It seems that a few countries
have issued travel advisories to their citizens visiting the United States, and
the reason, though a tad over-blown, is nonetheless a function of what one sees
on cable news programs. A large part of the problem is broadcast news
organizations like CNN’s confused interpretations of recent incidents of
violence; instead of just reporting the news objectively, it tries to “sell” to
all constituencies’ prejudices and hypocrisies at different times, different
places, and sometimes all at once—the result being loss of credibility in
trying to have it both ways, and giving the impression of domestic chaos to
outsiders.
We are thus fed two different views
of domestic strife without any clear avenue of resolution: One week, the
“menace” to society is a white police officer in Minnesota, who shot dead a
black man for reasons seemingly outside the realm of rational understanding. The man’s car was pulled over allegedly for a
broken tail light; inside the car with him were his fiancé and her
four-year-old daughter. A clear setting for a lethal confrontation, right? Perhaps only in the mind of a psychologically-damaged
cop. The victim, according to his fiancé who recorded the aftermath of the
shooting, apparently attempted to “allay” any concerns the officer might have
by informing him that he had a weapon in the vehicle and a permit to own it,
and what he was at that moment reaching for his identification. How many times
have we heard how this turns out?
The victim’s first mistake is that you can’t
assume that a cop is of sound mind, particularly in regard to minorities. His
second mistake was that he told the cop he had a gun, permit or not. Possibly
the cop took this to be a threat, rather than “helpful” information. His third
mistake was assuming that a cop (albeit in a paranoid state of mind) actually
understands that “identification” and “gun” are two different things, and what
people say and what they do may actually be the same thing; being “honest” has
no place here. His fourth mistake was assuming that the presence of a woman and
a young child would deter the cop from fearing that a potentially lethal
confrontation was in the offing.
One would think that a person
must pass a battery of psychological tests before they are permitted to become
police officers. The cop in question
here was clearly paranoid and psychotic; his only rationalization for shooting
inside a car at pointblank range that also included a woman and child was that
he had told the victim to keep his hands clear. His hysterical excusing for his
actions indicated an individual who was the very antithesis of calm, cool and
rational. Doesn’t he watch the news? Isn’t he instructed to avoid causing
incidents like this? Why didn’t he see that it was his responsibility to
oversee that a minor incident that he
instigated did not escalate into something major? Such people are an extreme danger to the
public, especially given that their pathology is practiced behind a shield and equipped
with a license to use lethal force under any “justification.”
But does “outrage” –whether real
or for show—excuse the shooting of a dozen police in Dallas soon afterward
during a “Black Lives Matter” march, in which five officers were killed? Even if the police were clearly in
intimidation mode, with one officer per eight marchers on the scene? That they
made themselves by their arrogant insistence on a show of force (they certainly
were not there to “protect” the marchers, as they often do for white
supremacist marchers) a sitting target for a lone sniper? Even when the police
initially put out a hyped-up story about a well-planned “assignation”
conspiracy, complete with a “triangulation of fire” inference, a reference to
the JFK assassination, in which Dallas police at the time were aware of and
even colluded with various hate factions against Kennedy?
No, not at all. My first reaction
to the news of the Dallas shooting remains the same even after reflection: This
is not the kind of thing that will the gain “sympathy” for ones’ cause, any
more than anarchist bombings gained sympathy for labor rights over a century
ago. We all know that if a police officer is shot, the news media forgets all
about the incidents of police shooting unarmed people (the video of the
shooting of an unarmed Hispanic man in Gardenia, California in the past year is
a graphic example of reprehensible behavior by police beyond any reasonable
explanation, an incident that was quickly forgotten), and treat each incident of
an officer down as if the president was assassinated. The shooter (who was soon
afterward killed by police) did his “cause” harm by the simple fact that most
people may be pretend to be “outraged” by police abuse of force, there is
nevertheless this desire not to appear “against” the police, since no one wants
a lot of cops walking around with chips on their shoulders and all acting like
"bad apples."
Ultimately, the shooting of
Dallas police was a lose-lose proposition, for blacks (and Hispanics too) under
the police gun in particular. No matter
how much outrage the media and “BLM” activists express about repeated incidents
of shootings by police, some less justified than others, there just seems to be
no change in police behavior. Of course most cops are “normal” people who don’t
look for trouble of the lethal kind, but those that do always seem to find it,
and they don’t seem to believe they have any reason to change. In fact, they
only seem to get angrier and more paranoid with every new “outrage.” And no
matter how much the media expresses “outrage,” nothing ever changes; the
shootings simply continue, and the facts of each case is always consumed in the
rhetorical flames. And what is worse is that many people will look at the Dallas shooting and use it as "justification" in their own minds to wave their hand at yet another shooting incident by police.
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