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America Lost

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On June 21, 1788, the United States Constitution became the official governing document of this nation. The Preamble of that document reads: “We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Two hundred and thirty-two years later those ideals have not been realized.

Why?

Because the seeds of racial hatred are inexorably planted in the soul of this nation.

This was evidenced recently when I posted a piece about what former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin could expect in prison for the callous and intentional killing of George Floyd on May 25.

Two individuals, both female, posted comments in response to the piece.

One is a Nazi-worshipping lunatic who was particularly incensed that George Floyd’s death is being recognized across the nation as a travesty; and the other is a non-degree, layperson who called me a “sick man” for writing the piece.

Both comments have fueled a firestorm of different reactions. I just let those fires simmer and burn themselves out.

But that some lunatic in the backwoods of Arkansas would use a Facebook post to express her empathy for Nazism and publicly discharge the sewage of her hatred for the Jewish faith is undeniable evidence that America has never found a way to live up to the ideals its Founders sought to form in a “more perfect Union.”

Fires of racial discontent smolder in dozens of American cities this day as people express their outrage over George Floyd’s death. Already, white people are trying to put a black face to the looting and destruction by invoking slogans (“when the looting starts, the shooting starts”) from notorious racists from the 1960s.

But just weeks before Derek Chauvin suffocated the life out of George Floyd white protestors stood on the capitol steps in Michigan with AR-15s slung over their shoulders, waving Nazi and Confederate flags, praising far right-wing violent militias, threatening lawmakers, and promising violence while some white public officials called them “fine people” and encouraged their lawless behavior with “liberate Michigan” chants..

That’s what racism does. It allows the voice of the worst Americans to be heard over the best Americans.

What do you think would have been the response if followers of the Nation of Islam stood quietly and peacefully on the capitol steps in Michigan with AR-15s, lawfully licensed and purchased, slung over their shoulders and holding the Nation of Islam flag?

Most white folks would have called them “thugs” or “radical terrorists”—the same people who called those waving the symbol of treason (the Confederate flag) “fine people.”

The seeds of racism inevitably produce an infected harvest of violence, regardless of the color of the racism.

The final tragedy is this: America today is as lost as it was in 1788 when some of the very Framers of the Constitution bought and sold human beings in the slave market.

The proverbial bite Eve reportedly took out of the apple is not mankind’s “original sin.” The original sin is the hatred one man has for another based on their color, culture, and origin—hatred that spans the entire history of mankind.

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Angry, and alone.

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Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is angry. His recently released police mug shot reveals as much.

Chauvin is angry that he went from a police uniform to a jail jumpsuit.

He is angry that his former fellow police officers are angry at him because he killed George Floyd with a knee on the slain man’s neck. Chauvin knows his fellow officers are not angry because he killed Floyd but that he did it with the whole world watching as Floyd begged for his life. He knows that many of his fellow officers have done the same thing but “were not caught.”

Chauvin is angry that family and friends have turned against him. His wife told him that she is divorcing him. There is no rational way to explain his actions. You either accept those actions or you reject them. Most of the former officer’s family and friends rejected the actions. It has brought them untold shame and grief.

Chauvin is angry that fellow officers placed him in handcuffs, escorted him through the jail booking process, and placed him in a jail cell.

Derek Chauvin is alone now in a cell with only dark thoughts, and the crippling fear they produce, as companions through a mind-altering sense of powerlessness. The fall from privileged grace into what Jack Abbott once called “the belly of the beast” is a journey of nightmares.

And, indeed, jail and the prison cell that will most likely follow is a beast, especially for a white cop convicted of killing a black man pleading for his life. The “white boys”—not even the Aryan Brotherhood—will touch him and the “brothers” will do everything they can to get their hands on him. Even a deep protection lockdown cell will pose risks and dangers for him. A rogue prison guard could always leave his cell unlocked (as was probably the case with Jeffery Epstein) where he would later be found hung by his own jumpsuit.

Bad things happen in prison.

If Chauvin is placed in a barred cell rather than a solid door cell, he will constantly have feces and urine thrown on him by inmates out on the tier during shower time.

Chauvin will be alone, every minute of every day. Perpetual fear will overwhelm the anger. No one will help him. No one will hear his pleas, “I can’t breathe” as the knee of prison applies its pressure.

It was once reported—and I do not remember where—that Jack Ruby’s screams of “they’re killing me in here” could be heard at night by passersby on street below the Dallas County Jail.

No one will hear Derek Chauvin’s screams of “I can’t breathe” in here.

Some former cops can make it in prison, but not one as infamous as Derek Chauvin. He is on his own, and dark times await him in a world where his knees will only tremble.

And whatever bad things that may be visited upon this former cop, no one will really care—and if he should somehow manage to survive prison, the only life for him in the “free world” will be with some lunatic Nazi-saluting right wing militia group in the mountains of Utah.

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Tyrant of the moment

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A tyrant is a person who rules with absolute power.

My wife has asked me several times what would make a police putd the full weight of his body through a knee on the neck of a handcuffed suspect.

Police officers, and to a much greater extent prison guards, are geared to being tyrants of the moment. Their profession—if it can truly be called that—vest with them an absolute power to do what they feel is necessary to control the moment.

Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin literally suffocated the life out of Charles Floyd on May 25, 2020 because he believed he had the absolute power to not only restrain but to kill Floyd to control the moment of Floyd’s arrest.

That sense of absolute power made Chauvin tone deaf (or at the very least indifferent) to Floyd’s pleas of “I can’t breathe”—just as the officer was oblivious to the crowd urging him to stop while someone in the crowd filmed the entire episode.

Floyd may have said or did something that would be insignificant to a reasonable, rational thinking person but “pissed off” Chauvin because it offended his sense of absolute power. He automatically went into that tyrant mode of, “alright mother….r, I’ll show you.”

I’ve heard those tyrant utterances a thousand times by prison guards with, “what did you say, what was that bitch, you got an attitude with me?”

Most police officers do not join the force to “protect and serve” the community anymore than a prison guard goes to work in corrections to “rehabilitate” inmates. Both groups of people chose law enforcement and corrections because they are given absolute power and receive fairly good benefits with the job.

Cops and prison guards are instilled with one basic duty: control of the situation, regardless of the harm or damage that may be done in the process.

A prison warden once told me that if the inmates rebelled in his prison: “the first thing I would do is unplug my telephone, quash the rebellion by any means necessary, and then answer all the post-riot investigation questions that will come. Control, and I mean absolute control, is the primary responsibility of people running a prison.”

Policing has pretty much the same mindset. It was not Floyd’s suspected offense—an attempt to pass a counterfeit twenty dollar bill—but something Floyd may have said that triggered officer Chauvin’s need to quash the rebellion behind the words spoken.

But regardless of what Floyd may have said leading up to his being handcuffed, that perceived rebellion was quashed the moment the handcuffs were locked. Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck was purposely designed to suffocate the life out of the man because he had the temerity to even indicate rebellion. That perceived rebellion made Chauvin tyrant of the moment.

Police and prison guards are an “essential service” to protect and serve an organized society—and, yes, there are good cops that do “protect and serve” the community just as there are good prison guards that maintain order and discipline in a prison setting in a measured lawful way.

But there are too many bad cops and prison guards to trust either force. This is especially true for people of color.

My advice, for whatever it is worth, is this:

When stopped by the police, say as little as possible. Respond to questions without smile or attitude. Try to get the “stop” over with as quickly as possible.

Understand this one premise: the police are not your friend, even when you call them in time of need. I say that because of this: a cop responding to a sexual assault claim in a rich neighborhood is going to have a much more deferential attitude than he would have responding to the same claim in a subsidized housing complex.

There are probably a hundred thousand inmates serving life sentences without the benefit of parole in the nation’s prison system whose crimes of violence were not as intentional, methodical, or callous as the crime committed by Derek Chauvin.

But Chauvin will never receive a life without parole sentence.

Why?

Because he was a white police officer who killed a “black criminal suspect,” albeit unarmed and handcuffed.

That is the tragic nature of our criminal justice system today.

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To mask, or not to mask?

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That is the Shakespearian question facing Americans today.

Tragically, the question no longer emanates from science but from politics. Those who mask are considered by many who don’t mask to be either “politically correct” or somehow associated with the Deep State apparatus (whatever the hell that might be).

In essence, the increasing social perspective is that those who mask are politically “liberal” and those who do not mask are politically “conservative.”

That is the new “cultural war” raging in America today—a tragic time when a deadly virus is killing off hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Americans each day.

America has always been at war with itself from its very Founding: settlers versus Native Americans, English patriots versus rebellious colonists, slave holders versus abolitionists, Northern patriots versus Southern traitors, segregationists versus integrationists, war hawks versus peace doves, and Democrats versus Republicans.

The Founding Fathers actually planted the seeds of internal war and strife within their Bill of Rights that was ratified in December 1791—constitutional rights that applied only to white male landowners, no one else. In other words, white men who owned land were the only Americans who could govern and make decisions about the future of the nation.

It would take 76 years before the constitution’s 14thAmendment was ratified effectively applying the Bill of Rights to all the states and to every person residing in them.

It is the 14th Amendment that gives every person in this country the right to wear a mask when and where they want.

The great thing about the 14th Amendment is that it gives the unmasked an equal protection right to walk freely about in our society without any facial covering.

However, the police powers enjoyed by every state in the Union permit restrictions being placed on constitutional rights in order to protect public health, safety and morals. For example, to protect public health, the states can regulate the production and distribution of food and drugs; to protect public safety, the states can regulate transportation with vehicle driver’s license and highway speeds; and to protect public morals, the state can forbid nudists from fornicating on Main Street.

Put simply, states can impose, either through executive orders or legislative enactments, requirements that masks be worn in designated situations during a “public health crisis”, such as public businesses, job sites, medical delivery systems, and any place where more than a certain number of people congregate.

Within this legal framework rests the right of business owners, such as grocery stores, restaurants, bars, entertainment venues, etc., to impose mask requirements on people entering their business establishments.

You might say the “to mask, or not to mask” question comes down to this: those who wear masks are honoring both their legal obligation and social duty to protect public health and safety. Those who do not wear masks believe their individual “rights” exceed the common good.

I wear my mask in public (or whenever I have contact with anyone other than my wife) for my own personal safety and to protect public health. I do not interact with folks who do not wear masks in public unless there is a good ten to twelve feet between us. My mask is not worn in defiance of anyone personally or politically, but to anyone who does not like my mask wearing, let the mask stand as a clear, unequivocal middle finger to them.

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Jodie’s Interview

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Jodie’s May 20, 2020 interview with The Crime Report about her memoir, “Love Behind Bars: The True Story of an American Prisoner’s Wife,” is a great read. Being biased and all, it is a penetrating interview that touches on many issues about the criminal justice system; most importantly about the death penalty.

Please feel free to share the attached link. These are rough times for criminal justice with so much misinformation being thrown about. Jodie does speak “truth to power.”

Capital Punishment and the ‘Culture’ of Revenge
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Copyright © 2019 Jodie Sinclair| Author