The Storm Next Time

As much as I’d love to just goof on this shit, we need to start thinking seriously about 2024. I think it’s gonna take way more than a coordinated shadow campaign to get us through the next presidential election. The GOP has made it clear that it won’t accept another loss, results be damned, although that insistence comes from the base, not the politicians. If Republican Congressmembers could just sit on their asses and still get reelected, I’m sure they would.

But they’ve wound up their supporters into such a tizzy that they no longer have that luxury. It’s all the same to the elected officials, as long as their corporate paymasters get a good return on their investment (and the officials get their kickbacks, I mean, “donations and cushy corporate jobs after they retire from politics”). The barbarians at the gates might actually lynch some Congressmembers next time, but I’m guessing the Captains of Industry would see those as acceptable losses. After all, there’s money to be made, by God!

Whether they nominate Trump, DeSantis or someone else, it doesn’t look like the Republicans are gonna accept another 4 years without control of the White House. After the hissy-fit they threw last time, I really don’t see them walking off into the sunset, even in handcuffs. The irony is that the Moneyed Elite is perfectly happy with either party. But the inmates have taken over the asylum that is the GOP. The tail is now wagging the elephant.

Of course, this is a rather inverted conception of democracy. In theory, we would want the masses to tell the politicians what to do. But we’re so brainwashed by the elitist version of democracy practiced in the US that, when presented with a populist version, we recoil in horror. Part of that horror is inspired by the evil ideologies espoused by these masses, but some of it arises from a lack of familiarity with the kind of democracy America is supposed to embody.

The midterm elections should be interesting, but I think the real fireworks will come in ’24 when the states are presenting their electoral votes to the House. Regardless of which party’s in control of the House, the GOP-run swing states will be forced to put up or shut up when it comes to “election integrity.” In other words, they’ll have to present Republican electors to Congress regardless of the vote totals in their states, because, if they don’t, their base might just murder them or, even worse, vote them out of office.

Then the question becomes, will Kamala accept fraudulent GOP electors? If we’re to believe the mainstream narrative of Jan. 6^th (and the bill recently passed by the House), the vice president has no power to reject the states’ electors. But I doubt Kamala, or any Democratic veep, would accept such an outcome. Can you imagine the furor on the Right side of the aisle were she to reject the results as presented to her and Congress by the states? I think I can, and it would be deafening. They would surely find it a cruel irony after Vice President Pence’s “betrayal” on January 6, 2021.

Alternatively, say the Electoral College goes for Biden or whoever the Democratic nominee turns out to be. If Congress signs off on it (a big “if”), I think it would spark a serious secession movement.  These Republican voters are mad as hell, and they aren’t gonna take it anymore. It’s not totally clear what they’re mad about, but they’re clearly very upset and the routine operation of US politics (as currently constituted) seems inadequate to mollify them.

If only they knew that Biden has continued many Trump Admin policies, even resuming construction of his precious wall on the Mexican border. But it’s not the same, the Right-wing (and mainstream) media insist. The White House went from Republican to Democratic hands; therefore, most government policies must have changed dramatically. It seems to be one of the MSM’s (“mainstream media”) prime directives that they have to ignore the huge tracts of bipartisan consensus on the most important (i.e., economic, military and foreign policy) issues.

Getting back to the ’24 scenarios: say Congress refuses to sign off on the results. Then what? Constitutionally speaking, we’d really be up a creek. The election would go to the House, where each state delegation would get one vote. (Gotta love those Founding Fathers! What democratic-minded geniuses! Excuse me: republic-minded geniuses!) Given the dominance of Republicans in low-population states, this would favor the GOP candidate and likely put them in the White House.

But who will accept that result? The winners obviously will but surely not the losers. Yet again, if the Republicans get the short end of the stick, I believe they’ll call for secession. Don't believe me? The Texas GOP is calling for a referendum on secession next year. Support for the Union is a mile wide and an inch deep. We're counting on a thread-bare social fabric to hold the country together. Nothing is off the table.

Will the Dems stand idly by and let this happen if they’re the losers? I certainly hope not, although I have my doubts. If they have a backbone (an open question), they’ll mount their own secession movement (after many vain attempts to appeal to the Supreme Court, of course). But they’ll have to rid themselves of their fanatical devotion to the Institutions and Norms. It’ll take an unprecedented mass movement to drag the Dems kicking and screaming into the post-American future, but I think it can be done. We’ll just have to snap them out of their Norman Rockwell daydream.

None of these is a pleasant scenario, but they seem the most likely outcomes of the next presidential election. Of course, the Powers That Be aren’t going to just sit on their duffs and let the Union be dissolved. Oh, no! Far from it! There’s much too much money at stake to allow the American Empire to die. It’ll put all those overseas military bases in danger of closure, not to mention all those “free trade” agreements justifying the expropriation and exploitation of Third World wealth and labor. (I don’t know why I put those two things in the same sentence! Can you figure it out?)

The Power Elite’s first move will be an MSM propaganda campaign the likes of which we’ve never seen before. It will be funneled through the usual outlets, e.g., Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow and whichever nobodies are hosting the networks’ nightly news shows these days. They will assure us at all hours of the day and night that our way of life is in peril, that taking the path of secession is tantamount to jumping off a cliff.

There’ll be plenty of Civil War comparisons made, including parallels between latter-day secessionists and their historical precursors, i.e., slaveowners, although I’m guessing that will be deployed most often against the Left. The Captains of Industry will be loath to offend their traditional allies on the Right.

I’m really looking forward to seeing where all those Right-wing grifters come down on this issue. The people who sign (most of their) checks will require them to toe the pro-Union line, but that side will have very little support from their fans. Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire will have to be pro-Union, no matter how devastating it is to their popularity. They have no other significant sources of revenue beyond Big Daddy Fossil Fuels.

But the rest will have a tough decision to make: either lose their sugar daddies or lose their audience. I can imagine Steven Crowder doing a lovely little tap dance around the issue, trying to assure his viewers that he’s still pro-“Mom, apple pie and baseball” while tepidly pledging fealty to the “pedophiles” in DC.

Alex Jones doesn’t have to worry about that, of course. He’s got his audience pretty much in the palm of his hand. He’ll be free to advocate any insane position he wants. He’ll probably lobby to have Austin declared a Free City in the Republic of Texas or the Neutral Zone or Narnia or wherever he thinks he is by then.

Take it from me, though, the Powers That Be will be super-pissed off about secession. They might even try another Business Plot. Most Americans are blissfully ignorant of this little episode, but in the 1930’s a bunch of business leaders tried to get a retired general, Smedley Butler, to overthrow FDR. Lucky for us, Gen. Butler had more of a conscience than your average American general and tattled to Congress about it. (No surprise here: Even though they found compelling evidence for the conspiracy, Congress did nothing. Because who wants to keep a bunch of rich guys from just havin’ a good time?)

If we can withstand all the sturm und drang that will accompany the end of the USA, I think we can actually come out the better for it. I am an anti-imperial socialist, after all, so I have no interest in preserving Capitalism or the Empire. In my opinion, the dissolution of the Union would go a long way toward ending the latter of those things, and maybe even the former. But I would like to avoid a Civil War. To that end, in my next essay I’ll offer some helpful hints to save America. Stay tuned!

Fumbling Towards Fascism

In the days following the January 6th Coup or the Insurrection or the Whatever-The-Fuck-You-Wanna-Call-It, I was listening to any Leftist podcast I could get my hands on. I was trying to find a satisfying take on the Storming of the Capitol/Capitol Coup/Riot/Whatever. I was mad and kinda scared and looking for some guidance on how to feel and what to do.

Chapo Trap House, my go-to Leftist podcast (and favorite podcast overall), left me cold with their takes. They persisted in mocking people for freaking out about it, which they really seem to revel in. I mean, yes, they’re right that the Capitol Stormers (I kinda like calling ‘em that cuz it sounds like a cool name for a sports team.) were oafish buffoons who weren’t gonna take over shit, and this isn’t Fascism… yet.

Which reminds me: Hey, MSM (Mainstream Media)! Stop calling them “insurrectionists”! You’re making them sound a lot cooler than they are. I guess it was an insurrection, but the MSM are so fucking oblivious. They really think treating these people like an actual threat to overthrow the government is gonna make the rest of us think less of them.

Don’t get me wrong. The Capitol Stormers were a bunch of fucking idiots who did more harm to their cause than good. They were people who thought Donald Trump actually cares about them and has been fighting for them. Anyone who thinks Trump cares about them is an utter moron, politically speaking.

On the other hand, the MSM (like the rest of us) have to pull off a delicate balancing act. If you treat the Capitol Stormers as a genuine threat to democracy, you risk inflating their power. They’re probably taking some pride in the scare they gave the Establishment. The fact that the talking heads on TV seemed to be shaking in their boots surely gave the Stormers a giddy thrill. This could also give people the impression that the Stormers were effective and are worth supporting.

If you dismiss this mob as a bunch of fucking morons, you run the risk of not taking them seriously enough. Dismissing them could lead to more anger at being ignored by the Powers That Be. This could also lead to ignoring the threat they pose if they continue to grow in strength. It could also make them a cause celebre, since there are a lot of people who already hate the MSM (myself included) and will gravitate to anyone the MSM denounce.

But at what point can we take this shit seriously? When exactly should we be afraid? How far down the road to Fascism do we need to be?

I think I was awaiting marching orders from Chapo. I wanted their permission to hit the streets and start the Revolution. You could say I’m in a similar headspace as the Capitol Stormers. I share their misery and desperation. Granted, the mob wasn’t exactly chockful of working stiffs. There were a lot of rich folks in there, small business owners and the like.

They may be well-off compared to most of the country, but they’re certainly feeling the squeeze with the pandemic and worried about losing their position and being “proletarianized,” becoming workers like the rest of us. (Full Disclosure: These are takes I stole from the aforementioned Leftist podcasts.) The last thing the “small business tyrants” want is to go from being the ones giving the orders to the ones taking them. That prospect must scare the shit out of them, the idea that they could become subject to someone else like them, that they could be at the whim of someone with the same predilections.

But, if you know history (or listen to Chapo), you know that the petit bourgeoisie are usually the driving force behind Fascist movements. They have a vested interest in maintaining the current economic system, which means crushing the Left and any labor movements. The US government, police, military and MSM have spent decades crushing the Left and organized labor, thereby helping to lay the groundwork for Fascism.

Fascism arises in the absence of an effective response to the needs of the majority, what we in the US have called “gridlock” for almost 30 years now. Just as the Weimar Republic was either incapable of or unwilling to relieve the suffering of most Germans, so are the Democrats and Republicans either incapable of or unwilling to relieve the suffering of most Americans. Only policies that address our widespread economic precarity will take us off the road to Fascism.

Cracking down on “disinformation” and “extremism” (as defined by the Establishment) will lead to a further narrowing of acceptable political discourse. Remember: This is the same Establishment that believed Iraq had WMD and the only way to eliminate that threat was war. These people aren’t your friends. Even if they’re condemning FOX News, Newsmax and OAN (One America News) right now, that doesn’t mean they’re on your side, Libs.

The corporate elite still has a stranglehold on political power and refuses to even loosen its grip. As we saw in 1930’s Germany, they would sooner bring the whole thing crashing down on their heads than let go of the Levers of Power. Let’s hope we can steer off this course before they get their death wish.

The Opposite of a Honeymoon

 

Can't we just revel in Trump's defeat for a while? I'm not ready to start thinking about what ghouls Biden has put forth for his cabinet yet. I'm having too much fun watching Trump and his legal team flail around like walruses on a beach. The schadenfreude is off the charts. 

It is so delicious to see Trump turned into a lame duck by the democratic process. His grip on power is slipping away, and I'm really enjoying it. Whatever the opposite of a honeymoon is, that's what I'm feeling about Trump right now. It's the (however paltry) joy that follows a divorce. (The Germans must have a word for it.) America has dumped Trump, and the rejection is driving him insane.

I'm just luxuriating in the knowledge that he'll soon be out of the White House and will lose his vise-like grip on the news. I've been thinking that no longer being the Center of the Universe could drive him mad, but he might prefer his new position as kingmaker. He can throw bombs from off-stage, criticize politicians and not have to actually do anything. 

He'll still have a cult of personality and maybe even his own TV channel or online media outlet. The MSM will have to pay him heed because of the legions of people who still (bafflingly) hold him in high regard. 

The wild card is his legal trouble. He might have to face the music, but, considering he's gone so long without paying the piper, why would they throw the book at him now? Did he go too far by becoming president? Is he no longer of any value to his creditors? I don't know. 

Maybe he's become more of a liability than an asset to them. It might serve them politically to wash their hands of him. They could take the credit for finally putting him away. There would be a rich irony (and sweet satisfaction) in seeing the man who sailed to the presidency with chants of "Lock her up!" become the first ex-president to go to prison. (I hope it starts a trend.)

I know I reveled in the Establishment's (i.e., Hillary's) defeat 4 years ago, but the Trump Admin has been so emotionally exhausting that I'm over the moon to see it go. At least now we can get back to the much calmer status quo ante of Leftists getting pissed off at a Democratic president while Liberals remain blissfully ignorant (or in denial) of all his crimes. It'll be just like old times.

Pregame Propaganda

In the not-too-distant future…

On a beautiful fall day, Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts was abuzz with a cacophony of football fans and classic rock blaring over the PA. On the field, the New England Patriots and San Francisco Forty-Niners warmed up for their ensuing game. Eventually, the music faded out, and a voice cut through the crowd noise.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to direct your attention to the Jumbotron. US forces are currently engaged with Al-Qaeda in the city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. To honor America, they will be performing a surgical strike on an Al-Qaeda base.”

The crowd roared its approval. On the Jumbotron was a decimated Middle Eastern city with a firefight going on amidst the ruins. Tanks and other American vehicles advanced down a street under enemy fire. The video then cut to a fighter jet cockpit.

Over the static of his radio, the fighter pilot delivered a message to the assembled throng: “On behalf of the US Air Force, I’d like to dedicate this strike to the people of New England and San Francisco. Good luck to the Patriots and Forty-Niners in today’s game. We’re doing this for you!”

The next shot was an aerial view of Jeddah, soon punctuated by an explosion that shook the camera and the plane it was attached to. A plume of smoke, dust and debris filled the screen as the fans cheered. The view switched back to the fighter jet cockpit.

“Now, are you ready for some football?!”

Fireworks went off around the rim of the stadium as the crowd lost its collective shit. Of course, there were always plenty of “surgical strikes” to show the folks back home. With all the wars going on in the Middle East and elsewhere, the Pentagon could’ve shown live coverage of an attack happening that very moment.

But this one wasn’t live. It was prerecorded, then meticulously edited and audio-mixed to give it the veneer of authenticity and immediacy. The government couldn’t run the risk of showing footage of a bomb accidentally landing on a hospital or an orphanage, a disturbingly frequent occurrence.

Although, honestly, considering how the fans ate it up, they probably would’ve gotten the same reaction with live footage. But there was some danger that the athletes wouldn’t like it and might stage a walkout. Even though they were millionaires, a lot of people seemed to sympathize with them. Why ordinary people found millionaire athletes sympathetic was anyone’s guess.

No, they just couldn’t run the risk. It had been hard enough tamping down the kneeling-for-the-national-anthem controversy. Colin Kaepernick and the other ringleaders were blackballed, but it took a considerably greater effort by the league to keep the virus of non-patriotism contained.

There had been enough of a fallout when President Palin reacted to video of a hospital getting bombed by the US. She did her best Urkel impression: “Did I do that?” It was actually more reminiscent of Bugs Bunny. “Ain’t I a stinker?” her face and body seemed to say.

The mouth-breathers on the Right were sent into raptures of joy, of course. Tucker Carlson appeared to climax on camera as he watched the press conference on a loop. Sean Hannity offered to be her sex slave. Rush Limbaugh spontaneously danced a jig in his studio and finally dropped dead of a heart attack. Whatever he found on the Other Side could not have matched the bliss he was feeling as he expired.

The mainstream media (or “MSM”) denounced the president, and the Libs had their usual hissy fit. Rachel Maddow poured gasoline on herself and struck a match, opening up a huge whole in the MSNBC primetime lineup. There were many who felt she should’ve thought of her bosses before making that decision, but others shamed them for disempowering a woman, and a gay woman at that.

Who cared that their bread was all buttered on the same side? That they all fed from the same trough? That they all accepted the same basic premises about the righteousness and glory of the American Empire? These Republicans kept saying the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet. It was like they didn’t even believe in the loud part anymore. The Democrats at least had the decency to maintain the illusion of a humanitarian foreign policy.

“Urkelgate” provided media fodder for months. The content mills chugged along relentlessly, gobbling up each new outrage and abomination like ambrosia and spitting out venom, bile and puritanical condemnation. Jaleel White held a press conference to denounce the president’s use of his character’s trademark catchphrase. Predictably, the MSM applauded his principled defense of the Norms, those sacred guardrails that would surely save us from this president-gone-wild.

But, unlike Trump, Palin knew how to milk a scandal. She found the media’s wounds, stuck her finger in and just rooted around, driving the press mad with a pain so intense that it verged on pleasure. They were her slaves. They claimed to hate her, but there were still a few Americans left who knew better.

Picking Up the Pieces

 
My last essay was about the protests and looting in Minneapolis, so I wanted to talk about the aftermath this week. After a week of curfews, they finally called them off this weekend. Things have settled down, but I doubt we’ll be going back to the way things used to be.

Friday night (May 29) was the first curfew night, and that’s when shit started to get real (at least for me). I heard a helicopter hovering overhead in the evening and definitely had that feeling of being in a City Under Siege, in some kind of authoritarian dystopia. There was a little gunfire in the distance, but nothing alarming.

On Saturday morning I awoke to a more real sort of reality. I started off with my usual weekend morning regimen of stream-of-consciousness writing for an hour followed by about 20 minutes of meditation. My roommate Kenny and his boyfriend left to help with the clean-up, which sounded like a great idea. I also stole their idea of making banana pancakes.

As I enjoyed my brunch, I went on Facebook and saw my friends’ shock and horror at the previous night’s events. I had no idea it had been that bad. Suddenly, this was no longer a chance to see history up close and personal. This was a real crisis that threatened my life.

I called my parents to let them know I was OK. My mom had emailed that morning, but I didn’t realize the urgency of replying until I saw the news.

Now I really had to go help clean up, in order to preserve my faith in humanity and find some sense of community to combat my anxiety. Mom said they suggested people bring brooms, so I grabbed one with a dustpan and biked down to Lake Street at the Midtown Global Market, near Chicago Ave.

There were already tons of people walking up and down Lake Street with brooms, garbage bags and masks. It was a very heartening sight. There were tables by the Midtown Global Market where people handed out push brooms, garbage bags and other cleaning supplies.

A woman told us we could head to Bloomington Ave or Franklin Ave. I’d come from Franklin, so I stayed on Lake and walked east to Bloomington. We passed a lot of volunteers heading the other way. I wondered if there were too many of us and not enough work.

People were sweeping up broken glass from bus stop shelters and storefronts. I helped a guy move some plywood off the sidewalk. The plywood was for boarding up windows, which was happening on a lot of buildings.

There were already plenty of people working on Bloomington, so I kept going east as did seemingly every one else in my group. I didn’t stop until I got to the Hi-Lake strip mall by Hiawatha. There seemed to be more to do there. Two stores had burned down. I swept up broken glass for a while and gawked at the ruins.

Where there was broken glass, there was usually water from sprinklers. Where there’d been fire, water was a virtual guarantee. This made sweeping up the broken glass more difficult.

There had been a Savers thrift store here that I’d gone to many times since I got my first apartment in Mpls. back in ’03. It closed last year, another puzzling case of thrift store attrition. The Little Caesar’s, Aldi and a liquor store remained.

I continued on to the light rail station next door, where all the windows had been knocked out. A legion of people was already sweeping up the glass. Most of them were White. I wondered how many had ever used that station. Maybe all of them, maybe none of them.

Like the Minnehaha Mall on the other side of Hiawatha, Hi-Lake was another strip mall I didn’t feel comfortable in. It had the same sense of poverty and despair I mentioned in my last post. Combine that with a latent hostility and you can understand how I felt going there. But it was the cheap thrift store (not the “vintage” kind of thrift store) closest to Uptown, so I had to get over my discomfort.

Then I walked under the Hiawatha overpass. A few people were sweeping up glass. I picked up a few shards, but there wasn’t much left. Normally, there would’ve been houseless people (mostly Native or Black) sitting under the bridge or panhandling to the cars at the stoplight. Now it was mostly White folks like me with masks and brooms.

I kept moving past Hiawatha to the epicenter of the uprising, the area around the Third Precinct. It looked much different from Thursday. There were a ton of people at the Minnehaha Mall cleaning up outside of Target, Cub and the other stores. (I didn’t even know it was called the Minnehaha Mall until this day, when I took a picture of the graffiti on the mall sign.)

I walked past Target and a few more storefronts before stopping in front of a Minnesota Transitions School (MTS) location. MTS is a charter high school. It seems to cater to kids who don’t function well in traditional schools. I know it mainly from its seemingly improbable (albeit coming in Class A, the smallest class) state championship in boys’ basketball in 2010.

The graffiti on Target was painted over.

I was just standing there looking through the empty window frame at a guy sweeping up a pool of water and broken glass. He asked if I wanted to help. That’s all I’d been waiting for, so I stepped through the window to help him.

I shouldn’t have needed that kind of encouragement, but such is my personality. Even in the midst of this outpouring of goodwill and generosity, I was still reluctant to speak up. Of course, the mask didn’t help either. It feels like an obstacle to being heard. It obscures the source of your words. But maybe that’s just an excuse.

A petite, young woman and I collaborated on sweeping up inside, switching roles as the sweeper and dustpan or bag holder. I asked her if she had any connection to MTS. She said no, she just lived nearby.

A guy came along and asked us to get out of the building. He didn’t want us to get hurt. We obliged and swept up glass on the sidewalk.

Another woman asked me where I live. I told her. She said she’d just helped paint a mural at a brewpub in Nordeast (a local nickname for Northeast Mpls.). It was kind of a weird non-sequitur, but I didn’t mind. It was nice how she skipped ahead in the conversation instead of just telling me where she lived.

She seemed to be there with her husband and another couple. They had some tattoos and looked like middle-aged hipsters, so I felt right at home.

A man of East Asian descent came over and asked me to help him carry what looked like about a 6-foot-long light pole. He gave me the heavy base end, which was OK, but it was a bit awkward trying to keep up with his pace. I managed to follow him to the dumpster without tripping, and we threw it in. He said it had been used to smash windows. He seemed to be a proprietor of one of the stores.

Some people had come around with water bottles, one of which I had accepted, so now I had to pee. I really wanted to bid adieu to my fellow hipsters, but I chickened out. I remembered seeing a porta-potty by the light rail station, so I walked back there. I was afraid there’d be a long line, but as soon as the current occupant came out it was free.

Then I went to the Cub Foods, which had been my primary grocery store. I felt no compunction to help clean up Target. They’re a huge transnational corporation. They’ll be fine. But I did feel the need to help Cub out, since I’d depended on it so much.

There was a bucket brigade line of people leading out of the entrance. They were passing food out of the store and setting it on shelves that had been set up on the sidewalk. There were even price signs hanging over some items, but I didn’t see anyone ringing up customers. They were just giving the food away. It was essentially a more orderly version of the looting I’d seen 2 days before. People loaded up on groceries and took them to their cars in the parking lot.

At the exit, a mass of people was raking through the river of water streaming out of the store. There was garbage mixed in with the water, packaging and food that had been turned into pulp by the sprinklers. I joined in this project with my broom and dustpan. A woman offered me her push broom, which I took and set down my broom and dustpan on the storefront.

The woman was there with her daughter, who might’ve been about 10. The girl was quite industrious, as was a boy a little younger than her. It was really cute to see them busily sweeping the garbage downstream or into someone’s waiting dustpan. For some reason, people kept giving the boy pennies. He must’ve asked for them.

I got frustrated, because I was not on the same page as the woman who gave me the push broom. She was operating a dustpan, but we had different theories about the most effective sweeping and dustpanning techniques. I thought my methods were universal, but apparently they’re not.

It was dumb of me to get frustrated, of course, but I wasn’t willing to just tell her what I wanted her to do with the dustpan. I could’ve nicely let her know what I had in mind, but that would’ve been extremely out-of-character for me. Again, the facemask felt like an obstacle to that. And I didn’t wanna ruin the esprit de corps of the occasion.

One of the hipsters at MTS wondered why no one had turned off the water or power to these buildings, leaving the sprinklers running and live wires hanging in the window of the store next to MTS. Somebody wondered the same thing about Cub. It seemed like an excellent question.

An older woman said the water might make it easier to clean out the store. I questioned that, but I couldn’t think of a good rejoinder. After I got home, of course, I realized that the water was causing the mess, not helping it. (I’ll leave you, dear reader, to make your own parallel between this and the role of the police in our society.)

The woman was from Hugo, the exurb where I’ve spent most of my year-and-a-half at Habitat for Humanity working on a development of 4-plexes (and one 5-plex). I was really touched by her willingness to drive a half-hour from the boonies into the city to help us clean up. I wasn’t expecting that from an exurbanite.

We scooped the garbage into plastic garbage cans with our dustpans or snow shovels. The cans were then hauled off by people with a power jack for pallets, who took them around back, presumably to be dumped into the dumpster.

After doing that for a while, a man shouted and whistled to get our attention. He was standing on the hood of his car and, once everyone was quiet, introduced himself as a vice president of the company that runs this Cub. He said he’d been told there were “a couple people” helping to clean the store, so when he pulled up he cried at the sight of all of us. He said they would do whatever they had to do to reopen the store as soon as possible. He thanked us, and everyone clapped.

It was a heartwarming scene, and I was moved. But I wasn’t satisfied. Returning to the status quo ante isn’t enough. We’re going to need big, structural change (a big, structural Bailey, if you will) if we wanna move forward and right these wrongs. I overheard a young Black man say that we were all helping clean up because we wanted to restore the System. I wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up, but he wasn’t totally wrong, although he overestimates how many of us actually wanna restore the System.

I was there to facilitate change, and I think a lot of others were there for the same reason. Our mere presence was a big change from the norm. I’d never seen that many people in those neighborhoods, and certainly not that many White people. We were there to pick up the pieces, because the authorities had clearly lost control or were no longer willing to maintain it.

We were there to pick up the slack, fill the vacuum left in their absence. As with the largely peaceful looting and protests that occurred there, the fact that the community stepped up to begin the rebuilding won’t soon be forgotten.

A Taste of Anarchy

I wrote this on Thursday and Friday. My perspective has changed radically today, Saturday, as the riots have grown. I'm in a much more sober, scared mood. But I think this is still worth posting as a look into one mindset behind the unrest.

My employer shut down its construction operations Thursday afternoon because of the riots. I was working out in Hugo, a small town well north of St. Paul. I hadn’t been following the news closely, so I only had a vague sense of how extensive the looting and arson were. We took off at 2pm, so I probably got home around 2:30.

I live in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, about a mile from the Third Precinct, the epicenter of the uprising sparked by the murder of George Floyd. Everything seemed tranquil. I tried to catch up with the news at my apartment.

When I saw the reports that looting had spread to St. Paul, I thought anarchy must be engulfing the Twin Cities. The police had secured Maplewood Mall and Rosedale (another mall). It reminded me of The Simpsons episode when Helen Lovejoy keeps crying, “Won’t someone please think of the children?!” Won’t someone please think of the malls?!

My roommate Kenny showed up with his bike in tow. He said he’d been to the Third Precinct and that the scene was crazy. I decided to have a look for myself. My anxiety was piqued, but I thought staying home just thinking about the riots would be worse.

I started by biking to 38th and Chicago. I didn’t even know that was where George Floyd had died. I just knew it was a locus of protest. I crossed Lake Street to get there, which I expected to be a war zone from all the reports I’d seen that day, but it looked normal to me. It was busy, but that’s typical for 4pm on a weekday.

The Midtown Global Market and a warehouse towered overhead. I headed south of Lake, down a residential street. There was a guy just mowing his lawn, as normal as could be. I thought the MSM had seriously exaggerated the threat. I didn’t see the protest until I was 3 blocks away, and I got no sense of menace from it.

There were a few cars parked in the middle of the road in all 4 directions to block off the intersection. Maybe a few hundred people were gathered to listen to a Black woman on a mic with a PA. There were some tables set up on the sidewalk behind her with water bottles and other things I couldn't identify.

The crowd was racially diverse: Whites, Blacks, Latinx, etc. There were some White girls with dyed-pink dreds standing in front of me. Almost everybody had a mask on, which I’ve come to think of as a political signifier as much as a safety measure. I put my mask on when I got there.

It was an open mic, the woman said, so they had other people speak, all of them Black for the half-hour I was there. One lady had us raise our arms, lean back and face the sun (which was at our backs) and then bend over to touch our toes. It was like a sun salutation in yoga. Then we put our right hand on our heart. It was like doing the Pledge of Allegiance except the opposite, because we were trying to get our country to pledge allegiance to us.

Another Black lady exhorted Black people to get their GED and go to college. She wanted them to put down their phone and pick up a book. The one man who spoke had on a shirt with the Wu-Tang Clan “W” that said “Wakanda.” He had us raise our right fist in the air. I joined in for that, but I was wary of letting go of my bike. It’s just some middle-class suburban paranoia, but it’s hard to shake.

I was trying to let down my defenses. But it’s not easy to do that while wearing a mask. It enhances my sense of social distance from others. If they can’t see me at least try to smile, then how can I put them at ease? Somebody told me last year that I have a “mean stare.” I don’t want that to be all people can see of my face. That’s the main reason I don’t always wear a mask in public. The mask also makes me anxious, reminding me of the seriousness of our situation. These aren’t excuses, just explanations.

At 4:40 pm, I moved on, kinda disappointed that I seemed to have missed the excitement. After a few blocks of mask-less biking, I realized that the Third Precinct wasn’t at 38th and Chicago. I looked it up on my phone and discovered it was next to my local Target and Cub Foods, my primary grocery store. I’d planned to check it out anyway, having heard about the looting there.

I got on the Greenway and headed east. The Midtown Greenway is a block north of Lake Street and occupies a former rail line. It’s in a trench dug out for the railroad over a century ago, so you get to bike under bridges in a grassy little valley. It’s very nice. I passed a collection of tents some houseless people were living in. That’s a new development to me. I’ve only seen that this year on the Greenway.

I took a bike and pedestrian bridge over Hiawatha (a highway) to the strip mall where my Target and Cub are located. I couldn’t see anything from the bridge, but that’s where I found all the excitement. That’s what all the hubbub was about.

I came around the back of the mall. There was some graffiti, but nothing serious. When I turned the corner into the parking lot, then I understood what Kenny and the MSM had been talking about. There were people walking toward and past me, some carrying clothes and other wares. 

Slowly, it dawned on me. Oh, wait. These are looters. But they weren’t the evil, greedy people I’d been told about (a label that, ironically, far more accurately applies to the people doing the labeling and trying to maintain the status quo). They were just regular folks, basically the same people I saw shopping at that Target and Cub on a normal day.

They weren’t the scum of the earth. Many of them were smiling, not maniacally, but in a dizzy, giddy glee at this momentary upturning of the System. I felt it too, but it scared me at first. They had violated the sacred code of Private Property. As a middle-class, straight, White, cis-gender male, when push comes to shove, I’ll often cling to the System for protection. To see it overthrown like this was terrifying, dizzying and exhilarating.

I saw the steaming ruins of the Auto Zone across the street from the Target parking lot. It gave the scene the look of a war zone. I wasn’t sure if I’d be safe, if someone would push me off my bike and abscond with it, maybe beat me up. But that didn’t seem to be happening to anyone else, so I kept biking through the parking lot.

There was a line of cars slowly moving toward the Target entrance. I passed through them. A car with teenagers hanging out the windows and whooping it up, hootering and hollering, drove over a median in the lot, but in a surprisingly careful manner. So, yes, there were some hijinks, some unfettered hurly-burly, but not the unrestrained bacchanalia one might expect.

I kept biking to the intersection between the strip mall and the precinct. There was a truck broadcasting a message from a disembodied man. I couldn’t tell if he was on the scene, in the truck or in some remote location. It said something like “Mad Dads” on the side. Many of the hundreds gathered in the intersection were listening.

When I got to the intersection, I put my mask back on. There wasn’t a lot of social distancing going on, but a lot of people were wearing masks. I hope I didn’t get the ‘Rona there. That would suck.

I got off my bike and walked over to the precinct. A crush of people stood vigil opposite a line of silent, motionless police officers. It looked like the cops were in riot gear and had clubs at the ready. The people keeping the police at bay all seemed to be wearing black. I could’ve sworn someone was playing NWA’s “Fuck tha Police.”

The racial mix was just as diverse as at the other protest site. There was a White gutterpunk guy walking around, carrying those little milk cartons they have at schools and offering them to people. There was a table with young women offering free stuff, mainly water. I saw gallon jugs of milk under the table, behind the “Free Stuff” sign. A young woman in the crowd took a picture of the police with her middle finger in the foreground.

The man speaking through the truck said this was our community and we shouldn’t be burning down buildings. That got a round of applause. He encouraged us to help the people picking up litter. The truckman’s words were then accompanied by Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” I saw an orange peel on the street, picked it up and put it in the trash bag held by a Black man in his 20’s or 30’s, thanking him.

I took a picture of the Auto Zone’s smoking remains. There are suspicions that the arsonists might’ve been undercover cops. Given the history of police in this country, it wouldn’t surprise me. They haven’t exactly bathed themselves in glory, especially in recent decades.

Then I biked toward the Cub Foods 2 blocks away. Along the way was another burned-out shell of a building. I think it had been an apartment complex still under construction. I’m not surprised if protesters set that one on fire. I’ve certainly resented how apartment buildings have shot up like weeds in Minneapolis for the last 15 years while rents have shot up almost as fast.

On the berm at the end of the Target parking lot, someone was lying on the ground having an emergency of some kind as people gathered around trying to help them. A woman in a hijab driving a minivan was filming the scene on her phone as she glacially turned through an intersection. Her attention was fixed on her phone and not at all on the road. The weird part was the cars behind her didn’t honk at her to hurry up.

I got to the Cub and took pictures of the graffiti and shattered windows. A young woman said “sorry” for walking in front of my picture. Bemused, I said, “No prob.” There was a group of people near the Cub exit. The entrance was blocked by shopping carts and hastily-posted police tape. The windows were all smashed. A few people were coming out of the store.

The parking lot had some parked cars and people milling about. I biked over to the Target entrance. Cars slowly drove through the lot. It wasn’t the kind of chaos you would expect in a “riot.” (Frankly, I think riots get a bad name. The Clash were pro-riot, as illustrated by their song, “White Riot.” “Riot” doesn’t have to be pejorative. Embrace it!) Someone was playing Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power.”

Honestly, I couldn’t tell if people were actually playing these songs or if I was hallucinating them, because they were all the exact kind of songs I would expect to hear in a riot. (I’m surprised I didn’t imagine someone playing Rage Against the Machine.)

There was a guy in a delivery van who pulled up to the Cub entrance and was taking pictures with his phone. I saw a young woman lazily drive by. She appeared to be smoking marijuana. I think she was just digging the scene. I couldn’t blame her. It was intoxicating, addictive.

The Target façade was covered in graffiti. The inside was dark. People were walking in and out of the entrance. I saw exactly one person run during my half-hour in this free-for-all. Everyone else was moving at a leisurely pace.

I walked up to a window with a group of people standing in front of it. The glass was gone. We were all taking pictures and video as people went in and out the window. A group of 3 White guys in their 20’s came out with some clothes and the top half of a mannequin. A guy outside exclaimed, “You got a mannequin!” The looter responded, “I’m takin’ this baby home!” They were smiling.

 

There was a shallow layer of water on the floor and cellophane-sealed sandwiches strewn about. It was smoky inside for some reason, but there was enough light to see a few people walking around. (I can’t stress this enough: NO ONE WAS RUNNING! So get that looter stereotype out of your heads, my fellow bourgeoisie!)

I walked my bike along the sidewalk with the people leaving Target. A steady stream of folks was still flowing past us, toward the entrance, as well as that line of cars I’d encountered when I first arrived on the scene. The employee entrance was open, around which lay a pool of water and clothes. A guy grabbed a push broom and started sweeping the clothes away (or was it toward?) the door. I have no idea what he was trying to accomplish.

Then I turned the corner and was heading back out the way I came. As if on cue, police sirens sounded in the distance, and that’s when people started running. But there were still smiles all around, even from the guys trying to convince the girls they were with to jump in their car.

I headed back up the bike trail, north on Hiawatha to my apartment. The back of the strip mall was all I could see now. Whatever hasty retreat might’ve been unfolding was out of view. But I’d gotten my fill of anarchy. It gave me a strong feeling of freedom, and I knew that, in time, I’d want more.

The Powers That Be had better hope we don’t develop a taste for this kind of anarchy. In the absence of Law and Order, there was no descent into barbarism that I could see. I’m not saying that situation would’ve lasted forever, but it was a powerful lesson, even for just a half-hour.

It’s also a dangerous lesson, because it teaches people that the rules that are supposed to protect them are actually holding them back. The same System that has protected me has also forced me to collaborate in a ruthless, heartless empire (which is redundant, because all empires are ruthless and heartless). As I (and the empire) get older, the costs of that bargain grow while the benefits shrink.

Before the riots, I spent a lot of time at that strip mall, going to Cub and Target, but I was never comfortable there. There was always a sense of poverty and despair. I sat in the Starbucks in that Target a few times, and the tables were mainly occupied by poor people. Some would be chatting, but most of them would just sit there alone, looking forlorn. My shock isn’t that they finally rose up and destroyed this arrangement (even if only temporarily), but that they waited this long.

My familiarity with the area also gave me a sense of the possibilities of revolution. (That surely also contributed to my sense of disorientation.) Before, it was just my usual grocery store and the nearest Target. Now it’s a scene of civil unrest, where the police have been defeated.

Earlier that day, I’d heard one of our U.S. senators, Tina Smith, condemn the violence on MPR (Minnesota Public Radio). After seeing the riot firsthand, I have no patience with her pleading. She’s done more damage with a single vote (for the CARES Act, for the USMCA, for the take-your-pick-of-bills) than the rest of us could do in a lifetime.

And she sees no problem with exporting violence to other countries. Do you not see the inconsistency, Senator Smith? Do you not understand why we ignore you? Why you don’t have a moral leg to stand on?

The riots are a predictable outcome of a culture that values profit over people. The violence we wage across the globe (for profit and power, not peace) has boomeranged on us. We thought if we fought them over there, we wouldn't have to fight them here. But the war zone was here all along. The only difference is that now the resistance has decided to strike back against the empire in the only language the empire understands: force.