Fear and Loathing: 2014

It seems if the world is burning once again. The recent grand jury decisions in Ferguson, MO have started a wildfire across the stars and stripes that previously were just a flame in the belly of the people: outrage, disbelief, and injustice of a cop who killed an innocent unarmed young black man in broad daylight. It seems that these trigger finger happy law enforcers are not complacent but ready to jump at any action. Certain citizens in Southern, and Midwestern states, and cities are in complete uproar with the fact that these black fearing and hating white officers go into heavily black neighborhoods to patrol and end up leaving with a full body bag. I don’t know if this is white vs. black, authority vs. citizen, law vs. reason, or guns vs. rationale. It’s likely to be a cacophony of it all in a dizzying chaotic shit storm. Yet it’s not only in the nucleus of the fire but other cities that usually seem to care such as DC, LA, NYC, Oakland, Seattle, places of upstart and political awareness, places in which people are at least attempting to see thru the clutter and bullshit.

However, I am not completely knowledgeable in every facet of every political movement nor am I completely likely to be in the position to truly feel the crumble of these decisions being made. Here I am in my warm apartment in Seattle, completely unaffected by pretty much anything. A white male that has never been questioned or stopped by cops, never felt a fear from the ones who are supposedly in a position to help rather than kill. Listening to the distant sirens through the dripping of the rain, I look out over towards the city with a dissonant view of the real issues that real people are faced with. A detachment to the necessity of looking over my shoulder for not just criminals but the enforcers of crime, a thing that I don’t think I ever will have to consider. I walked to class today and saw groups and masses of people marching to who knows where. I open up twitter on my phone and there are protests in the city, kids walking out of their high schools to march, gatherings going on since 1 am, and this is in a west coast liberal city. In Missouri, however, Ferguson is in flames, people are looting and burning establishments down, as well as many peaceful protests yet most news suppliers are turning their attention to what sells air time, which is of course the violence and continual burning.

At the same time and not even a world away in Mexico, the USA’s southern neighbor, the people are demanding answers of the disappearance of 43 college students. Allegedly the students were offed by the imploding drug cartels within the nation, which are intrinsically connected to the government and officials within the state. 43 lives executed and dumped in shallow mass graves. In the heart of the nation, Mexico City, there are tears of mothers, fathers, and loved ones wanting answers of their lost young family members, and friends. The sickening contrast of me walking safely to campus observing a protest of maybe 100 while an even smaller group of students complaining about their state in just a country away end up being executed in the jungle by soulless savages too concerned with financial dependencies, greed, and power. The dichotomy is something too far from realistic comprehension.

In continuation to the middle east, where many citizens have been questioning and protesting their government’s rule for the past years, or where Islamic Extremists are cutting off the heads of American and Western aid workers, soldiers, and journalists to raise awareness of their own. Headless marketing of their attempt to cleanse their regions of foreign rule and religion. Or in Ukraine where there is unrest in the position of Russia and their constant drive to conquer and rule foreign nations. Then farther to the east in Hong Kong where there has been clashes and protests between the capacities of Chinese communist influence.

I read articles, look at tweets, absorb images, and yet it’s so easy to click out of the window, or flip the page. There is this detachment from the entire world that drives me a little crazy. Of course geographic positions play heavily into this, but after a certain point I come to the realization that it’s all just numbers and statistics, body counts, broken windows and overturned cars, molotov cocktails and the necessity of emotional retaliation.

Perhaps it isn’t the 60s, I don’t know if it’s worse now or then or there is just more exposure to things than anytime before because of the internet boom and technological industrialization. Even so, things are erratic; there are shades of beauty in people, and brilliance in ideas, yet unspeakable horrors, and monstrous crimes occurring every day and moment.

The world is still burning, and will continue to until the unfeasible disconnect between a nation’s doctrines, and lawmakers is relinquished, which will never transpire. History is eating itself again in different manifestations of the same. We say we have changed, evolved, and moved on yet the same devastations are happening since the genesis of the human race; we just have become more efficient at speaking about them for the few weeks or months that we care.