Driving through Phoenix, flames.

At a place they called the Broadway Curve, a pickup is engulfed in flames on the left shoulder. The far left lane is closed, but I’m in the next one over, and as I pass the truck I feel the amplification of the searing heat on my cheek. A moment later, just as the heat is fading into memory, there is the muffled explosion of something popping, probably one of the burning tires.

On the radio meanwhile we have spokesdrones droning on some weekly news and public affaris show.

There’s an economic development officer from Buckeye, the second-fastest-growng city in the country. New home starts are actually up from the same time last year, straight through the pandemic.

I can tell you that you don’t want to live in fucking Buckeye.

Next up is somebody from the county courts, explaining how they will continue to ram prisoners through, but now in a responsible socially-distanced way.

My mind wanders to spokesdrones I’ve known, and how the way they live is impossible for me to even consider living. There was the college president in Yuma who wanted us all to know and live by his words, quote: It’s a great day to be a Matador!

Once during a meeting in my short year there, I offered that I was considering changing my email sig to:

What kind of day is it to be the bull?

My proposal was received with nervous laughter and hushed admonitions, essentially, to behave if I knew what was good for me.

I don’t know what’s good for me, if by that we mean what will ensure my success. I am in the words of Steve Earle, The Other Kind.

I left that job under my own steam, but twice in the last few years it has been otherwise.

You and I, we know why.

Somewhere in those miles I pass a billboard, offfering a degree quite literally in a field they call Worship Arts, at a place called GCU, a very expensive private Baptist college.

I could tell those students quite a lot about the Worship Arts, but you can be sure that it wouldn’t be anything their Dean wanted them to hear.

This is the kind of day it is, to be the bull. A job in their reverent china shop does not wait for me.

One more thing.

I have very little right to speak about the current uprising underway, from any angle. I wasn’t paying attention all last week as it developed, and as it intensified over the weekend, I did have bandwidth to watch a few random snippets of coverage–the best was from Unicorn Riot, and the worst was from any local news team you care to name. KTLA in LA, I’m looking at you fools.

But I will say this much. Don’t talk about looting, to me.

(Preface: There is nothing to be gained by looting a bottle of Korbel brandy out of the smashed window of a liquor store, except a free drunk binge that will probably be counterproductive to any higher goals. Don’t do it.)

If you want to cluck and handwave about those bad looters, my question to you is simple. What are YOU doing, about the problem? Or hell, any of the problems that plague us?

Anybody who is interviewed while in the middle of protesting on the streets has full rights to issue strongly worded statements to those who are looting.

Anybody watching from the safety of a suburb or gated community or cozy news studio can shut the fuck up about it as far as I’m concerned.

Similarly with scaremongering about "Antifa" … Mr. President.

What does Antifa mean? Do you know that much? Who is the President of the organization? Who is the economic development officer for Antifa?

You want to classify them as a tururist organization, when they’re not even an organization, and in fact being one would be contrary to their core principles.

Whoever wants to call themselves Antifa just does it, and they at least will know that it stands for Anti-Fascist, and nothing more.

Are you too not anti-fascist?

Much more could be said legitimately about the arguments among activists between the militantly non-violent approach, and others.

The smartest thing I heard all day coming out of the speakers of the rental car was from a black academic. He said of course we start with civil disobedience, and non-violent action, in the spirit of MLK–even though those who would wave the MLK flag will often do so from the right, and ignore all the other things Martin said about poverty and the class war and all the other wars as a way of life in this country. But …

Part of the reason King’s approach was so effective was that there were other approaches in the mix. Most notably that of Malcolm X. Martin was the carrot and Malcolm was the stick.

Working uneasily together, they made some progress, maybe the last real progress that has been made in the last fifty years.

And each of them took a bullet for their good works in the end. So much for non-violence. The enemy believes otherwise, regardless of how they might try to counsel you sagely about what you should, and shouldn’t do.

Make your own decisions, and make sure that you make them whenever possible without hypocrisy and righteous privilege.