ICYMI, on Thursday, Miami police killed four people. Two of them you could definitely throw into the bad guy category and the other two, not so much.
His name was Frank Ordonez. He was the same age as me, 27. He had a stable job at UPS as a driver for five years. He had two daughters, who are now without a father. I read that and thought about how Frank seemed to have it figured out, at least seemingly way more than myself. And then I start to think about how he died at the hands of a bunch of police and how it could have been handled differently. Anything better than this shit.
Then I start to think about what I can do, which is jack shit, besides bring awareness to this and write about it, and share his gofundme, which should hopefully keep his grieving family afloat until the Miami PD coughs up a hefty amount for wrongful death, which you already know they will try to avoid paying and taking responsibility for as much as they possibly can.
And alas, I make the inevitable mistake of hopping on Twitter to learn more and see people’s reactions. Since I describe my views as leftist, I follow other leftists who are very good at twitter and see their reaction/how they weigh in. This came across my feed and I felt that it summed things up well:
Update: UPS pulled the tweet that Dennis was quoting. The tweet made no mention of Frank’s name and thanked the police for how they handled the situation.
And it didn’t take long at all to see a reaction like this and subsequent return:
On a quick side note, and maybe I’ve mentioned it before but while it seems like I cherrypick replies and sentiments off twitter and apply these ideals to a subset of people to prove my point, there is someone who typed this and there are five real people who liked it and agreed. I always feel the need to clarify that sometimes Twitter actually is real life.
Anyhew, calling someone a bootlicker has been one of my favorite retorts to see this year. I know this term is nothing new, since bootlickers have existed everywhere since…well the beginning of time. If you didn’t understand the context above, a bootlicker is a suck-up, a brown nose, apple polisher, a toadie, a crony, a worm, a kiss-ass or by Urban Dictionary’s #5 entry it is…
someone who constantly agrees with their friends, or someone they see superior to them, to attempt to gain respect from their friends or colleagues (although it backfires, since that’s not how you gain respect). People hate this type of person, and people like this usually think they have lots of friends and everyone loves them — yet it’s the opposite of that.
And while I enjoy the memes/retorts and seeing people getting called out on their propensity to lick boots, it makes me realize how much we see of it.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a bootlicking problem.
While we unfortunately see far too many instances of unarmed civilians getting shot to death by the police, this iteration of bootlicking could also be defined as “cop-splaining.”
It’s easy for someone like me to say that the cops completely butchered this one and their training that allows them to walk around and fire has failed them. It’s easy for someone (a guy with a photo of a selfie he took in his F-150) to say that being a cop is a tough job and how we always pass the blame but in this instance with video, we can be a little more objective.
I don’t think you have to be trained in combat to know these tactics were objectively wrong and funny enough many of the comments I saw pointing out how this was wrong, came from ex-military and those alike trained in dealing with guys with guns.
Obviously, many who aren’t experts in combat chimed in across the internet with their #taeks but if there is anyone who should be able to angrily express how they truly feel and how they were impacted by this, it’s a victim’s family member.
I’ll let you read the replies on this one for yourself but as you can guess instead of letting someone grieve, many presented themselves to apply saliva-to-leather and take down a young woman who’s brother hasn’t even been buried yet to defend neglicent cops who will never know their faces, their names or who will really even care about getting defended online by strangers.
To take a step back, look at the entire Blue Lives Matter counter-movement. Directly designed to spit in the faces of victim’s of police brutality and their families, as well as anyone else who thinks law enforcement needs to have a semblance of restraint if they are getting paid to carry around a gun and are left with their judgement to pull it out and fire as they see fit.
‘Blue Lives Matter’ is one of the many myths the right has cooked up - a Blue Life does not exist. It is not a thing. This isn’t an Avatar movie, their skin isn’t blue. A cop goes home at the end of the day and takes off his uniform - it’s an occupation. Tamir Rice and Philando Castile weren’t able to take off their black skin and inept, ill-trained police officers ultimately killed them for it.
Bootlicking knows no bounds. It isn’t just always unabashedly agreeing with the decisions of police, it’s telling students saddled with mountains of increasing student loan debts to zip it and pay up, it’s defending the private health insurance industry while getting ripped off by it simultaneously and not seeing a dime from it.
The more I’ve gotten older the more I’ve understood how respect is mutually earned and actually you don’t have to automatically give anyone respect - that was just a lie by the elders so we wouldn’t dunk on them. I will offer my respect first and will reciprocate whatever respect comes back my way. The last time I had a police encounter, they were dicks. Guess who was a dick right back? To be fair, nobody wanted to be there as it was 6 am on a Saturday morning and my drunk asshole ex-neighbor had accidentally wondered into somebody’s home - a classic mistake.
To put it plain and simple, if you think critiquing the police in certain situations is an indictment and disrespectful to all cops (because yes there are good ones, I know that isn’t the coolest to say though) then I might suggest to get the boot off your tongue.
Share with a friend or bootlicker in your life!