Blue Lives Matter

[decocker 7,198]

To challenge the police is to challenge the American people, and the problem with the police is not that they are fascist pigs but that we are majoritarian pigs.

When defenders of the police say that cops do the work ordinary citizens are afraid of, they are correct. The criminal-justice system has been the most consistent tool for making American will manifest in black communities. The tool for exercising that will is not the proliferation of ice cream socials. I suspect, we would like to know as little about criminal justice system as possible. I suspect we would rather the film of Eric Garner's killing not exist. Then we might comfort ourselves with the kind of vague unknowables that dogged the killing of Michael Brown. ("Did he have his hands up? Was he surrendering? Was he charging?") Garner, choked to death and repeating "I can't breathe," trapped us. But now, through a merciless act of lethal violence, an escape route has been revealed. This overstates things. To the extent that this weekend's murders obscure the legacy of Eric Garner, it will not be due to the failure of protests, nor even chance. The citizen who needs to look away generally finds a reason.

I wonder if there is some price attached to this looking away. When the elected mayor of my city arrived at the hospital, the police officers who presumably serve at the public's leisure turned away in a display that should chill the blood of any interested citizen. The police are not the only embodiment of democratic society. And one does not have to work hard to imagine a future when the agents of our will, the agents whom we created, are in fact our masters. On that day one can expect that the tactics intended for the ghettos will enjoy wider usage.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/blue-lives-matter-nypd-shooting/383977/?single_page=true#disqus_thread

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

Good read.

[Pooky 3,365]

Good read.

Except the author had looked away himself, before he had even written a word.

[decocker 7,198]

Except the author had looked away himself, before he had even written a word.

you think so? why