kpete
kpete's Journal
"as long as you said you didn’t mean it."
I remember one morning when I walked up from the river after a canoeing session, the early-morning dew evaporating as the summer sun sauntered across the sky. On my way back to my cabin, I passed the shooting range. The scouts were taking their places in the partitions, each of them loading his weapon with pride and intention. There must have been a dozen of them lined up alongside one another. Guns pressed to their shoulders. Eyes narrowed with purposefulness. I watched them hold the guns between their pubescent hands, the ease with which their fingers pulled back on the triggers—there was a certainty I could not understand. The white boys spoke of rifle shooting as a pastime, a way of both reasserting and claiming their burgeoning manhood. And perhaps it was. Perhaps holding a gun and aiming it at something has always been a sort of game.
What I remember most is the laughter. The unfettered rapture that rang from their small bellies. The joy that came from firing something with no ostensible objective other than to destroy what was in front of them. It felt different than what I saw in some of the boys I knew from school, who carried guns as a way to protect themselves in places where no one else would. But I couldn’t understand who these scouts were practicing to protect themselves from. They did not have to imagine that, one day, someone might turn the barrel on them, and claim that it was because he was scared or that they looked older than they were. That was not, and has never been, my reality. I could not bring myself to fire a gun without also imagining being its target.
My father had told me that these boys—boys who were my friends, who invited me over for sleepovers, birthdays, and football games—would grow up to be police officers, lawyers, judges. He told me that no sleepover could insure that I would not be on the receiving end of their guns or one of their gavels. Because it wasn’t about me. It wasn’t even about them. It was not about how kind they were, for they may indeed have been kind. It was about a system that makes intention secondary, perhaps irrelevant. He did not say this to scare me. He said this because he knew what it meant to be a black boy in a country that wasn’t built for us—a country, in fact, that was built on the destruction of our bodies, whether for profit or for power. Right now they were just boys. I was just a boy. And still these guns were real and my skin was black.
As I sit on the couch this week, I keep thinking of these boys. The merit badges they would go on to receive. The way their hands gripped the guns. I think of Prosecutor Tim McGinty calling Tamir Rice’s death a “perfect storm of human error.” I think about what does or does not get called an error. I think of how, at the range, if you shot your gun too early they didn’t take the weapon away; they simply told you not to do it again, as long as you said you didn’t mean it.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-stories-tamir-rice-makes-us-remember?mbid=social_twitter
The story of one trump supporter struggling to get by
I initially stumbled upon Harwood on Twitter. The Social Security Administration had tweeted about disability insurance, and Harwood responded with a YouTube video claiming that the SSA was jerking him around.
MORE:
http://mattbruenig.com/2015/12/30/the-story-of-eric-harwood/
:thumb
Donald Trump Offers Passionate Defense Of Aerosol Hair Spray
“You can’t use hair spray, because hair spray is going to affect the ozone,” the billionaire mogul told crowd.He continued, pausing to pantomime spraying and styling his shag carpet-like hair: “I’m in my room, in New York City, and I want to put a little spray…but I hear they don’t want me to use hairspray, they want me to use the pump.”
The presidential candidate very much prefers aerosol hair spray to “the pump” version, which he said “comes out in big globs and it’s stuck in your hair and you say, ‘oh my god, I’ve gotta take a shower again because my hair’s all screwed up.'”
Trump also contended that using aerosol hair products in his “sealed” apartment can’t cause harm to the environment.
“I’m sitting in this concealed apartment, this concealed unit – you know, I really do live in a very nice apartment – but it’s sealed! It’s beautiful! I don’t think anything gets out,” he concluded.
MORE:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/donald-trump-hair-spray-hilton-head
'Love is stronger than war'
Surrounded by devastation: This bride and groom posed for a remarkable photoshoot following their wedding in the Syrian city of Homs
Mr Meray shared the images on his Facebook page, JafaR Photography, this morning, writing: 'Honeymooners from Syria.
'They chose rubble and destruction to be the background pictures of their wedding.'
The photographer said the shoot was 'proof that life goes on, silently' and that hope 'is always there'.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3379345/Wedding-warzone-Remarkable-photos-Syrian-newlyweds-posing-ravaged-city-Homs-Russia-reveals-hit-FOUR-targets-country-just-two-days.html#ixzz3vuI62tYo
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Someone Put A Hitler Quote On Trump’s Picture — His Fans Didn’t Even Notice
The individual, who asked us to blur his name, shared a meme bearing Hitler’s words to the Facebook group, “The Trump Party,” attributing the words instead to the 2016 GOP presidential hopeful.
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The meme was shared 28 times, and accumulated 103 “likes” in 11 hours. It was, in short, wildly popular when compared to other posts in that group. But surely someone noticed? Someone had to have fact-checked the quote. At least one person took a few seconds to verify its authenticity, right? Wrong.
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more:
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/12/31/someone-put-a-hitler-quote-on-trumps-picture-his-fans-didnt-even-notice-screenshots/
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Member since: Fri Sep 17, 2004, 03:59 PMNumber of posts: 71,978
