Posted on 08/19/2014 11:12:25 AM PDT by Kaslin
America is on trial," said Rev. Al Sharpton from the pulpit of Greater St Mark's Family Church in Ferguson, Missouri.
At issue, the shooting death of Michael Brown, Saturday a week ago, on the main street of that city of 22,000, a neighbor community to Jennings, where this writer lived in the mid-1960s.
Brown, an 18-year-old African-American, was shot multiple times by Darren Wilson, a 28-year-old white police officer with an unblemished record in six years on the force in Jennings and Ferguson.
From his patrol car, Wilson ordered Brown out of the street where he was walking and blocking traffic. A fight followed. Wilson appears to have been punched in the face. One police report says that there was a struggle for the officer's gun.
According to Brown's companion, however, after he was first shot, he threw up his hands and yelled, "Don't shoot. I surrender." Then Wilson gunned him down.
According to one of three autopsies, Brown was shot six times, once in the top of the head, which may suggest he was charging the officer when gunned down. A second St. Louis County autopsy found marijuana in Brown's body.
What we are witnessing in Ferguson today, and nationally, is not only a collision of reported facts, but also a clash of visions about America.
In Sharpton's vision, America is a country where white racist cops harass, assault and gun down young black males, and Brown's execution is the latest outrage. Many media echo his indictment and accent the facts that support this preconceived narrative.
Disrupting this portrait and particularly outrageous to Sharpton was the release by the Ferguson police chief of a videotape of Brown stealing a $44 box of cigars, 15 minutes before he was shot dead, and manhandling and menacing the store clerk trying to stop him.
Brown was 6'4" and 292 pounds.
Sharpton contends that officer Wilson did not know of the "shoplifting" that was irrelevant to the shooting, and that release of the tape was a moral atrocity to smear the character of the dead teenager.
But while that tape may be unrelated to the shooting, it does testify to the mindset of Michael Brown that morning and to his respect for the rule of law. Ought we not know that?
Then there is the rival vision of America rooted in a separate reality. It is that in America today, police, like Darren Wilson, are the first responders and last line of defense, willing to risk their lives battling the criminal elements that threaten us and our free society.
Moreover, violent crime in America -- assault, murder, robbery, rape -- emanates disproportionately from the black community, and especially the young male members of that community.
Crime rates, conviction rates, incarceration rates all testify to this truth. If cops are more on guard when encountering black males, is it not because, given the crime statistics, they have more to fear from them?
Do not the weekly news reports from Barack Obama's hometown of Chicago, where black-on-black violence is pandemic, also testify to this?
Decades ago, U.S. newspapers, which used to publish the race of both victims of crime and perpetrators, decided to stop doing so. They felt that this was the kind of news people have no need to know.
These conflicting visions are not exclusive to race. Many liberals share Sharpton's vision, while many black folks move out of home communities to escape the scourge of crime.
Indeed, if Ferguson in the North County is a racist enclave, why did so many African-Americans move there from overwhelmingly black North St. Louis?
And if only three of the 53 cops on the Ferguson force are black, is that due to race discrimination? The chief says he has sought to recruit blacks and asked the Justice Department for help. Is this untrue?
We are told that of six members of the Ferguson city council only one is black, while two-thirds of Ferguson's population is black. Yet, last week, we learned that the black voter turnout in local elections in Ferguson in 2013 was 6 percent.
When St. Louis County, to stop the violence and looting last week, sent cops into Ferguson with armored personnel carriers and assault rifles, they were denounced for militarizing law enforcement.
"Tell them to remove the damn tanks," ordered Eric Holder. The county complied and a kinder, gentler law enforcement ensued.
And the looters and rioters went on a three-night tear over the weekend forcing Gov. Jay Nixon to call out the National Guard.
Nevertheless, the violence in Ferguson is child's play compared to Watts in '65, Newark and Detroit in '67, and 100 U.S. cities including Washington, D.C., after Dr. King's assassination in '68. In those riots, great cities were gutted, dozens were killed, and thousands arrested.
Detroit never recovered. And that is the future that beckons us all if our first demand today is not for peace and order, and then for justice for Brown's family and Darren Wilson, according to the rule of law.
Thanks for the posts. I went on Twitter and was shocked at all the liberal tweets (of course, liberals pretty much comprise Twitter). Some of the rioters were posing for pictures as if at a concert.
Ferguson just shows what a sick world we’ve become.
They compared the early 1990s recession to the Great Depression, the Tea Party to the Taliban, Nazis, KKK. George W Bush was like the men who dragged James Byrd to his death. Generally, nothing they say is remotely near the truth.
Just like Detroit.
In fact this has been happening. I saw a graphic last night that somebody here posted that in 1970 the population of Ferguson was 29,000...85% White and 15% Black. Since that has shifted to 67% Black with a net population loss of 7,000.
Makes you wonder how they keep fuel in the garbage trucks and the water running.
Get out whitey! Get out while you can!
You're under the delusion that those folks will sit idle and await their turn.
That shows you know jack.
Most of the population will applaud as Obama declares martial law.
The United States will no longer exist.
Why'd they wait six years to start, though?
If that was the plan, why wait so long?
yes.....sadly.
Some of my relatives lived in Detroit until the 1968 riots. By 1969, they got the hell out and moved to Dallas.
Is Ferguson Our Future?
What’s going to make it not so? More multiculturalism? More invasion from our south?
What do you mean "our," white man?
Had to get Obamacare into place.
Had to spend several years proving to the public and to themselves what totally gutless critters Boehner, Ryan, Romney, Cantor, et al., really are.
Had to get the Middle East into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates, like ISIS.
Had to totally F up the U.S.’s relationships with all allies.
Had to have time to spend us to the brink of hyperinflation.
It takes time for all the tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of terrorists to get across the border.
Needed some time to get the world to dump the dollar as the reserve currency. Can’t have the planned hyperinflation until that happens. Can’t punish white Americans properly until you have hyperinflation.
These things take time.
The REAL trick is, doing everything slowly and in stages, so that EVEN PEOPLE WHO HATE OBAMA won’t realize that there’s been a revolution. You want those people just thinking we have a lousy President.
Most people will think Obama is just an ordinary lousy President until ISIS actually breaks down their door and saws their heads off.
“No. Mexican/American War II, maybe.”
Not likely. The Mexicans hate blacks 10 x more than they do whites. In fact, the Mexicans are ethnically cleansing California communities from blacks.
Mexican gangs trying to run black families out of southern California
http://www.examiner.com/article/mexican-gangs-trying-to-run-black-families-out-of-southern-california
MEXICANS AND BLACKS KILLING EACH OTHER IN LOS ANGELES GANG WAR TIME
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MjSmgor5Dw
There are dozens more stories, but you get the idea, I’m sure.
Stay safe!
Stay armed!
I would not bet against your prognostication.
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