You're checking the news a few times a day and breathing a sigh of relief that there's no verdict from Ferguson yet, too, aren't you?
(Predictable snit-storm of comments to follow.) At this point, it no longer matters what the facts are -- oh, I know, the true facts matter to you and certainly to individuals directly connected to the precipitating incident -- but if the Grand Jury comes out with anything other than a policeman's head on a spike and especially if there's no new corroborating evidence made public, neighborhoods are going to burn. The only real question is how many, for how long, and will it happen where you live?
I don't know. This was a lose-lose situation from the beginning and I continue to believe it was persistently mishandled by a police department and city government felt public opinion could be ignored and who failed to -- or refused to -- believe they we juggling dynamite with a lit fuse. I'm not arguing for the right of a mob, any mob, to overrule criminal justice -- but even a little bit of sensitvity, a little bit of PR, chest-beating and a high-ranking resignation or two would have gone a long way to defuse tensions -- or, if you prefer, to undermining demogogues intent on inciting violence.
Too late now. The fuse is sputtering down and the only question is, how loud will the boom be? I expect a verdict today; the weather is about as cold as its going to get this week and yes, I'm just cynical enough to think that will have an effect on the Grand Jury's timing.
You might want to take a sack lunch to work today.
Meh.
ReplyDeleteNah, I disagree. With the media and the professional protest folks stirring this up,there was NOTHING gonna fix this. Not even had they publicly hung Officer Wilson on a crucifix at noon in the town square. after flogging him and all the other officers in ferguson with a cat-o-nine.
ReplyDeleteNeither you no I know what happened that day. Rumor has it that all credible witnesses say things happened much like Wilson said. BUT WE DON'T KNOW. Was officer Wilson a perfect cop? I doubt it. Was Mr. Brown a Choir boy? No.
But I do know this: If it goes against Officer Wilson, no white people will riot and burn their neighborhoods and loot. None of us will call for the lynching of any black people. None of us will destroy our neighborhoods in protest. In fact, most black people won't either, they, like you and I will just want to go to work and then home and not have any issues. It's only the folks who are given a livelihood by others and who don't have to work who will be stirring shit.
...And you're claiming all of the latter group are African-American? And white folk never, ever riot?
ReplyDeleteRiiiiiiiight.
Not like the LA riots, nor the Watts riots before that, nor the ones in Chicago before that. Not at all like the Ferguson fiots either.
ReplyDeleteYes, white people riot. But if they Indict Wilson, there won't be the riots like what happened in Ferguson earlier this year.
Again: "In fact, most black people won't either, they, like you and I will just want to go to work and then home and not have any issues. It's only the folks who are given a livelihood by others and who don't have to work who will be stirring shit."
After all of the build up in the press...and with the cold...I'm hoping it turns in to much ado about nothing.
ReplyDelete"And white folk never riot" Yes, a truth and and an unfortunate one. We should be pissed off enough to riot. We stand by idly, watching as our republic is destroyed doing nothing. We should be the ones turning out in the streets.
ReplyDeleteThe sad thing is that the very same media who tried to paint The Tea Party as a rabid terrorist organization are doing everything they can to fan the flames in this case.
ReplyDeleteFurther proof that the Left has far too much invested in the politics of race to ever let racism go.
I agree with the weather assessment. Sub-zero wind chills take all the fun out of smashing storefront windows and grabbing electronic goodies.
eatgrueldog: you first, buddy. --And how, exactly, is open civil war anything *but* destroying the republic? And how many dead babies is it worth to you?
ReplyDeleteB - With the media and the professional protest folks stirring this up,there was NOTHING gonna fix this.
ReplyDeleteI think there is much in this. I confess to not knowing much about the Ferguson case (after the travesty that was the media "coverage" of Martin / Zimmerman, ignorance is most assuredly bliss), but I've seen media people as good as say that Wilson EXECUTED Brown. With that sort of biased coverage, what else can we expect BUT a riot?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots#Race_relations ...rather a lot of pale faces in some locations. What they had in common was few had jobs.
ReplyDeleteRe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots#Race_relations
ReplyDeleteNice try.
That is England. I was referring to populations in the US.
Again: Most people, of whatever race/color, don't want to riot, steal, loot, burn or break things. They just want to go home after work and kiss their significant other and eat a meal, watch some TV, maybe have a few drinks and go to bed. It is only the underclass, and those who don't work for a living, but rather get their income from others (be it trust funds or welfare) that have the time and effort to invest in rioting.
But here in the US when there is dissatisfaction with something, white people generally don't burn their neighborhoods and loot businesses in the name of "social justice".
I suspect race is not the actual controlling factor, B. No, make that I *know* it isn't.
ReplyDeleteWhite people never riot?
ReplyDelete"I suspect race is not the actual controlling factor, B. No, make that I *know* it isn't."
ReplyDeleteIn the particular case of Ferguson, or rioting in general?
It seems that the way it has played in the media, as well as what the footage of the protesters, and rioters, shows, it's all being made to be about race (Holder comparing Brown to Emmet Till doesn't help) in Ferguson.
When it comes to rioting in general, I agree with you, race isn't a controlling factor.
Terry
The necessary condition for a riot is the people doing the rioting need to feel they don't have anything to lose from it.
ReplyDeleteLibertarian economic theory says price (asked and offered) is a signal. It's communication. It takes a particular set of personal circumstances, however arrived it, for the "price" to be right for a riot. What does that communicate to you?
Hint: if it's, "Them low/no-income black folk are trouble," you may have not read it very well.
B, that is the kind of sneaking, wink-and-nod racism that makes me very uncomfortable around a lot of gun people. And arguing, "That was 200 years ago! That was England! That was Sooners!" is just no-true-Scotchman nonsense. You get enough people convinced they have nothing to lose and a foe to stand up against, and you get riots -- unless you're really good at it and sell the majority of a nation on it, then you get to start wars instead. That's why "eatgrueldog" is at best a fool, a man who, whether he understands it or not, want things to be a whole lot worse for a whole lot more people.
I won't run interference for guys who think that way. To hell with 'em. They're losers.
Roberta X - You get enough people convinced they have nothing to lose and a foe to stand up against, and you get riots
ReplyDeleteCertainly the media is doing all they can to provide "the foe to stand up against". I clearly recall how they twisted themselves into knots trying to prove that George Zimmerman was white, and then did everything they could to make him the cretinous, hulking monster who gunned down a smiling young boy, even supressing evidence that he'd suffered a severe beating at the time of the shooting.
As for nothing to lose... I'm not sure. Are the people who (we fear) are planning to riot destitute? Starving? Seeing their loved ones shipped off to fight the king's wars? Suffering the corvée? No.
I don't say that relative poverty doesn't play a role in the decision to riot, but I'd say that culture plays a much larger part. Consider the Parisians: they are NOTORIOUS for rioting, it being apparently part of their culture to cry "Aux barricades!" at the slightest provocation. In contrast, the Germans used to say of themselves that a revolution there was unthinkable because it was illegal, the Germans taking considerable pride in being uber-law abiding. Our own noble forefathers shot it out with the redcoats for reasons that doubtless had many in England scratching their heads in puzzlement; Southerners went all Ft. Sumter over something that I suggest most of us find incomprehensible to say the least. What I'm driving at it the idea that culture more than mere economics helps a person decide when he's "got nothing left to lose".
Is there a sub-culture* in our country that says that the police are the enemy? That the ballot box and jury box** are both shams controlled by "the Other"? That violent protest is acceptable? That takes "no justice, no peace" quite literally? And are the people in that sub-culture being egged on?
I think so.
=====
(*) More than one, really; there are people in the RKBA sub-culture who don't hide that they trust the police about as much as the people in Ferguson.
(**) Given the statistics on incarceration rates and disproportionate sentencing, there may well be something in this.
Here’s the thing that I absolutely hate, vis-à-vis black vs. white rioting (read the whole thing, I hate the white part of it most):
ReplyDeleteIn America, it seems that black folk tend to riot over injustices, whether real or imagined (I’m not going to chime in on whether this PARTICULAR case is one of those, the facts speak for themselves – you decide). They riot when police officers that beat a black man half to death in the street, on camera, get acquitted. They riot when a man that they perceive as having murdered an angelic young boy in cold blood (I will chime in here – Trayvon physically assaulted a man who had ceased following him a while back. Physically assaulting a person is a damn fine way to get yourself justifiably shot). They riot whenever the prevailing narrative is “white people can beat/murder black people and not be held responsible for it”.
If there was ever a reason for civil disobedience, that’d be it. I just wish that more people would take to time to get truly up-to-date on what actually happened, with as little bias as possible, before they break out the riot gear. I also wish that there weren’t so many opportunists that take the “riot-for-a-cause” and turn it into an opportunity for looting and theft. You want to make a statement, even a violent one, about a member of your community that you think didn’t get justice? I understand that, right up until you start stealing from your community as a target of opportunity. No excuse.
White folks, on the other hand, tend to get all riot-ey and destructive over sports games. In 1998, the year I started at WSU, there was a riot on Greek row over a football game. Soccer hooligans. The Stanley cup. I remember seeing a big crowd turning over a car in Buffalo after the Bills lost one of their many Superbowls, and that crowd was very pale.
It pisses me off that the prevailing narrative is that “black folks will riot at the drop of a hat” when their rioting is far more justified than ours. Riot because a kid got murdered and you don’t think justice was done?
Or riot because the Flyers didn’t win the Stanley Cup?
Of course it won't happen here--I live in the country. The black folks around here don't seem especially worked up over Ferguson, although they may just not be volunteering it. It doesn't come up, & none of my friends have volunteered an opinion on it. We all have more important things to think about.
ReplyDeleteWe all seem to care more about here. If a bunch of rioters of any or every hue came through here (there's an image--looting the Co-op, turning over combines) we'd all be out with weapons to defend our places.
--Tennessee Budd