“A white blank page/And a swelling rage, rage/You did not think/when you sent me to the brink, to the brink”

I should be doing literally anything but huddled up with my laptop, reeling from what the latest doomscrolling has dumped upon us. The worst thing is not that ICE shot another protester, tragic and infuriating and wrong as it is for that man and his family and his community and all of us; the swirling anger and rage and dissolution of our tattered Constitution and how so very many people are taking the line of “play stupid games, win stupid prizes”. A stupid prize shouldn’t be extrajudicial killings! Never should this be ok! It hasn’t been okay for so frighteningly long, to whoever it happened to. I refuse to get pulled into the weeds and useless, heartbreaking hairsplitting on this latest government goon killing and cover up, because ultimately the details matter little. They don’t really matter to his family and friends and community, they don’t matter to the hatred filled men who killed him, and they don’t matter to those currently “in charge” of our government who are so fucking quick to blame this man for his own murder.

What matters, in the end, was every single bit of this was utterly, completely preventable. If ICE hadn’t been militarized and currently attacking an entire city of civilians, if immigration wasn’t treated as an Evil with a capital E, if the Constitution actually mattered to the right people, especially that bit about “we the people”, Renee Good and Alex Pretti and on back past George Floyd and Rodney King and Matthew Shepard and the kids in Uvalde back through Columbine would still be alive. Every step, every decision and court case and policy choice and politician elected and those not persecuted or held accountable has led us directly here, watching the greatest experiment in democracy shred itself in real time, in fast forward.

Laws don’t protect people at the end of the day, and a whole new segment of the population is discovering that right now. I’ve known both that some laws are unjust and that I could be hurt despite them since a young age. I still remember standing on the courthouse steps as my lesbian parents got married the moment it was legal (through a weird loophole, a county declaration that was annulled mere weeks later) and watching how angry the protesters across the street got watching grown ass adults declare their love and connections to each other…and feeling how very fragile the “protection” of the cops were. Even then, I knew what had happened to Matthew Shephard, and how that could happen to my own parents with just a twist of circumstances. Half of my lineage could have been burned at the stake in an earlier time.

What can be done to one human and justified and explained away can be done, in broad daylight, to anyone, with no accountability and no stopping it and outright cheering from a certain section of people. No law ever stopped a human being from hurting another person. No law stopped slavery, in fact so many laws were written and brutally enforced to keep it afloat, and the Jim Crow laws just cropped up to replace them. Religion never stopped anyone either; more death has come under the guise and with the full throated support of religion than just about anything else.

I don’t see much of a way out of the current unraveling that doesn’t end in more bloodshed and destabilization and upheaval. All the moderates have been weeded out or pushed aside, and with the current Swiss cheese brained President and his Cabinet chock full of the worst humans pulled from the muck busy removing every single guardrail against despotism and fascism that have been painstakingly erected over 250 years of this American Experiment we have nothing to stop this mess from getting worse.

For every person I know who can clearly see how dangerous the latest crop of government approved killings and kidnappings are (and everything going on out of sight in the camps), there’s a counterpart with every excuse and strawman argument in the book supporting it all. There are just too many people who would rather hurt any number of other humans for what they feel is right and comfortable for themselves, whatever stripe that is. Too many who can’t view another human as a person, whole and entire and entitled to every single right they themselves are, and more that every person should have.

At my son’s first high school band concert a few months ago, the band director had every student in the band stand along the walls of the concert hall, ringing the audience. They played a song, and we were all surrounded by the music, and able to watch the concentration and joy in our children’s faces. I was crying, because it was beautiful. I couldn’t understand how anyone would want harm to come to any student playing this beautiful music, and how all I wished for was the safety for every single child. Why should the child playing trumpet to my son’s left fear a parent being deported, or the flute player on the other side fear an older sibling shot for the crime of existing in public, or the French Horn player bullied for being trans and banned from playing a sport they might love? Why would we not do our utmost to make decisions that support their right to exist, to thrive and enjoy their lives? Why is the cry “protect the precious children”, but no actions taken to actually do so?

Tonight, I have no answers. I only have the dark knowledge, as always, that life has been worse before, and this wheel will every turn…but how many unnecessary lives will be ground down before we can right it? What else has to break and be torn asunder before we can walk the streets without whistles and first aid kits? What can loosen people’s hold on the worst, most cruel answers to any problem?

“I see the bad moon risin’/I see trouble on the way/I see earthquakes and lightnin’/I see bad times today…

“I know the end is comin’ soon/I fear the rivers overflowin’/I hear the voice of rage and ruin.”