Weekend thread: What's happening?

National horror as video of police killing of Tyre Nichols is released. Video of Paul Pelosi attack underscores brutality, political violence. General warns of war with China in two years (!).

It’s sickening to see another police beating leading to the death of a Black man in America. Also sickening was the countdown to the release of the police body cam footage on Friday night, and the realization that very little happened in the wake of the national reckoning over George Floyd’s murder by then Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020.

Another video released yesterday countered grotesque conspiracy theories of MAGA pundits and Republicans who mocked the attack on Paul Pelosi and downplayed political violence. The attack was brutal, as evidenced by the body cam video of police who came to his home on the night that David DePape, a deranged Big Lie proponent, planned to savagely attack then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

A U.S. Air Force general is actually warning troops that the U.S. could be at war with China in two years, as Taiwan’s elections will be take place in 2024 and the Chinese leadership is making threatening moves. It’s one of those situations in which you don’t know whether to be horrified that he’s right or enraged that he’s war-mongering. Or both.