and humor here just to get some stress relief. I apologize in advance for the mistakes – you can blame them on confusion. The world we’re living in is messy. This post could be much, much longer and there’s a decent chance I write a follow-up if I get into this mood again. Really though, what the fuck is going on? I’m sick of feeling like a total boob and it’s time we make some changes. We have half a year left to make 2020 a little better than its been thus far. I want to see people. I want to hang out with you. If you’re vulnerable and you’re scared of CoVid-19’s 0.26% death rate, then we don’t need to see each other, but please, somebody save me from my misery and distract me from the terror.
I’m gonna go on a hike.
Peace.
LifeAfterLopez 