"Summer's coming."
Just like its opposite warning about impending winter on Game of Thrones, this one needs to be taken as a looming reality just as ominous. Because "unrest" starts easier when it's hot.
Summer will bring revolution. Maybe not this summer, but a summer. A Baltimore City Council member explained that the "unrest" in Maryland right now isn't just about one more Black life that didn't matter to police. It's about... everything.
Shit pay. Shit jobs. Shit schools. Shit politicians. No jobs. No chances.
Or, as a fellow blogger puts it:
When the free market, real estate, the elected government, the legal system have all shown you they are not going to protect you—in fact, that they are the sources of the greatest violence you face—then political action becomes about stopping the machine that is trying to kill you, even if only for a moment, getting the boot off your neck, even if it only allows you a second of air.
The boot is getting heavier and heavier. Right now, enough Americans still believe in the idea of America, and the promise of democracy, to mask the truths that both concepts are dead, their empty husks sold to the highest bidder. But the blindness will only last until reality affects the blind firsthand. America is a wonderful place until it breaks you into pieces and rips your guts out.
Then you get angry. Then you want justice.
For yourself and everyone like you.
But if you're young, you know that acting on your anger will label and dismiss your entire generation. (Think of Occupy, those naïve little hippy kids thinking they could change the world by camping in city parks.) If you're Black, you know it will reinforce one of the root problems needing to be eliminated. And the problem will push back by wanting to eliminate you. (Just read the web comments.) If you're a patriot disgusted by the corruption and decay of your once-proud nation, then you're either deranged and dangerous or stupid and socialist.
So you wait. And wait...
But summer's coming.
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