MINNEAPOLIS … Sports. Racism. Hate. Politics. As I contemplated what to write about this week, I reflected on the last few weeks. I usually write about sports, with a focus on the hockey world, but how could I not say something about the events dominating our world at the moment?

The pandemic and the resulting shutdown of the country and the world has inflicted damage in infinite ways we might never recover from. As the shutdown of the world eases up ever so slightly, I am left to wonder if none of this was an accident or chance occurrence and which persons will benefit.

The global elite have already experienced major gains in wealth since the advent of the shutdown. The leadership of our President and his cabinet has been so weak and lacking in clarity that the population has basically been left to fill in the blanks. And regarding that, any of the President’s toadies that dare speak the truth about what is going on are subject to termination at the whim of the mentally deficient POTUS.

The murder of black American citizen George Floyd by a Minneapolis law enforcement officer, while three of his associates stood by and did not intervene has ignited protests, rioting and looting around the country.

First off, we need to separate those that are engaging in property destruction and looting from those that are genuinely pushing forth with legitimate peaceful civil disobedience. They are not one and the same.

And after yet another killing of a black person by law enforcement officers, an overreach to the actual offenses alleged to have been committed by Floyd, the tinder box of 400 some years of white oppression against black citizens exploded with a rage and fury we hadn’t seen in recent times.

Obviously and sadly, it’s not the first time we have witnessed this sort of phenomena here. And people by and large, blacks, many people of color and a fair amount of the white community who desire to see fairness, peace and justice extended to ALL citizens, have basically had it.

But we have been down this road before, right? And the resultant talk and hand wringing has changed pretty much nothing.

White privilege, with a supremacist in the Oval Office has not only continued forth, but with the man-child faux POTUS at the wheel, all we have witnessed during his term in office is the fanning of those flames and more dog whistle rhetoric that has only served to further divide us.

What kind of person, in the highest office of our land, would conduct himself like this? One could only deduce that some form of mental ailment has taken full control of this person.

Sadly we live in a place where the most important thing here in the political world is power, and that’s as it applies to the power of the party. The Founding Fathers warned against this, citing the potential factious divide of such.

And those in power have taken full control of this. In fact I am left to wonder how many Americans actually know that this was a purposeful strategy, designed to divide us, to make it easier for the elitists to protect the American wealth creating mechanisms for themselves, and to leave a good percentage of the masses to fend for themselves in an obviously rigged economy.

At the upper end of that divide are people of color. White privilege has left them unable to gain full participation in our economy among a myriad of other things. You name it – education, health care, nutrition – a fairly large percentage of our population has been excluded.

I recall years back having a discussion with a guy who was decrying the welfare state of black America, the crime and substance abuse within their communities and so forth, when I stopped him right on the spot. I asked him what exactly he thought was going to happen in the absence of that full participation in our society. Vice usually takes over these situations when time and idle hands are left to their own devices.

Further, this same guy was oblivious to the fact that more of white America was on government assistance then any other segment of our society, not to mention the tentacles of Corporate America siphoning off of the people’s treasury at an alarming rate. They hardly need it.

This is what happens though when inequality rules the day. And it is in full command here in the United States of Scam-erica.

Not only are people of color getting jacked here 24/7, the working class in general are the victims of wanton elitist greed on a daily basis. Of course, neither the Republican or Democratic parties are going to fix this for the better, their elitist paymasters have seen to that.

Some of us do well, the upper occupations and trades available here provide for higher level compensation and benefits for at least some of the working class. But make no mistake, the upper 10 percent of the wealth holders here are in full control, and the results have been a total fucking disaster. Sorry, not sorry, I do not know how else to put it.

I dream of the day that my fellow citizens might wake up and unite against this travesty of total dysfunction that rules over us, thinking that government was supposed to help ALL of us obtain  smoother, if not better lives, but that’s been hijacked by wealthy sociopaths and it is becoming increasingly harder for us to think that we could pry it away from them anytime soon.

At the end of this debacle will the late Floyd receive the justice he should? Frankly, I’ll be surprised if that happens in a country with a justice system that has one set of rules for the elites, who flaunt that on a regular basis, to those of the working class, who will normally pay the full price for their transgressions, particularly if they are black and poor. The police have been granted their own immunity over many decades, usually given a pass by a derelict judicial system.  

For me, I would never do this, because I believe in nonviolence, but I dream of a drive out to D.C. to grab the maniac in the Oval Office by that critter on top of his head and drag him out onto Pennsylvania Avenue, throw him to the ground, place my knee upon his neck ala Derek Chauvin and tell him he has 60 seconds to resign and also to offer up the resignations of his entire cabinet, staff and any other of his misguided enablers.

Does that sound harsh?

Well, unlike George Floyd, he would still be alive after having agreed to my command. The Founding Fathers would be applauding me from their graves. They would say I’ve fulfilled my duties as a patriotic American.

Then I’d quietly return home to meditate upon that currently unfulfilled phrase of “Liberty and Justice for all”… PEACE