Trying to live under a rock while simultaneously working in Times Square is like trying to fit a square peg into a circular hole.
This is especially impossible when complete strangers see me dressed very sharply and seated at a lobby desk and think that it is my job to know when the results of some verdict will be made public.
"Verdict?" I ask dumbly, feigning a childlike innocence. "For what?"
...
The shops of Times Square boarded themselves up, and preparing for a riot--in the name of George Floyd (without his consent)--were spared by Chauvin's unwilling sacrifice. Hoodlums smoked--and sold--their marijuana to tourists and fellow hoodlums peacefully without police interference, and only one pathetic march squeaked by, ironically escorted by the NYPD. For my personal environmental safety I was thankful for a GUILTY verdict. (Times Square feels dangerous on a good day.) For the sake of the future of this once great nation, this verdict was a tragedy, as was the death murder of George Floyd. (I have to preface everything with the obvious 'George Floyd didn't deserve to die like that...')
I was a newborn New Yorker when Osama bin Laden was allegedly killed in 2011 and recall waiting for hours on the steps of St. Peter's in the Financial District for a three second glimpse of Obama behind 6 inches of bullet proof glass as he waved through the window of the presidential limousine.
The celebrations for Osama's killing were unanimous and raucous throughout all of America. As a contrarian I disagreed with the celebrations, nobly believing that death is never worth celebrating, especially for the sake of vengeance. (I still believe this, but for reasons beyond non-conformity.)
Yet, just ten years away from the death of bin Laden--a death which (wrongfully) brought all Americans together--is the death of George Floyd/verdict of Derek Chauvin, an ordinary tragedy (for those unbiased individuals, wherever they are hiding) that divided America along fiery ideological lines: one side celebrating, the other side afraid to voice honest disagreement.
Where bin Laden was America's greatest enemy, Chauvin and Floyd were a couple of regular dumb Americans that met under tragic, dumb, ordinary circumstances. Other ordinary, dumb Americans should mourn this tragedy, and then move on. But instead battle lines are drawn (by the media and cynical politicians) and ordinary, dumb Americans believe their fellow Americans to be their enemies because of their race instead of that Asian country and its evil government that brought us the Coronavirus while trying to take over the world. Or that "religion of peace." edit: Or Zionist Jews.
In 2021 "justice" is mob vengeance, celebrated by Americans against a fellow American.
I miss 9/11...I miss bin Laden...I miss the United States of America...
This is how it truly begins to end...
