Tipping points ...

Public opinion and political movements move in cycles.

There’s usually a tipping point that sets off a new cycle.

Some person or group goes too far. A defining moment happens. It doesn’t have to be a single event; it can be a sequence of seemingly unrelated events that suddenly appear to be connected.

The tipping point is reached.  Public opinion can quickly and dramatically shift, often catching politicians, activists, and the media by surprise. The public doesn’t simply stop believing and supporting what it did; it starts moving in a completely opposite direction. 

It’s like Newton’s Third Law – for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. 

When the tipping point is reached heroes can become villains, villains can become heroes, and sympathies can reverse – all in what seems like the blink of an eye. 

The shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, the death of Eric Garner, and to a lesser extent the shooting of a 12-year-old in Cleveland holding a toy gun, are seen as tipping points for black activists who have long maintained that our justice system places little value on black lives. They’ve used these to rally the black base, as well as young whites, and liberals in general, all of whom have a an ingrained distrust of authority in general, and the police in particular.   

At first blush it’s been very successful with lots of media coverage of crowds in the streets, die-ins at shopping malls, temporary shut-downs of major roadways, and symbolic gestures by sports celebrities.  Sharpton’s gotten a lot of on-camera face time.  Members of Congress have taken to the floor to do the “hands up, don’t shoot” pose, as have some anchors on cable news shows.  Basketball players have worn “I can’t breathe” shirts.  The Mayor of New York got into the act as well, claiming he had to teach his biracial son to be wary of police. 

Then it happened. Things went out of control. Protesters went too far. Protesting crowds attacked police officers, injuring some.  People at one of Sharpton’s rallies started chanting “What do we want?  Dead cops!  When do we want it? Now!”  

And someone took them at their word.  A dirt bag from Baltimore – who had just shot his girlfriend – boasted online about how he was going to kill cops.  Then he did, assassinating two innocent New York cops as they sat in their car, before killing himself. He probably thought he’d be a hero; after all, didn’t he do what protesters wanted?   

About 24 hours later a Florida cop was shot and killed by a suspect who was afraid he would be sent back to prison. 

A black Philly paramedic posted a still from a rap video at about the same time showing two black guys holding guns to the head of a white cop with the caption:  “Our real enemy...need 2 stop pointing guns at each other & at the ones that's legally killing innocents." 

Are all these events unrelated?  Perhaps. 

But there’s a synchronicity in these for many people, especially for those in law enforcement.

Cops believe activists as well as politicians are sending a signal that cops are the enemy. Cops can’t be trusted. Cops routinely target black males.  If you’re black and stopped by a cop you’re much more likely than a white guy to be arrested, beaten, or even killed by them.  

Add those messages to what comes out of the White House, and Holder at the DOJ – that the civil rights of blacks are often violated by police, and the justice system unfairly treats blacks more harshly than whites.  It’s no wonder that people in law enforcement feel threatened.  And why some more radical critics of the police feel emboldened.   

It’s also no wonder then why cops are less willing to take a chance when they feel their lives are in danger. That’s what happened in Ferguson and in Cleveland. 

So what happens now?      

Black activists like Sharpton and others think the tipping point has moved in their favor.  They believe they’ll be able to extract – or more accurately, extort – concessions from law enforcement and the justice system to give a special pass to blacks because, well, they’re black. They want the authority to oversee hiring, training, and enforcement policies of police forces. They want the ability to decide when and if any officer has used excessive force and how they should be punished. 

They think they have the “right” to demand these as retribution for recent events.  And that public opinion is now firmly on their side.

They are wrong. 

The mob they have created has moved ahead of them. It’s no longer theirs to control, nor is it listening to the “leaders” like Sharpton, de Blasio and others that helped spawn it.  Mayor de Blasio, trying to regain some credibility, had asked protesters to hold off at least until the funerals of the two dead cops were completed. They’ve ignored him. 

Protesters are still in the streets and assaulting cops as if nothing has changed.

Meanwhile, a lot changed.  The cold-blooded assassination of the two New York cops by a deranged black guy is still fresh in the public’s mind.  Another cop in Florida checking out a simple domestic disturbance was shot and killed by a career criminal. Cops in Philly were arresting a man for shooting out windows when he turned his gun them, pulling the trigger several times; fortunately, he was out of bullets.    

At one of the recent anti-cop protests, police tried to arrest a Brooklyn English professor who was attempting to throw a metal trash can on a road to block traffic.  A melee ensued, during which the professor – joined by other protesters – attacked the arresting officers, breaking the nose of one of the officers before fleeing.  He left behind the backpack he’d been carrying, in which police found three hammers and a ski mask.

None of this helps the “black lives matter” or “I can’t breathe” crowd intent on painting police everywhere as jackbooted thugs singling out black males for execution.    

The public perception of the whole situation is changing.  We are approaching another tipping point, but not the one black activists and anti-cop protesters think we’ve already hit.

This one’s the reactive tipping point. It’s what happens when the other side goes too far. 

It’s important to remember that the American public generally favors the police.  It believes in law and order; always has, and probably always will. It is appalled by wanton violence. Killing cops is a bright line to most Americans; juries that convict cop killers usually show little mercy.   

The media, activists, and certain politicians can spin things all they want, but down deep the overwhelming majority of Americans generally will side with the police and the courts.  They believe the police and the legal system aren’t perfect by any measure, but can be trusted to do the right thing in most cases. Polls tend to bear this out, year after year.

So it would take a monumental amount of evidence to overcome that.

Frankly, that evidence doesn’t exist. 

Tangible evidence of people targeting cops is equally scant, but far more powerful. Someone physically assaulting a cop deeply disturbs us. Anyone openly advocating or actually killing cops just because they’re cops goes way beyond that. They cross a far more emotional line – a cultural barrier, if you will, between anarchy and civilization. 

The public will always choose civilization and order over anarchy.  When the public feels things are getting out of control – hitting a tipping point – they will swing toward greater control.

It’s what happened when the anti-war movement went too far in the 60’s – blowing up buildings, calling our soldiers murderers, robbing banks, and rioting at the 1968 Democrat Convention in Chicago.  The anti-war movement felt it had gotten the attention of the nation. It had. The result was the election of Richard Nixon on a strict law-and-order platform, and his continuation of the Vietnam war.

In 1972, the anti-war movement became even more violent and strident and seized control of the Democrat Party.  They nominated George McGovern – their peace candidate – who promised to end the war even if he had to go to North Vietnam on his hands and knees.  Again, too much.  McGovern lost to Nixon in a landslide. 

That’s what tipping points are all about.    

You’ll notice that the big stories of anti-cop protests have fallen from the front pages of newspapers and the landing pages of online news networks recently.  The general public, much to the consternation of cop haters and the Sharptons and of the world, have already moved on to widespread sympathy, rather than isolated antipathy, toward police. 

This was always going to happen.  Sadly, it took the deaths of three officers, and attacks on others to move it forward.  But it was inevitable.   

RIP Officers Ramos, Liu, and Kondek.  

“Whitewashing the Bible”

There’s outrage about the just released movie “Exodus.”

It seems a bunch of folks are upset that the main characters are white, while Egyptian assassins and thieves are darker skinned. 

Some see this as a continuing whitewashing of the Bible by Western cultures intent on presenting lighter-skinned Caucasians as inherently better than their darker brethren.

An article online I read today claims this movie perpetuates historical inaccuracies reinforced by Renaissance painters.  Adam and Eve,  Moses, Jesus and other religious figures were almost always depicted as white. In reality, given where they lived, Jesus, Mary, Joseph and others at that time probably had skin colors more like Middle Easterners than Mid-Westerners. 

Then there are the Egyptians in the movie. Apparently, the ruling class is depicted as mostly white; slaves and bad guys are not. It’s not known what skin color Egyptians were back then. They were in North Africa, so maybe more Middle Eastern looking, but were probably darker overall having interbred with other Sub-Saharan Africans in lands they conquered. 

Then the article morphs into a discussion of white supremacists and slavers in America who used the Bible as justification for subjugating black Africans as an intellectually and physically inferior race. It's clear to the author that this "dangerous association of whiteness, divine favor and heroism" such as seen in this movie and in what's referred to as the "bleaching of the Bible" has "plagued modern Christianity." 

Whoa. 

Let me get this straight …   

A movie is called into question because it’s not historically accurate?  And because it’s not reflecting the actual skin colors of the people of that time it’s perpetuating racist stereotypes?   

Hello. It’s a movie. It’s not real.

Maybe that’s been lost on these people.  Maybe they didn’t notice that everybody in the movie is speaking English.  Or that the story line itself is loosely based on the Bible – a collection of stories which, while meant to be inspirational, aren’t generally considered to be all that historically, or factually, accurate.  And then on a specific set of stories in the Bible most folks have a particularly hard time taking literally – like the killing of all the first-born of Egypt and God’s parting of the Red Sea.

So it’s kind of hard to get too worked up over the other details when the basic foundation of the whole movie is more than just a tad sketchy.  A bit like worrying whether they got the sandals just right for the time period. Who cares. 

The people who made this movie did it to make money, not to set the record straight. 

Lighten up, Francis.

But now that someone has opened this subject, what about the remakes of classic movies, recasting them with different races than originally intended? 

Where was the outrage and charges of racism when they remade the Wizard of Oz with an all-black cast?  Or now with the new black Annie? 

Oh. That’s right. 

Never mind. 

  

Enhanced interrogation by the CIA

As promised – or threatened – the Democrats have released their report on the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques following 9/11.

I haven’t read it, and probably won’t.

I really don’t care what the CIA did to terror suspects following 9/11.

Muslim terrorists had just murdered thousands of innocent people in the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the hijacking of Flight 93. The same terrorists were promising to kill as many more of us as they could.

They attacked and killed folks whose only crime was going to work that day or getting on a plane. The terrorists weren’t interested in “fairness,” the Geneva Convention, or human rights. They were only interested in killing as many Americans as possible in the most spectacular way. 

This was not an act of war on the United States. It was an act of terror, committed against a much broader target – Western Civilization.

The terrorists focused on us because they especially despised our American values, our tolerance of other faiths and beliefs, our culture, and our democratic principles. In short, all the things we hold most dear were anathema to them.  A successful attack on us also offered the biggest bang for the buck in worldwide publicity.

So they did whatever was necessary for shock factor and a high body count. They hijacked commercial planes, killed any passengers who tried to stop them, and then flew those planes and their passengers into office buildings killing more innocent people inside.  In the case of flight 93, passengers tried to overcome the hijackers only to perish when this plane hit the ground.

It was a good day for the terrorists. They got what they wanted. 

The wanton slaughter of innocent civilians on 9/11 was a crime not just against us, but against humanity. The perpetrators were monsters who committed premeditated murder, and publicly pledged to commit more such murders of innocents.

Bless George W. Bush for pulling us together when we needed it, and for putting the world on notice that we weren’t afraid, we weren’t intimidated, we were united and would hunt down these monsters, wherever they hid, however long it took. 

First, however, we obviously needed to prevent – by whatever means necessary – another attack by the same or like-minded terrorist organizations.  

This is apparently what we told our intelligence-gathering agencies, and for good reason. We didn’t want another 9/11.  We didn’t want to let these terrorist sociopaths kill even more Americans, especially on our own soil. And so they did what we and Congress asked.     

When our intelligence services swept up some terrorists, dropped some in Gitmo and others in various black ops sites around the world, and subjected them to “enhanced interrogation techniques” most Americans didn’t care. Despite media outing of waterboarding and sleep deprivation as “torture” interrogation tools, most Americans still didn’t care. If anything, most Americans probably felt we were going too easy on captured terrorists.

Of course, there were those at the time who thought we were abandoning our principles by engaging in “torture” as an interrogation tool. They claimed we were violating international law, human rights, and established rules of war regarding the treatment of prisoners. These captured terrorists were also being denied their Constitutional rights.

The majority of Americans weren’t buying it back then. They were okay with dumping suspected terrorists in Gitmo and elsewhere; some would have approved of dropping them into shark-infested waters, to be honest. They were certainly okay with waterboarding these suspected terrorists.  They were okay with harassing them with loud music and sleep deprivation.  They would have been okay with pretty much anything at this time, as long as it helped make Americans safer. 

They ignored the constant whining from enhanced interrogation opponents. They tuned out the common refrains.  “We’re Americans.  We’re better than that. We need to hold ourselves to higher standards.” And also: “If we start acting like them, we’re no better than them.” 

Instead, a lot of us were thinking:  “We’re Americans.  We’re the most powerful nation in the world and now we’re severely pissed.  Your rights as a terrorist?  You have the right to be hunted. You have the right to be interrogated long and hard until you give us what we want.  You have the right to rot in Gitmo until Hell freezes over. You gave up any other rights when you attacked us.”   

Candidly, we wanted to be as safe as possible.  We were willing to do just about anything to be safe.  We were also willing to allow our military, and our intelligence gathering and law enforcement agencies to do whatever they needed to do to make us safe. 

And they did a great job.  Remarkably, they did so with far greater restraint than most of us would have in their place. Yes, terrorism suspects were treated roughly at times, but none were seriously harmed.  Was it unpleasant for the suspects?  Of course, but nobody had electrodes attached to their genitals, were raped, had their fingernails pulled out, or lost fingers or toes – all fairly common interrogation tools where the suspects came from. 

Plus, nobody was beheaded.

I don’t need to read the Democrats’ report to know this.  If any of this had happened we’d have learned of it long before now. 

I didn’t care back then what the CIA did to squeeze information out of the terrorists we captured. And I don’t care now.   

The world is never going to love us. We need to give that up. It’s far better that our friends respect us and our enemies fear us. That’s how the world really works. And that's how we need to conduct ourselves in today's world if we want to be as safe as possible.  

To paraphrase Al Capone:  A kind word and a gun will get your further than a kind word alone.   

Pick your battles

It always wise to make sure that the battle you’ve chosen is worth it.    

This seems to be lost on race-baiters like Sharpton, Marc Lamont Hill, and Eric Holder.  They’ve all embraced the circumstances surrounding Michael Brown’s death – as they did Trayvon Martin’s – as emblematic of continuing racism in America’s justice system. They’ve waved the bloody shirt to other activists to signal that it’s okay to riot, loot, burn, and destroy in protest when they don’t agree with the results of court decisions. They’re also using these cases to support their narrative that young black males are disproportionally targeted by law enforcement simply for being black.

This is a mistake; it’s likely to be a costly one. It’s the wrong battle, at the wrong time, based on the wrong circumstances, for all the wrong reasons. There’s little to be gained when the facts, the law, and the circumstances are not on your side. 

Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown are not Emmett Till.  They are not the four young girls killed in the Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham. They are not Medgar Evers or Dr. King. 

If you want to draw parallels to the civil rights movement, these aren’t your guys. 

Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were not innocents slain by racists. They were both gangsta wannabes; self-styled “tough guys” with a history of petty crimes and violence against others.  They took selfies holding guns and wads of money. They didn’t die simply because they were young black males, but because they stupidly attacked someone who had a gun.     

It was only news because they were shot by someone who wasn’t black. 

Had Michael Brown – or Trayvon Martin – been fatally shot by a black cop, or another black male, there would be no story. He would just be added to the statistics that already show that the overwhelming majority of young black males who are murdered are killed by other black males.

And murder remains the top cause of death for young black males.

Moreover, Brown’s death was not a “tragedy.” He was a criminal and a bully – captured on video committing a strong-arm robbery 10 minutes before he got shot by the cop he attacked. The real tragedy was the destruction of Ferguson businesses and public property by those who used the death of this punk as an excuse to loot, burn and create havoc.

                                                                                                                                           

His parents, step-parents, and other family members can wail on TV all they like about what a “good” kid he was, and how their “child” did nothing that warranted him being “gunned down in cold blood,” or “murdered” by the police.  Sobbing, tearful family members make good TV, as does the staged clip of a mother collapsing in grief into the arms of friends. 

But it’s all for show; parents of thugs like Michael Brown aren’t terribly surprised when their kid gets killed. However, they rarely expect that to happen as a result of a confrontation with police, because, well, it almost never happens.

Between 2010 and 2012 black teens 15-19 were killed by police at a rate of 31.17 per million. Death by homicide among black males in the same age group averages 48.8 per 100,000.  Large numbers of black kids dying at the hands of cops of any color is pure mythology.  

That’s the inconvenient truth.  Here’s more … 

If you’re a young black male, your probability of being a homicide victim is almost 17 times greater than a white male the same age.  (Homicide rates for young white males are about 2.9 per 100,000.) And since for the most part homicides are overwhelmingly between people of the same race, most likely you’ll be killed by another black male.   

Now, critics claim the reason for this has more to do with poverty and proximity than anything else.  Poverty breeds crime, they say, and more blacks live in crime-ridden areas.  Since most homicides regardless of race happen between people who know each other and live near to each other, there’s some merit to this argument. 

But it doesn’t explain why so many in the black community – including race baiters like Sharpton and Hill – turn a blind eye to black on black murder rates, or dismiss these as media distortions. Apparently a black kid killing another black kid is no big deal; but in the extremely rare event that someone who isn’t black kills a black kid, then society doesn’t value black lives.   

No one wants to admit that a growing thug culture embraced and emulated by a lot of young blacks – and some young whites – glorifies violence against others in general and the police in particular. That doesn’t mean it’s a direct line from movies and music to murder, as some suggest. Still, if artists you idolize say that killing or being killed is the path to fame and respect, and right now you feel you have neither, then it’s going to have an effect.     

Black on black murder in some areas is so common that a thriving business is making and selling “RIP” t-shirts with screen-printed pictures of the deceased, often in gangsta gear while holding guns and flashing gang signs. Sadder still is that some black kids collect these like baseball cards, building a wardrobe that brings  a whole new meaning to “fashion to die for.”       

Michael Brown, like Trayvon before him, was a product of this culture.  He was far from a gentle giant who, as one family member said, “wouldn’t hurt nobody.” The video clip of his robbery demonstrates otherwise.  A recent picture posted online shows him with a gun and a wad of money.  So the media can display all the choir-boy images of him they like but it won’t change who and what he was. He was destined to have his face screen-printed on a t-shirt. It was only a matter of time. 

I am sorry, but I can’t find it in me to have a single iota of sympathy for Trayvon, Michael, or their families. To me, Trayvon and Michael were self-absorbed punks, raised by self-absorbed mothers, fathers and step parents who failed in their duties to civilize their offspring. Now, after the fact, they all want to blame someone or something else – the police, the justice system, society, racism, whatever – for the monsters they produced through their own neglect and indifference. 

Am I sorry they died? I suppose – but mainly in a philosophical way.  Trust me, when the verdicts were announced, I neither wept nor celebrated.  Based on what I did know from digging beyond the breathless headlines and talking heads, justice was served. 

What happened to Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin is not evidence of a racially biased justice system, but the opposite – the system worked the way it should, based on evidence instead of emotion. Nor are they martyrs for civil rights; neither of them gave a damn about anything but themselves. 

Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin are the wrong ponies to ride into battle.  And this is the wrong battle to fight at the wrong time. 

The images of rioting and looting in Ferguson, the destruction of black-owned businesses there and Brown’s step father on video telling everyone to “burn this bitch down” are still fresh in everyone’s minds.  So is the media coverage of other acts of violence and mayhem in various cities.  Add the fact that “hands up, don’t shoot” never happened according to testimony from witnesses in the grand jury hearings. And don’t forget the outing of Officer Wilson’s home address and marriage license, and the subsequent threats on his and his pregnant wife’s lives. 

Overall, the Michael Brown case is not likely to sustain sympathy for very long. When more of the facts come out he’ll be just another punk, not a folk hero.

Linking it to the Trayvon Martin debacle does nothing to change that.  That will remind most of us of how the media shamelessly manipulated its coverage to support a false narrative about an innocent young man executed by a white vigilante for the crime of being black and wearing a hoodie. The media manipulation of the Brown case will be seen as more of the same.        

There are only so many times you can play the race card before it starts losing its potency. When you play it all the time, even when it’s not applicable, you decrease its value even faster. 

And this is one of those times. 

The shooting of Michael Brown – like that of Trayvon Martin – had nothing to do with race. The acquittal of Zimmerman, and the decision not to indict Wilson had nothing to do with race, either. Falsely claiming both did may play well in the black community, but that’s only about 13% of the population. Add the big-city liberals and NPR crowd and you add maybe another 20%

The rest of the country isn’t buying it. Been there, done that. Won’t get fooled again.    

Between inflammatory statements by Michele and Barack Obama over the years, and the perpetual animus of Holder, Sharpton, and others who see racism in everything, race relations in this country have already been set back by decades. 

Choosing to rally around the Brown and Martin events to focus America on the need to address distrust among minorities of police and the justice system is a poor decision.  Especially now. 

A better battle would be to address how to prevent crime in minority communities. 

That would make more sense than focusing on what happens after a crime is committed.