Mental Health

As the pandemic drags on and we crawl towards the election, mental health is a topic on lot's of people's, well, minds. I subscribe to the mindset that talking about most things is healthy and we need to especially normalize talking about our mental health, so I am going to share what is going on in my head these days.

This year hasn't been great for me, what with the everything, but I can't blame everything on that, I haven't been diagnosed... until recently, but I am pretty sure I have dealt with depression issues since probably my 20s, and anxiety stuff maybe for the past ten years. My depression takes the form of laziness for the most part. I just don't... do things and pretty much just sort of skate on by through life. Those of you who knew me in my early twenties probably noticed. That is a constant with me and something I have learned to pay attention to and manage to an extent, I did start a business after all, now the depression could have been a contributor to it not succeeding, but the point is I can still do stuff now and again and I recognize some of those patterns these days.

This doesn't mean my brain is a happy place, I have had a few, very few, periods of suicidal ideation, it's never gone beyond thoughts, I've never made concrete plans or collected materials, written notes, that sort of thing, but for most of the last couple decades there is the desire to just not be anymore, it's not that I want to be dead, it's not a desire or conscious thought like that, it's like, we all need to breath, and I have a need to not exist. Something on that primal level.

It's al lie of course, when I am honest with myself I do tend to enjoy existing for the most part, thought these last few months have made that harder. But you ignore it, distract with TV, games, friends, that sort of thing, you manage.

I also have anxiety, there may be a better term but basically I hate being in groups of people I don't know, groups of people I know are better but still extremely draining for me. I'm an introvert sure, but this goes beyond introversion, my bi-weekly grocery shopping trip is an exceedingly uncomfortable experience for example. I get hyper aware basically, everyone else doesn't do things they way I feel they should, and are hard to predict, and for some reason this is a HUGE PROBLEM for my brain, I get hyper-vigilant and spend most of my time in groups getting close to hyperventilating, wearing a mask does that no favors either. This has developed later in life than the depression, I first noticed it a while ago when I spent most of PAX(A gaming convention for those who aren't aware) in my hotel room. It was only after I got home from it when I realized that yeah, crowds just aren't doing it for me anymore.

So of course I took a job at the Moda Center, but having a counter in between me and crowds helped a lot so that went okay. Driving does not give me that anxious reaction I just have the normal thoughts that everyone but me is insane when on the road, so Domino's was pretty good for me.

Anyway, going along with all of these is insomnia, I don't know if it's depression, anxiety, or a combination of the two, or neither, that doesn't let me sleep, but I do not sleep well historically, and honestly that has been for as long as I can remember, at sleepovers when I was little I was always the last person awake, and sleeping at home was not tons better. It's like a switch just doesn't flip, I can be tired, sleepy even, and perfectly comfortable with no worries or distractions, and I just don't turn off for the night. When I was a kid it was better, to my recollection I never did all nighters until high school, and those were always on purpose. Obviously being younger I could recover easier from that kind of crap anyway. But the thing about mental health stuff is, like most chronic health things, they don't usually get better if you ignore them, and it's gotten so much worse, coming to a head this summer. I think in the seven or so months we've been in pandemic mode I have probably been awake for the sunrise at least half of them. This October has been extremely bad.

So I finally talked to a doctor.

It's been a few conversations, the first one was an e-visit where I just filled out a form with symptoms, the questions were, as one might imagine, geared towards suicide prevention and the like. This lead to a phone call from a doctor the next day, and we had another conversation that recapped what I put in the form and started talking about goals, we agreed that sleep was a major issue and if we could get a handle on that then we could confront the rest of the stuff a lot better, so I was put on Trazadone the efficacy of which I am dubious about, it's an SSRI but not prescribed for depression a lot these days, but it is prescribed for sleep problems, although I am not sure why since in the research I have done there isn't a ton of studies showing it as helpful for that, but whatever we gave it a shot, and for like 2 days I slept at night like a regular person, but it turns out that was just a coincidence and everything went to hell after that, I spoke to a councilor at a follow-up appointment to set up therapy, and they also referred me back to the medical doctor to talk about meds. So a couple days later, this past Monday in fact, we decided to double the Trazadone dose and then revisit in a week or two if that doesn't do anything. 

It's been three nights and I am sleeping every night, but I can't say it's working yet, two of those nights I was only out for like five hours before waking up, last night was pretty great though, I slept like nine hours straight and feel pretty decent for once. Too early to tell of course, but it's a good day at least and I'll take it.

I am starting therapy next week, and we'll see what comes of that, I don't know that it will be super helpful to be honest since I don't know if they will tell me anything I don't already know, but fuck it, I have insurance that covers it so let's find out.

If I had to self diagnose, I would say I have mild depression and maybe more severe anxiety, my doctor says it's moderate depression and no one has really talked about the anxiety with me yet, hopefully therapy will cover that. I could probably live the rest of my life without treating it, many people live their entire lives with worse, but I guess I finally realized that isn't an excuse not to get treatment. If you have a cold, you can probably survive it by ignoring it, but symptom management makes life better so why not have some tea and cough syrup too? Maybe don't mix them together.

I also have a stress ball, which is fun to squeeze, so things are looking up.

Welp

The Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett yesterday in a party line vote, I will not be wasting the words on explaining why this is horrible and hypocritical, you all know them and if you don't, well, I dunno, message me or something and we can go into it.

As with most things this isn't the end of the world, this is a true statement, very little is the actual end of the world, but the only people you hear saying that when shit like this happens are folks like me: White, cis, straight, and safe. For everyone else their world got a little bit darker yesterday.

I do not think things like Roe V Wade and the ACA are automatically doomed, the right has been consistently disappointed by it's appointees over the last few years and while things on those fronts certainly got worse there is still a pretty high chance that stuff survives, that said you can certainly be forgiven or panicking and are not wrong to do so, nothing about this is good, at best it maybe won't be quite as bad as we fear.

I am saving my worry for the election, I do think that even with a great deal of cheating from the GOP the vote will end up in Biden's favor, and I think we'll probably know that by election night. So outside of the nightmare scenario of Trump reusing to admit defeat and the Supreme Court handing him the election, which is a possibility, we'll have the Biden administration in January.

There my worry starts, you see, Joe Biden is in many ways to the right of Reagan, at least based on his voting record and statements. I do think he either supports, or more likely just doesn't care enough to oppose things like LGBTQ rights and he probably will contribute to pushing the white power folks back into the shadows, but I do not expect him to work for true Medicare for all, or to fix the family separation crisis, or the student debt crisis, or the racist police, or to scale back our military interventionism, or the drone program.

He'll put the kind mask back on American politics or a few years, and try to return to normalcy as fast as possible. To avoid looking like he's retaliating and making enemies on the other side of the aisle, he will not do much to purge Trump appointees and it is very likely that a sort of "Deep State" will actually form in the bureaucracy working against him anyway. I would be shocked to learn that he supports expanding the Supreme Court. He'll do these things because that is how American politics have always worked and he is old as hell and knows nothing else. His return to normalcy is the ideal because he cannot fathom that people outside politics have life experiences different than his own. This is not unique of course, most national level politicians have this attitude

He also possesses the same narcissism that everyone who runs for president possesses, he is a better actor for sure, but make no mistake that ego plays a larger role in everything he does than we can really comprehend, Trump took the mask off, but it's there in most of them. Trump might shoot an opponent dead on 5th Avenue, Biden would too, the only difference is he'd make sure there were no witnesses first.

I'm not saying don't vote, by all means go and do so, it's easy to do(sort of, location depending) and while the long term benefits are minimal it's got more of an immediate return on investment than anything else you can do to create change right now. Long term though the only answer is the dismantling of the American empire of course, but we can't do that between now and November 3.

Screaming Intensifies

 It's been two months almost since the last time I wrote anything of substance. Not gonna lie, things have been getting to me, I've been pretty depressed, bored, maybe a little lonely if I am honest, and perhaps most notably increasingly pissed off at virtually anyone with any kind of power in this hellworld it turns out we live in.

The problem with that of course is who wants to hear it? Another white guy is angry, big fuckin' whoop. I'm not saying voices like mine aren't useful in some fashion, but I have almost nothing to say about what's happening that haven't been said a million times by other, less privileged, and more eloquent voices, and these days unless I feel like I am bringing a unique(or something like it) perspective to the table then no one needs me shouting into the void.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died recently, that was sad and also infuriating. RBG wasn't a saint, but she was one of the very few people with both the opportunity and the will to do good for people on a large scale and she executed it well. I never really got the cult of personality around her and I rather suspect that she was more hypocritical and self serving than most of us want to believe, but nonetheless her death is a tragedy in a lot of ways.

To the surprise of apparently a lot of people, Mitch McConnell has been pushing to get a new nominee approved, why anyone thought he'd do otherwise is beyond me, but here we are. A lot of words have already been written about the nomination process and what the Democrats can do to throw a wrench in it, I won't go into detail but suffice it to say there are some things they could try, it looks like they won't though and probably before the election we will have a sociopath in RBG's place.

Let's talk about McConnell for a second, I hate the man more than perhaps any other figure in public office right now, including the president, and if I ever am in a room alone with him I will kill him with my bare hands if I can. He is the embodiment of the degradation the Republican party and our political system in general has fallen to. No, that isn't quite right. He is the embodiment of every thing wrong with our system? No, that isn't quite it either.

Let's talk about the system, the ideals of democracy and republic that founded our great nation have never been more than ideals, and this nation has never embodied them, it lost the chance to do so when the founding fathers allowed slavery to exist in America, chose not to allow women the vote, and built the electoral college to make sure that "The right people" would forever have the final say in who ran the nation. Over the last couple hundred years we've had many chances to change that and without exception when a person gathered enough power or influence to do so, the nation killed them. Oh slavery is technically illegal now, and women can vote, but inequality is written into the bones of this country on much more than paper. The psyche of the entire nation knows on some level that we aren't what we claim to be. Some people are big fans of that, those people are in power now. 

That is what Mitch McConnell embodies. Rather than a corruption of the political process, he is the purest expression of it. A monster who ruthlessly defends the status quo using any tool available. His belief system is only that those in power deserve it, and those without are not even worth showing a façade of respect.

Donald Trump is a monster who deserves only to suffer for sure, but he's just a symptom of a populace that knows it has no power and is blaming the wrong people. He jumped on the wave, manipulated it, but he didn't create it and honestly has very little idea what he is doing. McConnell knows precisely what he is doing and Donald Trump was a huge gift to him because his horrible things are so obvious that people pay less attention to him, and when Trump is gone the new president will be easier to manage, if Democrat they will be willing to reach across the aisle in an effort to show unity and healing, if Republican then all they have to do is stop saying the quiet part out loud and they will get to do virtually anything they want.

The problem with this is that it is only now starting to dawn on people that Donald Fucking Trump has never let anything he wanted go before he destroys it. He is threatening to break the system if he loses the election, to stay in power and expose just how shaky the foundations of government are, that they are mostly a system that works because everyone agrees it works. It wouldn't take much to show that for a lie, and in fact is something that McConnell has taken advantage of in the past, with the last Supreme Court nomination most notably. Who could have conceived that he could hold up the entire process for a year simply by... not doing it? Now we must ask ourselves, what if Trump applies this same lesson to losing the election? What if he just... doesn't leave? He challenges the legitimacy of the results and refuses to go anywhere until they are confirmed. How can we stop him? What if the Supreme Court steps in as they did in 2000 and rules that in the absence of reliably tabulated votes, Donald Trump must remain president?

If the country sees how easy it is to ignore the process, then it might just set people to considering why they don't do it themselves. What if in the above scenario, the West Coast states secede? Or not even that, just... stop working the with the federal government? Right now our governors are cowards who wouldn't think to try it, but if the president leads the way then what?

It's honestly not the worst thing in the world if this whole institution falls apart, don't mistake me for an accelerationist though I am not saying vote Trump so that happens sooner, I would dearly love to see the USA turn into something else in my lifetime, but I think we maybe can manage that without election a literal fascist to his second presidential term.

But just like the police, it is too corrupt to stand, it has to be torn down and rebuilt if we want any chance of seeing true freedom for the majority of people, or for the human population of the world to have a chance to survive climate change for that matter.

The cruelty is still the point

The thing that enrages me most in arguments against aid to the lowest income brackets and for aid to the highest and to corporations, otherwise known as trickle down economics, is that just giving the poor money helps pretty much everyone.

If money isn't moving it really isn't helping the economy, and the rich mostly don't move money in ways that matter. The system is set up that money sort of filters upwards until it gets to a billionaire, and there it remains for all time. This means that whether we give a tax cut to the rich, or cash to the poor, the rich will still get the money eventually anyway.

The above isn't really revolutionary economic theory it's basically how capitalism should work in an ideal world. Money moves, providing a benefit to those it comes into contact with, the government gets tax revenue from the transactions it participates in, and more money is made, which then naturally raises the question: "Why do we do the opposite of that?".

As I have said a few times before, the cruelty is still the point.

You can make all kinds of arguments against funding the poor, you can say that no, trickle down economics totally works, you can say that those in power don't understand economics, you can say that people should be taught independence and not to rely on government aid, you can argue that the government shouldn't be in the business of aiding anyone at all. You'll find people who honestly believe all these things and more, but for nearly all of them and for nearly all of us you will find an often unspoken reason as well:

The poor deserve to suffer.

I mean it when I say all of us, yes, even you, even me. You need to admit it, just like you need to admit you're a bit racist and have privilege. Racism and classism are essentially the same thing if you dig down deep enough anyway, but for this discussion consider the people you know. Do you know someone who hasn't worked seriously in forever and indeed doesn't seem too interested in doing so ever again? Does this person spend a ton of time complaining about how poor they are and how no one helps them, then spends the small amount of money they do get on something frivolous? Sure you do, we all do. Perhaps that someone is unfairly maligned by you, maybe they are disabled in one way or another and unable to work, maybe something else is happening that you can't see. Maybe not, it doesn't actually matter because when I gave the description above someone probably came to your mind along with an emotional reaction.

Our economic policy is based on that image, and that reaction. That reaction of "God, they just keep taking. I don't want to be part of it anymore."

It would be a mistake to say I think you are wrong to think how you do. Lord knows there are toxic people at any income level and you may very well know one. The point is that reaction is applied to the poor as a matter of policy and we have all internalized it just a little bit.

When we as a nation speak up for policies that leave the poor behind while giving yet more money to the rich, we do so less because we worship the rich, although that is also true, but more because we don't want to help the undeserving. There are always poor people after all, no matter how much support goes to them it seems, people will always need support, after a certain point shouldn't there be no more poor people? Haven't we helped enough?

Rationally most of us know that is not true, that you can never help "enough", and there is no reason to stop caring for an entire class of people. But the idea speaks to us emotionally and so we look for reasons to support it, and look to ignore reasons on the opposite side.

We have a hard time sustaining kindness as a nation, especially when it is inconvenient in any way. Much easier to sustain cruelty. After all those suffering must deserve it right? Otherwise they wouldn't be suffering, thank god I am not one of them, I don't deserve to suffer like that.

I've had those thoughts before, I won't lie, and I am poor by any financial measure. I imagine you have too, we aren't saints and are results of society just the same.

This I think is in large part why billionaires never fix anything, they could be heroes, literally and figuratively, Elon Musk could become Batman, Jeff Bezos could buy the Amazon and protect it. Any number of the couple thousand or so billionaires in the world could do incalculable good for it and it wouldn't even cost them very much in the end, but they don't, because they in large part think everyone else who isn't on their level isn't worth it, is a scumbag that just keeps taking. And we reward them for it because they reinforce our own viewpoint as we reinforce theirs.

People say being kinds is easy, it's not really, I mean, it's easy once, it's easy to help someone with their bills once, to give a ride once, to give a round of stimulus checks once, the problem is it that people needing kindness don't go away after you've been kind once. They still need it and they'll need it tomorrow too.

But cruelty, well, cruelty is as easy as walking past someone, all you have to do is not look at what you step over. It couldn't be simpler, and if you can convince yourself that whatever you stepped over deserves to be there, well, cruelty is even rewarding, good on you for not wasting effort, time is money and all that. It even gets easier with time! If you've been cruel once then it's much easier to justify being so again. Do it enough and you won't even feel a thing when hundreds of thousands die on the streets, or in nursing homes, hospitals, or classrooms.

But we can't run a government like that, if we do then what is the point? If our policies are based on cruelty, on what is easy, then why does it exist at all? What is there to aspire to or protect about a system designed to predate upon the needy?

It's easy to be cruel, but right now we have to convince ourselves that the people we are cruel to deserve it, wouldn't it be easier to be cruel to something that actually does? We can use the energy saved to be kinder to each other instead.

Protest chat

What a unique time, while we grapple with the idea that every one of our elected officials throughout the political spectrum have agreed that our lives are less important than the stock market, we also get to watch a large part of the country learn what nearly every non white minority needs to know from childhood: That the organizations responsible for our safety are completely uninterested in serving the public, in fact the very idea is antithetical to their real purpose.

There was rumor this week that with the various federal agencies in Portland operating there might be the intention of allowing their agents to go weapons free on the protests, by which I mean using live ammo on protesters. I was dubious about it, currently there is enough support for the protests and the ideas behind them that I thought it was unlikely that orders would come from on high to execute people in the streets, but I watched the livestreams last night anyway just to be sure, mostly I checked to make sure they were on at all, because when the streams go down is when bodies will too.

PPB is being it's usual self, and I was encouraged by the restraint I saw from the feds too. Don't misunderstand me when I say that, I don't mean they were nice or anything, I also don't mean to imply that they should even be in the state in the role they are in, I meant that I saw a very heavy element of coordination on the other side of the fence that was specifically intended to keep their side from escalating. When forces came out of the building they did their usual shit with the CS gas and so on, the crowd did their retaliatory tossing the gas back, insults, laser pointers, and fireworks. But when things got really heavy the officers would pull back inside. I saw a lot of rotation, no officer was kept in the same position on the line for very long, which probably had a number of reasons but one would be that they couldn't start any relationships with people across the line. They got to spend a few minutes at a time getting insulted by one section of the crowd, but where moved before they could get a chance to really deeply hate someone enough to break orders. There was constant communication, no officer was left alone for long, I know they all have radios but there were people coming out and talking to each other in person, using physical contact as well. This is another way to make someone feel like they are not alone surrounded by enemies, which also makes you less likely to start firing into the crowd out of fear.

All of this suggests that at least for now and at least in Portland, the plan isn't for an intentional atrocity.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that is universal though, Portland has the dubious advantage of being extremely white, and the law enforcement massacre of a crowd of white people will play very differently than if they were black or brown. At all costs they need white people to believe they won't be treated like minorities otherwise the illusion will collapse and we'll see that to those in power we are all scum.

I think in general the "best" place for an incident like that would be Portland, if the term has any meaning at all. For just the reasons I described. Any use of force by the government is almost certain to escalate protests all across the country, but killing a bunch of white kids would probably be the best way to get the most people looking up how to make firebombs.

I know there is a lot of discussion in progressive groups about how the lack of minority leadership and representation in Portland protests is hurting, and I don't disagree, but there may be ways to use that as an advantage too, like it or not the image of people clad in military gear surrounded by a sea of enraged people is perceived differently depending on the color of that sea, and a great many people will dismiss the problem entirely if that color is black. When it's white it shifts the narrative a bit.

Changing topics a hair, I hate that every person who defends the protests has to first go through the tiresome process of defining them as peaceful and saying the police, feds, whatever, acted first. Who even gives a shit anymore? Last night the inciting incident that started CS gas was a beach ball landing on the other side of the fence. They'll find an excuse anyway. No one paid attention to the protests until shit started to get broken and people got hurt. No one ever changes things until the protesters decide to get serious and throw tea in the harbor, or blow up mining offices, or any number of other events in even the last hundred years in the USA. Things change when the pockets of people in power start to hurt, so the most powerful tools are to strike, or to break stuff, that hasn't changed.

Week fuck it doesn't even matter

Thank you everyone who wished me a happy birthday, I was going to reply individually but I didn't, then kept putting it off until it was awkward, I do actually appreciate the wishes.

I turned 37 as the pandemic strengthened to an unprecedented level... in the USA. Here in Oregon we have had record numbers of new cases and we are certainly not the only state that is happening in. Our governor has been posting increasingly desperate requests and demands for people to wear masks and properly distance, culminating in a statement saying that this 4th of July weekend and week will pretty much decide if the schools open this year.

Of course, during all this no mention was made of any help for people to distance, the restaurants and bars are still open, as are the beaches and virtually every business. Rent is still piling up, the bills still have to be paid, folks still have to eat, and the unemployment benefit extension will expire in 3 weeks.

Nearly every death and illness from Covid-19 was avoidable and it required failures at every level for it to get like this, first and foremost of course was the White House seemingly intentionally sabotaging any hope of a coordinated federal response in the months leading up to the pandemic, but state and local authorities all bear some measure of responsibility too. No governor and precious few mayors have had the guts to properly lock down their area's for the amount of time and to the extent that it was needed. Even the "good" ones, maybe even especially them. Governors Cuomo, Newsom, and yes, even Kate Brown, have blood on their hands that they knowingly accepted as the price of doing business. They are Democrats, they are theoretically moral and kind individuals, and yet they knew, they knew, that what they were doing was a half measure at best, perhaps they hoped that their citizens would have stepped up and done the right thing, maintained their distancing and adopted safe practices without the force of law behind it. But that was a foolish hope and they should have known better. Even if the spirit was willing, the flesh still has to pay the rent. We point to the failures of Congress and the Senate and watch as they ignore or vote against measures that can directly help save thousands. But we ignore the local governments when they do nothing themselves.

This country is in many ways not a unified entity, every state has many elements of an independent nation of it's own and has certain rights and freedoms because of that. Many of the states have a GDP higher than a lot of countries, but with all that money and power there seems no will to use it. We could, as a state, decide to implement Universal Basic Income and hazard pay provisions until the crisis is past. It would surely cost a lot and be difficult to pass in our own legislatures, but it likely can be done. Yet I have heard nothing, not even a whisper, of those ideas being implemented, instead it is pleas to stay home without the force of law, and railing against the federal government for not doing anything. They aren't and likely won't do anything, our governors have to know this and yet they continue to follow reopening plans in defiance of all logic or rationality.

To be a leader is to make hard choices, I don't believe anyone can run a country, even one as small as Oregon, and not have blood on their hands based on their decisions. But right now they are making the wrong choices, they should be buying time with money, instead they are buying money with lives.

And no one seems to care.

Week 14

Since I stopped working my sleep schedule has been completely fucked, I've seen the sun rise more often than not and I do not care for it. Fortunately I seem to have gotten it under control and have gone a full week going to bed by like 11. I wake up super early now but it's a lot better. I feel old though getting sleepy at 9.

What a fucking couple of weeks. Everything just keeps going, new things just keep happening, it's so hard to keep up on anything. Multnomah County here in Oregon has entered "Phase 1" of reopening despite a strong week of new Covid cases but apparently "The hospitals are well below capacity" and that is the metric for justifying death that we are using now. I can't fucking stand it. I see people all the time ignoring masks, social distancing recommendations, and advice from actual doctors and it drives me crazy, and the thing is, so many of them aren't deluded or assholes, they know they shouldn't be doing it and they just... do it anyway. When confronted they give a sheepish look and just sort of mumble incoherently and change the subject. It drives me crazy, those of us who are able to stay home have a power to entertain ourselves unmatched in human history and yet we apparently can't possibly be happy without going camping, or to the bar, or to get a fucking haircut. How fucking spoiled are we.

I nearly became that which I hate, I've been wanting to visit my friends in Colorado for a while and was hoping to do so in a month or so. I was thinking of driving so I could avoid the airports and also because I like driving. I talked to some friends and we agreed that perhaps I could manage it safely. My wife wasn't super comfortable with it though and since I respect that I agreed to keep an eye on cases and see what happened, then everything started spiking, now 30+ states, including Oregon, are showing large increases in Covid cases, more than we had at the beginning of this ordeal in many cases. And I just can't justify it anymore, I can't be the guy who becomes a disease vector across half a country. Even if there is a 1% chance that happens I can't take that risk. I'll have to settle for our weekly movie nights instead for the time being.

It sucks because I don't really see another time to go traveling coming soon either. Summer is looking horrible, and all the epidemiologists are pretty much in agreement that we'll see another spike in the fall, folks, if we see a spike from what we have now, we are totally fucked. I don't see travel being a thing until early 2021 at best, and honestly maybe not until a real good treatment or vaccine rolls out will travel be a responsible choice.

As this all goes on protests are still happening, fortunately you want to be masked at a protest usually anyway, so I hope that they won't be super-spreader events, we'll start seeing data for that pretty soon I think. We haven't had a ton of news coverage of the protests lately, this is because without carnage there isn't a lot to grab attention, so the major networks are kinda just ignoring things. It's hard to sustain rage and after the initial chaos both sides have calmed down a little. The police are at least trying to hide their excesses somewhat, and the protesters aren't breaking things. I don't think this is a good situation mind, I preferred the breaking things, that is what got people making even the mild changes we have seen over the last month.

The situation is unlikely to remain stable though, just like how we can't control ourselves with the virus, the cops are inherently unable to stop being fucking monsters for very long, so they will do something blatantly egregious soon, assuming we are all desensitized to their bullshit and not paying attention anymore, they will be proven wrong rather quickly. That or they will decide not to press charges against someone who clearly murdered a black person on video and things will blow up again from there, and can I say by the way, that the fact that I don't have to specify I specific obviously murdered black person on video should terrify everyone? We have multiple to choose from in the last two months alone, to say nothing of the spate of "suicides" where black men just happened to hang themselves from trees outside major cities.

Really liking the various reports of cops being whiny little idiots when they discover that the entire public isn't gonna immediately suck their dicks for murdering people though, like the one who decided it was a good idea to post a video of them crying because they had to wait for their food at McDonalds and got scared that the employees would do something to it because they were a cop, or the SWAT team in Florida that quit because a police chief took a knee with protesters, despite it clearly being a pandering stunt. Like, you're gonna quit because we don't thank you for your boot? Don't fucking threaten me with a good time. Fragile fucking babies. Will you die screaming in your own shit like a baby does if we ignore you? One can only hope.

Speaking of fragile screaming babies, glorious leader had a rally the other day and it went beautifully, the following picture sums it up pretty well I think.

The video is better, seek it out if you want to watch a defeated man walk across a lawn for 45 seconds, I won't judge. A lot of commentary has been made about how people online, specifically Kpop fans, screwed up attendance by preregistering for tickets in the hundreds of thousands and just not going. This is all very funny and good, and I respect the hustle, but it ignores a bigger and more important fact: Trump rallies have been super well attended and had tons of overflow for the duration of his political career, and tickets for those rallies pretty much always run out, despite all that getting into them has pretty much always been on a first come first served basis, so the fact that tickets "ran out" shouldn't have prevented him from filling his arena, there is always overflow, they were even counting on their being overflow and scheduled Nigel Farage of all people to do a speech to the anticipated overflow crowd. This never happened, which means those fans didn't show up. In Oklahoma, a state he got 65% of the vote in.

It's the start of the summer and it doesn't really mean much as a singular data point, but outside of hearing that he caught Covid and is choking on his own fluids while on a ventilator it's some of the better news we can get right now. So it's a high enough note to end on.