It slowly dawned on me, as I listened to the radio, driving in to work this morning,

[fflo]

that the people talking weren't talking about the killing of Alton Sterling, so maybe this was an interview with relatives of a previous victim of police violence, but, wait, could it be that another story has broken overnight?  It could be that, but --- could it be that?

And it was that.

It's utterly sick that the Baton Rouge story, horrifying as it is, didn't shock all the shock in me to the surface.  It was shockingly extreme, and shocking to look at (on video), but also not shocking at all, because that's what happens.  That's what happens all the time.  Yet, even having just, yesterday, in my mind and spirit, touched again on how not uncommon it is, when another video broke another such story through to the masses, again, so soon, and so now for these coupla days we're hearing about it and seeing it every day, this everyday horror of everyday injustice, I do sit at my desk in a stupifying shock.  It's not the shock that this great wrong happens every day.  It's the shock that this is how it is.  We have to accept that this is how it is.  This is how it is.

Comments

[paperkingdoms]

We have to acknowledge that this is how it is, but I really hope we don't have to accept it. I really desperately need for it to be unacceptable.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Yes, acknowledge is the better word. Stare in the horrible ugly face of. Scream at, however powerlessly.

How we find ways to have power against it seems like it's going to be an ongoing question, struggle. How is resistance futile and how is it not? When is it less so, how is it less so?

[paperkingdoms]

I'm seeing some really interesting threads about how and what to look at with local police stuff, from Twitter. But on this and other things, I keep coming back around to the most important thing, the most lowest denominator thing, is that we can't let our silence say it's OK.

(Which, OK, is, in a few contexts, leaving me incredibly grateful for having curated spaces around myself where people don't say shitty things, while simultaneously wondering ... I don't even really have words to wrap around the other half of this. That if I use my privilege to surround myself with people who I agree with, that's good for my mental health, but also means I'm not leveraging that privilege for others. But seeking out situations where it's needed seems... awful, in it's own way. Which I mostly keep coming back to a place of committing to more watchfulness, more awareness when I'm out in the world, to not let those situations slide by me because I can. But there's definitely conflictedness.)

[sabotabby]

Woke up to the same experience this morning.

[custardfairy.livejournal.com]

Sandy Hook was that moment for me. Because I thought that surely, SURELY, since children were killed we would do SOMETHING. Something would start to change.

Nope.

So now I have accepted that this is it. This is us. This is who we are as a people. Killers who keep killing. Killers who promote and encourage killing through inaction, through racism, through bias, through lobbyists, through corruption.

There is blood on our hands, on our flag, on our founding documents. We're baptized in it. Mass shootings as rites of passage. Injustice as law.

Yee haw.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

It feels like the right thing, and important, to have my eyes as wide open as I can stand. I go back and forth on my sense of duty to witness what's out there to witness, in the form of horrendous video documentation, and on my desire not to traumatize myself. But when our fellows are traumatized and treated like animals and killed, don't I have a duty to bear witness?

Also I am so with you on the overwhelmingly clear broad nature of perpetual injustice and some of the worst of human nature embodied in our country, our culture. Today I wonder how much worse it may get. That ex-congressperson dude with the deleted tweet is so scary I can barely stand to think about it.