Today I had a patient on the schedule as “suture removal.” No biggie, we do it all the time. Except its a teenager who has had 8 inch long lacerations of both wrists sewn up, as well as a few other self-inflicted wounds. Because “the world as gone to hell and its just not worth the pain anymore.” As we deal with the various calamities occurring on a daily basis, this is my plea that we reach out to those close to us and watch for the signs of pain and desperation, talk gently and handle each other with care. If we lose ourselves, what are we fighting for? Same age as my kids. This one hit me hard. FUCK I HATE THIS TIMELINE!!!
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Do you know about https://postsecret.com/?
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I think something broke in a lot of people. We can’t fight a virus. But racism and police brutality? We can fight that.
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Footage from 2016.
As well as the lack of teargas, clubbings and bullets, notice which way the police are facing.
Who do they protect, who do they serve?
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https://twitter.com/oldmanweldon/status/1270858982400262144?s=21
America has two white supremacist parties.
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I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t know they were there.
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Trump’s will hold a campaign rally in Tulsa on Juneteenth.
I see the hand of Stephen Miller in this. Trump is happy to do it; but too clueless to have conceived it.
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Oh, I’ve made a public fuss while in the Statuary Hall! Three Confederates as representative statues from their states: Jefferson Davis and Robert E Lee and Alexander Stephens, as I recall.
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ive known plenty of people through the years who’ve been attacked, sexually assaulted, beaten, robbed, had cars or houses broken into, cars stolen, parts of cars chopped and stolen, bikes stolen and on.
in exactly one of those cases - a serial assult - did the police do anything other than take a statement. none of it was ever “worth their time.”
two friends had relatives who have died of suicide and the police did nothing but berate and dismiss my friends.
this stuff has remained true across many many cities where ive lived.
the cops can never do all they work that someone needs to do to solve crimes because they’re out there policing traffic, and homelessness, and drug uses, and neighbors shouting, and dogs running away from home. [ edit: oh yeah, and shaking down black pedestrians and drivers, and responding to karen calls, and gassing and shooting peaceful protestors. they’ve got a lot on their plate. 
]
we can do more with less.
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I came up with this simple parable trying to explain “defund the police” and “abolish the police” to my racist relatives on Facebook. I don’t think it worked but I think it might be useful for more reasonable folx. (Note that this is a very incomplete analogy meant to get across the basic idea, etc., etc., disclaimer):
Sometimes people get severe infections, and one of the side effects of a severe infection is a terrible fever.
A doctor can keep managing the patient’s fever with fever-reducing medicine. You could spend hundreds of dollars on fever-reducers, which might do a decent job of managing the fever for a while, but no matter how much of it you use, or how much you spend, it’s not going to deal with the underlying infection. The infection won’t go away without antibiotics and other treatments.
“Defund the police” is simply the notion that we’re going to consciously spend fewer resources on fever reducers and more on curing the underlying infection. We’ll still need to manage fevers but we’ll need a lot less fever-reducing medicine if we can get some good antibiotics.
Now let’s say the only fever reducer we have access to is Tylenol, and sometimes it’s effective at reducing the fever, but sometimes – maybe for a significant percentage of the patient population – it kills the patient or damages their kidneys or has other awful side effects. We might think about trying out a different fever reducer, maybe one we’d never considered before, that has better health outcomes for everyone.
“Abolish the police” is the notion that maybe we should stop using a fever-reducing medication that’s killing people, and look for something else. We’ll still need to manage fevers, but maybe there’s an approach we haven’t considered yet that doesn’t have unnecessary death as a side-effect.
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So, apparently Trump threatened to invade Seattle today…
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Wow @ Durkan’s response! Basically, “Bring it, BunkerBoy.”
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One has to wonder if any other people who were charged with treason and armed insurrection against the US have statues in Congress.
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Here we go again
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