It is time for people to stop hating and arguing against each other and realize that neither side has exclusive rights to the truth.
Being a policeman is a tough job, and a dangerous job. Mistakes will happen. Most police deserve our respect and admiration. But a few police are criminals and should be removed from the force (and in some cases, put in jail).
The militarization of the police over the last few decades is a very bad idea. The military’s job is to kill the enemy. It is not the job of the police to kill anyone.
On the other hand, killing police officers in retaliation is even worse. When someone does that, they become the enemy. Terrorism is never a good civil strategy.
But I’m mainly sad because I’ve been apprehensively expecting and dreading this. The level of racism in this country is out of control.
When a former Congressman tweets something like this, he should be prosecuted for a hate crime:
This is not war, and we do not need to choose sides, to choose between caring about Philando Castile and the Dallas cops.
We need to be able to see both sides of this issue, including the problems suffered by minorities in this country, and the issues faced by the police. We have to work together toward a solution. Otherwise this will destroy us.
18 Comments
It’s terrifying that such a knob ever held elected office. Here I am hoping the US can come together and decide that all murder is bad and instead this halfwit Walsh and his ilk will excuse extrajudicial killings by the police as some sort of holy race war.
Another officer shot about 3 miles from my house this morning on a traffic stop. That was at eleven this morning and I still haven’t heard an update on his condition. He was shot in the neck, so it’s probably not good. Then I read another story out of TN that resulted in a leg wound for an officer and two civilians either dead or injured, I cant remember which. I think this might get a lot worse before we can find a way to calm things down.
Money needs to be thrown at retraining the police and the police themselves need to stop denying that their own are never guilty of wrong doing. If you let a bad cop get by then you are as guilty as the bad one.
I remember all the rioting in the 60’s and sadly little has changed. It was just a matter of time until the pot started to boil again since it seems most in this country refuse to acknowledge there are problems on all sides.
A quote from New Gingrich, of all people, “It took me a long time, and a number of people talking to me through the years to get a sense of this. If you are a normal white American, the truth is you don’t understand being black in America, and you instinctively under-estimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk.”
With 244 “likes” former Congressman Walsh appears to be providing red meat to his racist fandom.
I am assuming by “Real America”, he is not referring to a latino muslim with big beard.
Man shot his son at the gun range by mistake. He claims it was not the gun at fault, he was at fault.
My son was on his motorcycle going through an intersection with the green light when Asa turned left in front of him without looking twice.
Had that man not had a gun nor my son been on a motorcycle, that man’s son and my son would still be alive.
Seems Paul Ryan is working on Congress to pass stricter gun control
Really, what’s the big deal? This was just another American mass shooting — right down to the classic “lone madman” perpetrator killed by the cops. Republicans didn’t react when the victims were grade-school kids, or church-goers, or any of the other shocking events of the past few years.
But this is the Great Forbidden — a black man killing white people. This one they can see. But clearly it’s easier to declare race war — and blame the bystanders — than to consider reinstating the ban on assault weapons.
And isn’t it interesting? All the other slain mass shooters have been exhaustively profiled in the media after the fact. But all we need to know about this one is his race.
But really, how surprising is this? We fill the military with members of the underclass, give them training and experience in urban warfare, misuse them to the point of madness and refuse to diagnose the resultant mental problems, and dump them back home where black men are being murdered by policemen every week. It’s a testament to the tolerance of our black citizens that it’s taken this long for something like this to happen.
It’s also oddly satisfying to have the reality of law-enforcement work start to match the fantasy that has become increasingly enshrined in that culture — cops have treated the dangers of their occupation as an entitlement to bad behavior, when in fact a dozen other occupations are far more lethal. Commercial fishermen, agricultural workers, and roofers haven’t declared war on the rest of us because a lot of them die on the job — and they die at a much higher rate than cops do. I have a forlorn hope that actually being under attack will help restore some reality — and maybe even professional standards — to the law-enforcement world.
a black man killing white people. That’s all it is. Wow
And the outrage over a has been politician posting a tweet and only 200 people out of 300 million respond. Ridiculous!
Where is the outrage at things like this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3681894/Facebook-refuses-remove-sickening-cartoon-police-officer-having-throat-slit-Black-Panther-page-Dallas-cop-killer-Micah-Xavier-Johnson-ranted-just-days-massacre.html
or This:
https://occamsrazormag.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/cuq5eumusaawpck.png
Or here’s the whole list of them:
https://occamsrazormag.wordpress.com/2015/11/22/extreme-anti-white-tweets-from-blacklivesmatter-movement/
So yes, I am angry that this idiot posted such hate and he should be condemned, but I am here to tell you there is a great amount of racism from blacks. Both sides need to own up, and until people like the President, The Clintons, Sanders and Trumps call it out on both sides it will get worse. There will be more blood. Pelosi, Reed, Ryan and McConnell need to call it out too. Along with so called Reverend’s Jackson and Sharpton’s.
We have a leadership deficit in this country. In politics, the media and yes that sometimes includes this site.
What kind of stoopid congressional district would elect that idiot?
PSgt, that tweet was taken down very quickly, and in that time over 200 people responded. The outrage wasn’t over the response, it was that he posted it in the first place. Are you excusing his tweet?
And I would completely agree that there is racism on all sides. And while I’m sure even on this site, I’m at least hopeful that in balance this site is more of a force against racism.
Absolutely not. IMO twitter is stupid anyway. And in this instant connect to the social media world, I’ve seen more people, say more stupid crap then ever. In days gone by if you wanted to say something idiotic, there had to be someone to say it to, or people would look at you funny for talking to yourself. Now they just blah blah to the media sphere.
My point is that there is rampant racism in the BLM et al. movements. No one is calling it out, but you will call out 1 lone idiot in the twitter-sphere. Call it all out, specifically, or don’t call any of it out. If we don’t do that, we will never fix this. We cannot just point fingers at one side of the equation, when both sides must be equal in order to solve it.
The obvious difference here is the power gulf. Sure, there are racists of every ethnicity, but we can’t call things a wash when we’re pointing out essentially random people’s ignorance on twitter/facebook collected by “a blog devoted to deconstructing the pretty lies of political correctness” (ha) and comparing them to words from a former Congressman (!) and currently influential radio host. We could go tit for tat endlessly with nobodies on twitter being racist. We shouldn’t use them to try to make it seem like the state of affairs is anything approaching equal, and we don’t need to call all of it or none of it, that’s silly.
Ok, so I guess the narrative is set, no other opinions matter, argument dismissed.
And the blood will continue to pour.
So we can’t acknowledge that the effects of racism go alarmingly one-way in this country? We have to decry every single ignorant tweet, regardless of the differences between the stature of the posters, or not address any of them at all? How is that a rational choice?
Yep, we can acknowledge that the effects of racism.
But we also don’t have to ignore and allow the the same and worse from a good number of their members, just because we feel sorry and think we should appease them for past transgressions.
If you want equality, you need to treat people equally. You can’t accept inappropriate behavior from either side, nor dismiss it.
On a news show last night I saw and heard a organizer for BLM from Chicago, advocate for the abolishment of the police across the country. No police again.
I can’t imagine the chaos that would happen. Or how they think that would work.
But again we’re talking about actions from the side of government (bad cops) and the thoughts of an organizer from a protest movement. One must, by necessity, be held to a higher standard than the other. Ditto former Gov’t officials and public personas vice random twitter users who no one has heard of. If we treat these instances of oppressive government action as equal to one crazy idea from another person no one has heard about, we’re deluding ourselves. That’s pretty textbook false equivalence.
Calling out racism or ignorance is never wrong, and that’s not where my issue lies. It’s this sort of “all lives matter” bent that either intentionally or unintentionally misses the point that we can’t just say “everyone should be treated equally” and assume that makes it so when the parties involved have never, ever been equal.
So you’re more ok with groups and individuals calling for members to kill police officers and that we should allow that because of past injustices?
So when a child who was less favored by classmates or family acts out or doesn’t like how they are being treated, its ok for them to start acting out against other school children or adults and that is justified?
Now I get your point about weighting of the issues and I don’t have a problem. Yes we need to work on rave relations, but the agitators are blocking progress. There are now armed groups actively seeking to kill police officers in more then a few major cities. Do you condone this behavior?
When we don’t call out inapropriate behavior or ignore it, then we have just condoned it. Protesting excessive police force and unlawful shootings is good and productive. Ignoring murder squads is not.
Was there a point to this argument? I mean, you are both using good arguments, but I’m not sure what conclusion (if any) this supports.
PSgt, you make a good argument when you say that we should treat people equally. I agree, but right now the field is tilted so far against blacks that saying it creates a false equivalence that if we don’t immediately condemn all nutso statements of any BLM members that we are condoning them.
Also, PSgt, it doesn’t help when you say things (without any supplied evidence) like “There are now armed groups actively seeking to kill police officers in more then a few major cities.” Where did that come from? So far, we have one person who acted alone committing murder of police, and I haven’t heard anyone (in here) say that is ok or justified.
Do you think we are being too hard on Joe Walsh?
PSgt, I don’t think anything I said could remotely be construed as condoning murder squads or calls to violence. I’m just pointing out that injustice is not, in any way, behind us. When you elevate the rantings of random people on twitter as a somehow equal counterpoint to state-sanctioned assault and killings (or calls for them) then you’re effectively trying to ignore the very real impact to the latter.
IK I guess my point is to rail against false equivalence. We don’t have to ignore a major issue for want of artificially equalizing plainly unequal points of argument. Imagine doing that with something like climate change.
Of course, as your OP says, we need to be sensitive to concerns from the side of law enforcement, but we can’t pretend that the relationship between the police and the policed has been equal.