Bombs Away

Yesterday when I heard a bomb had exploded in downtown Nashville my first thought was, shocking, no, not really. Again I have no love loss for the area; however, I do not wish anyone to blow up the town the Tornados can take care of that, the Cumberland flooded a decade ago and it can do an equally great jo, in that Mother Nature, the Lord, in a way that the residents of the region accept as truths, versus those of science. And that Tennessee is number one in daily pos Covid cases fits that as they have never seen a number one list that they can refuse to mention. The Religious crackpot Plumber/Governor who has eschewed mask regulations continues to do so despite his own wife contracting Covid. The idiot former Beauty Queen Senator Blackburn continues to issue droplets of idiocy as we wind down the year and the end of Trump, so a bomb in the middle of its city where the driver of the largest portion of their economy is just another anal wart in a city reeling from the pandemic. Again, I have nothing good to say about anyone there, well maybe a few, but this is not something I understand in the least.

My first thought was Timothy McVeigh and then I realized it was in a commercial area off the main strip but still an essential street as all streets in Nashville that run along the city are one way, and 2nd is a street I know well. I patronized many of the businesses along that area, and few actual residents do, but Mike’s Ice Cream and Rocket Fizz Candy are mainstays. The Hooters seen in pictures is where I often disembarked my bus and walked up Commerce street to get a coffee on the way to the Y. I liked 2nd as it was in fact “less touristy” but that entire areas is well known as a high crime area and the problems faced my many workers and businesses was an issue that dominated discussions I had with them after witnessing a robbery in a liquor store one day, being the victim of endless petty crimes (as I lived on 4th Ave S) and being aware of the many sexual assaults that were the result of one too many cheap beers provided at the honky tonks just below the bombing area. The symphony hall, the more elegant hotels, and restaurants that align the area are untouched. So this particular location I find is less McVeigh and more Ceasar Sayoc, another misguided Trump idiot who decided to load a van with explosives that he was busy distributing to perceived enemies of Trump,, but was thankfully caught before he managed to do serious harm. And this bomber wanted to eliminate casualties, while still doing damage, with an announcement to vacate the area. So there was a point or message and then in my Nancy Drew way I found this: The Nashville Fire Department Fire Marshal was fired Tuesday for reasons including performance and insubordination, the department’s top officer said.

And while this is a coincidence I have found that many firefighters are often arsonists and while again this is not an accusation I do find it well “odd.” And again Nashville is hardly a liberal bastion despite belief otherwise, this is still MAGA country with most of the visitors very proud members of that cult and have no issue with a place that accepts if not values their beliefs – in God, Trump and Guns. Nowhere did I live embrace such hypocrisy and idiocy like Nashville and use religion as their mask to cover their true faces. And while I have little good to say I question what the purpose of catastrophic damage to things and people (including their homes, businesses and livelihoods) do to validate your hate. It is sort of like how we are in hysterics over children and distant learning, with numerous articles declaring that this was the Lost Generation. Sure a year ago we were in arms over childhood bullying, trying to adapt to teaching social emotional learning in curricula and worried about kids wandering in schools with guns to commit violence. Teen Violence was actually studied by WHO in between Covid studies. Remember those days, as in about 365 days ago?

Anger and rejection prompted many of the mass shootings and we have had some shooting reports of late, in two cities at malls, and one was what? A Teenager. These stories immediately hit the new, but as it is not the topic du jour, as it is not Covid, not a vaccine nor a weather problem, crickets. Again teen violence folks. Or how about Police Violence, we had a shooting by Police of a black man in Ohio just this week. Or this man also in Ohio just a week prior. That George Floyd thing is still a thing right?

The issue is about violence and the inability of lawmakers to ever fully resolve the issues over guns. So we take the streets to somehow resolve conflicts with a vigilante justice. Then when a family member is on drugs or has a mental health breakdown we seem to think that the same folks who shoot first ask no questions ever will be the one to resolve the issue. Areyoufuckingkiddingme?

So why Nashville and why announce the bomb if you wanted to do real damage. You clearly don’t but you want attention and man we are attention seeking nation. While I lived in Nashville I used to say to the people I knew, “Misery loves company and boy are you people miserable.” That type of grievance seeking and endless wallowing in self pity was a common trait and it is more infectious than Covid. The endless parade of having versus have not is very evident in Nashville, the city is literally ringed by public housing forcing those residents to look through the glass of how a city is being built without their inclusion. It is a city divided by money first then race and they use religion as some type of bridge to accommodate or allow the misconception that they are not racist. No they are however, classist and they care about one color, the one of money, green.

Again I go back to my many conversations with workers that are in the shops that align 2nd or nearby and how then in February of this year how they hated living there, they had moved with the belief they would find a good job, only to be paid barely a minimum wage, the cost of living out of reach and that the tourist trade, the bridezillas were horrible. They, as I felt, we were hostages, only I just paid my ransom to get out. The violence by the kids in Nashville was rage, the endless petty crime and vandalism also rage but this crime is not from them. This is from someone with access and availability to acquire the tools needed to build the mobile bomb and in turn construct it. This is not someone who is a poor fragmented isolated member of the poor community, but it is someone with rage. I saw a lot of that there and I too had a lot. I just left and not a day goes by I am grateful I was able to.

So now the kids and owners of already struggling businesses will have to add to the list recovering from tornado, covid and bomb to an already bursting at the seam one. And the carpetbaggers will arrive to I am sure take that burden and that list from their hands. That is what they do, they sweep it all under their carpets and later cut them up to make bags to carry the money away with. That is Nashville, a pipe bombers dream.

**ETA***Since I wrote and posted this it appears that in under 24 hours the case has been “sort of kind of solved”. Maybe in a Richard Jewell way or not but the suspect is a white. man 63 who is assumed the bomber which was a suicide mission or again not with issues over 5G. Gosh again, I knew it was not a social or political thing given the odd choice/location in front of an AT&T data center. The headquarter building a block away, designated the Batman building would have been the target for a bigger statement but this was not that. A few blocks north are all the federal and state buildings so again not political and the busy strip of Broadway just a few blocks behind and that is the money maker so no, not economics. It was, however, another example of how fucked up Nashville is. What I find interesting is how quick they found a suspect in the southern “burb” of Antioch, which is surrounded by poor families largely those of color. Again where a Church was located and shot up by a nutfuck and the home of the Waffle House where a lunatic shot and killed several patrons in a some attempt to prove his manhood over Taylor Swift. Two cases I forgot about despite the high profiles and the 23 hour manhunt that dominated the news over the Waffle House killer and the hero who stopped the shooting. Another individual whom has largely disappeared from the limelight after being center stage for the months that followed that incident. Nashville has so many “incidents” it is exhausting to keep up. Sadly the Governor Plumber will not get his wish to declare it a national emergency and have to forgo federal dollars to fix the small business decimated along 2nd Avenue. This is another hypocrisy by the red states, the eschewing of Government intervention and legislation but when it comes to money its hands out. A perpetual state of agita that I saw again and again there. Even the headlines in the paper discuss the PPP money given to the state, the disaster relief money and of course the next anticipated stimulus package and who and how much they will get. They get it alright. But if they don’t it doesn’t really matter as the checks and cash will flow as that may be prime real estate and Carpetbaggers never saw a disaster that they did not like. So wait for new shiny things to replace them and make Nashville “it” again. Well until the next incident.