It’s Hot in Here, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

July 30, 2015 Victor El-Khouri 2 Comments

My apartment is like a cave, dark and cool.  I prowl around in it like a bear.

My apartment is cool because I have the air-conditioning on in the rooms I inhabit.  It’s dark because I keep the blinds drawn to keep out the sun and its attendant heat.  It is my hope that, by living in this darkness, I can keep the air-conditioners at a higher temperature and thus stave off a black-out.

(Yes, it’s all about me and what I do.  What’s your point?)

I hate this.  Not as much as I would hate being without air-conditioning, but a whole bunch.

It’s July (almost August!), so it’s not a surprise that it’s hot.  Summer = hot, at least in the northeastern United States.  What is unusual this year is the extreme heat, with days on end registering above 90 degrees.  Throw in the high humidity, and you have, as David Letterman once observed, a city that makes its own gravy.

It’s not just the northeast that is too hot.  The West Coast is stupid-hot , plus they’re having a record draught, so the whole place is burning.  There’s tornados in the Midwest.

Plus, occasionally this summer, snow.  Because why the hell not.

Look, one season doesn’t prove anything, but we’ve had ever more severe weather, and yet it seems that those who deny climate change just dig in their heels ever deeper.  They don’t “believe” it.  That’s their opinion and they are sticking with it.

You know, I don’t particularly want to believe in gravity (I want to fly!) but that doesn’t mean anything to gravity.  It’s still there.

Here’s something else I don’t want to believe:  our police departments include men and women who don’t understand the implications of their jobs nor have they been properly trained to keep the peace.  Instead of following the rules of a civil society, these bad cops act like bullies and thugs, especially to people of color.  Unarmed people are killed.  People taken into custody die.

Even worse, there are people who defend this status quo.  “They (the dead people) shouldn’t have resisted arrest,” they say.  (Actually, that’s my inference of what I’ve heard.  I don’t know if any one has said those specific words.)  “When the police tell you to do something, you should do it.”

Worst of all, most of these police walk free.  Killing men and women of color doesn’t merit punishment.

I’ve seen the videos, and none of the “resistance” to arrest that I’ve seen has presented a deadly threat to an officer.  Often (Eric Garner, Tamir Rice), the accused is backing up, or oblivious to the command.

Public sympathy is more intense for Cecil the lion than for people of color.

That’s enough for me, folks.  I’m staying in my cave.  And growling.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, wishes her sister a most happy 60th birthday.