This Memorial Day...

...I admit I'm with Arctic Patriot when he says that

I am completely unable to get Jose Guerena's murder out of my head.

Just so.  Jose Guereña served his government "in the sandbox" (whatever you may think of that), only to come home and get summarily executed by its standing army*.

The more we learn, the worse it gets.  Among the honest responses (meaning:  those that do not come from a police union), the most utterly generous way to view this atrocity is to describe it as completely incompetent, Walter Mitty-ish (only with real corpses), and inexcusable in practically every way that matters.  The best technical description I've read so far (long, but the analysis is worth it) is here.

It is hard to put into words how much anger cases like this (for it is but one) brings out, in perfectly rational people.  As Billy Beck put it:

And they killed Jose Guerena in no time at all. "Jose Guerena". That was his name. Man, it gets hard to remember them all. This government should be taken at its word ("war"), and there should now be a running memorial of this reasonless slaughter, going all the way back through its ages now. It's been forty years of murder in the War on Drugs, all of it running down to a time when the skies must thunder with widespread realization of its end-logic:

They're just murdering us, now, at will. The courts have, recently, done diligent work at clearing the ways for them right into and through your homes -- do you understand? -- and the integral procession of the thing must be that once they officially disapproved of what you could do in your own home, they had claimed you, and that means right up to and including your life.

Many people are starting to realize that they, too, are Jose Guereña, or could be at any moment of any day or night, anywhere in the country.  And the thought of contemplating one's own fully-sanctioned murder just tends to produce strong reactions.

The police apologists, the "just a few bad apples"ists, the "it can't happen here"ists, the "you're being melodramatic"ists, the "cops are militarizing just to be able to catch up"ists, the "gawd, you're so negative"ists, the "there's a place for SWAT teams in this country"ists, the "they just want to come home after their shifts"ists, have nothing left but their own empty catechisms.

Jose Guereña wanted to come home at the end of his next shift too, you fucking jackasses.

But we all know, by this time, how these things work out.  (We've got so much experience, after all.)  The character assassins have been working hard to support the work of the corporeal assassins, although their stories shift daily like the bad con artists they are.  The Establishment will tell us all how important it is that the Drug War's valuable work continues because it is just so darn profitable because any day now it will actually start paying off after forty years of failure.  And of course in the end, we will be reminded once again that the badge is not so much a shield of authority as it is a shield of immunity.

Doubt that?  Just watch.  Bettin' money is on "no charges filed" and "acted within policy".  UPDATE:  That didn't take long.  Done.

As has been said more than once today, Jose Guereña was a United States Marine, and he died horribly in a war.



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* Yes, the cops are the "standing army" the Founders warned us about.  Even if you believe that our overseas military marauding does nothing but endanger our interests, safety and security, that's still all entirely theoretical compared to what's happening every goddamn day here at home, at the nightsticks, Taser barbs, and muzzles of the Fatherland Security State.  (You've stopped pretending and just call it what it is now, right?)