Some Theft (Chicago smash and grabs) is worse than others in the Neo-Feudal United States

It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Chapter V

The current freak out over the smash-and-grab thefts at high end retail stores ivo Chicago and out in California highlight the Corporate Media's obsession with a very small segment of thefts in the United States.

Retail theft isn't the biggest loss of money going around but, it's in the open and strikes right at White society's fears and prejudices.  Normie society sees those people getting away with it and get all indignant and righteously aggrieved!

Meanwhile, no one in the Corporate media is thinking ahead.  After the thieves who strike malls in Oak Brook or Northbrook and swipe dozens of Louie Vutton bags; what do they do with them?  No one is selling them at half off on Mag Mile.  No one is setting up hidden shops in their home to sell them to other poor people.  

No, it's part of a sophisticated Organized Crime ring; most likely involving smuggling, drugs, and according to the Illinois Attorney General's Office human trafficking.  The black thieves grabbing the merchandise and running are low-level criminals.  Who's funding their operations?  Who's the "fence" to use an antiquated term?  Where's the merchandise going?

But, the scope of such criminal enterprises are too massive for most people to take in and the difficult task of consuming pages of data and require too much detailed report analysis.  Humans evolved to think in much simpler terms one or more than one.  It's why most old languages have distinct terms for 1or 2 but, required work to come up with greater numbers and often resorted to vague terms beyond counting for really big numbers.

It's why one death is a tragedy and a million is just a statistic.

Of course, besides the sensationalist media coverage o these dramatic grab-n-go thefts is the lack of coverage of theft which impacts a vast number of Americans and dwarfs the money lost from retail theft; i.e. Wage Theft. 

For example, out in California a restauranteur Golden Gate group swindled low-pay Burger King employees out of $2 million in wages from 2016 to 2019.

Wage theft is often invisible to normie society though.  And, of course, bad actors on the right fully endorse a wage slave society with a permanent underclass paid subsistence wages.

Then Covid-19 hit and a large segment of the working class decided working 3 jobs at minimum wage to simply pay the rent and phone bill wasn't worth it anymore.  The Great Resignation struck directly at the US wage slavery system and perpetual corporate bondage.

Now, of course, Faux News and the Corporate Media's job is to advance the rightwing agenda of oppression, intolerance, and adulation of the rich so they've adopted a Blame Biden, freakout over Kamala's cookware, and Inflation fear monger to distract their rightwing drones from the reality of the American economic system; it's designed to afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable.

Will President Joe Biden and the Democrats get the credit they deserve for the help they've passed through the recalcitrant Republican opposition?  I don't know.  I know conservative bad actors consistently try to blame everything on the Democrats and the Corporate Media eagerly regurgitate rightwing agitprop, but all I can ask of the President, VP, Speaker, and Democrats in the Senate and House is they try and that they have and continue too. 

Today's School Shooting is brought to you by

For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday.

It's another Tuesday in America.  I'm already well behind on the latest school shooting.  Of course.

The details are more visceral now as one of students sheltering in place captured digital audio and video of the 15 year old(!) shooter telling the students he is a sheriff's deputy and "it's safe to come out."

3 teenage lives were cut short.  8 others wounded and now facing decades of physical and emotional healing.  The shooter taken into custody, of course, because some people are inherently good and just having a bad day and thus aren't shot on sight.  Or "justifiably" killed while resisting arrest.

Gun Humping Extremists have been conducting a massive social experiment: More Guns = Safer Nation.  This is demonstrably untrue.  The United States is awash in guns.  And thus we are beset with deaths and woundings from guns.

There have been other high profile shootings recently as well as little talked about mass killings:

• In a widely-viewed incident in Lubbock, Texas a child custody dispute turned deadly when a little man decided he'd use his big gun to murder a guy.  The responses to this Fox News post calling it self-defense is the whole crux of the rightwing fascination with guns.
• In Fort Wayne, a twenty year old killed his little sister, mother and father and then himself.  His grandmother escaped.  This happened the same day as the Michigan school shooting.
• In Georgia, a domestic dispute ended in 4 deaths including an officer in recruit training.  This happened the same day as the Michigan school shooting.

Gun Nuts want the power to kill at a moment's notice and then claim self-defense.  Conservatives have set up a nice Catch-22 (call it the Rittenhouse-22 if you like) Bring a gun into a fraught or dangerous situation, escalate the incident, then use the escalation as justification for "self-defense".  1) Start a Fight. 2) Kill the guy if he Fights back.  It's basic Might makes Right.  Bring a Gun and say you were in fear of your life and anyone you shoot becomes a "lawful" act.

As a corollary the US has been faced with a large scale Catch-22.  Gun Makers and the NRA have ensured criminals have easy access to firearms and produce more and more everyday.  Flood the United States with weapons and then declare since All the "Bad Guys" have guns only a "Good Guy" with a gun can stop them.  An unstoppable circle. 

Which leads us to public support for stricter gun laws and gun control; the Republican Party is 100% unified against any gun control and when all levels of government are taken into account, Republicans have majority of government.  

Republicans have steadily worked towards making the Gun the Final Arbiter of Law.  When Mad Nazi Cawthorn, Major Traitor Greene, or Lauren Dick Flasher Boebert parade around with guns they are explicitly stating they will use them to settle all disputes.  They don't have to or even try to make any cogent or coherent arguments.  For example:

Famously, Australia enacted strict gun regulations and controls in 1996 after the Port Arthur massacre.  Since then, Zero Mass Shootings...

Meanwhile in the United States, Total killed and wounded by gunfire every year is now approaching 100,000.  The Gun Violence Archive, uses only verified data, therefore it's not subject to the NRA lies and Gun Nut fantasies of guns being used a Million times a year to defend LIFE!

I have always assumed that when you get down to it NRA, gun manufacturers, Republican poseurs and phonies, or ostentatious gun display nuts, really don't believe that more guns, less regulations, and Stand your Ground laws make Americans safer but, do it for the political power, monetary gain and the #OwntheLibs lolz...

But, when you pretend to be something for long enough that's what you are.  In reality, gun nuts don't believe they will ever be on the wrong side of a barrel.  And those killed and wounded by guns?  Well, to get back to The Deserving & The Undeserving they had it coming (for voting for DemocRATs, for being in a gun free zone, for any number of rightwing fantasies about the power of the gun).

Dopesick; Of The Deserving and The Undeserving

'Deserves' got nothing to do with it... Clint Eastwood, Unforgiven (1992)

Earlier this month I saw another opioid overdose.  It's not first, it won't be the last.   

Certainly it is easy to be hard-hearted and cynical but, it's my duty to myself and to society to not allow such feelings towards the daily deaths make me jaded and uncaring.  To not simply shrug and declare they deserve it.

Opioid induced overdoses have supplanted guns and cars as the biggest killers* in America.  According to CDC data, the United States has suffered 841,000 overdose deaths since 1999, 70% of those are opiate related; 50,000 opioid caused deaths in 2019 alone.

The levels of opiate addiction currently plaguing the US is something we've seen as a Nation in very select few times; i.e. after US Wars.  Those wounded in battle also became addicted to pain medication.  At first due to ignorance of narcotics functioning but now, we've decided to make ourselves victims by empowering the Sackler family and their Cartel Purdue Pharma. 

Watching the Netflix series Dopesick, Michael Stuhlbarg portrays Richard Sackler in a blended pastiche of Hannah Ardent's banality of evil and a wispy voiced Don Corleone.  The series also unflinchingly portrays the Sackler family as the immoral drug dealing kingpins they are; oblivious to anything but money and contemptuous of laws and morality.  The series Dopesick is based on Beth Macy's best-selling 2018 book.

Not everyone agrees with the portrayal of the Sackler family being villains every NPR (Nice Polite Republicans) story on the Sackler's takes great pains to repeatedly mention the Sackler family denies wrongdoing and no member of the family has ever been charged with a crime.  But, it does feel the last few years have changed the narrative and all the ostentatious donations to museums and pitiful donations to fight addiction earn them no credit.  If only the American Justice treated the Sackler family as harshly as it does men selling loose cigarettes on the street.  

In 2015, I watched a film called Heroin Cape Cod.  It was an unflinching look at the drug use.  There were no heroics, no glorious reunifications with the family, no arc of redemption.  By 2015 public health officials had catalogued a tripling of overdose deaths since 1999.  In reality it was most likely an undercount of opiate overdose related deaths.  Since then we had the treasonous criminal Trump in the White House who, of course, ignored it and so the deaths are still being ignored by the Republican Party writ large.

For 50 years, Republicans have linked drug use with criminality.  Worse than that Republicans were quite adamant the drug use was a moral failing and in no uncertain terms those who suffer from addiction are undeserving of care or even the barest compassion.  The Sackler's apparently knew this implicitly or explicitly as they spent decades falsely proclaiming the safety of their narcotics and blaming victims of addiction as criminals.  Conservatives have since Nixon been primed to blame addiction on low character, genetic flaws (i.e. black people), or immoral behavior.

Dualistic thinking dominates the right and all facets of conservative ideology.  There are no shades of gray.  There are no subtleties.  There is no subjective reality.  And more to the point, only their interpretation of objective reality exists and it conforms exactly to rightwing beliefs.  Now there are 3+ generations of conservatives who have steadily and increasingly absorbed rightwing propaganda and can not find grace to treat addiction any other way than those people deserve to die.

Incarceration harms January 6th Terrorists: The Deserving and The Undeserving Series

 

Major Traitor Greene and Louie Gohmert visited the criminals held for trial for their unlawful actions on 01/06/21. 

“I’ve never seen human suffering like I witnessed last night.  While some were shown to us in seemingly beneficial programs, others were in tortuous lockdown. I’ll never forget hearing their screams,” Shameless Greene

It seems that incarceration is detrimental to the mental health and well-being of those arrested for actions on the Day of the Insurrection.  Who knew incarceration was so bad?

This has, however, not caused conservatives or elected Republicans to call for an overhaul the U.S. Justice System or for the evaluation of sentencing guidelines or for Judicial review or exoneration for miscarriages of justice or Prison reform.  Except, of course, for the current rightwing hero; the murderer Kyle Rittenhouse.  (Mahablog points out a few of the other current Rightwing Victimhood Complex.)

Of course, everyday Americans are broadly ignorant of this or any of the workings of the US Justice system, so they convince themselves only the bad people, only the truly guilty get themselves caught in the gears and whatever happens is really of their own doing.  And Corporate Media make it easy for them to believe this because they don't report on the daily outrages visited on poor folk or minorities.  And any stories of government overreach or courtroom malfeasance are increasingly framed through the rightwing rubric.  Like the phony claim about the Wisconsin State's Attorney office withholding HD drone footage of Rittenhouse's murders.

You see some people deserve to be ground down under the boot of American Injustice.  A few recent examples of those people are Sandra Bland or Tanya McDowell.  Other people like Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Breona Taylor, and many others don't even get to make it to trial having faced extrajudicial execution at the hands of law enforcement.  This conservative white guy carrying a "Black Crimes Matter" sign outside the courthouse loves to yell the N-Word and fully endorses racist policing.

These are the extreme examples of basic violations of the 4th Amendment for black people; who, like Anjanette Young, also face transgressions of basic decency and gross violations to their liberty routinely.  It is an axiom in the United States that some people (mainly minorities) are a priori guilty of something and naturally bad people whereas white people (as long as the hew to conservative dialectics) are naturally good people who got caught up in something for which they are not to blame or they made a youthful indiscretion.

For instance, you might suffer from "Aflluenza" or have a bright future in front of you.  Then Judges and rightwing media have naught but compassion and stories of redemption for you, as they would not want some trifle like a felony DUI or sexual assault to keep you from getting onto the Supreme Court.

The American Justice System is the leading element of the Fascist remake of the United States.  Unequal laws, combined with unequal application of the laws, coupled with unequal enforcement of those laws, and finally topped with unequal sentences handed down for violations of laws equals White Supremacy and Fascism.

Conservatives' embrace of Fascism is pretty much complete.  They are playing a waiting game until 2022 in which they think they will gain control of the Congress (Both House and Senate) and begin the process of ensconcing oppression, intolerance and adulation of white terrorists into "law".  But, meanwhile the calls for outright violence from conservatives will only grow louder.