To the Point

  We don't see things as they are,
we see them as we are
--Anais Nin
__________________

Amidst today's talk concerning police procedure vis-a-vis the deaths of black Americans sparked by the police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, there is an unasked question, namely:

"Would the police have acted any differently if the suspect were white?"

If the answer is "No", then the shooting in Ferguson was not a racial incident from the police perspective. The answer to the question is discrete from how the event was perceived by the black population. Moreover, that precipitating event was a discrete event from each future police engagement with a black citizen.

Unfortunately, the concatenation of all following (or preceding) events is a human overlay, and humans have a compulsion to finding meaning or connection; we are pattern-makers. (We must be wary of our tendency to apophenia, as Lisa's Cambridge friend reminds her.)

Law enforcement officers have an unfortunate and built-in adversarial relationship with many of those those whom they must police. They are not filming a Hollywood police procedural and do not have the luxury of several takes. A pretty simple formula for not getting killed would be to not engage in crime, to not point a weapon at an officer and/or engage him in any physical way. Otherwise, it is an easy guess that the outcome will be an extremely violent one.

Lisa has a deputy sheriff friend who explained to her that many officers develop a poor attitude because they are dealing predominately with confrontation and shady characters on a daily basis. He, as a very Christian person, is able to access his faith and maintain a charitable outlook, but he allows that it is difficult in his position. He and his other deputies wear bullet-proof vests daily, a reminder that all do not welcome his appearance on the scene, despite and indifferent to his charitable outlook.

This is the law, which has no exceptions for race. So the question is:

"Do we have a race problem, or a police problem?"

Dark Night

--Sleepwalking in America

The first and principal benefit
caused by the arid and dark night of contemplation:
the knowledge of oneself and of one’s misery
--Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross

--Have you met the devil?
I want to meet him too.
--Why do you want to do that?
--I want to ask him about God.
He must know. He, if anyone
--Seventh Seal (1957)
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Sunday Homily: Propriety

It may seem an odd topic for RangerAgainstWar, but we, your humble writers, are often in the process of asking ourselves how to get it right, this appropriate living - behavior thing. Beyond identifying some of the problems, we are not sure.

The recent Aurora, Colorado shootings at the premiere of "The Dark Knight Rises" brought propriety back as a topic. Needless to say, another senseless, meaningless performance from a disenfranchised, perhaps deranged individual, and impropriety is not the word for such an unspeakable action. There is not much to say beyond another soon to be delivered dissection of another 15-second-murderous-famer by an obsequious press in collusion with a nation which does not really want to know why these senseless acts are now occurring with predictable regularity.

The thing that is improprietous is President Obama's visit to the Aurora Hospital which currently houses ten of the survivors. Colorado Governor John Hickenloope and Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan should be on-site. But for Obama, who interrupted his campaigning in Florida, this smacks of campaign flourish. The President should not glorify every failure via his presence, lending a gravitas which should be saved for events of national import. This is just another shooting event du jour.

We do not mean to be priggish, but a message sent from the White House would have sent the correct tone. Does our President intend to run hither and thither to address every heinous act? Obama is neither a goodwill ambassador nor a triage nurse.

What advice from the Gospels do we have on how to treat our fellows? The Golden Rule, the 10 Commandments and the Good Samaritan are a start, but these offer advice to the individual navigating his world, and do not need the reinforcement of a secular president. If they don't work prima facia, then perhaps they don't work.

The Aurora shooting occurred at the midnight premiere of the third installment in the Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight. The series has been hailed as a masterful depiction of the comic book characters, but it is far from light entertainment; the films raise sadism and violence to an art form, or so the aficionados say. One of the dead is a six-year old girl, her mother still in intensive care.

Who would take a young child to the midnight showing of such a gore fest? That is a story of societal malfunction in itself. The UK Telegraph ran a piece in '08 addressing the issue (Our attitude to violence is beyond a joke as new Batman film, The Dark Knight, shows).

We feel Mr. Obama has made several missteps in his capacity as Chief Executive of the United States. Several involve giving lie to the fact that we are a post-racial nation, as the pundits so glowingly declaimed after his election.

[1] Obama inappropriately stepped into the Cambridge, Massachusetts arrest of black scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. by saying the police department "acted stupidly", and later holding a "beer summit" at the White House between the arresting officer and Gates.

[2] Next, in the Sanford, Florida incident of a Stand Your Ground killing of a 17-year-old black male by a 28-year-old Latino male, Obama chose to say of victim "If I had a son he'd look like Trayvon", hopelessly biasing the adjudication of the case.

[3] Now, Obama is visiting Aurora following another mindless mass shooting. It is surely simply a photo-op in a contentious campaign.

We have some serious issues as a nation, but these lie underneath the matters of State and are not things our President should be addressing, nor is he able to address them.

As one of our readers recently commented, if we need to talk about race, let's talk about race; if guns, then let's talk about guns.

Why must we behave disingenuously, taking the long way about the barn, and never solving anything anyway? Americans may be loud and brash, but the bravado is shrill as it lacks self-awareness.