Monday, December 22, 2014

Protesting the Exception; Neglecting the Rule

I object to the protests and die-ins all over the United States about Garner and Brown. They're promoting a false narrative, with weak minds -- tools -- jumping on the bandwagon in order to feel good about themselves. Talked into protesting to promote an agenda.

"Hands Up! Don't Shoot!" and "I CANT BREATHE" [sic] are provably false narratives, with the intent to make people draw false conclusions. False narratives have us trying to fix non-existent problems, while we ignore the real problems.

It is easy to slice and dice the population into grievance subsets. Usually these statistics are misleading when taken out of their original context. Usually there is more to the story than the raw data. If blacks are over-represented in our prisons, or if blacks are over-represented in the arrest records, what is the real reason for it? Racism is too easy an answer. It is much more likely that the real answer lies in our government attempts to "help" these people. The welfare state has devastated the black family. It is much more likely that more blacks (and other minorities) tend to congregate in the inner cities, where youth of all colors, having nothing better to do, tend to form feral gangs. The residents of these neighborhoods (also primarily minorities) want the cops to protect them from these roving thugs. It's a Catch-22, isn't it?

The Brown case started out with police following up on a robbery call, and then coincidentally trying to help a person wandering aimlessly in the middle of the street. It escalated when the drug-addled perp started acting randomly and dangerously. In the Garner case, the police were doing their job, enforcing idiotic legislation that makes it illegal to sell loose cigarettes on the street. We should be asking why it is illegal to do that, and many other normal human activities that have been over-criminalized.

The thing is, police misconduct is the exception, not the rule. Police racism is the exception, not the rule. Everyone should question authority, but question the proper authority. Maybe we should be asking why police need MRAP vehicles. Where is this mindset coming from? Higher up, I'll wager. In his 2008 campaign, Barack Obama spoke of "a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." [as our military]. That doesn't sound good at all. I bet these tools protesters don't realize they're protesting Barack Obama's agenda. Instead of focusing on social justice, we should be focusing on freedom and equal justice for all -- at the institutional level. This is a political problem, not a police problem.

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