An Open Letter to Tucker Carlson Regarding His Opinions on Masks

Dear Tucker,

Can I call you "Tucker"? I don't really care because I'm sure as hell not calling you "Mr. Carlson," like you're the dad of someone I'm fucking back when I was in high school.

Anyways, I don't watch your goddamn show because you're an obnoxious, privileged, powdered pair of ass cheeks whose face veers between "serial killer who ejaculates while he stabs people" to "high school boy feeling a wet pussy for the first time." Mostly, though, I don't watch you because you're a fucking liar. Sure, sure, you fool the Fox "news" rubes: all those shut-ins and elderly people who can be scammed by the crazed pillow dickhead and gun-fellating men who can't get a hard-on to save their pathetic lives. Or marriages. 

But you don't fool me. You've been vaccinated. Motherfucker, you paid goons to knock off old ladies so you could jump the line. You got that shit back in January. You made sure your family got it. And the only people who would say otherwise are liars and fools. And if you said you didn't get vaccinated, I'd want to see a goddamned blood test to prove it. And I know and you know you wear a fucking mask anywhere you go, even though you're vaccinated. You didn't stop wearing them around the Fox "news" offices because you're too much of a little bitch to really stand up to the Man.

I did watch your 10 minute-long vomit of accusations, lies, threats, and more lies that you retched forth on your show, Tucker Carlson Fucking Hates Your Guts, last night. And then I read it because, really, how dick-kicking insane do you have to be to say shit like that, and I wanted to see if I had heard you right. I had.

I heard you say shit like, "America’s so-called public health community united as one to remind us that corona restrictions don’t apply to BLM rioters" back in June, when you know goddamn well that protesters against police murdering Black people wore masks. In fact, those marches were a clear demonstration that masks helped curb the spread of COVID-19 while your orange fuckhead president was prancing around the country, spreading the virus. 

I heard you lie about how people react to those not wearing masks outside. Motherfucker, I walk around New York City, and we wear masks because we're gonna be in crowds, and we wear masks because it's a sign of respect to those who haven't been vaccinated, and I'm not counting your fucking dumbass viewers who refuse to get the shot. We wear masks because even though, as you and your network's cockworms keep saying, COVID is "a virus that 99 percent of us would have survived anyway," it's also a virus that causes permanent damage to a fuckton more people who do survive, and we're still not sure about how it's spread and about the possibilities of variants.

I heard you mock scientists and experts, accusing them of actively trying to control the population. I heard you try to get all bullshit philosophical, saying, "Masks have always been incompatible with a free society. We used to know that. Masks strip people of their identity as individuals. Mask transform people from citizens into drones. They isolate us. They alienate us. They shut us off from one another. They prevent intimacy and human contact. If I can’t see your face, I can’t know you. Masks are for the guilty. They’re signifiers of shame and submission." Are they, though? Because they can also be signifiers that you care about other human beings, something you wouldn't understand.

And I heard you get outraged to the point of hysteria because there are parents who choose to have their kids wear masks when they're outside. I heard you say, "It should be illegal," and I heard you say that if you see a child in a mask outside, "Call the police immediately. Contact child protective services. Keep calling until someone arrives. What you’re seeing is abuse. It’s child abuse, and you’re morally obligated to try to prevent it." And I heard you compare it to your child getting punched in the face by a teacher every day. 

You simpering little ratings whore, you fucktoy of the lowest kind of vermin, you don't know people's lives. You don't know if there are people at their home who can't get vaccinated. You don't know what kinds of sacrifices parents have made. You have decided that liberals are the ones who force-mask their children, and this is a way to attack liberals and maybe even get them assaulted, arrested, and/or harassed. 

Why the fuck do this when we all know you know better? Maybe you're just mad that your fucking kids are at home and you don't have time to fuck Matt Gaetz's hookers or whatever the fuck you do. Maybe someone told you that the way to really go down in media history is to be the biggest cum whore on conservative networks, drinking nutzoid, conspiracy-theorist chowder like it's the blood of Christ. I'd say maybe you actually believe this shit, but, of course, you don't. None of you believe the shit you spew.

You wanna argue about mask mandates? Fine. Let's have that argument. But you don't wanna do that. You wanna make liberals cry by being as irrational as possible while your yahoo hordes of racist morons cheer you on and make life miserable for Anthony Fauci and other scientists.

This is making threats and demanding that police resources be used where no crime is being committed, perhaps leading to violence, perhaps taking the police away from places where they're really needed. 

So do it, motherfucker. Make the phone call. Dial 911 on some mom at a playground. You won't because you know it's illegal to do that shit. You won't because you're the worst kind of bully: one who's too much of a pussy to get your own hands dirty.

I'd tell you to eat shit, but you are shit.

The Rude Pundit

The Chauvin Verdict: Random Observations at the Beginning of a Long, Difficult Road

1. Sometimes I think about all the times that police murdered or beat a Black or brown person and no one was there to record it. It makes me sick to my stomach, as it should every person, as it especially should every white person. I can't get my head around that, and I'm not just talking since the Rodney King video came out 30 years ago, in March 1991, showing a group of Los Angeles police officers beating a Black man, King, who was on the ground and who was trying to shield himself from the batons and kicks and Tasers, which was taken as resisting arrest, which prompted more beating, until the cops put a sheet over him because they thought he was dead. I'm talking going back, in the entire history of policing in this country. Think about that. Think about all the times people read an account of a cop shooting a Black suspect and saying that they were armed and then people just accepted it as the official story and moved on. 

2. Think about the fact that had then-17 year-old Darnella Frazier not taken out her phone and recorded George Floyd being murdered by then-Officer Derek Chauvin, Chauvin would have almost certainly gotten away with it. The line from Rodney King to George Floyd, from the acquittal of the King assaulters to the conviction of Floyd's killer, is one filled with horrific acts of racist, often officially-sanctioned violence against Black and brown bodies, but it is one that extends far before King, all the way back to the bodies of slaves, and one that will continue after this verdict.

3. But for a moment, just for a moment, all but the worst of us could actually exhale, briefly, yes, but still, a breath for this justice being enacted. When the judge read Chauvin was guilty on all three counts - second and third degree murder and manslaughter - it was like the moment when you spark a flame in the wilderness. You don't know if you can get it to grow into a full campfire that will keep you warm and keep the animals at bay, but, damn, you know there's hope as you try to fan it into something more, something that you can add fuel to. 

4. Our failure to radically address the systemic racism and military tactics that our police forces use is a profound lack of imagination and a profound lack of effort by our political leaders at all levels. I'm not going to get into the entire history of how the police became a paramilitary force or how the existence of police departments go back to slave patrols and as a white control on poor and Black populations in northern urban areas. But we have to know that it's all led to this moment of crisis. 

5. We have to know that things must change. The verdict today is an early step in a long, difficult road that threatens to collapse under our feet at any moment. We have to conceive of a new way for law enforcement to engage with communities. We have to allow that an understanding of mental illness and drug addiction, something that is fairly recent in our history, must have an effect on how authorities handle so many cases. We must take funds from police forces and use them for mental health intervention specialists. (That's what most of us mean by "Defund the police.") We have to conceive of a new way to train law enforcement, to come up with a new meaning for law enforcement itself. Perhaps most importantly, we have to acknowledge that the status quo is unsustainable and just plain wrong. 

6. That starts with a very public, national reckoning on a few levels. The first is with systemic racism, especially with regards to how disproportionately non-white people are dealt with violently and abusively by law enforcement. Another is with the goddamn guns. The racism and the surge in gun sales go hand in hand. It's white panic against a completely made up enemy, and it's promoted by right-wing media for pure power and profit.  Until we are ready to say that some things are objectively wrong - like that white officers are more likely to use their weapons in Black neighborhoods - and then act to make them right, we can't move forward. Until we are ready to vote out politicians who use racism as an appeal to foolish white voters, we can't move forward. 

7. We must look at this day in another way: We're celebrating that a cop didn't get away with a murder that we all saw happen. That's perhaps the bare minimum a civilized society should expect. If you're video-recorded killing someone, you go to prison. It should be that simple. Yes, the Chauvin verdict might be the breaking of a dam on cases involving murder or assault by cops. But it's a sign of how low our expectations have become that, honestly, many of us, especially in the Black community, wouldn't have been surprised if Chauvin had been acquitted. What I'm expecting now is, at best, an assertion on the right of "See? Justice can be done" before proposing even more draconian crime policies. At worst, I expect a retrenchment by most of the GOP, a clinging to the old campaign tactic of showing scary Black people protesting while praising the clean, white police establishment. 

8. The supposed good cops should be relieved at the verdict today. They should be glad that those who make them look bad, who make them look like racists, who make them look like bad apples might now be punished and make it easier for them to be the good cops they believe they can be. In fact, the supposedly good cops need to be encouraged, even rewarded, for turning in the bad cops. Or else let's finally admit that the whole barrel is rotten.

9. Finally, I want to end this with a moment to remember George Floyd, a flawed man, like all of us, who suffered so awfully before our eyes, who it's not hyperbolic to say died for our sins. But you can't remember him without remembering every single name, every Eric Garner, every Breonna Taylor, every Adam Toledo, and you can't remember them without thinking about all those whose names we never got to learn. 

We can breathe where they can't. But we need to use that breath for something more than sighs of relief.

Shut the Fuck Up and Get Your Fucking Vaccine

A bunch of fanatics are fucking up the vaccination program for everyone. Polls are showing that a significant percentage of people won't get the vaccine. In places where people don't get vaccinated, cases have been on the rise. There are YouTube videos, filled with conspiracy theories, exhorting people to avoid the vaccine. People spread the idea that the vaccine is a way to spy on them, and there has been violence directed against the distribution, with fear that not enough people will get it to eliminate the illness.

Yeah, that's what's going on in Afghanistan as health groups attempt to get people vaccinated for polio. 

The rhetoric that's coming from the antivaccine right (and, to a lesser, weirder, but just as dangerous extent, the antivax left) is qualitatively not that different from what the Taliban has been pushing in Afghanistan. This is not to disparage the Afghan people or call them stupid. Far from it. It's to say that fear and ignorance is pretty goddamned universal, and it often is so on the same issues no matter where one is from.

Here in the United States, when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccines, we're swimming in a shit pool of lies and fear. We've got the dumbass white evangelical Christians who believe garbage like "It would be God’s will if I am here or if I am not here." (So, like, if God gave people the ability to create vaccines...fuck it, not worth it.)  We've got fucking idiotic conspiracy theories like "A massive death wave will be witnessed later this year among those who took the vaccine," ignoring that it's been a year since the first people were vaccinated, and, oddly, no reports of all of them dying have come out. 

And then there's motherfucking Tucker fucking Carlson, who always has the expression of a Victorian gentleman learning that women like sex. Carlson has been coyly and not-so-coyly antivax for the better part of the last few years. With the coronavirus vaccines, Tuckfuck has been vigorously gargling the balls of conspiracy nuts. Wondering why you should still have to wear a mask after getting vaccinated, Carlson's just asking,  "What is this about? If vaccines work, why are vaccinated people still banned from living normal lives?" Quite note: You're wearing your fucking mask because you still might be able to spread COVID, even if you can't get it, and you're trying not to be a selfish dickhead, something I'm sure Carlson can't even conceive of.

Carlson, who you know got his vaccine the second he could steal the spot from an elderly person, continued tuckerly, "If the vaccine is effective, there’s no reason for people who’ve received a vaccine to wear masks or avoid physical contact. So maybe it doesn’t work and they’re simply not telling you that. Well, you’d hate to think that especially if you’ve gotten two shots but what’s the other potential explanation? We can’t think of one." Yes, big science wants you to wear masks and not eat indoors at restaurants or go to concerts or movies because...he doesn't say, but I'm guessing socialism or critical race theory or AOC.

Of course, things weren't helped when the FDA and the CDC put a pause on the Johnson and Johnson single dose vaccine because of 6 reported cases of blood clots in the brains of women who had recently received it. And while I don't know the reasons behind such a drastic step, even if the J&J vaccine is only about 5% of the total vaccines out there, it sure as fuck seems like a big damn mistake to have taken that action, considering how fucking stupid and hesitant too many people are being about getting the shot. There may be something to it, but 6 out of nearly 7 million people who received the J&J vaccine makes it an adverse reaction so rare that it's pretty much negligible, and, yes, I'm recognizing that there may be more cases once there's an investigation. Yet the diabetes drug Jardiance can cause your taint (you know, your perineum? your grundle?) to rot (yes, rot), and there have been 12 cases in less than 2 million users, but that son of a bitch has full FDA approval.  

Really, honestly, whenever someone tells me they don't want to get the vaccine because it hasn't been researched long enough or they don't know what's in it or whatever, all I'm left with saying is "Shut the fuck up and get your fucking vaccine." I know one person who shouldn't get it, someone who is severely immunocompromised, and even she wants to get it. Just stop this shit and get the fucking vaccine. Line the fuck up and let shit get back to normal. 

But, no, no, no, not our selfish bourgie asses. Low turnout for vaccine distribution has become standard in many places. Health officials are worried that the country won't reach herd immunity, when at least 70% of people have been vaccinated, primarily because Republicans are being such dicks about it, acting as if there's something to be concerned about with the damn thing.

I mean, come the fuck on. Every single day, Americans suck down and engorge themselves on poisons masking themselves as food. Every single day, Americans are drinking and inhaling hundreds of pieces of microplastics that likely have a toxic effect on us. Every single day, most Americans are living with air so filled with chemicals that we're probably doing ourselves a goddamn favor by wearing a mask. Every single day, most Americans just allow the climate to degrade and diseases to mutate and spread. And barely anyone fucking blinks at this shit. But after shoving a wad of McDonald's french fries in your face, inhaling Dow Chemical's latest highball of poison, and avoiding wearing sunscreen while filling your lungs with enough plastic to make a small ball, all of a sudden, when it comes to the COVID vaccine, you're a fucking purist? Fuck you. Get the fucking vaccine.

By the way, to get back to Afghanistan and toss Pakistan into the mix, there are lots of idiotic, cruel, and backwards reasons that they have an issue with vaccination efforts, including refusing to take it from women (to the point of murdering women delivering it), but one big reason for the vaccine hesitancy is pretty interesting. In 2011, the CIA used a vaccine worker to get DNA samples from kids in an area of Pakistan to see if it matched Osama bin Laden's. Yeah, it was used for spying. Yeah, it completely fucking undermined the efforts of health NGOs. 

In other words, in those countries, they actually have more justification for being paranoid about vaccines than we do, thanks to us. What's our fucking excuse? Bullshit arrogance? Bullshit ideas of freedom?

You know what freedom is? Freedom is celebrating that science can actually solve our fucking problems and taking advantage of that so that your superstition and anti-science fuckery doesn't kill the rest of us.

Shut the fuck up already. Get your fucking vaccine, you fucking assholes.

Conservatives Finally Just Say, "Fuck Your Right to Vote"

As a slew of new voter laws slime their way through the legislatures of mostly Republican states where Democrats have a chance of winning, almost all based on the lie that there was mass election fraud in 2020, conservative commentators have decided that it's not enough to come up with bullshit new procedures that inhibit voting. Apparently, their goal isn't clear enough when they're voting to allow "poll watchers" to video record people going to vote or drastically limiting the number of drop boxes. No, now they're just flat-out saying, "Yeah, go fuck yourself with your right to vote."

This shit is not subtle. Over at the National Review (Motto: "Outraged that the Negroes get to vote for over 50 years"), Kevin Williamson wants us to ponder if "the republic would be better served by having fewer — but better — voters," and he pads his "column" (if by "column," you mean, "an elitist fart fest") with keen observations like "There would be more voters if we made it easier to vote, and there would be more doctors if we didn’t require a license to practice medicine." Motherfucker, voting doesn't involve surgery or prostate-fingering, even if it feels that way sometimes (for good and ill). It's just a shitty analogy, and it allows Williamson to get all smarmy about the loathsome unwashed voting in large numbers: "That sounds like a wonderful thing . . . if you haven’t met the average American voter." 

The tell in the piece, and there's always a tell whenever one of these squamous shits says something outrageous, is that Williamson doesn't say specifically who shouldn't be allowed to vote (beyond most convicted felons). He doesn't say the education level one should have to vote. He doesn't say if one should be of a certain income level. He doesn't say if you should have to literacy test or pay a poll tax. He merely asserts his little assertion, as if we should all understand who he means, itself both a cowardly and a  frightening position. 

Of course, unafraid to go full motherfucker is Tucker Carlson, the most reliable penis fish living in the muck of Fox "news." Last night, on his show Tucker Carlson Force Fists Lady Liberty, the host, who constantly looks like he just saw a Black person for the first time, continued his hoodless white nationalism. Talking about voting, Carlson said that "[T]he Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World." 

You think that's the fucked up part? No, here's the fucked up part: "I have less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate. Why should I sit back and take that? The power that I have as an American guaranteed at birth is one man, one vote, and they are diluting it. No, they are not allowed to do it. Why are we putting up with this?"

Try to parse this noxious fuckery out. It's pretty much saying that we shouldn't allow immigration because the immigrants might vote for Democrats (and it also implies fucking clearly that Republicans shouldn't even try to win the immigrant vote). But look at the nonsensical bullshit: He says that his right to vote comes from being born in the United States, which is complete dog piss. His citizenship comes from being born here. His right to vote comes from being a citizen, and there are other routes to becoming a citizen. So the extraordinarily radical proposition here is that only people born in the United States should be allowed to vote. Tell that to the fucking Cubans who have kept Florida red for the last few election cycles. 

Carlson mocks the idea that he's talking about "white replacement theory," which is one of those things that modern Nazis jack off over, the notion that people of white European background are being "replaced" by non-white people from, one assumes they believe, lesser areas of the world through both immigration and having babies. But that's exactly where Tuckfuck's going with all this. 

What we're actually witnessing here is not the growth of a movement, even if it looks that way since the right-wing media megaphone is so goddamned loud that it's like those cicadas fucking all the time. No, what we're seeing is the desperate clinging to power of a party and an ideology that is facing its demographic doom within a generation. And immigration is only part of the reason. Add in the way that online culture expands the world for the next group that will birthday into voting age, and, yeah, the Tuckerites' voices will grown smaller and smaller until they're just screaming into the Newsmax void, like, you know, Donald Trump. 

But until the "replacement" is done, we gotta remain vigilant and active against this stream of conservative thought that seeks to rescind the right to vote. Their problem with Democrats is democracy.

Republicans Don't Deserve Democrats' Bipartisanship

Today, as President Joe Biden was heading from Marine One into the White House, he stopped to briefly speak to reporters. And, sure as the sun comes up in the morning, he was asked about why he's not doing more to be nice to Republicans on the infrastructure bill that does not need Republican support to pass. "Where is the room for negotiation with Republicans?" some goddamn reporter wanted to know. That Biden didn't say, "Right next to my saggy ballsack" demonstrates an impressive level of restraint.

It's just goes on like this every fucking day. Last Friday, Press Secretary Jenn Psaki, who has become an expert at using stiletto to castrate Fox "news," was asked, "There’s the sense that Republicans will not support anything that has basically a Democratic president’s name on it.  How do you — how do you change that dynamic?" In her firm, clear way, Psaki more or less said, "By telling them to go fuck themselves with poll numbers that show their voters want more shit done."

Of course, Psaki gets this shit tossed at her so often that she's developed an invisible shield that bounces it off her and back onto the reporter who threw it. On March 26, Psaki was asked, "How can you achieve bipartisan support for infrastructure if Republicans are drawing the line — a hard line on taxes?" On March 24, she was asked, "Has the President’s definition of bipartisanship change since he arrived in office on January 20th?" Every fucking time, Psaki has to point out a simple truth: Biden's initiatives are supported by a bipartisan majority of voters. Republicans in power just don't give a fuck what their voters want because they know those voters will be distracted by a shiny Dr. Seuss "cancellation."

The media's pathological need for Democrats to have to get Republican approval for everything they want to accomplish in DC has long been pathetic. Coming out of the cancerous presidency of Donald Trump and after a decade of Mitch McConnell jacking off on any notions of compromise or bipartisanship, it's completely baffling. 

To this day, the majority of Republicans believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen or corrupted in some way, a lie so extravagant and fake that it could decorate a Trump property. Nearly 2/3 of GOP voters still gobble up Trump's election lies like it's kibble from Jesus's ass. Not only are many congressional Republicans still unable to admit that Joe Biden was legitimately elected, but we have states passing laws that make voting harder under the banner of the fake voter fraud. That's like Bigfoot-proofing your house. It won't do jack shit to make you safer, but the Bigfoot supply people are fuckin' happy they put one over on you.

According to too many in the media, Democrats are supposed to just fucking pretend that everything is hunky-dory and forget about Republicans almost getting them actually murdered while cutting off their voters ability to vote because the bipartisan unicorn is more important than anything else. Jesus fuck. Hell, this morning on CNN, Alisyn "Yes, I Spell My First Name That Way" Camerota really said, "Is there some potential upside to some of these laws that it will assuage the anxiety of Republicans?" Luckily, John Berman responded, "You shouldn't have to assuage a lie. I mean, assuaging a lie is not good legislation." No shit. And it shouldn't have to be said. This whole idea of just moving the fuck on is madness.

Let's say your neighbor's kid shit on your porch and set your car on fire. But when you showed your neighbor the Ring video of the teenage fucker doing it, he says it didn't happen, it's not his kid, he doesn't have to pay for anything because your car is the wrong color, and if you call the cops, he'll accuse you of fucking dogs. No one would expect you to invite the motherfuckers to your next barbecue. At the very least, he needs to apologize, admit he's wrong, pay for the damage, and let you shit on his kid's bed. Ok, maybe just three of those things. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Democrats should respond to any question about bipartisanship or compromise with Republicans with "When Republicans say that Joe Biden was fairly elected and that there was no widespread or coordinated election fraud or illegal voting, we can talk about bipartisanship." Make it a precondition for everything. The national GOP and all the state GOPs all have to say it. They have to say it's a motherfucking fact. They have to admit they've been fucking lying. They have to say that Donald Trump is fucking lying.  

Fucking hell, stand up for the idea that facts exist. Otherwise, we get the fuckery that's going on in Georgia, which has gone from overcoming Trump's lies and intimidation in certifying its election results to lying about election fraud to passing laws based on those lies so they can overturn an election to corporations protesting the laws that are based on lies to boycotts of the corporations protesting the laws that are based on lies. And that shit is going to happen all over the place. It's not like most Republicans actually believe any of the lies. But, you know, the rubes who still vote for the GOP sure as shit do, so, fuck it. 

Democrats shouldn't be asked to play nice with the party that is trying to legislate them out of existence. We are in dangerous territory when the foundation of democracy, the right to vote, is subject to the whims of a party afraid of losing. I just can't decide if we're more fucked or less fucked if we need corporations to save our sad asses.

Would a Good Guy with a Gun Have Been Justified in Saving George Floyd?

The testimony coming out of the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd has been beyond heartbreaking and beyond enraging. Today, for instance, Floyd's girlfriend revealed on the stand that his pet name for her was "Mama," which is what he called out over and over as he died. It's been this way throughout the testimony of the prosecution's witnesses. Darnella Frazier, now 18 years-old, was 17 when she took the video that first catalyzed the response to Chauvin's murder of Floyd, and she said on the stand, "When I look at George Floyd, I look at my dad, I look at my brothers, I look at my cousins, my uncles, because they’re all Black. I have a Black father. I have a Black brother. I have Black friends. I look at how that could have been one of them." This is not to mention the brave condemnation to the faces of the cops by two black men: Donald Williams, who said to them, "Y’all murderers, dawg, y’all are murderers, dawg," and 61 year-old Charles McMillan, who told Chauvin after Floyd's limp body was taken away, "I don't respect what you did." Both men broke down crying on the stand over what they witnessed, what they've had to live with.

Yet what has also been solemnly encouraging is how many people wanted to help Floyd on that awful day. There was teenaged cashier Christopher Martin who wanted his store manager to put Floyd's cigarettes "on my tab" rather than have the police called on Floyd for passing a counterfeit $20 bill. There was trained EMT and firefighter Genevieve Hansen, who called out again and again for the cops to check Floyd's pulse and wanted to offer medical assistance but was spurned by Tuo Thao, the former officer also on trial for his actions during Floyd's murder. Williams called the police on the police because, as he told the 911 dispatcher of Chauvin, "He just pretty much killed this guy that wasn’t resisting arrest." 

While the defense is teeing up an attack on Floyd's drug use, which just leads to more questions of why they didn't administer or allow for medical treatment if he was overdosing, I keep thinking about those people who felt helpless before the police. Even 911 dispatcher Jena Scurry, who was monitoring the events through a video feed since she was the one who sent police to the scene first, knew that "something was wrong" and called Chauvin's sergeant as she watched the murder occur. "You can call me a snitch if you want to," she said.

And I keep thinking about something else that Darnella Frazier said. "It’s been nights I stayed up apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life," she testified. That urge must have been overwhelming for so many of those watching Floyd beg for his life and Chauvin and the other officers just not give a damn.

Gun "rights" supporters often talk about two things: that some mythical "good guy with a gun" will be able to stop a bad guy in a violent situation, and that people need to be able to own guns to stop the government from treading on their life, liberty, and property. No, I don't believe these things justify mass gun ownership. But we do have a fuckton of guns. In Derek Chauvin, you have both situations bound together. The bad guy was a government official and he was depriving George Floyd of life and liberty. 

So I can't help thinking about what would have happened if someone or more than one someone had pulled guns on the cops and demanded that Chauvin get his goddamn leg off George Floyd's neck. I wonder if a good guy with a gun should have or could have saved Floyd. Would that good guy or gal have been justified in trying? Sure, the obvious answer is that this isn't a fucking game or movie and the cops would have pulled their guns and all hell might have broken loose, and that's a possibility, especially if the civilians who pointed guns at the cops were Black. But let's dare to go there for a moment or two.

I get that this is dangerous shit to even be contemplating, but, motherfuck, we've been watching these white nationalist dickholes work themselves up to a revolutionary rage over lies, over phantoms, over fantasies, and they were ready to overthrow the whole fucking federal government and a few states for shits and giggles and fake election fraud. Meanwhile, all this actual state-sponsored terrorism, violence, and oppression has been happening right in front of our faces, and the fact that we haven't seen a moment when civilians stepped in to stop cops who are abusing and murdering black people, like Chauvin's own sergeant said Chauvin did, is honestly something of a miracle and probably speaks to both the fear we have when it comes to official power and the titanic restraint of Black citizens in this nation. We want to believe the good guys would win. We need to believe that. Goddamnit, we wish that were true. 

To put it succinctly, even if it would have saved George Floyd's life, civilians stopping a violent cop is an uprising, and you can fucking well bet that it would have been put down with a savagery that wasn't even contemplated for the white nationalist rioters. 

Still, not helping, not doing something, anything, when you think you could have to save a life is haunting, as Frazier poignantly says. After voicing those sentiments, she added, "But it’s like, it’s not what I should have done, it’s what he should have done," referring to Chauvin. And that right there is key. The cop is supposed to be the good guy. The tragedy is that they so often aren't.

We have to fix the goddamned broken, racist justice system, hold the cops to the same behavior they hold all of us to, show that murderers aren't above the law because they have a badge, and convict this motherfucker. Do what should be done.  

The alternative is awful to contemplate because it feels so close to real.