Photo of a statement from Donald Trump—shameless and unabashed white supremacist and President of the United States—handed out to reporters during a White House press briefing today. Posted to twitter by
Franco
Ordoñez, White House correspondent for NPR.
The irony of training at bases named for those who took up arms against the United States, and for the right to enslave others, is inescapable to anyone paying attention. Now, belatedly, is the moment for us to pay such attention.
It’s about the history. When you build a statue of someone and place it at a center of civic life, it’s not a statement that they existed, or that they did things. Many people have lived and died and done things in between. It’s a statement that they should be honored, revered, held up as an icon around which we should organize our society. That their deeds, and the values they lived by, should be a source of inspiration for us all in the here and now. […] It’s about history, but not in the way people who defend Confederate monuments like to talk about it. These statues are not constructed to communicate history: they tell you little about Columbus, or Nathan Bedford Forrest, except that they were worthy of honor. But they are not. They are the the beneficiaries of false histories, written and rewritten down the decades as much to absolve ourselves as these men.
Anytime we step out in somebody’s name, we’re stepping in everybody’s name. Black people and brown people are very clear that George Floyd happens every day.
Abené Clayton, who reports for the Guardian’s Guns and Lies in America project
One of my little cousins said, “I don’t know what we’re gonna do now. ’Cause she’s the one who made sure everybody was together.” I’m like, “I don’t either.” Her friends call every single day and say, “Mom how’re you doing?” So many people are heartbroken. We’re not ready to even try to live.
Tamika Palmer, mother of Breonna Taylor, who would have celebrated her 27th birthday today, in an interview with New York Magazine / The Cut .
Breonna
was killed by police as she slept on March 13. Her murderers have not been charged or arrested.
You can contact special prosecutor Daniel Cameron and demand action with full transparency and accountability at attorney.general@ag.ky.gov. You can find updates and additional information at www.justiceforbreonna.org.
George is looking down right now and saying ‘this is a great thing happening for our country.’ It’s great day for him, a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality. It’s really what our Constitution requires and what our country is about.
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.
Handsome wins the day.
Patrick O’Brian, in Master and Commander, 1969.
My first reading was in 1970. Re-reading it now from quarantine island is like finding a long lost friend. Whatever virtues the 2003 film possessed—based on an amalgamation of several of O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin stories—they can’t compare to the pleasures of O’Brian’s engaging storytelling and nimble prose. His knowledge of the age of sail and sailing is colossal, prodigious, and the book is hard to put down. I recommend it.
Dithyramb 