I grew up in a country that told me it was the land of the free. This fictional county was founded on freedoms--freedom of religion, freedom of a whole bunch of things. This country had a constitution that was, for the most part, a beautiful thing to read. And all throughout  school, I was told that I was a free individual, that my freedoms had been fought and died for and paid for in blood. 

Lies--all of it. They were lies in the beginning and they are still lies today--and, yet, that shit was preached to me hour after hour day after day in classroom after classroom. And I believed it as the sheep believes the Shepherd, even if the Shepherd is a wolf in disguise. 

Today, I watched a man being gunned down by the police in Pasco, WA--a few minutes ago, actually. This man was causing some kind of disturbance. He was tossing rocks or something stupid like that. There's a theory floating around that he was mentally disturbed. He hadn't hurt anyone. In front of whomever happened to be there to watch (children included) the police shot this man down like a dog--even after he raised his hands in the universal gesture of absolute surrender. 

It was murder most foul that the police did commit against this man. He ran from them, and they killed him. 

Watching the news here is like being trapped in a nightmare on repeat--a nightmare that will not stop, and, sometimes, I can't believe this is my life, or life in general. Trapped here. Subject to this. 

The police are killing people--putting them down like animals--and there are those who would still defend them, that find some reason in all this madness. And I just can't. I have, you see, a big flaw in my character. I think that all people are people equally. I can't justify, in my mind, the murder of a person for superficial reasons.  Comments on this particular shooting run the gamut of people trying to reason out this unthinkable crime into something that they can deal with mentally and emotionally. They put distance between themselves and the victim for all sorts of reasons. 

And I am left wondering how they can do that. 

How they can watch him be riddled with bullets like that, and die like that, and feel ... nothing. 

My thoughts aren't as naive as they may seem. I study history for sport and understanding. I understand that history has a tendency to repeat, and I understand that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. 

I understand, truly, how the people watching justify themselves, what mechanisms they use and why those convenient mechanisms are there deep within them. There is a lack of humanity in it all thought that repeats itself like an ugly song throughout history--again and again and again. 

I watched a murder today by those who are paid to protect us. I watched the callous extinguishing of another life by the guardians of this society. I felt that shit deep down inside and it actually made me a little sick--but I couldn't move, couldn't turn it off, and saw it through to the very end of the short little video. 

And life will go on like it didn't happen. People will stare at Kim Kardasian's ass, they will work their full time jobs for their full time masters, they will continue to be the same way they always are and always have been. Nothing I say here will matter at all, and I'm not really saying it to make any kind of difference. I'm writing here to take that weird queasy feeling out of my stomach--because writing things always makes me feel a little better about whatever's going on. 

But, every once in a while, someone asks me about my tendency toward isolation. A woman who lives across the street from me said that "You are a very private person" and she wanted to know how I can do that -- be this way. 

I wanted to know why she bothered to notice, ya know?

The truth is:

I do not respect stupidity.

I am subject to stupidity on a daily basis in more way that I can ever write down here. I walk around looking like shit on purpose most of the time--and I catch the odd stares and disapproval for my baggy pants and gym-fucking-shoes--relatively cheap ones at that cause I'll be damned if I spend three hundred dollars on a pair of fuckin' kicks. I walk like a thug, talk like a thug when I feel like it and am a thug every mother fucking day of my mother fucking life and I do it on purpose -- not because I want to be hurt or die and certainly not because I have some point to make -- but because I just don't care anymore, ultimately. 

In the end, I will wink out like a match in the wind, and this shit will keep keeping on like it's been keeping on. 

There's hope for the future. *rollz eyes*

One day, there may be a world where a man gets shot down in the street and people demand retribution for the senseless life taken. One day, one man may not feel the burning hot urge to kill another man so casually like its a badge of honor to have 'bagged' another human being. But in the wake of human trophies and gator bait and slavery and human zoos and witch burning and human pillars and human sacrifice -- all condoned by whatever society they were practiced in -- I believe that day is a long time coming.