it's complicated

The bridges are not all down,  Just outside my balcony the State, Wabash, and Michigan Avenue bridges are still up, and they are ringing.  You know those bells that go off when the bridge rises, I'm guessing to keep some drunk motorist from running smack dab into one when it is risen.  Generally I rather like that noise.  I like the whole process of the raising of the bridges.  It starts with the ringing, then those crossing gates come down and then starting out very slowly, and never getting much faster, the bridges begin their rise, like a huge dinosaur yawning,  The litter that has accumulated on the bridge scuds down making a little puff at the base and you can see the masts of the sailboats slowly jockeying for a path through the mass to the other side of the bridge.  Delightful.  So Chicago, nobody has more drawbridges than we.  They have been ringing steadily now since last Friday, almost a week.  It's not that loud, mostly you don't notice it, but it's always there.  Still locked down.


Strange that Beagles is asking if the bridges have been raised before, to quell civil unrest, because yes, there was a time and it involved the countrymen of Beagles and myself.  I refer of course to the lager beer riots of 1855.  The hoity toity classes of Chicago at the time did not take kindly to the new immigrants coming to town, much I simply must add as certain people in the present day react to our neighbors south of the border.  They didn't like their habits, their perceived shiftlessness, the way they held onto their central European habits rather than the stodgy waspy ways of the guys who had come before.  You would think they were taking over.

One of their ways was spending Sunday in the taverns drinking their lager beer, so the city fathers passed a law to close all taverns in the city on Sunday.  There were skirmishes and at one point a big march was scheduled from the near north side where most of the Czechs and Germans lived into downtown and the bridges were raised to prevent this.  In the end the immigrants won and now (well soon) we can enjoy a lager at any bar we chose on a Sunday.


One of the things that I think all parties can agree about in this current unrest is that Floyd George was killed unnecessarily by the cops.  After that we may disagree about who is right on this facet or that, but we've all seen the video so at least the starting point is clear.

But not at Fox which I tuned in to see what they are making of this and the one Foxie was going on about a guy in St Louis who got killed by the looters, which ok, that is not right, but where is the relevancy?  Another guy was going on about how Floyd and his killer had both worked at the same bar (this much is true) and you know, bars, lots of illegal drug trading going on there see and maybe these guys were partners in some drug ring, yeah, that's probably what happened and so, so this was just some drug deal gone bad, or maybe a setup, yeah, probably a setup, probably all faked.  I tuned out before he got to the part that it was all the work of George Soros.

Like I said I didn't stick around to hear the end of the budding conspiracy theory.  Actually conspiracy theories have no end, they just sort of drift off into an isn't that suspicious and leave the listener to fill in their own wacky details.  But the other one, I think the connection she was trying to make was see he was killed by the looters, who are the same as the demonstrators see, so it's all the fault of people who think the death of Floyd was wrongful, therefore, see, all people who think like that are wrong.

Then last night I was listening on NPR to some militant Black Lives Matter person and the interviewer was asking her what about all the cops who took a knee with the demonstrators and shook their hands, weren't they reaching out, isn't that a good thing?

And the militant thought that those were all hollow, likely deceitful, gestures.  Cops, all of them up to no good, they should take away their guns etc.

Here is one of the first things that I think needs to be taken into account:  The demonstrators are not all the same.  Likewise the cops are not all the same.  Well doesn't that make everything more complicated?  Yes it does.