[While collecting articles to build a print book, and making corrections, I generally decline to correct the typo on the site as it moves it up to the top spot. But, I misspelled Stormtrooper as Stromtrooper in the subtitle! And, when I thought about just letting it go on the site while I corrected it in the book, I had a vision or Ernst Junger coming after me with an entrenching tool in my dreams...]
I am three pints into the riot and this is a first draft written directly onto the back end before I take me pre-work nap, so please overlook typos.
By 3:30 p.m. five friends and former coworkers had called me to say they had been sent home early from work because of impending riots.
The NEWS will depict this violence as a protest gone out of control. However, as of 11:00 a.m. black female cashiers at the Shoppers supermarket at Mondawmin mall knew through social media that riots were being planned by high school students—an attack from students at one school [Frederick Douglas high School] on the very shopping center their parent's patronized.
I knew this was coming on Thursday when the Department Of Justice announced it was investigating the Baltimore PD. Take heed America, whenever the DOJ announces that it is investigating your local police you will be hit with riots. It is the 'Go' signal.
Once all of this news came in I headed down to the local bar to see if anyone needed a walk home, and then over to John's liquor store to check on him. Hamilton looked like 1980, not a black person in sight. The streets were deserted. Five cop cars flew out of Hamilton to reinforce West Baltimore and John looked at me and said, "Be careful. I am afraid. The police are gone."
I stopped back at the bar for my second beer and the news was on, the police passively defending against the students from one Baltimore high school. Think about that. One high school can press a mid sized city's police department to the brink. Cops were driving in from Neighboring jurisdictions.
I spoke to John, a middle aged gay white man who had his panties twisted over the prospect of picking up his 'friend' from the train station tonight.
Allen was there. His brother's wife was dragged out of her car on Pratt Street on Saturday night and beaten unconscious. She has a serious concussion. The blacks who did it were not arrested or sought as they are unarmed innocent black teens—the DOJ storm troopers who the cops may not harm as they are children albeit 200 pound children. Her attack will not make the news.
Only black lives taken by white men matter to the news.
The news rules us.
The news is our master.
To the news, the only death worthy of honoring is that of a black man killed by a white man.
No other life matters.
No other taker of lives is to be persecuted other than the white man.
You are a slave and it is best to know how your master regards you.
Your master is the news.
If you area black man murdered by a black man you do not matter.
You can either be a zero or a martyr.
There is nothing else for you in the eyes of the news.
You are a slave.
If you are a white man you may be a guilty bystander or a terrible enemy of the news. You have no other possible place.
Darin was there. Darin is a painter who was in a rage over the riots. He said, "This is not about police brutality. This is about fucking up who you can while you can. Just like those five black boys that beat me up last week, because I'm white and the cops don't care!"
Montrose, the black city cop, who is sitting next to him said, "You damn straight! We can't touch those kids. I lay a hand on a middle line backer headed to play college ball I might as well have slapped a baby in the cradle—my ass will be in prison. Look, even the SWAT guys can't touch these people. They are victims. This is your faɡɡot white politicians done this shit. Our hands are tied. The criminal is the hero."
I, however was thrilled. usually, if I want a beer before going to bed in the evening, I have to sit there and watch Bonanza. I just said, "This beats the hell out of Bonanza. I, am entertained."
Montrose looked at me and I said, "Those boys rolling out the toilet paper are going to start a fire. If they find out that bags of potato chips go up like Roman candles its going to be a mess."
Montrose countered, "Shit, those fools is goin' to be eatin' that shit."
The other bar patrons, black and white, looked at me and shook their head. I had Megan call a cab for Mister Al, who is becoming senile. Al is black man who served in Vietnam. He might be senile. But he still knows lack of leadership when he sees it. He patted me on the back and said, "Jimmy, I'm a dinosaur. They will have to lay me to rest in the Smithsonian. But this stuff here, these two hundred police watching fifty young hoppers burn a car, that would not happen in my day. We might not have got along, but we believed in something. There should be an officer out there saying, 'Look left, look right, lock, load—and fire.'"
Although older blacks were bemoaning this turn of events, the younger adults were hiding in doors, and only the youth were rampaging, and many of the cops were white. There was only one color to the rioters—they were all black. They have fulfilled their slave master's bidding, and have shown the nation that:
1. Our negroes are tougher than those Ferguson negroes
2. That police are not organized in a way that facilitates protection of the population, at all [and they cannot, for they are not a military militia, but a police force and policing is all about selective small scale aggression]
3. That soft civilized people are not the protected elite class they think they are, and remain helpless before a mere mob of teens
4. That the Maryland Transit Police suck as bad as the Baltimore City cops say they do, because the BPD only lost one car out of two thousand and the MTA cops lost a car and a van, which is like 10% of their motor pool
5. That, if Americans truly want to be safe from criminals than they must invest in a massive federal police force. This may seem queer. But consider that the teenagers from one high school tied up the entire police force of a mid sized city for going on 4 hours, even after the police receiving warning and reinforcements from other municipalities. Imagine real adult unrest. Imagine thousands. Imagine guns.
I just got a call from an employee inside of the Mondawmin Shoppers, who is trapped along with coworkers, as the timid police use it for a supply depot during their defensive operation.
It is dawn in these United States, Negro Dawn. The federal government that fanned the flames of this race war did not lift a finger to help. They stand ready, however, to step in and take control, so that they can save us from their poster children, which we will be incarcerated for life for defending ourselves against. The janissary hordes of the DOJ are the hip hop generation of innocent unarmed black teens. For six hours now I have heard constant police, fire and ambulance sirens. You too could hear such sirens in your city, unless, you have large minority of Latino immigrants. The only answer to black youth crime so far stumbled upon in this great nation or ours, is to let a bunch of savage Mexicans move into town, organize, and then look the other way while they exterminate black males above the age of 14.
Oh, but that is so mean spirited and nasty.
Then run white rabbit, run.
Since beginning the writing of War Drums in real time, two years ago, as the police turned their backs on those they are sworn to protect and serve and got their asses kicked by those they will someday serve, the largest effect over the intervening two years has been a 90% reduction in the young black working men who take the bus after dark. Whitey holed up in his warrens pretty quickly—with me personally knowing 8 families that have left Baltimore because of the riots. But the hunt continued, the sacred black martyr thugz of Harm City turning back upon their traditional prey, working black men and school boys. The Purge is ongoing and the big winners are Uber, Lift and local cab and sedan companies, to whom the young black men who continue to work in the evening hours in service jobs suited to their dismal public education, now pay over half of their weekly income avoiding the hazards of mass transit.
Another big change is that the gangs of BLM men with gas cans and bats have exchanged their gas cans for cars and their bats for knives and guns and are now hunting deep into the suburbs in pursuit of the ever hopping white rabbits, ranging up to 35 miles to bank a white niցցer on the side walk. This past Monday night I was the only man out of five bus patrons—just me and four frightened black women—where once crowded 20-25 black men of all ages, these women and two of their sisters and the odd Latina. Every major transit stop was empty. Though it was raining the homeless huddled in the woods instead of under the bus shelters. The MTA, our mass transit system, is being amalgamated and rescheduled in June. Publicly this is to address customer service. In reality, it is about the economics of one well-paid black man piloting a vehicle half the size of the Mayflower occupied only by a hospital housekeeper, three Walmart girls and this white pauper, across town while the rest of Baltimore hides.
War Drums: Forty Miles from The Big House
link › jameslafond.blogspot.com
Damn James, please don't go out in a blaze of glory yet with all this rioting going on .
You are one of the few white men that I respect out there that has the brains and guts to respond correctly to what's really going on.
It would be more like a haze of gory I think.
Thanks for the props.
We need more Smart Ass White Boys.
Someone sounds a little cranky?
Yes indeed. I was not yet done my pint of grog and had misplaced my Enfield.
It’s all part of the civil war The Woman is waging against middle class white America, isn’t it? It’s a low intensity, asymmetrical civil war, but a war for control of the country nonetheless. It’s being fought on many fronts: in the courts, in Congress, in the state legislatures, in the county boards, in the city councils, in the government bureaucracies, in the schools, in the work place, on the borders, at the polls, in the news media and in the popular culture, as well as in the streets.
Ostensibly the grievance of the rioters is over the way young black men are being treated by Baltimore police. This is a highly ironic given that Baltimore is a 63.5 % black majority city and is governed by a black mayor and a black majority city council. Therefore, the Baltimore Police Department, in its interaction with young black men, must be assumed to be carrying out the will of the black majority of the city. If it were not, the leadership of the police force would presumably be replaced and policies would be changed, right? So what’s the beef really? Where is the alleged oppression of black people coming from? From other blacks? How could that be? If the police are executing the will of the black majority of Baltimore, why are they not able to act with greater moral authority in suppressing the violence and protecting the community?
In any event, it appears that the end game of the “black lives matter/hands up don’t shoot” riots is twofold:
1. To justify greater federal government oversight and control of local law enforcement. This will be based on the premise that the federal government needs to closely supervise urban and county police forces to ensure that they do not violate the civil rights of “minority” groups.
2. Black people will be given privileged status in their dealings with the police. The police will not be allowed to approach blacks based on mere suspicion of wrong doing or some flimsy notion of “probable cause”. No more “black while driving”. The police will not be able to be proactive in combating crime; they will only be allowed to respond to crime when summoned.
You might surmise that these policies will actually make crime worse in the inner city, and you would be absolutely right! But that is not The Woman’s concern, is it? The Woman’s solution to government dysfunction and malfeasance is always MORE government (controlled by the Woman). It going to be a long, hot summer then, like back in ’67 and ’68. The good news is that we have central air conditioning now, so we will be able to sleep with our windows closed and locked.
I see more poor whites getting squashed in the bargain.
James,
I extend deep appreciation for the street take narrative you've provided, along with your sophisticated / humorous / snarky style. Few writer's pull this off as well as you, as you parlay participles.
Having grown up in Detroit and lived through the transition from a relatively ok place to ghetto, I'm still left with imprints of watching the national guard troops and tanks rolling down the next street as they headed to the nucleus where various forces had kettled the then current black population of the realm.
What few appreciate or have been exposed to is that shortly after the summers of 67/68, the forest canopies shading and sheltering our streets were taken out via purported natural Dutch Elm beetles to provide better access for copters and monitoring going forward. We also don't have much collective wisdom remaining that race relations really went into the toilet in Detroit after the sweet community and music scene was nuked in Paradise Valley by an intentional division of the neighborhood by the I-75 Interstate being driven through its heart like a dagger. It is these sorts of subtle nuance bits that provide the genuine backstory and allow us to unravel the woven myths and parlayed propaganda.
Critical Discernment, like common sense, seems to be in short supply.
Your writing is a gift. Thank you.
Jim
Of course, James, and it reduced form, Jim, was the term for enlightened beacon of serenity in ancient Atlantean—a notably snarky language...
I'm glad you like the style and appreciate your info on Detroit, a place I find of much interest.
Baltimore seems to have changed overnight. It is probably more akin to a scabbed over wound being scraped open, but down to the bone this time.
Thanks a lot for checking in Jim.
This reads just as well now as it did then. One of those "Makes You Feel Like You're There" pieces without actually having to be there.
And prophetic. It hasn't gotten any better, and looks like it's getting worse.
Thanks for putting all this into words, with no punches pulled and no euphemisms.