Who Is Actually At Fault?

Time, April 20, 2015, features fourteen individuals, apparent ages from 12-68, who have been shot by police officers or neighborhood watch volunteers since the beginning of 2012.  As all these victims were people of color, a universal cry of racism is heard nationwide.  (Perhaps we should see stats about whites and other races killed in similar situations).  But who is really at fault?  The officer, racist or not, who engages in the violence?  The suspect who engages in a scuffle?  Or the national system that offers only vague guidelines as to when to chase and when to engage in violence?  Is all of the above too cliché an answer?


Certainly, walking home from a convenience store, carrying a bottle of tea, a cell phone and candy is not probable cause for anything.  Certainly, the volunteer neighborhood watch individual who disregarded a dispatcher's orders to stand down and let the police take over, wasn't without guilt.  But, then, the system that permits anyone  --  volunteer or paid officer  --  to unleash his weapon and shoot to kill for little or no cause, is a serious, serious problem.  And, a similar problem exists in terms of police chases, as well.


The first order of business that nationwide law enforcement should address is when to pursue  --  on foot or in a vehicle.  A foot chase after a suspect fleeing the scene of a crime, offers little danger to bystanders as long as weapons are not drawn.  That is probably the best and quickest way to apprehend them, too.  But once the pursuit is engaged, officers need some guidelines.  Do we pursue and just surround?  Do we chase and tackle?  Do we run with weapons drawn?  So, you need to know the nature of the crime.  A purse snatch?  Weapons not needed unless the suspect is armed.  Rape?  Homicide?  With appropriate attention to bystanders, weapons are not only permissible but needed.


Now, a car chase is a disaster waiting to happen.  It is my belief that car chases should be forbidden for anything less than rape, abduction, homicide and terrorism.  The risk to the innocent is just too huge to warrant or permit them for anything else.  Period!  No arguments considered!  The end!  Not for stolen cars.  Not for robbery.  Not for B & E.  Nothing that is not a threat to the body and/or of death.  Car chases cause more vehicular damage and threat to life than homicides in any one given area.


By the same token, purse snatching, unpaid parking tickets, B & E's, unpaid child support, fist fights, selling illegal cigarettes, etc., walking home from a convenience store, playing with toy guns, walking in streets, unarmed theft or robbery, do not warrant guns drawn or any other form of violence.  Guns in most instances are overkill.  Give these officers national guidelines, not catch phrases they can us as excuses for losing their self control, much less for racist behaviors.  And neighborhood watch individuals should never be armed on duty even if they have a license to carry.

The Right To Know Everything

Americans of all colors and creeds have a right to know everything about American unclassified issues.  By the same token, reporters of print, radio, television  --  and now even the internet  --  have the responsibility to show the entire story, no matter how they feel about an issue.  Bias in reporting has long been a no-no that is now largely ignored. 


I experienced a certain level of rage watching the video of Walter Scott (a black man) being shot in the back by Officer Michael Slager (a white man) when the video surfaced recently.  The officer was claiming Scott had fought him for his Taser, but the video I saw showed no such struggle.  To all intents and purposes all the man did was get out of the car and flee the scene.  And the "yes, but" was that he had warrants out for failure to pay child support.  Well, duh, he won't be paying any child support now, will he?


Then, Time magazine, April 20, 2015, shows several still shots from the video including one that shows Scott struggling with the officer as he reached for his Taser or gun.  Folks, it does give one pause in the righteous indignation.  Scott did resist arrest by fleeing  --  and he did get into a physical scuffle with the arresting officer.


And for what?  Over back child support?  The issue was not worth a violent encounter at all.  Yes, it was regrettable that Scott is classified in the vernacular as a dead-beat dad, but the violent end defeated the purpose of the warrants.


What was presented in the video I saw shows a man totally innocent of anything save fleeing the scene and a police officer shooting him repeatedly in the back.  Now why is it important to see the struggle over the weapon?  I repeat remarks I made in earlier blogs.  When you resist arrest and struggle with officers, in the very least, you get their defensive system activated.  Until tested, even the officer, much less you, has no idea the limits of his self-control.  His fear is very real.  He goes into fight or flight mode to save himself.  If he flees, he risks being seen as a coward.  If he chooses to stay and fight, can he control his response?  I repeat, even he doesn't know until tested.  And if an officer really is a racist, resisting arrest just gives him an excuse.  If he says to the ground, drop.  Hands on the head?  Put them on the head.  Hands on the car?  Do it.  Give no man or woman a reason or an excuse to take you out.


And to you working in the media  --  never buy a doctored video.  Never, ever, edit one to show a particular view.  Show the entire interaction that is available or get another topic.  In the days between the video and the Time article showing a struggle, angry citizens could have pillaged Rome and the producers of the television segment could have been held responsible for a lot of death and destruction.

Ted Cruz And Company

Well, I guess Ted Cruz is going to be the next president.  He is, after all, the only one running.  Sounds like the board for our coop  --  three vacancies needed filling  --  three people accepted their nominations.  I hope nobody bothered to go vote.  The results were a "no brainer".


The heir apparent to the Democratic nomination just can't quite make up her mind.  To be a grandmother, or to be a president?  To dote on children, or to take a job?  Most of us can do both, but then she is called American Royalty these days.  Don't Royals have all kinds of people to wait on them hand and foot?


Don't get me wrong!  I think it's way past time for a woman president  --  generations past.  I also think she's the most qualified woman at this time.  She's highly educated, experienced in international affairs, and just plain smart.  She's even experienced dealing with Republican character assassination.  I wish she'd declare and get on with it before she gets on my last nerve.  So what's with this prima donna thing?  Well, who would want to climb into the ring with all those snorting, stamping bulls  --  or bull s'ers?


She's waited so long now, that the unknowns (to most of us) are beginning to think they have a chance.  And Vice President Biden is flirting with the idea, but he stands politely in the wings waiting for the cue to be or not to be.


In the meantime, Cruz is cruising around collecting up all the donor dollars.  This Latino white boy, born in Canada, is just sure he's the one.  He even starred in the remake of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington.  Wasn't that sweet when he took time out to read a bedtime story to his kids?  If the heir apparent runs and wins, maybe Chelsea can call on him to babysit sometimes. 


Our media experts can't wait for the show to begin.  George Stephanopoulis of This Week exudes an excitement over the race that energizes members of all parties.  Then, on election night as the results come in, Scott Pelly of CBS is always at his best. 


It's a "great time" of the season and its time has come.  Let's get those hats in the ring now and get those cards and letters (with donor dollars) coming in . . . and let the games begin.  I need more fodder for my blogs.  I'm running out of metaphors I can mix and clichés to use for fillers.

What America Needs

We Americans have a saying we use when we are attempting to describe the most corrupt individuals around  -- "He's the kind who would steal from his own mother."  Yep, we have some of those around.  They are in all walks of life and all races, creeds and levels of society.  They are rich, poor, tall, short, male, female, whatever.


They are prevalent at the car repair level.  I reach a state of despair over them even finding supposedly diagnosable things wrong that the diagnostic tests do not uncover.  I realize they may not be quite the most amoral individuals around.  They are certainly near the top.  The American politician, though, may be just a little worse than even the mechanics and the home repair individuals.


We've had cheating, thieving liars among politicians for so long that movies portray country, porky, cigar smokin', small-town southern hicks as a typical front runner in elections or even as managers of small towns.  We've been trained to think they are funny and to view them with an "aw shucks, aren't they cute?" attitude.  They are not limited to a small-town mayor or sheriff level.  Such individuals are rife at the federal level as well. But they are in disguise, wearing three-piece suits and acting all sophisticated and respectable.  "The better to take advantage of you that way, my dears."


What America needs is to recognize liars, cheats and a mother's bad sons for what they really are  --  liars, cheats and bad sons (or daughters).  In fact, it is imperative that the American public learn what these people are to the core of themselves.  They are the bad apples that spoil the whole bunch and we need to throw out the bad ones so we can save whatever goodness of our country still exists.  That good is becoming sparse.


Will the media please do this for the good of everybody before America becomes completely reprehensible?  Will you please sideline all partisan politics?  Will you start pointing out all of our liars , cheats and thieves, instead of presenting our news in a he said/she said bipartisan manner.  Please show us what they say and compare it with what they do.  There are dishonest politicians (and dishonest people who put them into office) on both sides of the aisle and in all the branches of government.  Please expose them all to our voting public before our next election.  If you don't do this soon, we have only our country to lose.

Twenty-one Christians

There is a posting going around Facebook which lists the twenty-one people of the mass group killed by ISIS or ISIL terrorists.  The names are given for twenty of them (one is listed as worker), so that we can pray for them by name.  I have done this, though I'm sure I mangled their names.  But nice thing about it, God, as the trinity, will recognize them anyway.


I would like to add an extra element to that prayer which I hope Christian after Christian will add to their petitions to the Almighty. 


I pray that each of the individual twenty-one people who participated in the deaths of these Christians be caught and brought to justice for this.  May any individual who kills Christians anywhere be brought to this same kind of justice.


Father, I thank you in advance for your help in this matter.

Myopic Byopics

(And Black Racist Directors)


I thought I had exhausted what needed to be written about racism now being more from the African American community than the white community.  This week, several things came together that taught me more needs to be addressed.  For instance, a friend in a nursing home was talking of dealing with aides who sat around doing as little as possible to earn their paychecks, but having energy to demonstrate racist attitudes.


Then, the director of the recently released movie, Selma, a biopic about Martin Luther King, was interviewed by the press.  She told them that she had not expected an Oscar nomination for her part in the movie so was not disappointed.  When asked about the furor that she caused by portraying President Lyndon Johnson as a racist akin to Governor George Wallace of Alabama, she expressed denial that he had had any part in the success of the Civil Rights movement.  She angrily expressed that they hadn't had any white savior to help them with their cause  --  in fact, they didn't need any knight on a white horse.  She said they could do this all by themselves.


Sorry President Johnson, I guess you and the Kennedy clan and Congress were irrelevant to the passing of the Civil Rights Bill that changed the lives of blacks in this country forever.  Those black folk just did the whole thing themselves.


Well Ms. Ava DuVernay, lend me your attention, because you are about to get the education you should have gotten before you were ever allowed to direct a movie about history.  To direct a movie about history, or write one, or produce one, you have to first know history.  You don't.  I've never been a fan of President Lyndon B. Johnson, but I'm not so ignorant that I don't know that he was the key factor in the passing of that Civil Rights Bill.  The Kennedy family, especially President John F. Kennedy, had worked throughout the years he was in office to get the bill passed, but they didn't have sufficient knowledge about how to work the two houses of the branch to get it done.  In fact, other presidents had failed at getting changes made for your cause.  Then Vice-President Johnson is said to have notified President Kennedy that he should hold back on introducing the Civil Rights Bill until after the rest of his agenda had been passed because the Rights Bill would hang everything up.  Well that President ignored the advice and, lo and behold, everything in his agenda was hung up because of the civil rights issues.


When President Johnson was sworn in after the assassination of President Kennedy, he made the decision to see that the Kennedy agenda made it through Congress.  President Johnson had spent years learning the ins and outs of that branch of government and knew how to make things happen.  If he had not put his shoulder behind the Civil Rights Bill, there is a good chance it would never have come into being.  You would not have the advantages you have today if it were not for the sympathetic support of these two presidents, a handful of Congressmen, key entertainers and regular people you and your kind are treating so badly today.


You see, as you seem to have forgotten, there were no black presidents and few black congressmen back then.  With no black majority in Congress, the Civil Rights Bill would not have been just difficult to get passed, it would have been dead in the water.  So no, lady, you could not do it yourselves.  You had to have help.


Yes, key people like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King were effective in calling attention to injustices, but those same injustices would still be prevalent were it not for Caucasian Americans who cared.  So get your nose out of the air before you drown in your own self love. 


I know that arrogance is said to come from a poor self concept, but that doesn't make your inflated opinion correct or even easier to deal with in the here and now.  If  you plan to direct any more historical biopics, you need to read up on the history of the time  --  all of the history  --  not just the part that tends to reinforce your overinflated egotistical opinions about the matter.  In fact, to learn more about President Johnson, you might behoove yourself to read The Passage of Power by Robert Caro.  That book was an eye opener for a lot of people.


I haven't seen your film yet, so I can't say for sure, but your lack of knowledge and denial of the truth may just be the reason you failed to get the Best Director Oscar nomination.  I'm sure you'll probably nurse more racist grudges and tell yourself that you didn't get it because you are black and a woman to boot.  But take the blinders off lady. 


There are a lot of us still alive that actually lived through those days.  I actually stood outside a restaurant on the outskirts of Selma, Alabama, in 1965. I saw the three outhouses labeled His, Hers and Theirs.  Have you in your short life actually had to use a separate restroom?  In 1956 I actually sat in a front seat of a bus next to a young black male riding from the north right into the south.  That man risked a lot by doing so, but so did I when I chose to sit next to him.  Do you still have to sit at the back of the bus?  During those years when the Reverend Martin Luther King was walking those streets with blacks, whites, rich, poor, commoner and celebrity alike, I was sitting and playing gin rummy over lunch with people of both races.  Do you not mix with whites all the time now?  Well, maybe with your bad attitude, you are not welcome to do so.


You see, a definition of the word myopic is lacking knowledge, tolerance and foresight.  Your lack of true knowledge shows in your work and your press interviews.  Your lack of tolerance is apparent in your arrogant attitude.  And your lack of foresight concerning your work no doubt cost you your nomination. 


The African American cause may not have reached the level you would hold dear, but it sure as heck has come a long way thanks to the white community, especially President Lyndon Baines Johnson.


These very naïve and racist myopic biopics that are being produced these days are fueling more hard feelings than they are good.  The furor building at the grass roots is threatening to set race relations back, not forward.  You are flirting with a backlash.  Just keep whooping up the anger, the hate, the riots, and you will find yourself facing a ton of trouble.  And above all, if you are going to tell history, you need to actually know and understand history.  You don't have a clue!

A Cut-Throat Perspective

Deflate-gate, physically hurting our competitors, using steroids and other drugs  --  all in the name of winning  --  is downright disgusting!  "Well, others are doing it, so I will, too."  Well, others didn't get caught.  You did.


The human soul is becoming totally corrupt.  Everywhere we turn, sociopaths prevail.  Is it in our DNA now?  Has it always been?  Or, has people's abuse of alcohol and other drugs spun a mutation of sorts, an error in the human genome?


Whatever the cause, the spin is out of control beginning with what we value and what we respect.  However in this world did we get to the point that athletics and sports became centermost in our lives?  They override Broadway, movies, television, family, church and home.  Today, as "ninety-nine and forty-four one hundredths percent" of American citizens stop to view the big game, we find the sociopathic efforts to win hanging a veil of shame over the activities.


It is said that more than half the footballs used by the playoff winners were deflated, which gave them an advantage.  Was it an accident?  Odds are it was not, considering the number in question.  Will we ever know who did it?  The why is easy.  To win.  The how  --  yes, how in this world could someone carry out such a thing after the balls were inspected?  And why don't the teams use the same balls anyway?


In this never ending age of the "media pounce", it is insane to think such a thing would go unnoticed and unspoken.


Now, the team that won the playoffs will never know for sure that they really earned the right to go to the Super Bowl.  Neither will the fans.  Odds are they would have won without cheating, but nobody will ever know conclusively.  Likewise, if they win the Super Bowl, nobody will ever know if they should have.


But the most basic question of all is, in this day of injuring our opponents to get them out of the game, what has happened to our basic value system that athletics, sports, or anything else should have become so worshipped that we would risk our very moral fiber just to win?


An underlying theme the first Rocky movie portrayed (long past forgotten), second best can sometimes feel very good.  So, let's forget this everlasting cut-throat perspective and return sports to their proper place in this world.  They are but a source of entertainment.  It is not a basic need of mankind to win, win, win.  Tainting athletics is not going to put food and water on the table or a roof over the head.  It is just going to bring shame to all.