Daily Archives: June 21, 2017
Let’s not forget *Trump* is president…
There is this trap, I think, that many are falling into of treating Donald Trump like a run-of-the-mill lousy Republican president who is rubber stamping Paul Ryan’s awful domestic agenda. If this were Marco Rubio/Ted Cruz or even Jeb! and we were faced with an inhumane ACA repeal, I’d take more comfort from last night’s results in Georgia and South Carolina. But let’s remember that Trump is a president who is currently under FBI investigation, who fired the FBI Director and possibly obstructed justice, whose National Security Adviser and son-in-law might have committed light treasons. He also tweets unhinged gibberish late at night. Karen Handel didn’t repudiate him but rather embraced him. If core Republicans still back him, then the craven GOP will continue to do so. That’s why an upset last night would have been a key event or turning point. It also might have helped derail the passage of the ACA repeal but that also now seems unlikely. If a party that is in bed with a mobster and steadily starts to behave in ways that makes it clear they were mobsters all along are still winning special elections against non-mobsters, that’s a problem and an indictment of the country. I’d like to think that if Hillary Clinton were in the same situation as Trump, even a Nancy Pelosi district might have been lost in a special election no matter the Democratic advantage. If anything, we certainly should just focus on improving our performance in 2018 and defeating Trump in 2020 because impeachment is fantasy and re-election is not entirely off the table.
serhasacomplaint 
Spare me…
The police statements after events like the Castillo killing/inevitable officer acquittal are rarely made to reassure POC but to calm moderate whites. There are no promises of better outcomes, that another POC won’t be pulled over for having a black nose or shot in front of their child because of what an officer has a “split second” to decide. Basically the argument is “sucks to be us.”
And I’ve had it with the solipsistic narcissism of how shooting a man to death in front of his child and the child’s mother is really a bummer for the cop. Even if he’s in therapy dealing with it, it’s hardly as relevant as what the dead man and his loved ones are experiencing. I also am highly suspicious of how much this truly has affected the officer. I mean Bill Cosby is probably stressed out but that’s all about him, his reputation, career and liberty, not the women he raped.
If the cop offered to help raise the now fatherless child like Joe West on The Flash, that’s one thing but that’s not even a consideration.
We continue to debate whether racism or “white privilege” even exists when predominately white juries not only consistently let officers walk for these killings but never express the consistent level of outrage or demands for change that we see as a the result of airline overbookings. I can almost understand the cognitive dissonance and classism behind safely assuming you’ll never be busted for selling loose cigarettes or CDs, but if white Americans really believed they had as much chance of being blown away — again in front of their child — during a routine traffic stop or their child could be killed for playing with a toy gun in a public park, they wouldn’t stand for it.
Posted by Stephen Robinson on June 21, 2017 in Social Commentary
Tags: black lives matter, castillo, guns