Hispanic Fanatic

It’s bizarre how often Americans are forced to prove themselves.

You must have a full-time job to prove that you are worthy of health care.

You must take on crippling debt to prove that you deserve a college education.

If you’re a woman, you must prove that you understand your own body.

If you’re an immigrant, you must prove that you love this country better than people who are born here.

If you’re homeless, you must prove that you are drug-free to get housing (even if the exact opposite approach works better).

It goes on and on. But you’ll be glad to know that there are exceptions to all this proving. 

For example, if you’re a lunatic millionaire racist who led the country into unprecedented disaster, you deserve another chance.

Also, if you’re a toddler in Missouri, you can openly carry a gun in the street. We trust you.

Yes, Americans seem like a skeptical bunch, always demanding proof. But they are actually quite discerning about what requires evidence.

For example, most Americans emphatically believe there is a man in the sky who controls the universe, despite the fact that he has never revealed himself.

They are mixed, however, on the whole concept of climate change, despite vast amounts of solid data obtained over decades 

They may or may not believe that vaccines cause autism, or that covid exists, or that JFK is actually alive and working to overthrow a vast conspiracy run by lizard people. Really, millions of Americans believe that last one.

And still the contradictions mount.

Consider that many people think Biden stole the election (despite the absence of evidence), but these same individuals refuse to believe that giving people money or free food helps alleviate poverty (despite an abundance of evidence).

Of course, it doesn’t help that we are deeply suspicious of how poor people spend their cash, even while bursting with admiration for wealthy jerks who blow obscene amounts of money on egotistic endeavors and grotesque trivialities. There is quick judgment for what a poor person puts in her grocery cart, but foot-kissing praise for billionaires who spend the equivalent of Denmark’s GDP on themselves.

Other beliefs similarly defy reason.

For example, a high percentage of Americans believe that racism is dead, except if it’s directed at white people. But they also believe in blatant racist stereotypes so strongly that it affects public policy.

Yes, American life is a strange combination of superstition, illogical thinking, and skewed beliefs that are mixed with vociferous demands for objective proof that is usually ignored.

For many of us, there will never be enough evidence to change our minds. 

And that’s a fact.

We are currently enduring the 5,826^th video of police officers overreacting just the tiniest bit by killing someone during a traffic stop.

That someone is usually a black man. The officers exhibiting psychopathic levels of violence are often white, but not always.

The locations and details differ, but the result is the same. 

Conservatives imply the victim had it coming, which is odd coming from people supposedly terrified of a tyrannical government. Why are they so willing to accept the government murdering its citizens without trial, or even formal charges?

Right-wingers also insist everything will be fine if ethnic minorities just comply with the police, even if the cops give contradictory or physically impossible orders, and the unarmed person complies, only to be tased, pepper sprayed, and punched repeatedly.

And yes, conservatives are usually more upset about protests against police brutality than the existence of police brutality itself. They also freak out if a protester throws a brick through a window, but they’re noncommittal if cops kick someone to death in the street.

In any case, US cops kill an average of three people per day, and last year was “the deadliest year on record for police violence.” Experts point out that police violence is “continuing to get worse, and … it’s deeply systemic.”

American police “typically shoot, arrest and imprison more people than similarly developed nations,” making us an ugly outlier yet again when compared to other industrialized countries.

The cops kill over 100 Americans each year in which no actual crime is ever alleged. A similar number get killed during routine traffic stops, which is what happened in Memphis. Overall, about 70% of the people killed by police each year were not involved in committing a serious crime. In fact, about one-third of people killed by police were “fleeing before they were killed, generally running or driving off — cases in which experts say lethal force is unwarranted and also endangers the public.”

Now, if that is not some trigger-happy shit, I don’t know what is.

So why are the police so willing to gun down or beat up unarmed people? 

Well, like most societal ills, the roots of this issue go back decades. Cops have always held an unquestioned position of power that allowed them to rough up Irish immigrants in the 1920s or billy club Latinos in zoot suits during the 1950s. In the 1970s, Dirty Harry said it was cool to shoot hippies, and in the 1990s, millions of Americans thought Rodney King deserved his walloping.

Then we get to the September 11 attacks, which militarized the entire nation. Police departments became mini armies, and a “warriorculture emerged that often views community members as the enemy.”

This was also around the time that a handful of shoddy studies implied that “officers who show weakness are more likely to be killed.” Such pseudoscience convinced many cops to treat every patrol as a tour of duty, and “law-enforcement culture has never recovered” from this mindset.

Of course, conservatives still argue that heavily armed cops with their own tanks are necessary to prevent crime. But in truth, “police departments with more military equipment are more likely to kill civilians,” and studies show that “more militarized police departments are less likely to prevent crime or make local residents feel safer.”

In the case of Memphis, a specialized squad was “formed to address the city’s rising crime rate by targeting ‘hot spots’ of illegal activity.” But all this menacingly named unit — “supposedly created to make the city safer” — ended up doing was “instilling a newfound fear into a tight-knit grieving community.”

Yeah, that unit has now been disbanded.

Now, any discussion about police violence must include the issue of white supremacy. 

Oh sorry, I forgot that the Memphis cops were all black. Strange, isn’t it, that these black cops were all fired and charged, with no protest from right-wingers, even before the video came out? In contrast, the murder of George Floyd had to get constant airplay for days, with corresponding massive demonstrations, before one white cop was charged, all over the strenuous objections of conservatives.

But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

Regardless, the Memphis cops did not have to be white to uphold a racist structure. These officers were “drunk with power” and rewarded for maintaining the status quo. They worked within a system that “is predicated by white supremacy, and they bought into that system.”

Black Americans are three times more likely to be killed by US police than white Americans. However, if statistics don’t sway you, just focus on the fact that we will never see a video of cops pulling over an unarmed white guy and beating him to death.

The very reason that the police exist has gone from obvious to vague. After all, cops have no constitutional obligation to protect you. 

So exactly what are they doing out there? 

It’s a good question.

Yes, things have been grim in America for the past few years. To be honest, they haven’t been that great for a couple of decades now.

In fact, a serious case can be made that the nation’s high-water mark was the 1990s, when we had grunge rock, the X-files, a booming economy, and a conservative movement that was going crazy (but not yet fully psychotic). 

Also, I was still young, which is, when you think about it, really the most important thing.

But in the spirit of optimism — and before we get too far into 2023 and allow it to crush us like the other 2020s so far — I will point out several positive developments.

First, child poverty has “dramatically decreased in the U.S. over the past 25 years.” The chief reason may be the Child Tax Credit, which helped cut child poverty by roughly 30 percent. 

Of course, that tax credit has now been eliminated, so there is a chance the rate will go up again. And compared to “other developed nations, child poverty rates in America remain higher than the rest.”

But hey, let’s not kill the vibe.

Moving on, we see that the rates of cervical cancer have “dropped an astonishing 65% among women in their early 20s.” This is primarily because of vaccinations against the human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes this type of cancer. So many women have taken advantage of the HPV vaccine that herd immunity has kicked in, and “rates have dropped among unvaccinated women as well.”

It’s true that many religious zealots refuse to let their teenage daughters get vaccinated because they would literally rather have their kids get cancer than engage in premarital sex, but… ha, I see what you did there. Almost got me to go negative, didn’t you?

Nope, we’re going to continue on the good-news train.

Here’s something: inflation is slowing down, and the federal budget deficit has fallen significantly, going from $2.6 trillion to $1.4 trillion.

These are very positive economic developments, and everyone can cheer them. Well, except for Republicans, who are determined to drive America into default and wreck the economy out of some bizarre desire to punish Biden or parade their ignorance or just burn everything down. Who can tell anymore?

No, we are staying positive. 

So ignore all that GOP nonsense and move on to this intriguing fact: The racial gap in death rates of covid has disappeared.

We all know that the pandemic hit ethnic minorities far harder than white people, but “in a country with deep racial inequities, where covid was initially another tragic example, the virus is no longer disproportionately harming Black and Hispanic Americans.” This improvement is due to “passionate advocacy and hard work by many community health officials.”

That’s uplifting, right?

Don’t be a buzzkill by pointing out that “this accomplishment continues to receive relatively little attention,” probably because “the remaining pool of unvaccinated Americans is disproportionately Republican, and Republicans are disproportionately white.”

You see, white Republicans don’t want to admit that vaccines work, and that the pandemic was real. And the mainstream media does whatever white Republicans say, which is another example of the lobsided balance of power in this country and how we all bend over backward to appease ignorance.

It doesn’t even matter that Latinos “suffered more COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people than most other racial and ethnic groups for most of the pandemic” and that “the Latino community’s rising prosperity may be in jeopardy” because of the devastation that the virus wrought. 

But no, let’s talk about how white Republicans can’t have their feelings hurt and…

Stop. Stay calm. Ok, moving on.

Another upbeat development is that there has been mild progress on climate change, as “renewable power soars, vulnerable ecosystems gain rights, and climate protocols start to pay dividends.”

That’s almost enough to make you forget that “the oil giant Exxon privately ‘predicted global warming correctly and skillfully’ only to then spend decades publicly rubbishing such science in order to protect its core business.”

It turns out that “the only thing Exxon did better than predicting the future was lying about it.” If you need a refresher on how evil corporations can be, and how climate denialism indicates sheer idiocy, this is “your umpteenth reminder that we’ve known about the coming (now here) disaster for decades.”

Well, my quest for positive news is getting shaky now. Perhaps I can combine my last two items — the pandemic and climate change — into one hopeful story.

Yes, here it is: As global temperatures rise, it becomes “more likely that viruses and bacteria locked up in glaciers and permafrost could reawaken and infect local wildlife.” This means that the next killer pandemic may not come “from bats or birds but from matter in melting ice.”

So if the heat doesn’t kill us, the viruses will.

Damn. There goes all my optimism.

Ok, what was I saying about the 1990s? Yeah, I guess those were the motherfucking days.

At least we’ll always have Soundgarden.

If you’re Gen X, like me, you remember the 1980s phenomenon of action movies that were all based on the exact same plot. The premise was this: 

American prisoners of war are still trapped in Vietnam, and a ruthless bad-ass is going to get them out.

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Here’s how sensitive those liberal snowflakes are. Some guy in California got offended over a definition in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. How absurd. They’re just words, you wimpy, tree-hugging…

Oh wait. It wasn’t a liberal. It was a right-wing white man. And he wasn’t so much “offended” as “screaming death threats.” Yes, the guy was furious over Merriam-Webster’s entry on gender, and in his transphobic zeal, he sent multiple intimidating messages to the publisher and said the dictionary’s creators “should be hunted down and shot.”

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There are numerous disadvantages to arguing with crazy people.

It’s futile. It raises your blood pressure. And because this is America, there’s a good chance that the crazy person will shoot you.

But a frequently overlooked hazard of debating a lunatic is that, if you argue long enough, you’ll start to wonder if you’re the crazy one. Because the more the maniac digs in, the more you will call upon your rational brain and your desire to be open-minded, with the result that you’ll eventually ask yourself, “Is this guy right, and could the moon be a secret Martian base?”

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For decades, conservatism was essentially a commitment to traditional values and ideas, combined with a hesitation to rapid change. Basically, stodgy old men kept society from evolving too quickly.

The benefit of this philosophy has always been lost on me. After all, what’s so noble about futilely resisting innovation while upholding harmful traditions? However, it was at least a coherent and principled approach. 

Modern conservatism, however, consists of Republicans claiming “an exemption from any generally applicable rule they do not wish to follow, while imposing their own religious and ideological views on those who do not share them.”

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The “woke mob” didn’t kill 10 people in Buffalo. 

A transgender swimmer didn’t kill 10 people in Buffalo. 

A teacher talking about CRT didn’t kill 10 people in Buffalo. 

No, the biggest menace to Americans continues to be an angry white man echoing Fox News talking points.

In this case, the justification for mass homicide was a favorite among conservatives: replacement theory. 

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I have lived in my neighborhood in Los Angeles for 12 years, far longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere else. Obviously, I love it. 

Yes, I know — according to right-wing suburbanites, there is no greater hell than California, where you can’t go a day without being carjacked by crackheads, shot by MS-13, and swallowed whole by an earthquake. Worse of all, our gas is six dollars per gallon.

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Have you ever felt disrespected?

Perhaps someone mocked the color of your skin. Or morons in positions of authority dismissed your good ideas. Or everyone laughed when you said that Avatar is a masterpiece.

Actually, check that last one. You kind of had it coming.

In any case, from toddlers to world leaders to hardcore rappers, everybody wants the same thing:

Respect.

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