So, some bad stuff is happening in Ferguson, Missouri. Michael Brown, an eighteen-year-old black man, was shot six times and killed by police officers. This made a great number of people justifiably angry, and a protest movement of considerable size and volume has ensued. The police and state government have cracked down; last I heard before writing this, the governor had called in the National Guard. It's a big, controversial topic, but you'll have to turn elsewhere for coverage. Chasing the Rabbit will not discuss this.
There are a few reasons for this decision. First, I'm a slow writer and anything I say would be outdated by the time it made it to the blog.
Second, I'm a seventeen-year-old white guy from Washington. I've never had to deal with discrimination because of my skin color, gender, or sexual orientation [1]. My experience is rather tightly circumscribed, and hasn't anything that would shed any new light on the situation.
Third, Ferguson is just the tip of the shit iceberg [2]. Robin Williams is dead, I'm in a funk, I just got back from vacation [3], and I'm feeling just a bit discombobulated at the moment. There's a lot of stuff I'm working on at the moment--several blog posts, a webcomic, the back to school thing--and writing one of my signature long rambles about a topic as messy as this would just depress me too much. I'd rather finish something that I enjoy and think is worth my while and in the area of my expertise than tinker with a poorly-thought-out response to a complete mess whose ramifications and scope I've yet to grasp. This is a major, important story, one I'm entrusting to more skilled hands.
--Alex Adrian, 8/19/'14
[1]Admittedly, that last one has more to do with my tightly closeted nature and timid, retiring personality than my actually being straight.
[2] Shit-berg?
[3] NOTE: In the original version of this post I called the vacation the worst of my life. I changed it because it was ungrateful and inaccurate.
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