I read the conservative publication, admittedly one that wad set up to oppose the Iraq War but nonetheless planted its flag on some cultural matters that will at least lend to some protest of the protest — decry the “cancel culture” that lead the Dixie Chicks to drop the first half of the name. I will go ahead and cry out that the group has marched into absurbism –and I guess the culture which prompted this — while mocking the double dip hypocrisy.

Other conservative publication fails to note … Not all statue dumplings are the same. It is not Theodore Roosevelt that the descendents of Roosevelt consented to a removal — it is that particular Theodore Roosevelt. Though I do not know what ought be done on the groveling freemen before Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas’s political words for a political speech (trying to reproach the Republican Party to live up to some faded ideals) do not exonerate a flawed monument. Most of the rest of the vandalism seems Jacobin jackassey… Yeah, 13th century kings must be… Deposed? The local alt weekly published ten comments left to their internet postings on the lobbing og Jefferson and Washington, with (sigh) eight of ten in favor. The one I find fascinating was “beyond the righteousness of toppling racists” and the politics they are “ugly” “has anyone’s day been brightened” by this ” opposite of art”? Answer: Anecdotally, I have seen classrooms of school children run up and past yelling playing and irreveranrly “we love you, Theodore Roosevelt!”, So… As a matter of fact, yes.

Ever want to hear from Peter Norman, the Silver medalist here?  Apparently, according to wikipedia, and I suppose all coverage of the historic event he was wearing a badge of support, but I am imagining an alternate universe where whitey isn’t in on it.  So we get the experience where he sees in his peripheral vision the big salute and has to make a split second decision… Hey!  Maybe I should join in!

Oh boy.

I see the ny times features an interview with the gold medalist (I assume the gold medalist, I didn’t do much more than glance at it) from this famous photograph, and he touches base on Colin Kaepernick. Interesting to note an article at yahoo quoting the president who — is essentially right this time around but wrong in details on Kaepernick. It is the emphasis on his playing falling off dramatically and the “sure, a team that can use him should sign him”, apart from the emphasis the political activists will draw him on. THe yahoo article nitpicks the precise details — he did not really play his rookie year, as the president mis-spoke in setting up his rise, and he played with a reasonable qb rating his last year, in limited play — but that may not be what thw president wad referring to. As it were, in the current moment I see comments that such and such a team should sign him to “right an injustice” and wrong, but no one seems to throw one team out there… The team that dropped him in the first place, the 49ers.

Today we are Curt Schilling getting blasted for tweeting about the twist and turn on the noose on a black Nascar driver’s garage, which turns out an innocent mistake.  Nooses are used for all types of uses, after all, not simply a reminder for the ugliest use of them all.  A little bit of moral panic time, find a different way to hang things?… I guess the beef on Schilling is to bring up Jussie Smollett, which I guess applies only in how you define the terms. Both cases did not quite smell right, and my immediate thought was an “85 percent chance” it isn’t what it rorts as. Smollett falls apart as comparison with the “nascar noose” in that we have every reason to believe it is a mistake from the driver, who rightly and wrongly has the issue of racism front and center on his mind. So oddly enough, the shadowing of Confederate flags and the “deplorable” nature of the fan base lended me to suspect a narrative creation, not — as that article linked suggests — why I needed to buy it.

Y’know…

Keeping up with the Church of Scientology building…

Yep.  Boarded at ground floor at least.

Elsewhere, the Apple Store — and here I note when time comes to pull the things down they will be in a bit more of a pickle than the Microsoft store — having allowed massive build up of memorial and political pestering.

… And the incongruent Free Palestine slogan…

Maybe they have goodwill in the meantime, but when Apple has to dump it all… Will they be accused of racism?

Worth pointing out… While in the case of George Floyd or Rodney King is “don’t beat the snot out of him” … On Michael Brown or Rayshed Brooks, the question of “If you are the cop in that spot, you do what?” is not so clear. I was trying to pluck the name out… Aaron Campbell… Go back to the coverage of his death in the Willamette Week, and it will open with a sentence along the lines of “no one’s fault”, an editorial line I find difficult they would have now without seeing a pack of manure dumped in their parking lot.

The National Review had a half way sympathetic portrait of Chaz, suggesting the revolutionaries want to ease out as the city wants to commodity it all San Francisco Summer of Love.  Mother Jones valorizes it, and to be sure I would dump it in a book of interesting curiosities of political or spiritual community experiments … Though other chapters would include Malheur and Oneida… Maybe Waco…

Hard to tell if that one counts as commentary on current events, but it is refreshing from a batch of “pigs suck” material.

So.  Is the statue dumping mania an outgrowth of the 2004 Saddam statue toppling?  Learn the art of war from the war makers.  I do see the comment abouts… It is not the statues dropped that is the problem, but what statues will replace them.  I believe it is necessary that Washington, Jefferson, and Grant get replaced by… Washington, Jefferson, and Grant.  Grant gets a plaque with the favorable quotation from Frederick Douglas.  Jefferson’s Portland statue drop is interesting, the blk community in Portland very much emotionally tied and invested to the high school, so you can’t deny the name of who it was named after.

Just to be sure, this blocked off street has a bunch of people — not all too many, but very loud — chanting the desire to abolish the police, disband the ppb.  Off to the side, two hardhats (though not with hard hats on) I walk past are mocking the idea.  “Who will protect us  from these jackasses?”. (I wanted to toss in Charles Barkley’s comment — “Who are black people gonna call?  Ghostbusters?” ). Off to another side I overhear “… And if they call me racist, I will just bring out my wife and mixed race son…”

Peering on, I see some in This packing… Not wearing masks … Not flattening that curve.  Though I suppose I do not know what the immigration policies arrested to be here for flowing out and in… They gonna build a wall?

This was, apparently, part of a formation of one of them chazes, autonomous micro-states with their own canned police, before the very same cops snuffed them out.  The result is a bunch of graffiti cursing at Ted Wheeler… “Duck Ted” and “Ted is Dead”.

Meantime…

The cover feature for the latest edition of the alt weekly is a series of essays by selected black queers for intersectionality of “gay pride”.  An abject lesson in that proliferation of gays and queers amongst the provocateur set in “alt” or non alt right territory — having garnered a few basics of bourgeois rights to allow their lives, they state at these cultural confines and following strictly the jargon and run elsewhere.  (Perhaps recognizing the follies of chasing normatives?  Definitely would view the shift from the police enforcing society enforcement of morals in breaking up Stonewall to jumping in their parades for constituency reasons as an advance as opposed to . ..)

I guess, since this is the most number of characters I see, the current politically correct, most inclusive cluster is… Maybe…

LGBTQIA2S+

Oddly enough, the person who drops this one out there slips, and in this same essay throws out

LGBTQ+

momentarily forgetting the whole of Is, As, 2s, and Ss. Which, following logic propagated hereabouts, is cultural erasure, an act of violence against Is, As, 2s, and Ss, and any premature death experienced by them can be placed at the feet of them (singular pronoun), who has not earned their IA2S allyship, when they need to use their LGBTQ privilege for the job of amplifying the voices of what is said by the IA2S community. (More marginalized intwrsections).

Elsewhere, someone’s five is this one:

LGBTQ2S+

So, while voicing opposition to corporate pinkwashing, treating everyone as a market segment, singling out Starbucks, they (plural pronoun) conspicuously leave out the Is.  What do they have against the I communitu?  Have they discovered that they but a lot of coffee at Starbucks?

Another person here rearranges the letters to … I guess prioritize themself… and we have

TLGBQ+

I suppose the logic follows in how the L and G got flipped in the first place — at least part of the reason — emphasize the more disadvantaged letter.  (Another reason appears to me that leadership flipped as AIDs blew out gay men over lesbian women, though I noticed that when I was KBOO a few times the gay man doing the pre-recorded too of the hour announcements uses the outdated ordering.  May have had to go to hr for that offense — who knows?). It is odd that this person skips the 2s As and Is, given she (correct me if you want) is the most radical seeming… At least the most narcisstic, coming across as simultaneously demanding you notice her and her specialness and objecting if you do.  (Some months ago, the Tacoma city council had a day commemorating transgender community or maybe it was transgender artists, bringing some people to speak.  A few angry people came to angrily jab at the city council meeting, their objections boiling down to a “You didn’t invite me of [ super woke trans identity me myself and i online zine], I am outraged by the cruel act of violence and invalidation and you n the cis power structure don’t get to define acceptable teansgenderism”  This person I image would be in that outraged group.)

I guess the older woman whose section sits next to hers can be forgiven, has an excuse for leaving it at LGBTQ (Not even the all encompassing protect your hide “+” ), a dismissal with “OK Boomer”.  Though it is unclear to me if it is her offense, as it comes in the introduction of the interview.  It may be the staff writer who made this faux pas

Sure. A demand from 742.  “This is not a request.”

Off to the side, someone has scrawled the “Your white silence is supporting Oppression.”

I do not know what happens when the 742 people demanding the dismantling of the police…

Do not get the request.  Because, um, duh.

Do they form a new Chaz /Chop, the… Autonomous zone out in Seattle’s Capitol Hill, bring in the armed anarchist guard to patrol the new municipal limits and … Shake down the area businesses?

(Occupy meets Malheur Standoff… When the far right and far left are crazy mirror reflections of each other…)

Right across that we had this:

This feels old school. No Patriot prayer or Proud Boys brohauhau. (Whether the Samoan dude — I forget his nickname, but it is the ironic “Tiny” in it) would be invited in, I don’t know.)
Elsewhere they stuck up a more interesting slogan … “Nation Yes, State No.”. Join the next Chaz, I guess. (The “class of 2020 block party” signage no longer about, which I never grasped a meaning but there was something political in it, and chaz is described in news reports as… Block party.)

when we say… What we’re really saying…
Fraudulent cover for the terms, back track.  The other poster appears to mean that we say defund the police, we mean abolish it.  (Which is the outcome of defunding).

A little curious, “decommidify” as a cover for getting stuck with a funky term, even with radical notions, poses a problem:  I suppose the cops are supposed to be open to the highest bidder, like the guy who called them in on George Floyd apparently Somehow?  Actually, the quickest way to commodity the police is to define them, leaving the public funds to be scooped up by private funds for security and protection purposes.

Y’know, it strikes me that the President, passing on his Twitter account “one America news” suggestion that the 70 something year old protester was taking and exaggerating injuries when brought down by the Buffalo police, acting as an “Antigua provocauteur” — essentially they are accusing him of the tactics used by Andy Ngo, who parlayed a mild shuffle (and, yes, and on the antifa era for it) to spinal injury and a thrown milkshake into quick drying cement for the believing right wing audience.

I see the professor type of some renown tweeted the provocative question… If Biden is elected, will there be a”de-fascization” program similar to those enacted for De-nazization post WW2?  I’m a world where a blm group is defacing a statue famed imperialist and antfascist Winston Churchill (also a Soviet corraborator), and more to the point terms have been thrown in off kilter cultural analysis, I picture in my head Clockwork Orange… People forced before a tv set, eyes forced wide-open as the tv shows Samantha Bee or musical selections of Kendrick Lamar, and when old episodes of Walker Texas Ranger or Kid Rock music plays, electrical shocks are sent down the spine.

(Not wholly certain how Hamilton would be handled in this exercise, considering hearing in the current woker than thou era is slam poetry a figure of enough prominence reference it to a cheering amen as the confection of upper class white gentrifiers blowing up my apartment for a New Seasons and bike lanes.  Maybe a backlash set in from when a positive reference would get an amen cheer.)

I watched a Reef student, I am sure moving across the city, plastering up a couple sheets of paper on light poles.  I look at them, past the long performative “white privilege” confessionals, and over to the other — an “anti-social resource” list.  Staring at the dozen podcasts it ticks off, I am left to ask… Does she listen to every one of these, and if so… How does she have any time left to study for her classes?  Or political activism?  The movie selection leaves me deciding… Just go watch Pam Grier movies instead.

I see that the local alt weekly had made the style guide editorial choice decision to refer to protests as an “up-rising”.  To be fair, we have passed the riots and looting phases — though we are not distant enough for downtown to get unboarded– but I slant my head wanting a precise definition.

“Police are Poop”. Odd variant.

” Defund the Police” ceases to have any meaning.  On the face of it, it is a political and policy non-starter — someone of some note who tweeted the obvious “I’ll consideted, not thought through” comments only to get slammed and highlighted as if he were… Oh, that notorious super-bigot JK Rowling.

But I see a Yahoo article headlined “How defunding the police worked” in some municipality.  I click and read about… Something that is not defunding the police.  Here, we have that political on the city council praising the protests for getting done what she had spent so long banging her head for, using the phrase “defunding the police” for a few policy moves … 2 necessary and long overdue, the third I would want to know the back up here… I seem stuck in a hellscape of sorts with a slogan tossed about that has two meanings — one, I agree on but with the problem that the policy moves has no connection with the Logan’s meaning, the other the stuff of the more violent property damage which the Democratic Presidential nominee is well-advised to disavow and the Republican incumbent is well advised to run against.  The best I can say is the politician has a constituency blurring in the more extreme part of the protesters, and adapting the phraseology leads the nihilists to more productive ends.

To be fair, I think the flurry that can be described as “rioting” has passed.  Sooner or later the boarding has to come down — it is not a site that will work for anyone — come the white flight this time concurrent with the black flight rendering the economic deprivation.  The flyer on the left is intetesting, representing what can broadly be described as a “moderate” position — “police are necessary” after all “but”.  We are someone playing a sticker over it for infowars.  Interesting — back in the day when it provided some succor for left wing nuts, they might agree with the premise, if not use the language warning of “hyper-masculinity”.  It may be that Jones always picked who gets shafted by an encroaching police state in counterwise manners.

 Not so accepting of the necessary evil of the police, and envisioning — trying to conjure — an uprising.  Second Amendment enthusiast, I presume.  The alt weekly had an interview with four “black leaders” — two elected officials trying to state they are getting things done, damnedit who I assume the twenty something year old revolutionary interviewed will view as careerist reformist turds, sucking up to the white mayor.

I do not have a picture — maybe I will get it, but I see two flyers throwing contradictions at me.  The “White Silence is Violence” and the “Normalize shutting the fuck up when you don’t know what you’re talking about.” I suppose the line here is to say the same words exactly as whoever it is gets to police this dialing edict.  Then a list of a bunch of books of black radical politics and a few youtube clips I guess everyone needs to read and. .. Parrot?  Yes, I have heard Malcolm X’s “bullet or ballot” speech, and I assume Angela Davis’s answer is given in her questioning “Are prisons obsolete”?  I am tempted to pull out a pen and write two other books — Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.

Politically things get dicy, but maybe we bump back to “ballot bullet”.  The Republican President  ran an ad in the Superbowl touting, of all things, criminal justice reform.  A bit of a crock, the minor measure is something had the Republican Congress wanted to pass when Obama was in office, Obama would have been happy to sign, but nonetheless are we in some position where — like Nixon –we will get years from now ironic quotation comments on the last liberal president, Trump.  to zoom in on that center “vote blue” — leaving aside that pretty well all major cities have Democrats as mayors right now — The Democratic candidate spent the better part of the 80s surrounding himself with police unions as often as he could and was the force that come Bill that candidate Clinton had been campaigning on in the Georgia primary alongside Zell Miller and the representative from The Dukes of Hazard with a largely black prison population in frame in the back lot of the “Confederate Rushmore”.  I see the question asked — what was the political fall-out of Bush calling in the national guard at the LA riots, and I do not know… Other than Clinton pivots for a moment on Arsenio Hall.

Wait.  Free Palestine?  Huh.

Grand unified theory and…

Yes, some military contractors move into police departments and aid to Israel — I have read The Nation article thing knots where they find them.

But…

The city has long cleaned up the “Queer vanguard” graffiti, the “riots are my gender” the one I have posted earlier, which populated the restroom on the waterfront.  Noting political reverberations, I recall quotes from some disgruntled black neighborhood on resources going to the “pink patrol” of cops that had been set to patrol against hate crimes at gay bars and clubs.  A bit of a contradiction for any “defund the police” message.  This sticker, and that graffiti brings to mind another question I saw posed, simply listing of the who’s who of gay and sometimes flat out queer “alt right” and simply right figures.  Maybe Chuck Palahniuk had something in Redemption Day — where the US breaks into a white and black ethno-state and a gay state –where the leaders in Gaytopia rally around being the vanguard in all the great movements, referencing some conspiracy theories on Hitler and Goebbels …