The apparent path of the sun will reach its northernmost point at 21:43 UTC today, marking the longest day of the year and the beginning of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and the shortest day of the year & first day of winter in the Southern. May all of your plans come to fruition in the fullness of time, and Blessed Be!
Posted in Holidays | Tagged holidays, paganism | 2 Comments »
The first week of this month I was in Seattle, but that Thursday Chekhov called me to let me know that he’d received word the second cottage would be shipped soon. Since the kit takes about two weeks in transit and we only have room for one at a time in the garage, that necessitated speeding up the timetable a bit. When I arrived back at Sunset on Friday the 5th, we removed all the temporary horizontal braces and put down plastic sheeting, then on Saturday we shoveled gravel over the entire northern half of the bathhouse foundation (where Chekhov’s cottage needs to go). Some of y’all may notice that there are two kinds of gravel in this picture; that’s because we had a little left over from a previous project, so we used that first. Then the next day we started cutting all the posts to the same height in preparation for the joists; next week I’ll share a picture of the completed foundation!
Posted in Diary | Tagged Sunset | Leave a Comment »
Cops love murdering people by asphyxiation, whether that’s by strangling them, choking them out, closing off their airways, kneeling or sitting on them so they can’t breathe, or restraining them in such a way that they cannot get sufficient oxygen (this is called “positional asphyxia”, as any experienced kinky person could tell you). The reason is simple: even an obedient lap-dog of a medical examiner might find it difficult to explain away multiple bullet wounds in the back or facial contusions so severe they render the victim unrecognizable, but oxygen deprivation often leaves no marks and can therefore be hand-waved away as heart failure, the effects of “illegal” drugs, or the result of an imaginary condition called “excited delirium” that exists only in police reports. But unfortunately for cops, ubiquitous video recorders have captured many of them in the act of committing such murders, and “I can’t breathe” has been the last words of many people since Eric Garner, and countless people before him. But up until recently the pig-loving mainstream media have ignored these atrocities; perhaps that’s starting to change:
In Columbus, Georgia, a 300-pound [pig] sat on Hector Arreola’s back while another held a knee to his neck and kept him face down…until he…died. In Phoenix, four [pigs] placed the weight of their bodies on Muhammad Abdul Muhaymin’s head, neck, back and limbs as he lay face-down and handcuffed before going into cardiac arrest and dying. Three [pigs] in Aurora, Colorado, tackled Elijah McClain as he walked home with groceries…strangl[ing him]…and handcuffing him as he pleaded and vomited. He was removed from life support days later. In all three cases, the unarmed men uttered the same phrase as police [murdered] them…“I can’t breathe”…The phrase has become an international rallying cry against police brutality after the high-profile deaths of Eric Garner in 2014 and George Floyd on Memorial Day. But, across the country, dozens of people have died in police custody under similar circumstances. USA Today examined 32 fatal police encounters since 2010 in which victims said they couldn’t breathe while being restrained…At least 134 people have died in police custody from “asphyxia/restraint” in the past decade alone…That…is likely an undercount…Some cases, like that of 18-year-old Nicholas Dyksma, involved the same knee-to-neck hold that killed [George] Floyd…In virtually every case, the officers involved [were rewarded for the murders with paid vacations]…
But please, keep telling me how society can’t survive without roving gangs of deranged thugs wandering around looking for excuses to summarily execute people who pose no danger to anyone. Or better yet, tell Alesia Thomas, Jonathan Andrew Salcido, David Smith, Roy Nelson Jr, Craig McKinnis, Ben Anthony C de Baca…
Posted in Current Events, Tyranny | Tagged Arizona, Colorado, cops, Georgia, I can't breathe, Minnesota, New York, racism | 2 Comments »
Fundamental[ly]…policing [is]…a state institution that’s predicated on the use of violence to fix problems. – Alex Vitale
What Were You All Waiting For?
Is the ACLU finally beginning to do the right thing, at long last?
Sex workers aren’t always a part of [amateurs’] conversation about police brutality, but they should be. Police regularly target, harass, and assault sex workers or people they think are sex workers…[and] usually get away with the abuse because sex workers fear being arrested if they report. If we lived in a world that didn’t criminalize sex work, sex workers could better protect themselves and seek justice when they are harmed. Protecting sex workers from police violence is just one of the reasons we need to decriminalize sex work…
A murderer is also a rapist. Gee, what a surprise:
…one of three white officers accused in the death of Breonna Taylor…[also molested at least] two women [in the past. Brett Hankinson]…is…a dirty cop [who has also carried out] vendetta[s by] arrest[ing people he dislikes on trumped-up charges]…the more recent sexual assault…[was] against…a woman [named]…Margo Borders w[ho reported that Hankinson] …”drove me home [from a bar] in uniform, in his marked car, invited himself into my apartment and sexually assaulted me while I was unconscious”…In the second instance…Emily Terry…”began walking home from a bar intoxicated. A [cop] pulled up next to me and offered me a ride home…He began making sexual advances towards me…As soon as he pulled up to my apartment building, I got out of the car and ran to the back”…
Amazon wants to have its cake and eat it too:
We’re implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of Amazon’s facial recognition technology. We will continue to allow organizations like Thorn, the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and Marinus Analytics to use Amazon Rekognition to [persecute sex workers] and [pass the information on to the cops]…
In other words, Amazon is adopting a cosmetic ban in order to take advantage of the anti-cop zeitgeist while simultaneously profiting from helping notorious fascist anti-sex organizations to persecute sex workers and pass the information along to their pig buddies.
Another sign that the moral panic may be dying:
For the second year in a row, the number of federal human trafficking cases…has dropped after almost two decades of increases…Overall, federal p[er]secutions of [people using the excuse of] human traffick[ing] have dropped by about a third since 2017…The decrease came entirely from a drop in prosecutions of sex trafficking…which has consistently made up the majority of federal human trafficking prosecutions since the TVPA was enacted. The number of labor trafficking cases has remained roughly the same, [because unike “sex trafficking” they are based in reality]…The number of new sex trafficking cases, meanwhile, dropped from 207 in 2017 to just 136 filed in 2019…
…thousands of small children who are led out of schools in handcuffs every year around the country. Juvenile arrests in Florida have been steadily declining over the last decade, as they have been more generally across the U.S., but…the state embarked on an aggressive plan to “harden” its…[treatment of students], including putting at least one [armed, dangerous thug] in every K-12 school in the state…[the result is that] students, especially minorities and those with disabilities, are now bearing the brunt of new zero tolerance policies and heavy-handed discipline…In Minneapolis…the school board recently voted in favor of…ending a $1 million [cash cow for]…city police. Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland, Oregon, announced…that he would disband the city’s school [pig herd]…Other states and cities appear to be considering similar measures. [But] in Florida [police violence against students] increased…20%…[and] there’s been a spike in the use of involuntary psychiatric commitments against kids…thanks to an existing Florida…that gives police authority to temporarily lock up both children and adults against their will…
Alex Vitale on what abolishing police would actually look like:
Five years ago, in the wake of the murders of Mike Brown and Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, we were told, “Don’t worry, we’re going to fix it. We’re going to give the police implicit bias training. We’re going to hold some community police encounter sessions. We’re gonna buy some body cameras”…what we often refer to as “procedural reforms”…[were] going to magically fix the problem. But…the problem of overpolicing remains…Procedural justice folks…want to restore the public’s trust in the police…But this ignores the question of what they are policing, and whether they should be policing it. We have [millions of] low-level arrests in the United States every year and most of them are completely pointless. It is just a huge level of harassment meted out almost exclusively on the poorest and most marginal communities in our society…[true police reform must] go…hand in hand with decriminalizing sex work, drugs, homelessness, mental illness. We don’t really need a vice unit, we need a system of legalized sex work that’s regulated just like any other business. We don’t need school police, we need counselors and restorative justice programs. We don’t need police homeless outreach units, we need supportive housing, community based drop-in centers, social workers…
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny | Tagged activism, consensual crime, cops, fascism, Florida, hysteria, Kentucky, Moloch, porn, Pyrrhic Victory, rape, Silver Lining, surveillance, teachers, The Cop Myth, To Molest and Rape, video, Working From Home | 3 Comments »
Regular readers know that as the days grow longer, my brain becomes overstimulated by the excess of daylight, and it becomes increasingly difficult for me to slow down, relax and even sleep. Well, this year I’m putting it to good use by plowing ahead on the bathhouse project, as you can see in my new regular Friday feature on it. I’m also working on editing the essays for Ask Maggie, Volume I, and hoping to get it out in July; plus I’m still doing activist stuff, like appearing on Thaddeus Russell’s Renegade University Live tonight. Tomorrow or Thursday I’m briefly returning to Seattle for my hair & nail appointments on Saturday, then on Sunday I’ll return to Sunset; before much longer I should also resume traveling, when the clients who have inquired about visits get their schedules straight. It’ll be a while before I can relax again, and I can never do it as effectively as these critters can. But if I’m going to be hyperactive, at least I’m getting things done!
Posted in Diary | Tagged Ask Maggie, psychology, Sunset, Washington (state) | 1 Comment »
I think it’s extremely important that sex workers have resources inside our own community, because far too many companies are happy to use the demimonde to boost their growth, then suddenly become all pious and kick us out when they decide they don’t need us any more. Regular readers know that I’ve featured sex worker-owned web businesses before, so when I saw Estelle talking about her company online, I invited her to introduce her service to y’all.
Before I tell you about Red Cloud Hosting, let me tell you about me. I’m a Muslim who’s been a sex worker for 11 years; I predominantly work as a private escort in Melbourne, Australia, but I’ve toured many countries and worked in an agency in Europe. From the beginning of my career, technology captured my interest and my curiosity led me to investigate its influences and how it can enhance our work. Sex workers have the right to practical, reliable, dependable and simple technology to build, organise, advertise and work safely online, so four years ago I created Red Files Inc, a digital space that allows sex workers to share resources and information safely and securely. I created this project as part of my wider sex work activism, and it’s a registered non-profit charity.
Now that you understand my background, it’s obvious why I created Red Cloud Hosting in May 2018, a digital solutions company with a strong focus on sex workers which started as a safe web hosting platform. As my activism primarily focused on local or national laws in Australia, I didn’t notice the sinister nature of FOSTA/SESTA until it was too late; I also could not have anticipated how pervasive these laws were, and how they threatened sex work advocacy efforts globally. While any laws or regulations that punish sex workers are horrible in of themselves, this law seemed particularly far-reaching and conniving. For example, I operate my business in the legalised state of Victoria in Australia, yet American laws continually curtail and hinder my ability to work safely. So I put my utilitarian mind to work and concocted a solution. One year after launch, Red Cloud evolved to provide further reliable digital and web solutions for sex workers. Through the course of my work I found too often workers kicked off web creation platforms, or swindled by self-proclaimed webmasters that overpromise, overcharge, and under-deliver; others are completely boggled by the complicated process of setting up a website for themselves. Red Cloud now offers simple, affordable web and technology solutions for sex workers wanting more personalised, secure and friendly services.
As I believe in self-determination, Red Cloud Hosting focuses on empowering workers to learn how to manage their websites in a clean, simple and supported manner. If I’m the brains of Red Cloud, then my work colleague and Webmistress Kim Cums is the brawn. There’s not much you can’t do with a website when you have Kim on your team; she’s a jill of all trades who learned how to set up shop online from the ground up. Her personal sex working website offer a variety of engagements from videos, images, member signup sections, a forum, mailing lists, sex worker friendly payment processes and more; she launched the sex worker focused Bumbershoot Creative and now offers her technological expertise to others. While Kim’s skills lay in website creation, I specialise in copywriting and editing. In my muggle life I’m a writer, and with my experience, I know exactly what content attracts clients. Much of my work with Red Cloud is writing up new, fresh copy for sex workers, because we all know how cumbersome it can be to write about yourself in a sexy light. I’m also socially aware of the sex work laws in different countries and can use language to circumvent legal issues. I have another sex worker colleague, Chelsea who is in charge of SEO Audits. In her other life she’s an SEO whiz and that’s all I’ll say about the mysterious woman to protect her identity. She goes over your website with a fine comb and teaches you on how to improve your SEO traffic. I haven’t been able to showcase much of our work in the area of image editing just yet but my little worker bee Finnley is well-versed in the area and I will be sharing some photos soon. While the rest of our services don’t have much to do with FOSTA/SESTA, I have found in my two years of running Red Cloud, that most people want everything setup in one spot. That’s why I added additional services such as Kim’s photography and videography for those in Sydney. When she resumes travelling interstate, I’m sure this will be applicable for the rest of Australia, although I’m sad to say you Americans might miss out until the pandemic fades out.
Our websites come in the form of Packages that are customised for the level of investment a sex worker is wanting to put into their business. They start from $490AUD setup fee, with an ongoing $30 monthly fee for maintenance, security plugins, updates and so on. All websites are FOSTA/SESTA consequence free. For every Package purchased with Red Cloud, a donation is made to Red Files Inc or to a sex worker organisation of your choice. Red Cloud can now offer sex workers in Australia and internationally:
- Dedicated and trusted servers for website hosting based in Australia.
- Hundreds of website templates specifically tailored and curated to appeal to the sex industry.
- Personalised domain (for example www.myescortwebsite.com).
- Domain email setup (for example professionalescort@me.com).
- Complete and customisable website creation and build-up on WordPress.
- Migration or replication of past website onto Red Cloud.
- A variety of website packages aimed at sex workers at any stage of their business.
- Add-ons to provide your website a personal touch such as mailing lists, blog, screening forms or tours page.
- Content creation, copywriting and editing that suit the legality of your country.
- General website tweaks and must-have plugin, security and SSL updates.
- Professional videography for escorts, porn performers and webcam models.
- Professional photography geared for content creation, escort portfolios, brand building.
- Professional editing of images including colour correction, blemishes, body modification, lighting, facial blurring, tattoo removal and airbrushing.
- Dedicated sex working support team to help and guide you with quick responses.
- Individual, one-on-one website creation coaching and training.
- SEO audits and analytics setup.
Red Cloud is entirely sex worker-led and I aim to educate sex workers on technological literacy while I build their websites. If you want to transfer the hosting for your website to a sex worker owned company that’s FOSTA/SESTA proof, then I’m your girl. There are a few limitations: if you’re transferring from Wix or Squarespace their technology locks you into their services, and if you host pornographic material, Australian federal laws prevents me from hosting it. However, I have other solutions if you need. Red Cloud is also a great company to engage with if you want to rejig or refresh your brand with a new name or if you’ve just entered the industry. Our Add-Ons means that anything you want can be added on top of your Package so it suits your needs. I am not here to make big bucks off sex workers; I want to contribute to the growth and profit of sex worker businesses. I understand not everyone has a casual $500 to invest and that is why I often create flexible financial arrangements; monthly payments instead of once-offs. I would much rather see you maximising your earnings when you are ready and not have to wait for that initial investment to come in.
Posted in Guest Columns, Perception | Tagged Australia, censorship, internet, law | 1 Comment »
I can’t breathe. – Manuel Ellis
YouTube pushes videos based on some kind of algorithm involving what you’ve watched before, so I reckon it isn’t surprising I was dealt this one. Like all of these pop-culture docuvideos it’s at least twice as long as it should be, but it’s still interesting. The links above it were provided by Thaddeus Russell, Mama Tush, Grace, Kevin Wilson, Dave Krueger, and Elizabeth N. Brown, in that order.
- As one does.
- El Negro Matapacos.
- Cop brutalizes man being helped by EMTs.
- Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever.
- No, really, your reason is not a fucking exception.
- The only witnesses to this murder were other cops.
From the Archives
- When migration control disguised as “sex trafficking” law is very apparent.
- Monsters torture sexual minorities under guise of “helping” or “curing” us.
- Indian press can’t let go of word “rescue”, even when it’s patently absurd.
- Corporations are becoming the favored tool of censors around the world.
- The stench of FOSTA is all over India’s terrible new “anti-trafficking” bill.
- While sex work is at all criminalized, cops have power over sex workers.
- When the need to control others is frustrated, weird behavior can result.
- A bizarre claim even by the standards of anti-porn nuts & gun-grabbers.
- Bigots try to cover racism and misogyny by blaming imaginary “gangs”.
- Hair-splitting & moral panic create strange stew from age-old behavior.
- Do we really want rapists to eschew condoms to avoid federal charges?
- US “authorities” are too busy wanking to bother policing supply chains.
- More deliberate racial profiling under government-approved guidelines.
- Will Asstoon ever get professional help for his delusions of grandeur?
- Are amateurs really so sheltered that this sort of thing shocks them?
- When a highway is destroyed, the traffic has to go into side streets.
- Why are politicians so enamored of violent Disnification campaigns?
- Government thugs continue their crusade against Christian charity.
- One can never have too many debunkings of prohibitionist bullshit.
- Your periodic reminder that a child-shaped toaster is still a toaster.
- Training facial recognition software to recognize faces as they age.
- Only one highway runs from Halifax, Nova Scotia to the mainland.
- Politicians had to make this bad law even worse before passing it.
- Facebook’s policies make harassing and exploiting women easy.
- Calling this “sex trafficking” lets the government steal property.
- Cops, Florida, munchkins, Japanese Zeppelin, and much more.
- Pigs want to “make sure you’re safe” by locking you in a cage.
- How many moronic prohibitionist plays can the market bear?
- The “third world” is far ahead of the US in sex worker rights.
- Forcing cops to find a different excuse for harassing women.
- There are only two Ladies of the Night special editions left!
- This prohibitionist screed absolutely reeks of desperation.
- The government’s own moral panic come back to bite it.
- Man loses job after refusing to pay his tab while drunk.
- Grosso consistently pursued this course for four years.
- What should I do if an escort’s ad seems illegitimate?
- {Insert Ben Franklin quote about liberty and safety}.
- Preparing my brain for the summer anxiety season.
- Julie Bindel shares her fantasies of what sex is like.
- This is exactly the outcome prohibitionists wanted.
- A “best of” collection of resources for new clients.
- Cops, caffeine, Florida, Telstar, and much more.
- My irony meter just overloaded and burned out.
- Yes, I really do have red sheets on my bed.
- A deep dive on a power-hungry sociopath.
- How to help me, with money or without.
- The “End Banking for Dirty Whores” Act.
- Another sex worker murdered in India.
- Introducing the Prostasia Foundation.
- You mean he wasn’t a “youth pastor”?
- Recycled propaganda from Seattle.
- Good news from South Australia.
- Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
- That didn’t take long, did it?
- Liara Roux on coming out.
- A week of lovely presents.
- Rapist cop of the week.
- When “slavery” isn’t.
Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny | Tagged Alabama, animals, California, Canada, Chile, cops, Hollywood, I can't breathe, Never Call the Cops, Russia, video, Virginia, Washington (state) | Leave a Comment »
It’s not just that the police want to arrest somebody…they want to mete out punishment. – Michael German
Every school district in the country needs to rid itself of evil thugs who stalk and attack students:
Portland Public Schools will no longer have [cops stalking students in] its nine high schools, nor will the other two school districts inside Portland city limits…Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero…said the district…intends to increase spending on social workers, counselors and culturally specific supports for students…[a politician] announced she plans to introduce a resolution to…bar [uniformed pigs] from…school sporting events and other occasions…
In addition to brutalizing small children for childish behavior and terrorizing them for ordinary play, school pigs also frequently rape teenagers and even little girls. They are a menace and should be abolished.
Almost 1,000 Nigerian refugees [magically] disappeared from Dutch [concentration camps] last year, and [bureaucrats] are [fantasizing] many of them have been trafficked…The disappearances coincide with…the Netherlands…[trying to] sen[d them] back to Nigeria or Italy, [but the Dutch won’t admit their racism and so prefer to bloviate nonsense about]…Nigerian drugs and prostitution gangs…gain[ing] a foothold in Europe…”The women absolutely don’t want to go back to Italy,” one [camp] worker is quoted as saying….Warner ten Kate, who [uses the] human trafficking [narrative to] prosecut[e black people, pretends]…he is particularly concerned about the pregnant women, whose babies may be victims of illegal adoptions…
Fortunately, most “incels” are more of a danger to themselves than to others:
A southwest Virginia man who blew off his hand in an… explosives accident has been charged in federal court after [cops] say they found evidence he was making a bomb and wanted to target “hot cheerleaders” because of his sexual frustrations…Cole Carini of Richlands showed up at a hospital…with one hand blown off, fingers blown off his second and other shrapnel wounds. He [claimed]…he’d been in a lawnmower accident. But [cops] searched his property, and found explosives materials, rusty nails, pipes…pieces of flesh…[and] parts of a scorched letter that referenced tension “as he now approached the stage of hot cheerleaders” and “I will not be afraid of the consequences no matter what I will be heroic I will make a statement like Elliott Rodgers [sic]”…
In the Chinese government’s vast network of re-education camps in Xinjiang province, the daily horror of internment [i]s infused with monotony and boredom. [Prisoners a]re forced to endure countless hours of indoctrination and language classes, perched on small stools. In some facilities, they ha[ve] to watch TV propaganda broadcasts praising President Xi Jinping for hours on end. The slightest infraction, such as a whispered conversation, was met with swift and harsh punishment. But among the many months spent locked up, some former detainees report that one day was different: The day when they were forced to pick one or several infractions from a list they were handed. In essence, the [prisoners] had to retroactively choose the crimes for which they had been imprisoned…without being told why they had been detained in the first place. After picking a crime from the list came a sham trial, in which the detainees had no legal representation and were convicted without evidence or due process of any kind…
Redbridge has a long history of harassing sex workers, but this kind of infantilization is a new low:
Loxford Service Station asked…for permission to sell alcohol 24 hours a day, with the condition that night-time sales would only be through a third-party delivery service…[but busybodies claimed the presence of booze] would [magically] contribute to crime in the area…[one politician masturbated furiously while bleating “sex trafficking” fantasies and the deeply stupid statement that]…“The availability of alcohol on Ilford Lane would…allow…”punters”‘, sex workers and their pimps access to alcohol”…
Rapists are attracted to police work for obvious reasons:
A Fontana [California cop was rewarded with a]…paid [vacation]…for…raping a 16-year-old girl four years ago…Nicholas Shawn Stark…drugged [the girl in order to rape her]…when [he] was 24 years old, before [he joined the cops, but they cannot]…fire [him] due to [pig protection] laws [of the kind that have precipitated the current national crisis]…
Cops are responsible for more violence than any other social group in the US:
The “thin blue line” flag is the…centerpiece in a world of merchandise and policing philosophy, all built around the idea that the police are an embattled tribe of warriors, maligned and reviled by a nation that fails to appreciate their unique importance. The blue line is a reminder that much of the policing community sees itself as separate from the rest of society — and…this well-armed population, imbued with the power to deprive citizens of life and liberty, does not take kindly to those who challenge its authority…“What we’re talking about here is a worldview that says that police are the only force capable of holding society together,” [said] Alex Vitale, a professor of sociology…and author of The End of Policing…The view turns on the notion that “without the constant threat of violent coercive intervention, society will unravel into a war of all against all”…Seen through this lens, “authoritarian solutions are not just necessary, they’re almost preferable.” In the wake of [George] Floyd’s [murder]…the country is now witnessing what years of militarized conditioning, training, and culture have wrought: a nationwide protest movement running up against a nationwide police riot…
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny | Tagged Across the Pond, agency denial, California, China, cops, drugs, Europe, fantasy, Islam, law, Moloch, Negative Secondary Effects, Netherlands, Oregon, Out of Control, prisons, psychology, Quiet Genocide, racism, rape, Rooted in Racism, The Cop Myth, To Molest and Rape, United Kingdom, Virginia | Leave a Comment »
This was the view from my back door two weeks ago today; we really worked hard that week and as a result 52 posts are now in place. We also squared the position of the hot tub and dug up the existing water line in preparation for replacing it. There was no easy way to tell the pipe’s course, so I had to dig with a hand trowel from the point it left the wellhouse until the t-joint where the water line to the henhouse splits off. Once the new water line is done, we needn’t worry about accidentally drilling into the old one while excavating post holes in that area. While I was in Seattle last week, Grace got everything ready for leveling the tub, then this week, it was putting down plastic sheeting and spreading gravel on it; yesterday we started on Chekhov’s cottage. And I can’t tell you how satisfying it is that we’re moving so quickly.
Posted in Diary | Tagged Sunset | Leave a Comment »
Last Saturday, Chekhov and I were spreading gravel over the bathhouse area, and just as we had come to the conclusion that we had pulled everything we could out of a pile left over from the French drain project, one of our neighbors showed up with a dump truck full (we had called him the day before but weren’t sure he had received the message) and gave it to me for free because I let him store his extra hay in my barn. He’s a white man in his sixties of the type common in rural areas across the US: a big, jovial, clever-but-uneducated, good-natured farmer. So we chatted for a while, and naturally the protests came up; since very few older, rural white men have ever had a bad interaction with cops, I assumed there was no point in doing anything other than listen politely because arguing with him about it would be useless (possibly even counterproductive). As I expected, he could not comprehend why people are talking about abolishing cops entirely; he has not had the life-experience and/or made a study of the topic, and therefore believes that cops exist to “protect and serve”. But then he said something I didn’t expect: “They oughta lock them killer cops up!” Despite believing the propaganda we’ve all been fed about the goodness of cops, he made no excuses for wanton murder and clearly stated his support for criminal penalties for criminal cops. The cries and protests are being heard by the general public at last, and people are unhappy about the way cops can literally get away with murder. And when you’ve lost ordinary older white rural men like my neighbor, you might as well give up.
Posted in Diary, Philosophy, Tyranny | Tagged cops, psychology, Washington (state) | 1 Comment »
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