COVID19: Equanimity For Emmett Till?

We've Nattered about crowded environments, transmission, seasonal flu numbers, mortality rates, imagined vs real, the backdraft of draconian measures, predicted  "superspreader" events, pigs in a poke, monetary policy, preexisting conditions, a lack of global leadership, social habits, cultures, mutation... 

second hand stupidity, unknown known's, things that seemingly come out of the blue, a collective tabula rasa, all things The Prisoner and forgetful Memoriams, all of which have "conspired" in many ways to allow a mischievous Jinn out of it's bottle. Unlike others, this was not to infer that COVID19 is much ado about nothing.

A salubrious welcome to those whose tastes in the incendiary lean towards the highly volatile. Please do heed the gravitas in tonight's gallery of the macabre in which WMD's, looting, violence, torture, murder, and intense accelerant's aid the spread of a long going blaze and consequential fallout thereof.  And now picking up where In Memoriam? prophetically left off...

" and perhaps "shoot them dead" methods are necessary for the adolescents who have no clue what a real lockdown means?... As to moving pictures of crowds packed like sardines, considering what has been, still is and could be, bizarre social behavior is understatement. Worth one thousand words?  Not in the least, but for our illustrative purposes perhaps just four..." 

Along those four worded lines... Ahmaud Arbery, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice...  sadly, its a much longer list, add one George Floyd and aftermath.  Moving West...

Alex, I'll take "weather idioms" for $200. Trebek: Standing in the last reflective moment and relative peace of Maple Street USA, you'd experience this idiom of impending turmoil - just before the monsters come.

Accelerationism - more broadly, and usually pejoratively refers to support for the intensification of capitalism in the belief that this will hasten its self destructive tendencies and ultimately lead to its collapse. Case in point...

One video (since pulled) showed the driver of an SUV exit with bullhorn in hand, begging looters to cease, desist and disperse. The driver side door was tagged ACab, which I thought meant this was an off duty Uber or Lyft driver.  No seriously, but why would the driver tag his own vehicle?  Which led us down a most disturbing path... needless to say, there are protest videos galore, passing out and throwing bricks, swinging hammers,  even while holding an umbrella, tagging BLM and toting such after busting up police cars.  Meanwhile, some perspective in EO tweets...

Alex, lets try "in the MM-iddle" for $400. Trebek: Daily Double. I'm gonna Roger Craig this, all in. Trebek: Incendiary or provocative; arousing anger.

04/17 Liberate: Minnesota, Michigan, Virginia and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!  A call to arms inciting anti lock down groups to protest. AR15 armed Boogaloo Bois with their civil war ideology came out of the woodwork to violate lockdown and endanger public health. No arrests were made.

05/28 Floyd post mortem: "when the looting starts, the shooting starts".

05/30 "My administration will stop mob violence... radical left criminals, thugs and others all throughout our country and throughout the world will not be allowed to set communities ablaze... I will not allow angry mobs to dominate."

The latter two notably in stark contrast to 04/17 re: angry mobs. Speaking of which... most videos include BLM members begging for restraint, while groups of well organized black clad individuals with back packs and gas masks perpetrate mayhem. Oddly, upon closer scrutiny most of these individuals are not of color, invoking Gibbs Rule 39 and 39A. Detroit Mayor Duggan noted outsider arrests 65% Friday, 75% Saturday.

"They weren't here in the honor of anyone's memory. Now let me ask you this, think about the person that drove up from Nashville Tennessee, more than 500 miles - how many police departments are within 500 miles of Nashville that have a whole lot more troubled history than anything here? Is the motive really for justice and law enforcement or is it something else?"

Alex, lets try "THE END" for $2000.  Trebek: Of this racist system named for a minstrel routine: The federal civil rights laws of the 1960s.

Chicago Mayor Lightfoot noted "it begins with F and ends with U".  1312 aka ACab like Antifa are extreme left movements involved in this civil unrest. However, white protest infiltrators, agitators, and vandalizing nihilists seem to be at the core of the violence and looting. Indeed, far right extremists, supremacists, and race war accelerationists bear closer scrutiny.  More accelerant... amongst other things we've Nattered about, in Pig in A Poke? (03/10) virulence and getting more than one bargained for; in The Prisoner? (05/19) viral protesters and an constantly embattled "Prisoner" or mankind being his own worst enemy. 

At the end of the day, COVID19 could do substantial damage, and yet it sadly remains a secondary viral infection. How so?  It is more likely that the talking monkey panic and their knee jerk reactions will create more damage than the virus itself ever could. Think of the cost of lives and "Ignorance is a virus", which in this case is ironically apropos.  - Secondary Infection? (03/02)

As if the bipolar left and right variants of accelerationism weren't bad enough... Unconditional accelerationism, a far right white nationalist adaption refers to an acceleration of racial conflict resulting in a white ethnostate. Remember our intro "we see dead people" list?  1992 LA - Rodney King Acquittals; 1968 Chicago MLK Assassination;  1967 Detroit 12th St Blind Pig Bar Raid; 1965 LA-Watts Marquette Frye; 1964 NYC-Harlem James Powell; again, there exists a sickeningly much longer list. 

But does anyone remember the Summer of 55 and the body of Emmett Till? And his murderer's acquittals?  Near Money, it was said that a 14 year old visitor from Chicago, whistled and made verbal - physical advances at a 21 year old married Mississippi white woman.  Several nights later, Emmett was abducted from his relative's home at gun point by two white men. Till's kidnappers severely beat (extensive cranial damage, broken left femur, two broken wrists) and mutilated him before shooting him in the head with a .45, then for good measure fitted a car wheel to sink his body in the Tallahatchie River.  

The open-coffin funeral held by Mamie Till Bradley exposed the world to more than her son Emmett Till's bloated, mutilated body. Her decision focused attention not only on U.S. racism and the barbarism of lynching but also on the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy. - Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans

Black lives for white lies... on her death bed, the woman who claimed Emmett had accosted her admitted she had fabricated the most sensational part of her testimony. Answering Trebek's 3rd query: What is Jim Crow?  Dave Chappelle (whom since the passing of George Carlin, we consider to be the thinking mans comic) has cogently  juxtaposed and relative temporal perspective on the above topic, which is worth every second of the six minutes it takes to listen. Speaking of which...

Three years ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci mentioned that the CDC developed a prototype vaccine for SARS, and placed it in the US national stockpile. Said vaccine is still not field ready. Why? For over four years, we have had a potential SARS vaccine which was put on hold in 2016 due to a lack of funding?  Sound vaguely familiar?  All hands on DECK for Wall St banksters, throwin down Trillions.

Above, all hands on DICK for Main St, throwin down a $1200 Cheeto. Good n Plenty for war and finance, but never enough funding for the public's welfare, health and education.  Message received loud and clear: John Q. is just an ignorant fuck who we don't give a shit about.  At the end of the day, you get what you pay for, there is no vaccine for SARS, MERS, COVID19, nor ignorance. Stupid is as stupid does, and there's no pill for it.  Speaking of which...

Above, MP's assault peaceful protesters and Australian media with rubber bullets and tear gas for an unauthorized promotional propaganda video shoot. Answering Trebek's 2nd query: What is inflammatory?

Meanwhile, while everyone has been looking the other way, COVID19 and death have not taken a holiday. Since the "grand reopening" amidst a May 25th low, deaths spiked with cases hitting a new peak.  The protests and violence of late should serve as an ample accelerant or more sauce for the goose, as in a second wave. Answering Trebek's initial query: What is the calm before the storm?

Coming full circle in our theme and borrowed but apropos title, we think... re: accelerating self destructive tendencies to aid the spread of a fire.  Said blaze is of the five alarm variety, inexcusably far too long in progress, and fueled by man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.  IID's, munitions, bombs, explosions and fallout are not the only tools of conquest.  Much simpler and effective weapons are thoughts, attitudes and biases. Things that are only found in the minds of men, ignorance, hate and prejudices are WMD's which can destroy and kill. Thoughtless fear based scapegoating and racism has a fallout all of its own for society, the children and the yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things are not relics confined to a long time ago in a land far away.  And now this from one of our favs Blind Boy Grunt. 

Be well, more to come in COVID19: Everything's Jim Dandy? Stay tuned, no flippin.

Recommended Reading:
COVID19: Corona Virus Series
Tip O The Hat to Rodman Edward Serling