STORMTRUMPERS

11/01/2020 by J. Nelson

Truck Dicks are old news that’s been kicked upstairs.
As of this week, they’re no less than Shock Troops.

The armed Texas Trump Train that reportedly outnumbered police 50-1 while surrounding a Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway has received their leader’s eager endorsement. Drivers of giant pick-ups, particularly those with confrontational or tantrum-like adornments, will now be lumped in with political vultures who have essentially become a Storm Division.

The galloping neuroses of men in monster trucks has never been more conspicuous or weaponized.

Already at ease with their cartoonish potency, Truck Dicks have achieved hero status of the “stand back and stand by” variety. Also, they’re probably relieved to have found purpose for their Ford Platinum Super Duty F-350 MSRP of $87,110. What third wife is gonna nag her celtic-tattooed mid-lifer about that monthly $967 insurance/car payment combo while they’re leading the most American parade since the Lafayette Welcoming of 1824?

Yup. Trump’s magic wand again, the meatball stick waved over empty heads. POOF! Knighthood!

Oh, I don’t mean every mega-truck owner is susceptible, but aren’t the cop groupies who yammer on about law enforcement (as though it were a life form) the easiest of Trump’s recruits? You know, the Dave & Buster’s dadbods whose rigs are too clean to be hauling America-building payloads like in the commercials?

I’m talking about the aging flat brimmers who mansplain about the bells ‘n whistles of doom survival. They swear that 700 pounds per foot of rear-wheel torque and a 40-gallon diesel gas tank are the only things standing between their families and any number of possible human extinction scenarios. Yeah, those 5’5″ fuckers whose flip flops dangle out the door when they fence-hop themselves into the cab.

Not so much guys with the shipyard cred: I mean the haters with the Heineken spread.

It’s almost as if Truck Dicks blossomed at the discovery that they’ve been driving Somali Technicals to Lowes and the bullet store. Their 18-guage steel tiger-cobra-rhino-dominators are now platforms for select historical celebrations, looter hunting, and ideological policing of all sorts. It doesn’t help with their child support payments, but hey, “blood purge.” USA! USA! USA!

If it weren’t for Donald Trump, some of these men might be relegated to the usual parking lot small-penis appraisals. But after ganging up on and endangering the passengers of an election campaign bus, who knows? There may be an Executive Order in their future, one mandating that “Intimidation Performance” be considered in the assessment of full-size pick-up resale value.

Here is our Where Excuses Go to Die screen-grab tribute to the men, trucks, and flags of MAGA enforcement.

Maps of Felony Disenfranchisement, 2020

10/17/2020 by J. Nelson

“Disparities in the criminal justice system are linked to disparities in political representation.”

The cartograms and maps created by The Sentencing Project’s incredible researchers say a lot about who we are –and how far we have to go– as a country. Even a cursory glance at “Locked Out 2020” should have you questioning how so many Americans have come to think the way they do about fairness and opportunity.

Hopefully, it will also spur some thinking on what we can do about it.

Please vote accordingly.

For more, visit sentencingproject.org

On Bonus Justice

10/13/2020 by J. Nelson

The national dialog on prison reform exists on a steep, 30° hill. Engaging a public taught by film and television to recognize life behind bars only as rape, riots and rotten food makes it a difficult climb.

Once started, the conversation is always in danger of sliding downward into, “Well, they should have thought of that before they went to prison.” And this, in itself, is a trained reaction. It’s an octopus arm of what I’ve long defined as “bonus justice.”

Some maintain that prisoners, while serving their time, shouldn’t be allowed to vote. I disagree, but regardless of where one sides in that debate, the continued denial of voting rights for parolees and ex-felons –– in some cases for life –– is inarguably bonus justice.

A prison guard inventing infractions to punish an unwelcome or shunned inmate is another good example. So, too, are the actions of jailers who believe they’ve been called upon to represent the public interest through the spirit of vengeance.

“Justice is for the courtroom,” inmates often remind their keepers, and they’re right. Still, show me a corrections professional and I’ll show you someone forced to navigate the ideations of state-sponsored payback on an inhuman level.

It’s one thing to lean on the mantra, “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” But frontline custody personnel who take bribes or embolden gang values while making statements like, “He should’a thought of that before he got sent to my Yard” –– ?

Yep, bonus justice.

But maybe that’s too cliché. Fine. Say your boozy cousin gets 18 months for his fifth DUI and winds up in a minimum security facility, the one with the cow fence around it. Score, right? No gang warfare in his future. He might even earn himself a welder’s certification. But he’s incarcerated during one of California prisons’ recurring outbreaks of Valley Fever. On laundry day, he’s handed an infected pillow case. With the state’s (very) long history of failing to provide even minimal constitutional levels of healthcare in its prisons, his illness can be viewed as bonus justice.

Or how about an assigned caseworker administratively burdening an offender whose crime is personally disagreeable? What about a Watch Commander who protects, rather than questions, facility practices that steer certain ethnicities toward or away from favored work assignments? Bonus justice is right there for all to see, but it’s often obscured by conditioning, casual neglect, and indifference.

Interested in seeing if you yourself are as un-progressive as all that?

Read Los Angeles Times investigative reporter Kiera Feldman’s harrowing front page account of what the March-to-May pandemic period was like for female inmates forced to make 3,500 masks per week, many of whom were prohibited from wearing one themselves.

And as you’re reading, if at any point did you decide, “They should have thought of that before…,” take note of it.

Because despite my own former incarceration, this learned, punitive, and bitter convention flashed itself at me as well. And while it may be an uphill climb, we can ––in fact we must–– be better than bonus justice.