Haven’t felt much like blogging over the last couple of
days. The events in Louisiana and Minnesota, and now in Dallas, have left me
feeling sour and dispirited and incredibly ANGRY. The shootings in Dallas were
of course horrible and demonic and destructive; I would use the word “counterproductive,”
except that would give them the dignity of being an actual, thought-out plan to
achieve something. It sounds to me like they were more along the lines of Sandy
Hook and Orlando, a troubled guy with too easy a chance to buy guns (though I
am sure the Republicans will waste no time in blaming Black Lives Matter).
The Louisiana and Minnesota killings stick in my heart more,
though. I would like to say it is because of my burning sense of and thirst for
justice. But, to be honest, I
think it is just that I hate bullies so much. Bullies, and people who arrogate
to themselves the right to substitute what they want and their well-being to
what others have a right to. To do something that makes them feel better even
if it makes someone else feel much, much, much worse (or feel nothing at all),
and who then have the fucking temerity not to own up to their own shortcomings
but, instead, to brave it out and say they had a right to do it. There is
something from my childhood – I haven’t figured out what, exactly, though I
have some ideas – that makes that intolerable to me.
It makes me angry at policemen who seem to think that their
personal fear or rage is a justification for ending someone else’s life. It
makes me angry at them for not having asked themselves, after two years of these
stories making the 6:00 news, why, exactly, they get scared so easily when they
see a young black man, and whether maybe they have an obligation to question and
adjust that fear. It makes me angry at departments that have not yet said, wow,
if other departments have this racism problem, we probably do, too – we better
take steps now to avoid doing these stupid and tragic things ourselves. It make
me furious at the chummy, clubby, clannish camaraderie I see among policemen on the
streets and in the stations of New York, “us-against-the-world,” as if it is
some sporting event we are talking about and not people’s lives. The “blue wall
of silence” that puts loyalty and self-protection above justice and truth. It makes me furious that so many cops appear to feel that the public is some sort of brutish enemy, and that their primary job is intimidation rather than conflict de-escalation. It
makes me furious at legal standards that for some inexplicable reason make the
officer’s fear, not reality, the measure of whether his actions are justified
or not – that make it not “was he, realistically, in danger from this unarmed
man, when he himself had a gun?” but “did he FEEL he was in danger from this
unarmed man?” (if I “feel” I have a right to your car, can I take it?). It
makes me angry at the lack of honor in a profession that doesn’t say, “When in
doubt, I’ll take the risk,” but instead, “shoot first, ask questions later.”
Maybe we don’t pay cops enough to make them willing to adopt this more selfless
standard – in which case, let’s pay them more, enough that we can demand it of
them. The response to doubts about whether a man is reaching for his wallet or
for a weapon (this was the “issue” with Amadou Diallo, too, remember?) should
be more time taken to find out which it is, not sudden, lethal gunfire.
So that’s what I’ve been thinking about for much of the past
two days. I’ll get back to what’s going on here soon.
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