A Who Dunnit

--the elephant in the room, Bansky

 But I ain't losing sleep and I ain't counting sheep,
It's so funny how we don't talk anymore 
--We Don't Talk Anymore, Cliff Richard

  Who are you?
(Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
Come on tell me, who are you? 
--Who Are You? The Who 

I'm looking through you
Where did you go?
I thought I knew you
What did I know? 
--I'm Looking Through You, The Beatles

 _____________________

This small story is rife with implication.

The Jacksonville Times-Union ran the following Tuesday in their "Law and Disorder" column:

Man shot in arm during walk

A man in Jacksonville was shot once in the arm Sunday night in the area of West 38th and Main streets.

The victim was walking home from his cousin’s house when a man in the street asked, “Who you is?” said detective M.E. Pichardo.

The victim replied, “Who you is?” back and the shooter pointed a handgun at his face before hitting him multiple times in the head with the gun, Pichardo said.

The victim then said, “You got it, you got it, you got it” and kept walking on his way until the shooter shot the victim once in the left arm, Pichardo said.

"Who you is?" Is there any more poignant cry of confusion, both grammatical and situational?" Was either party able to ascertain who the other was? Wouldn't it be wise to beat feet and hit the bricks at a rapid rate after such an inquiry?

As on the national level, if you are not the right tribe, name, club, crew, peeps, gang, we might have to take you out. If you are not a fast-talker, your inability to respond might just be the end of you.

The exchange lacks the clarity of the more military, "Halt, who goes there?", followed by a password, followed by an "advance and be recognized." It also indicts the efficacy of Florida's No Child Left Behind policy, and whatever succeeds it. Though the subject of the repetition in the last graph of the declarative, "You got it" is unknown, its insistence without clarification is a standard of poor Southern speech.

When adjectives fail, Southern dialect allows simple repetition to serve as an intensifier or descriptor, as in, "It's a good, good day", meaning something like, "a very fine day". Triple repetition is not unheard of to express a superlative feeling.

So, from this short bit we can surmise what happens when ignorance meets aggression, or aggression arises out of ignorance: an inexorable walk towards violence. You could blame the gun for what happened, but that explosive outcome is only the thing which got the interchange press.

In fact, these brutal meetings of confusion play out daily in every block of every city; yours, too. If we do not get a slug in the arm we sustain a figurative bloodying of our heart or soul. We all suffer from the Invasion of the Body Snatchers' terror expressed by these two men. "Who ARE you?" I thought I knew you, but I find that I do not.

"Who you is?" How does one answer? How does one even ask?

...on the brighter side, "Who you is?" is always better than "Who you was."

Is Truth and Justice the American Way?

   Americans want their fascism soft-boiled.
Americans want gradualism.
They don't want a coup in the middle of the night.
They want to watch the leaves fall off
the tree of freedom one branch at a time 
--Media Fascism, Jon Rappoport

Even though the sewer pipelines
reach far into our houses with their tentacles,
they are carefully hidden from view
and we are happily ignorant of the invisible
Venice of shit underlying our
bathrooms, bedrooms, dance halls, and parliaments 
--The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 
Milan Kundera 

Are people bad code? 
--Person of Interest
____________________

Coming up behind a vehicle sporting Florida's "Operation Iraqi Freedom" license plate made Ranger queasy.  Florida's Governor Rick Scott has refused Medicaid funds for our state, so reviling is he of the poor urchins who have the bad luck to be poor in America ... but we have plates benefiting our foreign excursions. 

Apparently a license plate saying, "We support all citizens because we are a democracy" with vanity plate funds going into some general social coffers wouldn't be too cool.

Americans must be insane to accept and correlate aggressive, elective military invasions with the concept of freedom.  Wouldn't the more correct description of the escapade be, "Operation Iraqi Humiliation", or perhaps "Operation Iraqi Castration", or perhaps, "Domination?  Perhaps, "Operation 'He Tried to Kill My Dad!'"

The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan had nothing to do with freedom, and yet we swallowed the lie hook, line and sinker.  The path to un-democracy is marked with religious impositions befitting an Augustinian City on the Hill: We may attack evil, because we are chaste.  Myth is more ennobling than reality; As Capt. Jean-Luc Picard says, "Make it so".

When did the United States begin replacing reality with myth?  Surely the original Revolution was an act of suspension of disbelief: "Taxation without representation" was false, and the rebels would surely have been hung as the brigands they were if not successful.  But victors write the history.

Have we ever told the truth? Perhaps, but the litany of untruth is long: The Philippines at the turn of the 20th century, The Banana Wars, The Dominican Republic or Cuba (1960)?  Was Grenada a practice run for Panama?  Was Panama a practice run for Iraq and Afghanistan?  Will those two wars be practice runs for Iran?

What about our domestic actions?  The government's violent response to violations at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, shares similarities with the Iraqi operation.  The Branch Davidians may have been breaking the law by manufacturing firearms without a federal license. They may have been producing automatic versions of the M-16. But were their violations commensurate with the Waco Massacre, destroying their compound and killing 76 men, women and children?

An example of our extreme hypocrisy occurred recently when the U.S. blithely condemned Israel for its "disproportionate response" in its recent "Pillar of Defense" offense which killed 105 people, including many targeted terrorists, in an incursion to address years of bombings on their country; severe disproportionality is the name of our game.  We know that heavy-duty disproportional is the only way to fight and win, and we smugly engage in it because we have deemed ourselves "good", and the bombees "evil".

Bring out the big guns is the American way, and we do not even seem disturbed when the guns are turned against our own citizens, forgetting in those moments that we are supposed to be a democracy, which accords all citizens equal rights, regardless of how loony or destructive they may seem.

Because OUR destructiveness (murder) is in the name of good, and destruction behind the aegis of the U.S. government may not be questioned, lest one become a target themselves of suspicion.  You are with us, or agin' us.  Again, the American Way -- my country, right or wrong.  Only, in a converging world, such isolationism does not serve us well.

The Davidian comparison holds, because collateral damage is necessary when people are being held captive by bad guys.  You must break a few eggs to make an omelet. Only ... the Branch Davidians and the Iraqis did not choose to be "saved" by outside forces.  The deaths in Waco and Iraq were not  justifiable or proportional; they benefited no one and nothing.

The point here is, our aggression and will to destroy starts here at home; it starts in the heart and mind of every one of us.  When our government kills our citizens in violation of well-established rules of conduct, illegal invasions are a stone's throw.

And we wonder how we can say "Iraqi Freedom" without a hiccup.

Assassin's Creed III

___________________

The video game "Assassin's Creed III" has received glowing reviews from the tech community.  A USAToday reviewer called the detailed re-creation of 18th century America, "phenomenal".

"Players follow Connor, a Native American assassin who joins forces with the newly formed American colonies to fight off the British during the 1700's  The story dives deeply yinto Connor's life, from his family history to his path to becoming an expert killer.

"The structure of the game allows players to feel like a graceful assassin, leaping between trees or rooftops as they kill Redcoats with hidden blades, bows and arrows, tomahawks and even rope darts. ..." 

"Graceful assassin" . . . one can almost picture a Rahm Emanuel or Ron Reagan, Jr., in their ballerino days (more at Emanuel), but still not a gratifying proposition.  We are not Samurai in a slow-mo Tarentino conception or a Bruce Lee film.  Assassins are not graceful in the true sense of that word, and anyway, why would someone want to be an assassin, clunky or graceful?

Molina calls it "highly satisfying action, however, the reviewer fails to note that it presents an entirely erroneous interpretation of history, leading uninformed individuals to believe that assassins helped win the United States Revolution.  Adding insult to injury, Connor is a Native American, which some reviewers actually found to be an inclusive nod to minorities.  It is not; once again, the dirty work is foisted off onto a transgressive minority member.

Assassins were NOT a tool of the U.S. Revolution, a war won by a combination of conventional and guerrilla-type warfare.  A slick and mindless violent game does not change that fact, though it does play into the current fascination with Black Ops and extralegal strategies employed in the execution of war.  Combined with Presidents who sign off on the illegality, confusion is the name of the game.

Assassination is not a soldierly skill nor should it be a tool of policy, and games should not espouse this insane thought.  Meanwhile we stand by simperingly wondering how nut jobs like the Aurora, Colorado killer get their ideas for what they must feel constitutes "heroic action". In the inspiration for the Colorado case, the film "The Dark Knight Rises" has all of the archetypal trappings of righteous vengeance wrought by a wronged entity, reminiscent of the collective U.S. mindset apres- 9-11-01.

In the case of "Assassin's Creed", the very name of the game implies that assassins live by a "creed" -- something honorable and special to an elite group; this is an enticing concept for a marginalized, ostracized individual.

Assassins should not be heralded as heroes.  If they are, all that is good about America is lost.

--Jim & Lisa