Entry 518: Bad Backs and Social Media

My back locked up on me this morning and ruined my day.  Hopefully, it's just the day.  It's feeling a bit better now, but these things can linger.  It's so frustrating.  I wasn't even doing anything strenuous.  I was getting ready to wrestle Lil' S2, so I got down on my knees, and out of nowhere it felt like somebody put my lats in a vise.  They suddenly tightened up and dropped me to my belly in agony.  I spent most the rest of the day lying flat on my back in bed.  S suggested I go to the doctor, but I hate that in normal conditions, let alone in the midst of a pandemic.  Plus, I've been to the doctor many times in the past 20 years about my back, and they almost never tell me anything I don't already know and couldn't do on my own.  Well, sometimes they give me pain meds, but I don't need those right now.  I'm hoping it's just a blip of an injury.  My chronic back problems have gotten much better in the last few years, and it would be incredibly disheartening if I started having regular incapacitating flare-ups again.

In other news, I'm joining the "movement" and leaving Facebook.  It's something I've been meaning to do for a long time, but just haven't.  I don't know why... inertia, I guess.  Posting stuff on social media, in general, gives me anxiety.  It's fine if it's something totally banal, like a link to a crossword puzzle I constructed or pictures from a family vacation, but if it's anything with any actual substance then I just find it to be an awful forum for discussion.  There were too many times, in the early days, when I found myself in comment-battles with people I barely knew, whose opinions meant nothing to me, and it's like... why?  For who, for what?  Nothing was ever solved; nobody ever changed their mind; I would get upset.  Those are the common elements of every Facebook "debate" I've ever had.  Some people thrive off that type of argument -- they enjoy it (and that's cool) -- but not me.

So, I stopped posting anything slightly "controversial" on Facebook, but then it just started feeling so frivolous.  And that's fine, once in a while, but everything about Facebook is geared to ensure it's not just a once-in-a-while thing.  It's programmed, using expensively-crafted, proprietary algorithms, to keep you on as long as possible.  It sucks you in ("Likes" are literally mini dopamine hits), and if you get off for too long, you get punished.  If I don't post for a while, the next post I put up gets relatively little reaction.  It seems as if you have to post a lot to get people to see your posts.

Even given all that, I still would probably keep my Facebook account, if not for all the Cambridge Analytics data-misuse stuff, and the unwillingness to do much, if anything, to stop the spread of misinformation.  I wrote about this two years ago, and it's only gotten worse since then.  It's something I can't in good-conscience be even a small part of anymore.  There are some things I genuinely like about Facebook, and there are some people I'm really happy I reconnected with on it.  But at some point the many negatives overwhelmed the few positives.  It happened a while ago; this is long overdue.

I'm not forgoing social media completely.  I'm keeping my Twitter account.  I rarely tweet (anxiety remember), but I've been lurking a lot lately.  We all know Twitter has problems of it own, but at least it makes me laugh more than Facebook does.  The other day I read a thread of people posting the funniest things they've even seen on Twitter, and it had me rolling.  Here's one of my favorites:

Savage.

Until next time...

Entry 517: Perfectly Adequate Getaway Weekend

It was a getaway weekend, this past one, for the G & G family.   It was fine.  I give it a B- overall.  It was S's idea, which isn't surprising, as she's big on these rut-breaking excursions in normal times, let alone after quarantining for a few months.  I'm more of a homebody, myself, especially so after having kids.  If an activity isn't explicitly kid-friendly, then it's often more work (and less fun) than just staying at home.  This weekend had a bit of that to it.

S booked us a "cottage in the woods" near Waynesboro, Virginia.  I use quotes, because it was more like a one-room townhouse than a cottage, and it wasn't really in the woods.  It was cute, and it had some nice amenities, but there was nothing really to do there.  I guess the idea is that you're supposed to go there for a relaxing/romantic escape -- drink wine and eat cheese in bed, have coffee on the porch the next morning, shower with six different shower heads -- but, again, kids.  Relaxation and romance is pretty much impossible when you have a two kids under eight in tow.  And in our case we have to constantly worry they are going to break something (possibly a bone in their own body).  They were obsessed with the aforementioned shower and with these big window blinds controlled by a switch.  Lil' S2 literally tried to ride the blinds to the ceiling, and he might have been light enough to do it had we not stopped him.

The thing is, S often underestimates/forgets how difficult it is to take our kids to "grown-up" places.  There were a bunch of wineries around, and she suggested that we go to one for dinner one night.  I was against it, because I wasn't sure how that would work with distancing/mask wearing, and also because you just can't take our kids to a place like that unless you want to spend a few hours wrangling/yelling at them (or letting them stare mindlessly at a screen).  "But So-and-So took their kids, and they're the same age as ours," said S.  Yes, they are the same age, but they are not the same kids.  We have exceptionally rambunctious boys (especially the younger one).  We just have to accept that and act accordingly.  I reminded S that on our last vacation, she took the kids to meet some friends for lunch, and she was texting me in tears, because they were being so rowdy.  It won't always be like this.  They'll get older and understand how to behave better (Lil' S1 is pretty much there, so long as his little partner-in-crime isn't around).  But it is for now.  "Yeah," she said.  "You're right."  Small victories...

The other thing about our cottage that annoyed me is that it shared a wall with another cottage (which is why it wasn't actually a cottage), and said wall was not very thick.  It sucks to be in the middle of nowhere, trying to "get away from it all," and hear the people next door watching The Bourne Supremacy, or something like that, while you're trying to relax.  Also, the cottage is basically a big studio apartment, and S and the boys went to sleep before 9:00 pm both nights, so I was like, Well, guess I'll sit in the dark for a few hours until I get tired. 

But there were some really good parts of the weekend as well (he says after four paragraphs of bitching).  Friday evening we took a nice walk along the South River in Waynesboro.  It's kind of a cute place.  They have a giant mural, which won some sort of award.  S says it's ugly, but I think it looks sorta cool.  The kids enjoyed playing near the water.  We didn't let them go in the water, because we didn't bring their swimsuits or towels, but there were people of all ages in the river, including some weirdos, who were probably hopped up on goofballs.

[The award-winning mural]

[The weirdos who were probably hopped up on goofballs]

[My boys live by the rule of ABC: Always Be Climbing]

We mostly kept our distance from strangers.  Nobody was wearing masks -- including us -- but we had them with us in case we needed them.  It's amazing (and sad) that you can tell the politics of a region by the prevalence of mask wearing.  It's infuriating that the Trumpist Right has decided to take some sort of idiotic stance against mask wearing, but I just don't know what we can do about it.  State and local officials can (and should) make mask laws, but actually enforcing those laws would be almost impossible and maybe even counterproductive.  (We need to give police another excuse to hassle citizens?)  The laws would be a formal statement of expectation, but it would still be on all of us to live up to that expectation.  We need a strong mask-wearing norm.  We need everybody to feel social pressure to wear one, but right now, I don't know how those of us who want to apply this pressure do it.  The other side won't listen to anything we say, no matter how we say it, and in fact they are probably less likely to do it explicitly because we are saying it.  So, what's the solution?  I don't know, and there's not much time to figure it out.  I like to think we can just protect ourselves, and if COVID runs roughshod over all the non-masking wearing dummies, so be it, but we all know that's not really how it works.  This disease isn't out to give irresponsible people their comeuppance.  It thrives on the most vulnerable, and many people are vulnerable through no fault of your own.

In Waynesboro, it was about 50-50, as far as mask wearing inside goes.  I popped in a Target really quick and everybody had a mask on, but then at the gas station mini mart (which was quite crowded) I could see nobody had one on.  Based on this I guessed that Waynesboro leans red, but has a sizable blue population, which is spot on.  I saw almost no non-white people around, but I did see a gay social club with a very prominent sign, so that made me feel better.  That's where I am now with traveling to places that aren't big cities.  I'm always a little uneasy, and then if I see black or gay people, I'm like, Yes!  I can hang here!  It's weird how that's happened.  Growing up I was surrounded almost exclusively by white heteros, and now I get edgy if I see too high a percentage of them while traveling.  What's going on here?  Why are there no minorities around?  That's what Trump has done: made me nervous of my own people.

The next day we really drove into Trump country.  We went to the Crabtree Falls Trail, which is a really nice hike, and there are people of all colors and persuasions on the trail, but in order to get there, you have to drive by a Confederate flag or two.  Actually, I think I saw three Confederate flags and about seven Trump signs.  Per mile, I think that's actual fewer than we saw on our drive to Columbus, Ohio last year.  Also, I saw a few signs, at least, that went the other way.  A car in front of us had a Bernie bumper sticker; a very crudely made yard sign said, "Health Care For All Vote Democratic"; and another yard sign said, "Drain the Swamp," and then it had the names Trump, Barr, and McConnell all crossed out.  Using Trump's own words slogan him -- I like it.

Anyway, the falls were cool, and the hike was the perfect length, about 3.5 miles round-trip.  The kids walked almost the entire time.  I had to carry them a bit, but I don't mind.  I like it actually.  That's how you get a really good workout in.  Carrying heavy things uphill -- it's an underrated exercise.  What I really need to do is get a decent backpack -- not like a hardcore hiking backpack, but one of those one's with the bottom strap that buckles around your waist.  Without that strap, carrying a backpack for an extended period of time kills my back.*   So, every time we go hiking, which has been a lot lately, S carries the backpack.  I would feel bad, except she intentionally bought a not-so-practical, girly-looking backpack because she wanted something stylish, so that's on her.  Plus, the kids are much heavier to carry than the backpack, so she actually gets the lighter load.

*In general, my back has gotten much better the past few years.  The main reason: a standing desk.  I cannot recommend this highly enough if you have back pain and spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer.

[Scenes from the hike]

When we left the trail, we realized we weren't getting any cell service, and it was sad how much of a catastrophe that caused.  We didn't have GPS, and we had no idea how to get back to our cottage without it.  We didn't even think to write the directions down or anything like that.  Thankfully, on S's phone the map app was still showing us kinda where we were, but it didn't have much detail, and it couldn't give us directions to a destination.  I'm not totally sure how it knew where we were at all.  I think it had already downloaded a base map to the phone, and the movement we were seeing was being generated locally using built-in distance/direction functionality.  That would make sense, as we didn't have any trouble with the directions on the way there, but surely our service cut out at some point, and we didn't notice it.  So, that's my guess, but I'm not totally sure.

Whatever the case, we finally made it back to civilization (i.e., a highway with cell service), but not before some "scary" moments.  We made several wrong turns trying to navigate local unpaved roads, and we drove past several boarded-up churches and rusted out pickup trucks.  I didn't literally hear "Dueling Banjos," but I had it going through my head the entire time.

When we finally made it back, I took the kids through the Sonic drive-thru for some ice cream (an Oreo milkshake for myself, thank you very much), and then we all snuggled up and watched Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.  I'm not huge on animation or comic book movies, but this one was pretty good.  S liked it as well, and of course the kids loved it (they had already seen it a half-dozen times).  It was the rare movie that all four of us enjoyed.

Alright, I think this post is long enough.

Until next time...

Entry 516: Micro-Anecdotes Of Racism From My Past

Like many Americans I've been doing a lot of thinking about race the last few weeks.  In so doing my mind will frequently stumble upon a moment from my past -- a snippet of a memory -- in which I acted in a racist way or stayed silent while somebody else did.  I wanted to write some of them down.  I'm not sure why.  I'm not seeking absolution, and I certainly don't want this to come off as a wannabe version of those cringey "I Take Responsibility" pronouncements.  I mean, most of this stuff happened when I was a child and literally didn't know any better -- or if I did, I didn't yet have the self-confidence or verbal skills to express it.  So, this is not a moment of catharsis for me.  These things have just been on my mind, and I like to write what's on my mind on this blog.  It's as simple as that, I suppose.

Age 10: I was playing the video game One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird with a friend and his parents at their house.  We were taking turns being the characters, and each time my friend, who was a few years older than me, was Dr. J., he would start jokingly "acting black" -- mock break dancing and talking faux-jive.  He and his parents were laughing at it and having so much fun, so I was laughing and having fun too, and it was all a big joke.  When I went home, I tried to recreate the moment for my dad by doing all the things my friend was doing, but he cut me off and told me it wasn't funny to behave that way.  I'm not saying my dad was "woke" in 1987, but he was on the right side of these things more often than not.

Age 12: So was my sister.  There were a couple times she set me straight.  Once a friend of ours who was her age (three years older than me) came over to our house with two pet rabbits.  They had sleek black fur, so he named them Spear and Chuck.  "Get it?" he said, "Spear-Chuck-er."  My sister was not amused, and they got into an argument, and I reflexively took his side, because he was the "cool" older boy, and my sister was my sister.  After he left, my sister called him a "racist dick" and stormed off to her room.  I think even back then I knew deep down that she was probably right.

Age 13: Another time I told my sister a derogatory joke, and she said it was racist and not funny, and I got really defensive and tried to argue that the joke was actually making fun of stupid people, not black people, but she wasn't having it.  I never conceded the point, but I also never told the joke again to anyone.

Age 13: I rooted hard for Rex Chapman in the 1990 NBA Slam Dunk Contest, solely because he was the only white guy in it.  (Years later, however, Chapman became sports-enemy number one for me, because he hit an amazing buzzer beater against my Sonics in the playoffs.  But now he seems like a cool dude on Twitter -- he's been outspokenly in favor of BLM -- so retroactively I don't mind that rooted for him.)

Age 14: Speaking of sports, my favorite defensive player to use on Tecmo Super Bowl was Rod Woodson.  He's awesome on that game, but I think a big part of the reason I liked using him is because he's depicted as white on it.  (He's mixed race in real life.)  I also loved using white wide receiver Ricky Proehl.

Age 15: Speaking of Tecmo Super Bowl, the same friend with the rabbits came over once while I was playing it.  I was using the Washington Redskins and for whatever reason the 8-bit graphics made the black guys on their team look super dark-skinned.  So, my friend started calling them the Washington Ethiopians (which, if you think about it, is somehow less offensive than their actual name).  At this point, I was starting to figure things out a tiny bit, so I asked him to stop, and he gave me a long spiel about how it's okay for white people to use slurs toward black people because they use them towards one another.  I didn't say anything else.  I just awkwardly waited for him to leave.

Age 15:  Oddly enough, however, I never once heard this guy use a racial slur in the presence of anybody other than his white friends.  In fact, the only time I really remember him interacting with a black person at all, he was totally obsequious toward him.  We were at the mall, and we saw this black kid who was the star of the football team (he actually went on to have a brief stint in the NFL), and my friend said hi to him, and the kid said hi back.  Afterward, my friend was acting like he was this kid's right-hand-man because he so much as said hi to him.  That was his way.  He deified the cool black kids at school and black celebrities and bumped rap music, but then he would say a bunch of ignorant, racist shit in his normal white life.  He was one of those guys.  

Age 16: I went over to the house of this girl I liked to pick her up for one of the first real dates I ever went on.  Her mom (who was also my old algebra teacher) and her stepfather were getting ready to go to a football game at a nearby inner-city high school.  "Well, we're headed to Africa-country," she said.  "Hopefully we win, and more importantly, hopefully we don't get jumped in the parking lot!"  It definitely made me uncomfortable (aside from the fact that "Africa-country" makes no sense, since Africa is already a collection of many countries), but my date was completely unphased, so I just let it slide.  For many reasons, we didn't date long.

Age 16: I got a video camera for Christmas, and I would use it to make these little silly skits and monologues.  One time, shortly after watching Blazing Saddles, I made one in which I played an old-school Southerner dandy, who was making a "can't we all just get along" PSA, but it was terrible because he was actually super racist.  As I recall, it was very cleverly written ("as I recall" being the key phrase there), but I used the N-word in it several times.  To be clear, it was a satire against racism, but still -- not cool.  Thankfully, I had enough sense to destroy the tape a few days later after waking up in a panic about it.  (I've always had a guilty conscience.)  Also, I can't remember ever using that word since then, in any context.  I even change it to "brother" when I'm silent rapping along to a hip-hop music: Hated on by most these brothas with no cheese, no deals and no G's.  That's how I say it in my head. 

Age 26: I accidentally, might have used a variant of that word one other time, and it was truly mortifying.  At the time I was dating this black woman (yeah, I'm just gonna casually drop that in there, even though it's not really relevant to the story), and she told me this joke: Why does Snoop Dogg need an umbrella?  Fo' drizzle, fo' shizzle.  It's kind of a cute joke (a play on this saying).  So, I told it to this black guy I used to watch football with at a neighborhood bar, only I fucked it up, and I said, "Fo' drizzle, my nizzle."  It was one of those things where as it was coming out of my mouth I knew I was saying it wrong, but I couldn't stop it.  He gave a contrived half-chuckle, and I couldn't tell if it signified "corny joke" or "ignorant white boy."  I thought about explaining that I meant to say something else, but I figured that would just make it worse.  So, instead I said something like, "Whoa... did you see that run by Jamaal Charles in the Chiefs game?" and things went back to normal... I think.

Age 33: Vacationing in New Zealand a guy at a bar used a racist slur in referring to Barack Obama.  But being a grown man at this point, I did not let that shit fly.   I actually wrote about it on this blog and rereading the entry made me sad -- in no small part because it reminded me that we once had a president whom was actually worth sticking up for.

On a side note, when I went back and found that entry, I also chanced upon something I wrote about Colin Kaepernick, and I gotta say, I pretty much nailed that take back then.  I stand by it all today.

Until next time...

Entry 515: Blacks Lives Matter: Portraits Of A Protest, Part Two

More pictures from Saturday's protest in DC.  For part one click here.

I like the creativity of the sign, and if you look closely you'll notice he's wearing a NASA cap.  Decent nerd cred.

Good shot of the underpass at Scott Circle.

I saw a decent amount of anti-police signage displayed in front of law enforcement officers, but everybody got along.  It's amazing how things stay peaceful when nobody is posturing as a battlefield opponent.

I can't remember what organization put up these signs, which is unfortunate, because they were letting people use the bathroom (including me), and I wanted to thank them for it.  We frequent pee-ers rely on the kindness of others.

A good spattering of these signs around as well.  I saw some people on Twitter express disapproval of them, because it was not about the actual issues of the protest (BLM and policy brutality).  But a dusting of explicitly anti-Trump sentiment is always fine by me.

Strong cosign.

Kneeling in solidarity and remembrance of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and so many others... Philando Castillo, Alton Sterling, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Abner Louima... and that's just off the top of my head.

The diversity of people turning out to protest was truly impressive.

I wore a mask; just about everybody wore a mask, but it was nearly impossible to stay more than six inches apart from people, let alone six feet.

As I was riding home, this group happened to be marching in the same direction, so I pedaled along slowly and chanted with them.

Somebody started speaking from a microphone about five yards from me.  It turned out to be Mayor Bowser.  I don't have strong feelings about her as a mayor -- she's fine (although I helped vote out her boy Brandon Todd in my ward) -- but she's a good orator.

After listening to her, I started daydreaming about what I would say to this group of people if somebody handed me the mic and told me to talk, and I must say I came up with some pretty moving words.  (I'm a star in my own head.)  I even wrote them down in this entry, but I accidentally deleted them, and I just don't have it in me to write them down again.  So, that's it.

Until next time...

Entry 514: Blacks Lives Matter: Portraits Of A Protest, Part One

I left my house is Northwest DC, near the Maryland border, around 1:30 pm Saturday afternoon.  I just started walking toward the White House with no real plan.  I wanted to catch a bus, but my transit app wasn't giving me any information, so I got a Bikeshare bike and started riding.

Before I left, I pinned a very simple, homemade Black Lives Matter sign to the front of my tee.*  I figured I might want my hands free, so I purposely made a sign I wouldn't have to carry, and I was immediately thankful for that decision, given my mode of transportation.  As I rode through well-to-do residential neighborhoods of DC, miles from the protests, I would be lying if I said I didn't feel a bit self-conscious.  Each time I rode by a black person -- out walking the dog or jogging -- I wondered what they were thinking.  Did they appreciate my support?  Did they even support BLM?  Did they dismiss me as a Johnny-Come-Lately who'd be gone once George Floyd stopped trending on Twitter?  Or did they pay me no mind at all, and I should get out of my own head and focus on avoiding potholes, given that I wasn't even wearing a helmet?  I settled on the latter.

*Although I didn't plan it out, I happened to be wearing my Indie 500 crossword puzzle tournament shirt -- a fitting choice given this year's competition was schedule for this weekend, before Covid-19 forced it to be rescheduled.  Also, so many people in the crossword puzzle community are committed to social justice causes, so it's a shirt I wear with pride.

Once I got to the Rock Creek Park Tennis Center, about three miles from the White House, I started noticing signs of protest and remembrance. 

The first one was for Tamir Rice.  I've long felt like his story didn't sparked the amount of national outrage it warranted.  He was a just dumb kid (i.e., a kid) playing with a toy gun; he didn't really understand the seriousness of what he was doing.  The person who called 9-1-1 told the dispatcher (twice) that the gun was probably fake, and the person wielding it was probably a juvenile, but nevertheless the responding officer shot and killed Rice within mere seconds of arriving.  His police car hadn't even completely stopped yet.

The officer (who had an extremely spotty history) was not indicted because it was argued that Rice was reaching for his waistband when he was shot.  This illustrates how messed up things are.  When it's a grown white man holding a real gun, police are somehow able to demonstrate amazing restraint to avoid violence.  When it's a black kid holding a fake gun, it's one, two, bang.

As I approached the heart of the protest, I started noticing little pockets of people milling around the periphery.  I like pictures of people taking pictures.

Here's what what I saw as I went into the heart of the protest.

There was so much free bottled water and snacks, which is great, but I only drank one small bottle of water the entire time I was there (plus a can of sparkling water I brought from home).  I hate the waste of plastic bottles, and I'm a frequent pee-er, and I wasn't sure what the bathroom situation would be.

Yes!  I've read some stuff on Twitter saying "voting doesn't matter," "all politicians are bad," etc., etc., and I have no time for this mindset.  Vote!

My heart is with this sign; my brain is not.  Also, I don't really know what "defund" means in this context.  I prefer to say "reimagine the police," even though I know it sounds too rainbows-and-unicorns-y.  Defund the police is already becoming the boogeyman phrase from Trump and his Trumpies.  (It's going to become the new Antifa.)  When Biden is asked about Trump saying he wants to the defund the police, I hope he doesn't take the bait.  This is what I think he should say:

It's a lie.  That's not my policy.  He's using distraction and scare tactics, so he can strip people of their constitutional rights and continue to play the part of wannabe dictator.  Don't fall for it.  I'm in favor of reforms that will ensure police protect and serve all people.  African-Americans have been telling us for so long that they often feel neglected or oppressed by the police.  Law-abiding black citizens of all walks of life -- deliverymen, entrepreneurs, professionally athletes, et cetera -- are telling us things have to change.  If we don't listen to them now, we are all just biding our time until the next George Floyd. 

[Update: Whoa!  I guess I'll get an idea of what defund looks like.  I hope this works.  It's incredible: Police in Minneapolis have so failed at their duties, the people are like, "We'll take our chances with a City Council member in a black sedan and a group of armed small business owners for now."]

Despite what we were led to believe when Kaepernick knelt in 2016 (on the advice of Army veteran Nate Boyer, it's worth noting), a lot of veterans and military members support BLM.

This is a perfect sign -- clear, succinct, profound.  It's something I think about a lot.  What we see on video can only be the tip of the iceberg.

This one on the other hand... I don't want to rag on anybody's sign -- she's out here holding it, which is the important thing -- but the whole pumpkin spice thing is played out.  For that matter, so is the whole white-people-making-fun-of-white-stereotypes thing.  The Simpson were goofing on this 25 years ago.

Fair enough.  But please don't.

I like this sign a lot also.  The protest had a party feel to it at times, which is cool, human beings can't handle all solemn, all the time, but let's not forget: Real people with real loved ones lost their lives due to completely avoidable and senseless police violence. 

Hmm... I'm not able post any more pics for some reason.  Maybe I've reach the memory limit for a single entry.  I'm posting this and putting up a second part soon.

Entry 513: A Citizen's Reimagining of the Police

My head and heart have been abuzz since my last post.  I've been trying to keep up with parenting and with work, but it's hard when you live a few miles from the epicenter of history-in-the-making.  I've mostly spent my time refreshing Twitter to try to follow what's going on.  I rarely use Twitter, but for its myriad faults, it is a good resource for constantly changing, fast pace stories like this one -- too good, actually.  I see how addictive it can be.  Even right now I have to resist the urge to look at it, and I've only been off it for, like, a minute.  The main reason I don't like Twitter, in general, is because it feels like every conversation is turned up to 100 -- everything is over-the-top; it's all outrage, all the time.  But right now that outrage is completely justified, so I don't mind it.  The other problem with Twitter is the misinformation and the bubble effect.  Those are still problems, but at the moment I'd rather live with them and get current information than lag behind.

Anyway, it seems as if things are relatively peaceful in the DC tonight -- at least, I don't hear the  incessant droning of helicopters.  It was pretty quiet last night too, I think.  (It's been quiet in my little nook each night, except for the aforementioned helicopters.)  My breakdown on the property damage is as follows: At first it was the protesters.  It wasn't suburban anarchists or Antifa or far-right agitators, it was the actual people who were actually protesting George Floyd's death.  It was an understandable insurrection (to use the language of Maxine Waters).  But in the days after that, it was more the people who just wanted to pointlessly fucking shit up and the opportunistic looters.  Now, that seems to have mostly stopped.  I could be wrong about all this -- how could anybody possibly know for sure? -- but that's how it seems to me.

The thing about all the wilding, however, is that I'm a thousand times less scared of it than I am of the actual authorities who are supposed to be keeping the peace.  It's the police, the military, the National Guard, the prison riot patrol or whomever it is that Trump has posted around the city that have me way more on edge than the looters.  It's kept me from joining any of the protests down by the White House, and it makes me feel guilty -- like I'm letting the authoritarians win -- but I would feel like I'm abandoning my family if I left.  When there's unease, the thought of not being near my family eats away at me.  It's not totally rational, but it's completely real.  And then I start worst-case-scenarioing it, and I think, What if something happened to me?  What if I got hit by car or maimed by police or killed by some vigilante nutjob?  And, oh yeah, Covid-19 is still running rampant through our society.  It hasn't stopped just because we've been preoccupied with other things.  The thing that viscerally terrifies me more than anything is something happening to my boys or something happening to me, so that they grow up without a dad.  That's why I haven't been down there yet.  But I might go tomorrow.  After all, my feelings explain exactly why people are protesting.  My biggest fear is every father's biggest fear, and I'm sure many black dads feel like they don't have the luxury of sitting it out like I do.

I did partake in a little family-friendly protest in my neighborhood -- people holding Black Lives Matter signs and getting cars to honk.  It was cool, and it actually might not have been that little.  I counted at least 50 people, and they were still going strong past my line of sight.  There could have easily been a couple hundred people.  I wanted to walk further to get a better idea of the scale, but a massive rainstorm hit, so I huddled under a tree, until my sign deteriorated.  I was legit moved by the demonstration, to be honest.  I got really choked up when I saw this little girl with her family holding a sign: Stop Killing Black People.  I've gotten choked up a few times watching clips on Twitter, and I'm not one to get choked up.  But it's the kids -- always the kids.

Another thing I've been doing a lot is donating money to the cause.  This comes with its own problem, amplified by my own decision-making neurosis, in that I don't know which organizations are the best ones to donate to.  I only have so much money to give -- what's the optimal allocation?  In the end, I gave to a few causes friends posted on Twitter, and I gave to one of those umbrella groups that splits your donations evenly among a bunch of organizations.  I also donated to this organization called Campaign Zero, which has their 8 Can't Wait project.  That might have been a mistake, as I've since read a decent amount of criticism of their group by other Black Lives Matters activists.  I don't know.  I'm not going to sweat it.  I stress out about how to donate money before I do it, but not after I do it, because it's done.  I can't take it back.  If it was the wrong cause -- oops -- I'll take the L and move on.   If I let myself get too hung up on it, then I would never want to donate to anybody, but that's not the right approach.  $0 to everybody certainly isn't the optimal allocation.

The thing about 8 Can't Wait is that their solutions are actually not my preferred solutions -- which entails essentially abolishing police forces as we know them (see below) -- but I figured theirs are more politically doable in the short-to-medium-term.  I've become much more of a political pragmatist as I gotten older, which is kinda weird considering my ideals have gone the other way; I'm more ideologically extreme now than I was when I was younger, but I'm more pragmatic in terms of politics.  I try hard (maybe too hard) to avoid the fallacy of "the smart political move is to adopt all the policies I believe in."  Bringing it back to the Twitter bubble, many of the people I saw criticizing 8 Can't Wait were also criticizing Joe Biden for not going far enough with his policies and his rhetoric concerning police brutality.  And that's fine.  If you want a presidential candidate to come out more strongly about this issue, I'm not going to argue with you.  But they weren't just criticizing the content of his words, but also the political ramifications of them, and that I just don't understand.  To have a chance at winning Biden has to bring together a very diverse coalition (that's one of the problems Dems have that Reps don't, since they can play almost entirely to rural white Christians) and much of this coalition just isn't there yet with extreme police reform.  I think politically Biden's words in the past few days have helped him more than they've hurt him.*  He's offering baby steps, but it's probably baby steps or nothing.  Plus, your baby steps are somebody else's giants leaps. Not everybody thinks what you think.  But they might be open to your way, if they see over time that it's correct.

*With the big caveat that nobody really knows such things for sure.  

With all that said, here is my 8 Can't Wait: A Citizen's Reimaging of Police.

1. Make an Official National Apology to Black People for Past Police Brutality

Yes, this is only a symbolic gesture, but symbols can be meaningful.  Plus, this is only my first point. Plus, plus, I'm open to the idea of some sort of tangible reparations for black people.  I haven't worked out all details just yet.

2.  Abolish the war on drugs; abolish the war on crime; abolish the term "the war on" as it pertains to societal problems in general.

Police should be peacekeeping civil servants, not warriors.

3.  As a follow up to above, cut all military style weaponry and machinery from the policy budget

Reallocate any savings to social services.

4. Divide municipalities into districts; each district has its own electable sheriff responsible for the beat policing in that district

Sheriff's must live in the district they represent.  A citywide police department would still be utilized for detectives, special ops, etc.

5.  Each sheriff has their own group of "cops" to handle distress calls

I use quotes because only a small percentage of them would be cops like we think of them.  Most of the first responders to distress calls would be actual peacekeeping civil servants.  They would not carry guns, but they would have self-defense training.  There's no reason to bring a gun to the vast majority of distress situations -- a loud party, a fender-bender, a stolen laptop, etc.  Only if the situation warrants an officer with a gun can they be dispatched.  I know the criticism of this is that it puts cops lives in danger, but you know what else puts cops lives at danger?  Having a large segment of the population view them as an oppressive gang and care very little about their well-being.

6.  Deescalation is key, even if this means letting a suspect get away temporarily

Again, police should be peacekeepers, not warriors.  "Dominating the battlefield" makes everybody less safe -- officers, suspects, and innocent bystanders.  Deescalation should be the goal, first and foremost, even if this means letting suspects flee.  I've heard in DC they already do this for high speed car chases.  It makes sense, as typically the chase is gong to be way more dangerous than having the suspect at large.  Also, with cameras everywhere and facial recognition and all that, you will probably catch them later.

7.  Open up the books

Keep data for each type of response call and make this data open to the public.

8.  Do not use armed or uniformed policed for protests 

As we painfully watched this past week, police only escalate the chances of violence at protests (especially those that are explicitly protesting the police).  It's the warrior mentality; it's the us-against-them mindset; and it's the contempt so many of them seem to have for anybody who dares to hold them accountable for their bad actions.  It's virtually impossible to have a peaceful protest when police have such a heavy-handed presence, because ultimately somebody in a protest of hundreds of people is going to do something wrong -- they're going to throw a water bottle, or they're going to block traffic, or they're going go somewhere that's fenced off -- and then the police respond and the protesters get mad, and then it's on, and once it's on, police think it's open season to brutalize anybody and everybody in their sight.

The security at protests should be like at a concert -- a bunch of bouncer-looking folks with highlighter-yellow t-shirts and walkie-talkies, walking with the protesters, not presenting like a battlefield opponent.  These bouncers can handle (or ignore) all the small stuff, and if they see looting or arson, they can call for backup to that specific area.  This could easily be done with the GPS in our smartphones.  Would this work in the case of a full-blown, wide-spread riot?  No, of course not.  But nothing really works in that case.  There would still be extreme moments to call in armed officers, but not for things like being on your stoop after curfew.

That's it.

Black Lives Matter.

Until next time...