Of all the times to resume writing this blog (encouraged by far away friends who use it the way others use Facebook) I did not want to resume in the middle of a national crisis, one that is played out in my own 1200 sf home. But, this blog was born of national crisis -- the controversy over building a mosque in downtown Manhattan -- and as long as I'm alive, and as long as I can feel outrage, this blog will exist.
Where to begin.
In my day job I sometimes read papers published in peer-reviewed journals that go to great lengths to describe the physics of a bullet as it travels through human tissue. The speed, the projectile's rotation, calculation of the frictional force, trajectory, and the thermodynamics of heat loss as a device made of brass and gunpowder tears, maims and often kill you. Usually there are pictures, e.g., Figure 1, let's call it Mortal Wound to Torso, and if I look closely enough (which I never do) what seems at a distance to be the mouth of an angry volcano is more likely what a tunnel gored by a bullet does to someone's body. (Imagine the violence required to blast through the mountains of western Pennsylvania so that Interstate 76 can take you from Philly to Pittsburgh; that's what a bullet can do.) If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, one's imagination is worth a 1,000 pictures. I don't have to see it; I live with it.
In a city that has been dying for half a century. Where persistent unemployment of young men of color is the enduring norm, not an anomaly. Where I, who has been through the sluice gates of corrosive institutional racism and should know better am daily conditioned to fear and distrust men who could be my own children. I repeat: fear and distrust men who could be my own children. That's where I live.
And I live with someone who, the mornings after Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were killed, and 5 Dallas police officers were killed, rushed to tell me that Black Lives Matter is responsible for what happened in Dallas. (Like most libertarians, he thinks he lives on Dispassionate Reason Street when he lives on Id Lane.) All of it, all of it -- outside and inside my home -- reminds me of the bitter and very American joke:
Q: What's scarier than a white man with a gun?
A: A black man with a gun.
I am in a rage which makes it difficult to write. As I write it congeals into a pounding headache. But, the paradox is that if I don't write I will never ever get to the other side. I used to make fun of crazy people who would offer me their tiny-margined, single-spaced, double-sided screeds, their manifesto detailing the malevolence of the universe and all its actors. I won't any more.
to be continued ...
Where to begin.
In my day job I sometimes read papers published in peer-reviewed journals that go to great lengths to describe the physics of a bullet as it travels through human tissue. The speed, the projectile's rotation, calculation of the frictional force, trajectory, and the thermodynamics of heat loss as a device made of brass and gunpowder tears, maims and often kill you. Usually there are pictures, e.g., Figure 1, let's call it Mortal Wound to Torso, and if I look closely enough (which I never do) what seems at a distance to be the mouth of an angry volcano is more likely what a tunnel gored by a bullet does to someone's body. (Imagine the violence required to blast through the mountains of western Pennsylvania so that Interstate 76 can take you from Philly to Pittsburgh; that's what a bullet can do.) If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, one's imagination is worth a 1,000 pictures. I don't have to see it; I live with it.
In a city that has been dying for half a century. Where persistent unemployment of young men of color is the enduring norm, not an anomaly. Where I, who has been through the sluice gates of corrosive institutional racism and should know better am daily conditioned to fear and distrust men who could be my own children. I repeat: fear and distrust men who could be my own children. That's where I live.
And I live with someone who, the mornings after Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were killed, and 5 Dallas police officers were killed, rushed to tell me that Black Lives Matter is responsible for what happened in Dallas. (Like most libertarians, he thinks he lives on Dispassionate Reason Street when he lives on Id Lane.) All of it, all of it -- outside and inside my home -- reminds me of the bitter and very American joke:
Q: What's scarier than a white man with a gun?
A: A black man with a gun.
I am in a rage which makes it difficult to write. As I write it congeals into a pounding headache. But, the paradox is that if I don't write I will never ever get to the other side. I used to make fun of crazy people who would offer me their tiny-margined, single-spaced, double-sided screeds, their manifesto detailing the malevolence of the universe and all its actors. I won't any more.
to be continued ...
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