Alright so here’s the thing. I have not one but two degrees in International Affairs. I don’t say this to brag, especially given that I was bartending before my second degree and I am bartending after so when it all comes down to it I am just an over-educated drink-slinger, as many of us are it seems. I say this because considering that I have two degrees in International Affairs you would think that I would be up on the news. On any normal day you would be correct. I like to read the news, I like to listen to the news, I like to talk about the news, I like to laugh about the news, but more than anything else I like to get angry and sad about the news. That is because on any normal day the news is mostly really upsetting. I long ago lost track of how many days I started crying about a third of the way through catching up on the news because goddamnit people are assholes. Really big assholes.
These last few weeks, though, I have been mostly avoiding the news altogether. It’s just like, too much. The other day I woke up to a text from a friend that read “I just watched the beheading” and it’s like, of course you did. You know why? Because the world is totally fucked. The world is so fucked that my friend watched a video that was made available on the internet of an innocent journalist being beheaded in the name of god, or that was the reason given by ISIS by what I can tell. The world is so fucked that the family of this journalist has to go through life knowing that millions of people saw their son beheaded and my friend has to go through life having seen the last gruesome moments of a man’s death documented and uploaded. It’s just…I don’t even have words. I just decided to read an article on the beheading to make sure that I am not making shit up and found this little gem:
“Earlier this year, (Abdel-Majed Abdel) Bary posted on Twitter a photograph of himself holding a severed head with the comment, “Chillin’ with my homie or what’s left of him.” But (Raffaello) Pantucci said that he appeared to have simply picked up and posed with one of many severed heads after a mass beheading by ISIS in the Syrian town of Raqqa. Posing with a severed head is common enough among ISIS fighters, he said, that the Twitter post alone does not point to any connection to Mr. Foley’s later execution.”
Can we just, you know, reflect on this for a second? This dude, a 24-year-old rapper who just moved home to Syria from the UK, simply picked a severed head up off the ground because there were so many of them lying around where he was with the other ISIS guys and then he posed with it. Like, yea, this looks like a good severed fucking head. I think this goddamn severed head I found just sitting in the dirt here will really get my point across. Seriously. What the ever living fuck? It’s like, our 20-somethings take selfies with their dogs and ISIS 20-somethings take selfies with severed heads. I shouldn’t generalize. That’s not nice or smart or any of the things I try to be but like, what. the. FUCK?!
Just as an aside, this is not me mocking or making light of anything. This shit is really serious and really, debilitatingly upsetting. This is just me writing my internal dialogue. This is what utter sadness/confusion/disbelief/anger/disgust looks like when I take out the majority of swear words and throw it on a page. This is the only way that I can express where my brain has been at the last few weeks. It’s been like white noise in there because I just cannot deal with how completely and totally fucked everything is. I am experiencing total shutdown of my capabilities to comprehend what is happening. Shall we continue? Okay.
So, Ferguson. The other day I ran into my friend Ashlie on the train and we were talking about Serious Things which is something we always do. And so we started talking about Ferguson. And I said that I have been having a hard time reading about it, that I had been largely avoiding it, because I just didn’t think I could actually go about my day productively if I started reading about it. And she said one of the most poignant and accurate things she has ever said, and she says a lot of them because she is insanely smart. She said “maybe we shouldn’t be able to go about our day productively.”
That is exactly right. We shouldn’t. What happened in Ferguson was appalling. Mike Brown woke up on Saturday morning, August 9th, thinking he was just going to have a normal day and he ended up dead. For no goddamn reason. And then his body was left for 4 hours in the middle of the street in the middle of the day in front of friends, families, neighbors, and community members while blood flowed out of his head and through the street. Four hours. There is literally no excuse for that. None whatsoever. And then to see images of police officers with assault rifles pointed at protestors? Assault rifles. Tear gas. Riot gear. As a result of Ferguson there has been movement in Washington to address the degree to which local police forces are armed in preparation for a terrorist attack, even though terrorist attacks on US soil are incredibly rare. In response, Republican Representative Peter T. King of New York, who is on both the Intelligence and Homeland Security Committees (oh, great news!), said basically that there was no evidence that giving this sort of heavy weaponry to police officers worsened the situation in Ferguson or elsewhere. He then continued by saying that he disagreed with anyone who might say “that somehow the police are the cause of what’s wrong.”
He disagreed that the police are the cause of what’s wrong. I am a girl in Brooklyn who has been avoiding the news because my brain cannot handle the injustice and the sadness and the hopelessness and the evil that seems to be fucking everywhere. Representative King is a man in Washington with access to information and yet he somehow thinks that the police are not at all the cause of what’s wrong? Who is the cause?! Who is the fucking cause in this case?! Tell me! I am dying to fucking know and understand who the fuck is the cause of a police officer shooting yet another young, unarmed, black man if it isn’t the police officer! And I am dying to know who is the cause of leaving that body on the street for all those hours? And who is the cause of local police forces having military grade weaponry when they don’t get military grade training? And who is the cause of men and women in uniform, fingers on triggers, pointing assault rifles at protestors? Who?! I just cannot fucking handle it.
Cry break.
And then there’s Eric Garner. And the Ebola outbreak. And methane seeping from sea floors all along the east coast. And Ray fucking Rice and the stupid NFL. And INS detainment centers. And Israel. And Gaza. And the Ukraine. You guys it is just too much and I am angry and confused and it doesn’t actually even seem right that it’s beautiful outside.
Why do we keep doing this to each other? It is just so totally fucked.
franklyrebekah 