Nothing serious, just the regular tag team of the creepy crud and lungs that don't like cold air unless there's salt in it..
Guess what I'm trying to say is that I stayed in bed untill 9:45 a.m. yesterday to recuperate a bit and rolled out this morning with my sinus stuffed tighter than last weeks turkey.
A Charles Stanley double sermon, one recent and one from 1992 took the place of Church attendance today. It also is the day we usually bring our McMonkeys to visit my mom, but with her susceptibility to respiratory infections, we skipped that too
So the " no video game " on Sundays rule was lifted and I sat around unshowered, in my jammies. Netflix had the movie " Phenomenon" on, and being one of my favorites, I commandeered the remote, sat back and watched it.
For the last week I've wanted to write about some of the recent events from the evening news. Words flooded my little thinker inside my skull for many days in a row and eventually, they escaped as quickly as they forced there way in...
I guess what is left are shadows of emotions.
I don't like talking about emotions, much but I suppose emotional shadows are safe enough...
I am sad about things that transpired. I'm sickened by unfairness and legalism.
It seems there are situations that are nearly identical, but completely different, that seem to be dividing our country in one hand, while unifying many in the other...
I'm talking about the differences between Fergusson and New York City...
Micheal Brown and Eric Garner...
Self defense and brutality and manslaughter...
I saw the video from New York. I saw a man stepping backwards, threatening no one. This was not Rodney King, mind you. In fact, it was nothing like it.
He did not run. He did not attempt to strike anyone. All he did was step backwards with hands in the air...
I'm not saying that he did not deserve to be arrested, because he did.
I'm not saying the police didn't have a duty to apprehend him, because they did..
I am saying that they did not need to attempt it the way they did...
In that video, I saw a man pleading with his last breaths that he could hardly breathe, surrounded by professionals who are all required to be first aid and CPR qualified, all trained to save lives by recognizing breathing obstructions and treating symptoms that follow...
I have had that training, too...
I live in whitebread upstate N.Y. and generally in this locale the police are given benifit of the doubt in almost all circumstances regarding self defense...
But I am not the only one who saw that video. Almost exclusively, the people who actually watched it agreed this man was not threatening anyone. He may not have been completely submissive, but it is an insane stretch to conclude he was trying to hurt any officer present...
Some of the few people I know who defended the tactics used by the police on that video would be the first to argue or ask questions, if told they were being arrested.
They would not have been choked, though...They could step back and ask questions without any real fear of immediate attack. This is upstate and they are clean cut and white.
We have a little more leeway here, especially if your an educated professional and white.
Or just white...
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