AMUSING, INTERESTING, OUTRAGEOUS, or PROFOUND

• California law enforcement misused state databases more than 7,000 times in 2023

• Former Alabama jail administrator charged with federal civil rights violation, falsifying a report and making false statements to investigators

• Dallas police sergeant charged with stealing department-issued guns, pawning them in Oklahoma

• He tried for decades to get the evidence in his case analyzed for DNA. Prosecutors and judges refused six times to allow the tests, even at his lawyers’ expense. Now, tests show he's innocent.

• Cop fired for making ‘derogatory slurs’ is hired by neighboring police department

• Florida cop accused of dealing drugs and trying to smuggle them onto a cruise to sell in Skittle packets

• Prosecutors say ex-trooper shot himself then falsely claimed he’d been wounded by an unknown gunman

• Police charge former state trooper with killing Luzerne County man dating his ex-girlfriend

• Ohio police crack down on body-camera footage in a blow to civil liberties

• Mother of former inmate sues Snohomish County over jail death

• "We all take this seriously," cops say, as they open 'investigation' into video showing cops intentionally breaking kid's skateboard with axe

• Florida cop blasts fellow officer in chaotic scuffle wrestling man with lighter she thought was a gun

• Mecklenburg sheriff's office pays $550,000, admits no wrongdoing, to settle lawsuit over cover-up of teen's jail suicide

• Philadelphia police union seeks to restore secrecy around police shootings and disciplinary records in upcoming contract

• Former deputy arrested for filing false report about being shot during traffic stop

• Washington cop gets nearly 17 years in prison for 2019 murder of Jesse Sarey

• Chicago to pay $38.25m to settle four police misconduct cases

• Over traffic stop, Wisconsin cops chase vehicle into fatal wreck

• Over traffic stop, Georgia cops chase vehicle into fatal wreck

• Florida officer fired after accidentally shooting a driver with his own gun during a traffic stop

• We are shocked, shocked, that Law enforcement joined meetings of far-right Oath Keepers, leak shows

   
Note: When reading news coverage from any corporate-owned source — a newspaper, TV station or network, etc — the facts are generally factual, but the slant favors the rich and powerful.

   
Previously

So something hit me when I read this one particular comment yesterday, and I wanted to write some things down that were too long and pretentious, and basically unrelated, to be in a comment in reply. These are some thoughts that occurred to me a while back, when I saw "Trainwreck" on Netflix. Check it out. Hope you enjoy.

"Trainwreck" is the story of Woodstock '99. In my opinion, 1999 was a perfect inflection point between America-that-was, and an early prototype of the one we have today. Remember how old kids used to look in high school? Remember Rodney King and rooftop Koreans? Remember sexism in movies? Remember not having a cell phone, and smoking on airplanes? IDK. Maybe you do not.

Remember people growing up and owning a home? Land lines? Single-income households? Remember pensions, and going to the doctor and getting treated, more or less for free, and it's normal? Probably you do not.

There was a lot about that old world that was very bad, but also a lot that was good that we lost. I'm not saying those events are related. I think we lost the good, and then, much later, we started fixing some of the bad, and it didn't need to happen that way. The one just reminded me of the other.

So Woodstock '99 happened during the final stages of evaporation of America that was. A lot of those kids went on to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan, and some of them came home broken. Some of them got tech jobs and became, honestly, a little weird. Irregardless, those kids had kids, and those are the young people of today, on their phones. Some of them had medical bankruptcies, bad credit scores. No savings. Oxy. Paying the rent. But back then, these were the grown-up-looking teenagers of the time, working in the summers, smiling big healthy smiles for the camera.

Woodstock '99 was the spectre of America the fucked, visiting again for a weekend to come and call on us in all its rotten glory, before it became universal for Americans to have to live within it.

The first Woodstock was magic because people came together. The organizers abandoned the idea of requiring tickets to get in. The people of the town jumped into action when it became clear that the event had way more people than supplies, and mobbed the place with literal tons of food to contribute, made sure no one was hungry. Everybody was one team. It was America. It was okay. We could work it out, even if we looked strange to each other and didn't understand a thing about this weird event, or had conflicts of interest and priorities, we could still make it make sense on a human level and everybody could be okay. That's what made it magic. It wasn't music or drugs, although those helped. It was the destruction of the forms and traditions that kept things in their standard orbits, and the incandescent magic of everything holding perfectly stable, still safe, with no structure to contain it. Of people's care for each other and their good nature being enough, so that it didn't matter what the details were. Anything keeping us at war with one another could simply be discarded without a question when it mattered for real.

Now, Woodstock '99: The provided drinking water was contaminated. Kids were getting trench mouth, with big blisters and sores, because they were drinking sewage. The vendors were charging $8 apiece, in 2025 dollars, for little dinky 12-oz bottled water, because there was a run because it was the only noncontaminated stuff to be found. Trash collection was bad. The toilets were bad. There was human shit on the ground, and dunes of empty plastic bottles like sand on the beach. Security was bad. There was no shade from the sun, and with the lack of water, kids were getting dehydration and heatstroke. A couple of them died from it. The organizers simply did not give a shit. They had their ticket money, all the kids were in the big pen where they were supposed to be, alright, sounds good, when is lunch coming.

Nowadays this kind of thing is normal. Nobody expects to work at Amazon and get treated any kind of way except like a fieldhand. But at the time it was abhorrent. People's parents had good jobs, leftovers all those generations later from strong labor in the 60s, or the 30s, or the late 1800s. People had health and safety, good retirement. For someone in charge to abandon their responsibility to look out for all the little human beings far below them was still outrageous and shocking. There were cracks showing: Divorces, layoffs, plant closings, mergers, significant tremblings of Reagan's dark incantations finally breaking through into the reality of the day to day. But the fundamental model of the world inside America was still that it was fair, at least for young traveling white people.

So, what do you think the kids did? When it became grossly apparent that the organizers had decided they didn't give a shit if they all lived or died?

They tore the place apart.

That's not metaphorical. They tore apart the structures with their hands and then lit the pieces on fire. They started getting froggy for real on the last day. MTV was going up on these Hitler-rally balconies to give live reports, with the sea of plebs positioned artfully in the background, far, far below and stretching into the distance, and the plebs started pelting the balconies with pocket change, batteries, bottles, whatever they could throw that would travel far enough. Kurt Loder had to duck and awkwardly try to keep it light, while he was fleeing because it wasn't safe, with little "ping" "smash" "clunk" sounds all around him.

Well, it wasn't safe in the pit either, and you didn't seem to have a problem with that, Kurt.

Watch the documentary if you want. I'm glossing over a lot. The climax was the last night, when the show ended, and it really sank in that this was what the people had gotten for all their young hope and far travel, and their $180, and this was the last chance they would have to even the balance. In a mass, they started climbing the audio towers and shaking them to knock them down, ripping plywood off the walls, lighting big fires.

Event staff asked RHCP, as things developed, to calm the crowd: At least ask the kids to move away from the fire, so people could put it out. But RHCP is also America-that-was. They had all been those kids, loose and young, skipping school, happy. They went out and played "Fire" by Jimi Hendrix, and exited the event.

Honestly it feels like kids today, and adults, are just broken. Nobody I know has that kind of fight in them because no one expects justice. Nobody expects responsibility from the people on top. Nobody expects things to be okay, and so nobody can get up the gumption to really fight back when they're not. It's just, wow what a shitty and unsafe show, back home then, I guess. I should have brought some water for myself. Maybe it comes from the music, too: Hearing something speaking inside you that you know is worth fighting for, having other people voice their own version of it every day, and having it reflected back to you in societal things you all interact with. Feeling that there's something alive and caring in the culture you're a part of, to connect back and strengthen the little part inside of you that's warm and alive.

There's a piece in the documentary when the organizer is emotional talking about how some of the vendor tents had a bunch of money in them, and these kids were moving in this big mob and breaking shit up, and the vendors couldn't get their money out before the kids smashed everything and, presumably, took it back. You know, the money they'd brought with them, that they gave away $8 at a time for the water.

He did not get emotional about the kids that died from heatstroke, who didn't go home to their parents.

And unlike during the day, no one died in the structure fires, or when the towers came down. A few people in the documentary got very concerned telling about when the fires had happened, but it was safer than the operation had been when they were in charge.

• Trump exits Paris climate agreement, again, and issues a flood of anti-climate orders

• The last time it was legal, exports of sea sand destroyed dozens of Indonesian islands—now, the ban is being lifted

• Swarm of jellyfish swimming in bioluminescence looks ‘magical’ – but it’s a warning sign

• Climate change could cut the economy in half, and we’re not ready for it

• The world is on track for between 1.9 and 3.7°C of warming by 2100

• We just lived through a full week of the world’s warmest temperatures ever observed during the middle of January

• Trump stocks EPA with oil, gas and chemical lobbyists

   
Note: When reading news coverage from any corporate-owned source — a newspaper, TV station or network, etc — the facts are generally factual, but the slant favors the rich and powerful.

   
Previously

• Christian school in North Carolina slapped with lawsuit over alleged sexual misconduct

• Montana pastor used his “karate lessons” to sexually assault at least one child

• Even religious people don’t trust religious institutions

• Two Chicago priests under investigation for alleged sexual abuse of minors: archdiocese

• Butler County resident found guilty in latest Jehovah's Witness sexual abuse case

• These Texas pastors believe God sent Trump to save America from sin

• Holy Family Catholic Church staff member Edwin Valdez arrested for multiple counts of sexual assault against minor in Sacramento

• Fort Kent woman sues Jehovah’s Witnesses, alleging child sex abuse

• Monsignor Joseph Reilly was chosen to become Seton Hall University's 22nd president, even though he's accused of failing repeatedly to report sexual abuse

• Hope Fellowship Frisco West pastor fired after prior allegations of inappropriate contact with a minor

• Pope dissolves Peru-based Catholic movement after ‘sadistic abuses’

• Former teacher at Christian school is charged with child sex crimes

• Former pastor pleads guilty to possessing nearly 700 images of child pornography

• SBC pastor arrested, charged with stealing hurricane relief funds from church

   
Note: When reading news coverage from any corporate-owned source — a newspaper, TV station or network, etc — the facts are generally factual, but the slant favors the rich and powerful.

   
Previously