THE THINGS THAT I THINK THAT I THINK ABOUT WHEN THEY ARE THINKING OF REOPENING THE STATE

...AND WHY I NEVER WENT FULL-BLOWN CONSPIRACY GUY

When I mentioned my tendency to give provenance to conspiracy theory and the suspicion inherent to them, I tried to indicate that I only would go “so far”.  I tend to look for tethering to some accepted and objective reality with which I use to prove the “something’s out there” part of the theory.  I do not continue to dig as though I was mining for Bitcoin, and get all “deep state” or “finding out how far the rabbit hole goes”.  I don’t stretch or warp logic, as that means that at some point there is a leap of faith taken.  Were I inclined to take such leaps, then I would not be agnostic.  Or, someone who accepts conspiracy theories full cloth.

There were a couple of recent incidents that struck a personal chord.  One, was the incident in Indianapolis, where the driver, Drejeanon Reed, led officers on a chase through somewhere in Naptown, and where the officers were able to track and unload their weapons and dropped the young man, first with tasers and THEN with lethal force.  One of the officers, presumably black, made a tasteless comment.  “It’s gonna be a closed casket”, referencing Reed's anticipated funeral service.  As far as the behavior of the officers, it is similar to how we took on tasks in the service, how I deal with the unpopular, grunt part of work.  Seems like the officers on the scene were up to their elbows with the kind of work that led me often to say,  “Well, it looks like the hero business is up to me”, a phrase that I co-opted from Bill Watterson’s “Calvin ‘n Hobbes”.  I did not pick up any vibes from the behavior of the officers, who were chasing down a threat to property and life.  So there was no real outrage, at least nothing that reached the national level (but I could be wrong… I have not followed the news since 2016) of protest and outrage that captivates the SJW’s and MAGA folks. The other case, down in Georgia, struck a personal chord of sorts.

Ahmaud Aubrey was said to be jogging through his Georgia neighborhood.  He was approached by some neighborhood watch members, two white men who were father and son, with father having ties to local law enforcement.  While I was, and am still, not too certain of THE FACTS, the Dad and his son just looked like the kind of men who I envision shooting another man because he was of the wrong skin color.

So with this case, you have a lot of assumptions you have to fight through.  Being told that Ahmaud was simply “jogging’ (which is a spurious claim and being walked back) through the area, it made me reflect on days I spent jogging through neighborhoods on the West Side of Detroit.  In hindsight, I can see why that was not in any shape or form a perfect identification, but I went with it.

OH, THERE IS VIDEO OF THIS, TOO (but I am NOT posting any of it..!)

And it makes me want to ask ALL the questions.  First, why was Ahmaud in the house?  It was not what I, and most people who hear, “house under construction”, think of when those words are used together.  It was prolly nearer to being “inspection ready” than it was under construction, so why was Abery IN the house?  Why would he stop from A RUN (which, IMO, a runner would NOT do unless some sort of duress was involved) to go into an empty house in the evening..?  Hearing this, my “Spidey-sense” begins to tingle.  From what he was dressed in (Docker-style shorts and flat canvas sneakers??) to his behavior around the property (again, who stops in the middle of a run to GO INTO A HOUSE AND LOOK AROUND??) and his history (cause if I was going to run Jim Bob and his inbred looking son into the ground, the fact that Ahmaud was not a choir-boy by any means has to come in as well) as a troublemaker, I think that the two cra--, er, “neighborhood watch patrol” had every right to question him.

Then… there is the wrestling scene between Ahmaud and the younger McMichael before shotgun blasts are heard in the video.  Ahmaud staggers for a few steps, then he drops.  At this point, what story is going to have more validity… that two Goobers from Georgia, with ties to law enforcement assassinated a black man for “jogging”, or that two members of a neighborhood watch responded to a suspicious character walking through an unattended property under construction?  “If it bleeds, it leads”, and you aren’t going to get much too bloodier than this.

Now that I have a cooler, less migraine-y, head to think about what has actually been reported, I have to wonder if this isn’t a case of much ado about the wrong thing?  What was Ahmaud doing IN THE PROPERTY.  Who does not know that is CRIMINAL TRESPASS? I mean, he had to open a door… it was not like the kind of construction site that I would walk through in my neighborhood when I was TWENTY-FIVE, taking it like a shortcut to another block, this home was having the interior installed. So, WHY WAS HE IN THE HOUSE??

Also, his trouble-making past, giving his attackers reason for approaching him, should be mentioned.  He was by no means an angel, and again, trespassing is against the law.  I assume that Ahmaud knew THAT before he creeped into the house!  Man…

I wonder what it is called when conspiracy theories overlap… a confluence of insanity??  I mean, does this incident help derail the re-election by guilting conservatives and energizing the liberals? Or does this cause conservatives, angered and ironically, “triggered” by the incident to come out in droves to make sure that “the libs” get owned and MAGA is kept in power?  No matter what I think the Aubrey incident represents (mainly, me trying to get home through chippy neighborhood through chippy neighborhood) is the kind of cognitive dissonance that allows for curtains of grey to cast shadows on everything, blurring things just enough that they are never clearly made out.