A Mission Creep Leap of Faith

I made a bet I’d last another year, despite chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, not quite so fast-acting as necrotizing fasciitis, and placed this dour domain on auto-renewal. It is true Sullivan’s closure of The Dish heralded the death of the blogosphere, as I continue to be less receptive to how he brings his experiences to bear on Trump era controversy. More on that later, while I plod along with no revenue because I write illegal threats I cannot carry out on my own, under no illusions: Even if I attract the crackpot elements, controlling them and creating incentives for enforceable codes of silence is another matter. When Pistorius had currency  in 13, I was unhappily conflicted over the events leading up to his disgrace. On the athlete’s side of the argument, even if he wanted to kill Reeva in a heat of the moment quarrel, he could have thought of a better strategy than “it was accidental” and then bawling himself into a pity party, though this last seems to have worked to his favor temporarily. Concessions may be given to the prosecution on the basis of the evidence, but where was this amputee’s incentive to kill the woman? He had everything to lose, unlike partisans, who are forced to utilize violence for autonomy, or to act against tyranny, and did lose it, his disability making him patently more vulnerable than a typical murderer, however that is defined in South Africa. My aunt argued with me about the case, equating Pistorius’ alleged fear of black crime as Americans would fear it in inner city Philadelphia, or the Bronx, or St. Louis, or Compton. The difficulty with this line of reasoning is that Africa is primarily populated by indigenous black natives, with allowances made for various Nubian populations, Africa belongs to black Africans. Europeans could not achieve in Africa what they achieved in the Northern Hemisphere, and into the sewer it goes, yesterday’s news pitted against a rare exceptionalism in a broken body made better than ableism through technical improvements on the bipedal biology. I wish reporters would follow up on these issues more often. If Pistorius is killed in maximum security because of his developmental birth defects, I doubt the Steenkamp family would find closure in a hypocritical justification. I am not excusing the man. He was a rare cross over hero against a majority that is so conflicted about deformities and damage in the first place, on one level just another he man venting misogyny, on the other, just another monkey who couldn’t be trust out of his cage. Flesh eating bacteria makes headlines because it is swift, and echoes pandemics of yore, if it isn't the opening salvo of the next. Complex mammals have few defenses against it; cases seem to be on the rise, and we've earned it, battling too hard against death as a natural process. My return will contain more of my leg crossing unpleasantness, terrain I've waded in before. We'll see whose stomach recoils first.