stupid stupid stupid

 I thought I remembered that assassination attempt, but research revealed that what I remembered was the shootout in the capital of 1954. The whole subject came up again in the 60's with a local gang turned activists The Young Lords who honored those past heroes of theirs.  In the oughts walking from the train to De Diego School (named for Jose De Diego the founder of the Puerto Rican independence movement) I passed by a mural honoring the group that shot up the capitol.  They were eventually pardoned by Jimmy Carter in 1979.

De Diego the grammar school was originally Tuley High School.  This was where Saul Bellow went to high school (also Knute Rockne, which I have just now learned thanks to the joys of research).  You'd think a school would want to boast about that, but in the four or five years that I subbed there I never heard a word about him.

It was a very Puerto Rican school, they talked about Puerto Rico a lot, kids would doodle the Puerto Rican flag on their notebooks, around Christmas they would celebrate Three Kings Day and the school would actually give gifts to the kids.

Seems stupid to me, well not Puerto Ricans who are all God's children like the rest of us, and even US citizens, though not quite with no representation in congress.  The independence movement that seems pretty stupid.  At the time of the capitol hill shooting 90 percent of Puerto Ricans wanted to remain in the United States.  But what seems really stupid stupid stupid to me was that these guys thought that by shooting up the prez or the capitol that they would somehow advance their cause.  That the rest of the people of the United States would, because of those shootings, decide, gee I guess these guys mean business, maybe we should grant them independence.

Kind of the way I feel about those guys who tore down statues for awhile, almost a fad thing, for awhile it was very cool, but now the cool guys have moved on, or the guys in Portland who have wasted any good will they may have had long ago, or the BLM idiots who praised looting as a sort of informal reparations thing.  None of that shit helped their cause at all.  But it was like they didn't care, what was really important to them was that they were in the right, because they were opposing wrong things.  Just opposing wrong things was sufficient for treating others badly.  George Floyd was murdered by cops and I oppose that, therefore I can punch you in the mouth or loot your store.  Stupid.  Stupid.  Stupid.

In order to get rid of the white space at the end of your post.  Put your cursor at the end of the post and hold down the delete key until all the white is gone.