Yet Another Massacre -- The Uvalde Thing

Nineteen kids and two teachers shot and killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, TX the other day. Just another day in the killing fields of the Good Ol' USofA. The number of injured is overlooked in most of these incidents so I'm not clear about how many were actually shot by the gunman -- who himself was supposedly shot and killed by an LEO marksman after more than an hour -- they now say -- "waiting."

For what?

Well, that's the question, isn't it? 

Massacres have been part and parcel of the (North) American Experience at least since the initiation of European, primarily British, settlement in the 1600s. The practice of massacring the previous residents -- Natives in the case of America -- so as to protect the newcomers seems to have come over from Britain as a sort of cultural marker. It's what they do. They were doing it in Britain and Ireland for hundreds of years before they came to America. Europeans in general seemed quite comfortable with massacres of their enemies -- or really anyone who got in their way. And of course the notorious Black Legend of the Spanish conquests in the New World was full of massacres of the Natives, sometimes simply because they could.

The bloodlust of the newcomers was insane. Is insane.

Because the massacres in this country have never really ceased -- although in most of Europe, Britain and Ireland, they've almost disappeared. The exception right now of course is in the Ukraine, where apparently "Slavs" and "Aryans" are having it out one more time, renewing a conflict from WWII.

Young men seem to be triggered time and again to go on killing sprees, generally of innocents, strangers they don't know going about their ordinary lives in schools, churches, shopping centers and markets, movie theaters and so on. Wherever ordinary people might gather, say at a concert as in Las Vegas a few years ago, some trigger-happy man (almost always a male, almost always white) will go on a shooting spree. 

A shooting spree made easier and more effective by the easy access to military style rifles and tons of ammunition -- access jealously guarded and made ever easier by politicians who seem to find the whole thing -- all the carnage, terror and bloodshed -- little more than a minor inconvenience in their quest for everlasting power over anyone they don't like.

It's so ingrained and the resistance to doing anything to curb it is so rigid that Americans in general are frustrated and bewildered. Angry and yet powerless to do anything about it.

Their lives and those of their children obviously mean nothing to their rulers, regardless of supposed political party. Even when members of the ruling class are targets (which is almost never) nothing is done to curb the killing; in fact, in many cases gun laws are loosened following a massacre on the bogus theory that "good guys with guns" will protect against the next massacre. 

Well, no. They don't.

But that seems to be the point. Proliferate firearms, make it ever easier for those on a quest to kill to do so and let the chips (and blood) fall where they may.

We can say it's a sickness, a mental illness, but that only goes so far. It's a cultural fault. One that isn't really seen as a problem by those who might do something about it.

It's like the Corona virus response. More than a million dead so far -- mostly met with a shrug by the Overclass who, since they are relatively well protected (as they are from mass murder) simply don't think about, and don't care about, what happens to the rest of us.

I've long said that our system of rule is the primary problem. It's a system that resists change for the better because the system itself is presumed to be best. When change comes on behalf of the downtrodden, it may be only after hundreds of years of constant agitation, and it is always beset with efforts to backslide, some of which will be successful.

In other words, it's a constant struggle to be better, a struggle that often fails.

That's built in. It's systemic.

So we'll go through the usual posturing over this massacre; soon enough there will be another, and the ritual of nothing will repeat ad infinitum. Something from outside may change the cycle, but what that will be, who can say.

Illness and Dealing With The System (UPDATED)

I have a Medicare Advantage Plan through Presbyterian Health Care in Albuquerque. Until yesterday, it seemed to be fine. I got care by competent professionals when I needed it, and though the clinic is 35-40 miles away, it's not too inconvenient. Co-pays -- so far -- have been reasonable.

As I've mentioned previously, I'm currently being treated for rheumatoid arthritis and pneumonia. Rheumatoid arthritis can be very painful and debilitating, whereas pneumonia can be lethal, especially for an elder like myownself.

Treatment for RA has consisted of diclofenac twice a day and high-dose prednisone for five days, with a follow up by a rheumatology specialist. That follow up has not happened. I was supposed to receive a call from Rheumatology setting up an appointment, but none came. The prednisone treatment ended April 18, and for the next week or so, the pain I'd previously experienced was more or less controlled. But yesterday, actually the day before, the pain started returning, and it became so bad I could barely stand it. It was at times worse than before I started treatment.

I had been given a five day course of antibiotic treatment for pneumonia, half the time-period of previous treatments. It seemed to control the symptoms, but then not. At all. It did not seem to me that Azithromycin was an effective treatment as I still had a severe cough, chest pain and compression, and difficulty breathing.

So I contacted my primary care physician reporting that I was experiencing returned or persistent symptoms of both RA and pneumonia and requesting advice.

The response I got was... odd. "Were you able to set up an appointment with the Rheumatologist?"

The answer, of course, is No. I replied that I had never received a call from Rheumatology and I had no contact info.

Shortly, I received a text telling me that Rheumatology had called me and left a message for me to call them back to set up an appointment. Apparently I hadn't received the message for some reason. Contact information was provided and I was encouraged to give them a call to set up an appointment.

This I did promptly.

Hm. I spoke to a very nice person who said that in essence there are are no appointments available until November at the earliest. The doctor who I was told to contact is not accepting new patients at all, and the only rheumatologist on staff who is accepting new patients won't have an appointment opening before November. I explained that I'd been informed by my primary care physician that someone had tried to contact me to set up an appointment with the doctor who isn't taking new patients but that I had not gotten the message. "Let me check," she said. A few minutes later, she said there was no record of anyone from rheumatology trying to contact me and no record of an attempt to set an appointment time. Interesting.

I asked if it was possible that someone had tried to contact me but called the wrong number (I get calls periodically from doctors offices and dentists for other people, sometimes because the caller has misdialed) and she that they only have the one number for me, and there is no record of anyone from rheumatology trying to contact me at any time.

I explained that the nurse told me there was, so it was something of a mystery. She said she would look into what happened and get back to me, because it certainly seemed odd to her, too.

I then texted the nurse who had told me that someone had tried to reach me from rheumatology with the information that they have no record of it, and I had checked through my voicemail messages for the last month, and there was no message from rheumatology.

Meanwhile, the pain was becoming excruciating while we've tried to get this resolved. As it happens I have a few prednisone tablets from the first prescription when I was told I was taking them wrong, and I took one last night -- because in a pinch, one tablet will control the pain for about 24 hours. Doctor told me not to take it that way, but I have no other pain relief option when the RA pain comes on the way it has, and as the issue with rheumatology follow up seems to be a mess for the time being, as they try to sort out what happened with my non-appointment, I used what was at hand.

We'll see what happens. At least the pain was controlled overnight, and that is a major relief.

Meanwhile, I still have pneumonia symptoms which I've reported and asked for advice on, but so far, there's been no response to that request. At all.

The system apparently isn't set up to answer two questions in one message or to respond to more than one issue at a time.

I'm learning, I guess. But if I didn't have the prednisone, I would be in serious agony with no relief at all, and the persistence of pneumonia symptoms after treatment ought to be something of a red flag -- but apparently it isn't.

UPDATE: Despite systemic resistance, I was able to set up two appointments to deal with immediate issues. The first, yesterday, followed up on pneumonia symptoms. Turned out my condition was worse -- gee, ya think? -- and I needed and was prescribed a stronger antibiotic along with more prednisone in case the chest pain becomes severe.

The next appointment is Monday for the rheumatioid arthritis. Since there apparently is no rheumatologist who is accepting patients within a reasonable time frame (at least none that I know of), it will be up to me and my primary care physician to find an appropriate treatment for as long as it takes to get in to see a specialist -- which apparently is going to be months.

Prednisone does work. Even, it would appear, in low dose, which I've tried since getting prednisone for chest pain yesterday.

My co-pay for the stronger antibiotic is quite high (close to $100). It may be that the earlier ineffective treatment -- which had a very low co-pay ($4.00 or something like that) was intended to keep my costs reasonable. I don't know. But it didn't work, and at first, the staff at the clinic ignored my repeated requests for relief. Then something happened, perhaps when I called up again yesterday morning, and things changed.

The system may be resistant but apparently it's not entirely non-responsive.

#BlackLivesMatter Propaganda and Testimony

Speaks for itself



I would only add that I am well aware that I benefit from white privilege every single day, as I have my entire life. I have personally witnessed incidents like those described and I have heard testimony from many people who have never had the benefit of white privilege, and I have been strongly affected by what I've witnessed and heard. There are some things that are just wrong, and one of them is targeting/profiling on the sole basis of skin color -- which is what police departments and private security are trained and expected to do. Do not believe their denials. They lie.

I have also witnessed disparate sentencing for exactly the same crime. Black and brown people are sentenced to jail, white people -- who have committed the same crime get probation or community service in lieu of jail.

This is wrong. This has to stop, but most white people don't even know it goes on. They have no idea because it doesn't affect them. They assume that all the black and brown people in jail and prison are there because of all the criminality among those people -- but that's not the way it is. They are in jail or prison because that's the way plea bargaining and sentencing works in this country of injustice: black and brown people are sentenced to jail regardless of what they've done or not done; white people are not. They may not even be charged with crimes they've committed, thus they may never wind up in court to plead out and be sentenced.

It's a royally fucked up system. It is a systemic problem of disparate injustice. It is fundamentally racist, classist and sexist.

Tré Melvin is telling the truth, and it is a hard truth for many white people to grasp or understand -- unless they've seen it for themselves and have the compassion to recognize that racism and injustice  is inherent in the system itself. So many people are invested in this system that it is almost impossible to change, but that was the case with slavery and Jim Crow too.  Yet they were changed... well, incompletely and insufficiently, but they were changed.

As for the killing, I want it to stop.

New Zealand Regime Change Effort Ends In Abject Failure

Oh my.

As I was cycling through some of the "news" channels on the internet today, I found that John Key's party in New Zealand picked up seats in parliament and the Kim Dotcom/Snowden/Greenwald/Assange/[Omidyar] effort to overthrow the government (through elections, of course) was a complete and utter disaster.

In fact, it was such a wipe-out that there are now no Maoris in parliament, though the Dotcom/Snowden/Greenwald/Omidyar effort was apparently focused on increasing Maori participation in government through the now defunct Internet Mana Party.

I really don't know enough about Kiwi politics, but this result is simply an astonishing rejection of whatever the Internet Mana Party with the assistance and funding of Dotcom/Greenwald/Snowden/Assange/[Omidyar] was selling.

What a mess.

Forced Into Poverty

"Wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten, look away, look away..."

For some time -- I'd say since the beginning of this now permanent recession -- I've been prattling about the millions forced into poverty every year by our economic overlords and the government policies which support them. A couple of million every year are forced into poverty, while those at the top make more and more money, often directly from the impoverishment of those below them. It's a cycle, a vicious cycle that once started is very hard to stop barring intervention, but those who might have intervened in the past -- such as the government -- are the ones enabling and supporting the current state of affairs leading to such high levels of impoverishment. So there's no help there.

There are consequences, however, from these continual rounds of deliberate impoverishment, one of them being that there are many municipalities that farm the poor for revenue. They attract them and farm them and keep them poor and scrambling because it is so very profitable for them to do so.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't link to a Radley Balko article. For cause. When Balko was at Reason, he tended to be hyperbolic and he routinely dissembled. It was the culture there, and he was the Editor. He outright lied about competitors in the field. Since moving into the mainstream, he's apparently changed some of his evil ways, but I am still leery and skeptical of what he writes and says, just as I would be of Michael Gordon, Judith Miller, and Charles Krauthammer, all of whom have proved themselves over and over again to be marketeers of deadly falsehood.

With that caveat, Balko has an extensive examination in the WaPo of how the poor -- and mostly Negro -- residents of St. Louis County are farmed (he doesn't use the term) by the multiplicity of municipalities for revenue, and how these activities help maintain residents in poverty through fees, fines and forfeitures.

For those who aren't familiar with the practices that are so commonplace in St. Louis County and are not unknown elsewhere, it's a good introduction. For those who are familiar, it's a detailed examination of how the system works to fund the often corrupt municipalities in St. Louis County and elsewhere at the expense of those least able to pay. It's a nightmare for those caught up in it, and a treadmill off which it is almost impossible to get.

By design.

I have referred to the practice as "Negro Farming" -- a term I probably picked up during the Civil Rights era from some radical or other. Apparently the term is offensive to some delicate liberals and libertarians because it implies that "Negroes" are commodities. Well. That's the point. In a plantation culture, such as exists in large parts of the South, and in the ostensibly Midwestern (but actually quite Southern) city and county of St. Louis, farming cash crops is fundamental, whether the crops are cotton or tobacco or... Negroes. If plantation owners can't buy and sell their Negroes any more because of the interference of the (illegitimate) Federal Government, the plantation owners are going to find other ways to make their Negroes pay for the plantation. Sharecropping was one way. "Negro farming" by municipalities is another, one that may more lucrative all things considered.

What it means is that Negroes are attracted to a community that's experiencing white flight. In the St. Louis region, the initial wave of Negro residents into a neighborhood being abandoned by whites is typically solid middle class, but soon enough poor Negroes are attracted as well, often housed in Section 8 apartments. The first wave will own their houses, but the poor Negroes will rent using Section 8 vouchers which provide the mostly white landlords with a steady stream of rental income that they might not otherwise be able to get. The tenants tend to be transient, however, as economic hardship is imposed on them to a more or less significant degree by the extortions they are forced to pay via fees, fines, and forfeitures, starting often enough with their first traffic ticket for a broken tail light or lack of insurance.

The cycle begins. The victim often cannot pay and does not appear in court (which may only be in session once every two weeks). Bench warrants are issued. The victim will be apprehended at some point and be jailed, fined, and otherwise exploited. Some arrangement for payment will be made, some payments will be made, and then the cycle begins again, over and over and over again, in an endless round that the victim cannot get off of. He or she will be endlessly cited, fined, jailed, extorted, and so on without let up for so long as he or she remains in the St. Louis metropolitan region. If he or she manages to leave, the warrants that piled up in St. Louis will hang like a sword of Damocles over their heads forever.

It's a vicious cycle that municipalities depend on for a serious percentage of their revenue. It's not confined to St. Louis or the South, either.

Most Americans have no idea that it goes on, sometimes even when they are caught up in it.

The system forces people into poverty and keeps them in poverty. It does what it is designed to do.

Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown in the context of that system in Ferguson, Missouri. I understand that prior to the killing of Michael Brown, there hadn't been a homicide/murder in Ferguson for many years. This in a supposedly gang-riven and violent community of savages. No such thing was apparently the case, but resentment at the constant extortion and exploitation of the residents by the police was and is a hot button issue.

And I would say that as more and more Americans are forced into poverty they cannot get out of, the practices of the plantation owner communities of St. Louis County will spread and become standardized. Impoverishment and exploitation of the poor is already what many millions of Americans face every day. It is becoming the reality for many more. We've seen something of how it works in Ferguson and much of the rest of St. Louis County. But we shouldn't assume those patterns aren't commonplace elsewhere and aren't bound to spread far and wide.
 
The future is nigh.

"Look away, look away, look away Dixieland..."