in the days of chimpanzees i was a busblog

spent part of the weekend fighting with people on Twitter about why NFL players were kneeling during the National Anthem.

It’s tough to argue on Twitter for a few reasons:

1. some people want to remain in the dark

2. im a verbose SOB thus it’s tough to stick to just 140 letters

3. i was watching football and forgot that i was arguing with half of the South.

the biggest problem was these people kept wanting to say that by kneeling during the Anthem, the players are disrespecting the flag.

as if the flag has feelings. it’s cloth i told them.

THESE PLAYERS ARE PROTESTING THE FACT THAT COPS MURDER BLACK PEOPLE AND GET AWAY WITH IT. I’d say.

but they didn’t want to hear it. and it was curious.

im sorry they arent protesting the way they want people to protest. when Trump tried to impose the racist Muslim ban, people took to the streets. The Trumpsters whined accusing the protesters of being paid. They complained that the traffic was bad now. They bitched that the signs were painting them in a bad light.

so here you have a protest that doesn’t affect anything. it doesn’t keep the flag from flying. it doesn’t keep the singer from singing. and it doesn’t even affect the game.

so they bring the military into it: “these selfish millionaire football players are disrespecting all the veterans who fought for this country!”

as if these Trumpsters care about the military. Aren’t a good chunk of homeless people veterans? Where were these defenders of the troops when W was cutting the VA?

but more importantly: is a veteran more American than a schoolteacher or a Community Organizer?

hey man, some of my best friends fought in wars. but members of the military are just Part of America. firefighters, nurses, farmers, fruit pickers, union bosses, seamstresses, and even your neighborhood blogger are all important parts of our society and we are all Americans who, when we are at our best, contribute to what makes the USA the second-greatest country in this continent.

hi baby.

long live every man woman and drone who defends this country and all the things we stand for but at what point is someone going to say, please stop using veterans as pawns for your bullshit argument?

the actual issue at hand is kids, teens, adults and even women have been straight up murdered by police and those cops paid no price even when they said

I DON’T KNOW WHY I SHOT THAT BLACK MAN WHO HAD HIS HANDS UP.

Yes. Yes you do. You know damn well why you do. And until we get that unsubstantiated fear out of the minds of our police force we are going to continue to have innocent dead black folks and athletes kneeling in protest.

but we can’t get there until we knock off this fucking shit about the flag or the military or the “country”.

until the flag murders a kid holding a toy gun, no one has any problem with the flag.

until the military says “i’m gonna kill this MFer”, kills a citizen, plants a gun on him and gets away with it, no one has a problem with the military.

athletes are kneeling because it is working. it is getting the word out there that police brutality and murder will not be tolerated.

the President of the United States wants to pretend that this is not about race or cops or anything other than the flag.

which is why you know it’s not about the freaking flag.

and now i wish i had learned how to run a Post Route so i could kneel

with my clenched fist up

during every anthem my team played on Sundays.

 

what if the sun’s a lie

what if these rich white men don’t know what theyre doing

what if that dude in korea hates his life, hates what hes done to his people, is sick of that terrible music

and is all, you know, fuckit fire le missile.

what if his generals are all, but sir

and what if he says, i said fire le missile!

and what if his generals say

first of all it’s not french, you are not french

and even if we all were french it would be

LA MISSILE

because it would cause the Mother of All Dumb Events

what if that general was ushered away for speaking out of turn.

what if my whole life is me speaking out of turn.

what if they usher me away one day

why havent they yet?

am i the usher?

am i the way?

are you the day?

what if the suns a lie and its not there to give us warmth but to kill us.

what if bruce is only half right and everything dies but it dont come back.

what if God is like Life is a toothpaste tube and i dont squeeze that shit back in it.

even though i could.

what if theres a world where the toughest part of their olympics is

shoving paste back in the tube.

and people love the people who can do it the best, with no mess?

that would not be a world that i would want to party with.

the older you get the fewer ragers you go to

even though now you know the cops.

and even though cops, like the sun, are also lies.

there is politics, there’s opinion, and then there are facts

bill walton and the chickenthe first one is a game. people lie. people root for their “side”. people do things that are sometimes against the best interest of the people they live around.

then comes opinion, someone’s point of view. someone’s ideas. someone’s take.

and finally theres science. actual statistics. numbers. irrefutable evidence.

it may not be easy for everyone to be ok with the fact that black people are killed by cops at a higher rate than white people, but it is a fact that it is happening right now in the USA.

you can have an opinion about that fact, and you might be able to politicize that fact if you want, but just like how right now it’s summer and the year is 2016, cops are killing black people. period.

president obama could politicize this if he wanted to. and some presidents loved politicizing things. i suppose he could try to overreact, but the thing about this president is he does the opposite of flipping out. he’s chill. he works quietly. remember when bin laden died? it happened like a thief in the night.

i dont know who is putting the fear in some peoples minds that obama is going to invoke martial law, but the last time a president did that in a wide spread way was when honest abe did it right before the civil war. we’re having issues right now, but aint no civil war happening. even if trump wins. (which he wont)

everyone needs to chill. everyone needs to look at the facts and see what we can do about this.

but the first step is gonna be sensitive. people are going to have to ask tough questions from law enforcement and they’re going to have to look deep inside. we all know being a cop is an incredibly tough and dangerous job. but only recently are people starting to see that being a young black man isnt a cakewalk either. (or an old black man. or a black woman.)

even the NRA is having a hard time saying, “wait you shot a guy because he legally had a gun and told you about it? thats fucked up.”

crazy opinion coming at ya: theyre having a hard time saying it because theyre not used to coming to the defense of black people.

all i know is i dont know.

i dont know if the cops will ever want to look closely at their fears and how it triggers their actions

and i dont know how many black men on the edge are going to snap like that young man in texas who killed all those cops and then the cops blew him up with a robot.

what i believe is God loves us and is looking out for us.

and what i hope is he leads us down the right path

and we do the right thing once we go down it

if i get shot and killed by a cop and it is on video

Screen Shot 2016-07-06 at 10.12.26 PMand if it shows that i wasnt doing anything wrong

either i was selling cds or cigarettes

or i was stopped because my taillight was out

even though my taillight was not out.

and if in the video two cops are on top of me

and one of them yells

GUN!

(which is the new n-word)

and if they then shoot me and i die

and if they pull a gun out of my pocket

and if having a gun in your pocket is legal

and reasonable when you consider how dangerous it is for a black man to remain alive these days

and if the cops dont even have to stand trial for my untimely death,

do me this favor.

do not remember me.

do not have a riot in my name.

do not have protests, and debates, and insist that the chief of police or any of the police be forced to resign.

if the police, in no way, have to admit that they were wrong to kill me,

do me this favor,

and you have to because this is my wish

get me a simple headstone

and on it, inscribe these words

black lives dont matter.

and thats all.

because thats what they are telling us every day and every night

from minnesota to baton rouge.

from st. louis to baltimore

from new york to los angeles.

if our lives dont matter, neither do our names.

so leave mine out of it.