It is, however, a perfect example of why I despise computers.
That they are electronic scabs – that they obliterated six of every seven jobs in my chosen field of journalism – is bad enough.
But now, as I have just discovered to my total fury, material on the Internet can somehow be programed to make its legitimate creative use impossible – a new, electronic form of impossible-to-overcome censorship of which I had not been aware.
My intent in this project was to assemble enough information to provide an in-depth view of the circumstances in Ferguson, specifically the class-war context in which an unarmed African-American named Michael Brown was gunned down by a white cop named Darren Wilson.
Because text can only go so far in conveying the socioeconomic horrors run-amok capitalism is maliciously and – yes – gleefully inflicting on the U.S. Working Class, I had planned to top off my report with an illustration I knew would at the very least raise eyebrows.
I would post a pair of photos – one of Brown's body as it was left for four hours on display in the Ferguson streets, another of a woman hanged by the Nazis as a partisan and left on display to terrorize the population of Minsk.
In other words, I would visually connect the murderous behavior of the militarized police in Ferguson – and everywhere else in the United States – to the murderous behavior of the Nazi occupation troops in Europe during World War II.
But making such a visual comparison, it turns out, is impossible.
And now – because I ignorantly squandered the first two days of this week on this effort, and because the rest of the week is obligated to my dentist, my ophthalmologist and the unbelievably time-stealing bus-odysseys the nation's most anti-transit seaport inflicts on those of us who are too poor to afford automobiles – the entire project is dead until next weekend.
The most infuriating aspect of this utter defeat is that I know my concept is a good one – a damn good one in fact. Hence somebody who knows how to bypass the electronic barriers that have reduced me to uselessness and helplessness – no doubt somebody well enough bankrolled by hereditary wealth to have been given the requisite doctoral-level degrees in computer science – will steal my idea and even profit by it.
My bitterness – and my furious mortification at my inability to cope with the accursed alien technology of the digital realm – is beyond description.
LB/26 August 2914
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