I have strongly recommended to every governor to deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets. Mayors and governors must establish an overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence has been quelled. If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.
In mythology, the myrmidons were a warrior race that, eventually, came to fight at Troy under the command of Achilles, who sulked in his tent but did not huddle in his bunker. Down through the millennia, the concept of the myrmidon has come to mean a mindless tool of authoritarian terror and destruction. From the start of this awful time, from the moment Derek Chauvin’s knee found George Floyd’s neck, we have seen this evolved concept of the myrmidon rise to angry life, clothed in the color of law and shielded by the badge.
A multiracial group of protestors have taken to the streets across America in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. And yet they are accused of being black people destroying their own communities, just as black people were condemned for Watts in 1965, Chicago and other cities after Dr. Martin Luther King’s murder in 1968, and Los Angeles in 1992. Aside from the horrifying way that white America seems to be more scandalized by the destruction of stores and police stations than the destruction of lives, the insincerity of this newfound concern for black neighborhoods is obvious. It only ever seems to be activated when a black person picks up a brick. Black neighborhoods have been bulldozed and bombed, burned to the ground and made toxic to those who live in them. If you don’t care about that more than you care about a Target, you don’t care at all.
Untitled.
Desert grassland whiptail (Aspidoscelis uniparens), with a bonus close crop. At Fairbank Townsite, San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, Cochise County, Arizona.
Western pygmy-blue butterfly (Brephidium exilis) on cowpen daisy (Verbesina encelioides), on the river loop trail at Fairbank Townsite, Cochise County, Arizona.
This is a tiny butterfly, with a wingspan of only about 15 mm. It would fit comfortably on my thumbnail, with room to roam.
At Fairbank Townsite. The Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, has recently finished exterior preservation of the Fairbank mercantile building.
Today’s trail.
Dithyramb 