Obama makes a point to all the haters yesterday at Dallas Tribute to slain officers.
"And I'm reminded of a passage in John's Gospel: 'Let us love not with words or speech but with actions, and in truth'. .....In our society we choose to underinvest in decent schools, we allow poverty to fester so that entire neighborhoods offer no prospect for gainful employment, we refuse to fund drug treatment and mental health programs,.
And then we tell the police, 'you're the social worker, you're the parent, you're the teacher, you're the drug counselor. We tell them to keep those neighborhoods in check at all costs. We flood communities with so many guns that it's easier for a teenager to get his hands on a Glock than it is on a computer or a book. And, do so without causing any political blowback or inconvenience. Don't make a mistake that might disturb our own peace of mind. And then we feign surprise when periodically the tensions boil over.
We know those things to be true, we've known that for a long time. Police, you know it. Protesters, you know it. You know how dangerous some of the communities these police officers serve are. And you pretend there is not context. These things we know to be true, And if we cannot even talk about these things honestly and openly - not just in the comfort of our own circles but with those who look different from us or bring a different perspective - then we will never break this dangerous cycle."
- President Barack Obama in his speech at the Dallas Memorial for five slain officers Tuesday
Sadly, most of Obama's speech and words - powerful as they were, encompassing as much veracity and integrity as they did - will be outright rejected by those more accustomed to speeches "at the third grade level" - as one commentator put in on Chris Hayes' 'All In' last night. This is sad, because at third grade level nuance escapes minds in favor of bombast and buffoonery. The clown and his antics prevail over the temperate, sober voices. Truth is lost amidst the wreckage of bunkum, loose rhetoric and unsupported claims. The worst part is that those who most needed to process Obama's words and let them sink in likely tuned him out as "another black terrorist", or reduced him to the hackneyed cartoon epithet of "Obummer" or "Obozo".
And so no wonder this nation is unable to halt its death spiral which begins with anarchy, lawlessness and chaos. But in the case of rejection of Obama and his much needed words, we already know why this gained such a toehold in certain quarters.
Let us admit that as the first African-American to ever ascend to the highest office, Barack Obama has since day one faced legions of race haters and baiters. A lot that seems to populate this nation like Piranha do the Amazon River Basin. Unable to tolerate a person of color as Chief Executive, these haters have been at his throat since his 2008 inauguration, unable to come to terms with their own racial hate. The latter betrayed by the too facile, too liberal employment of disparaging terms like "monkeys" and "apes" - which give away their game.
In like manner the BLM or Black Lives Matter movement has also come under opprobrium even to the extent of being called "terrorists". Some deluded folks have even opined that the insane sniper Micah Johnson was a "terrorist" recruited by Black Lives Matter which is a totally irrational proposition apart from being unsupported. As one BLM advocate noted in the Saturday New York Times, "We had white people finally coming to see what we saw in violence visited upon us" - with the logical inference left unsaid 'So why in the hell would we use a fool like Micah Johnson to undermine our cause".
But as I pointed out, a cynical underground movement in contempt of Dallas Police Chief Brown's community policing efforts and intolerance for police violence, would. This is the whole basis for a false flag, a title originally earned with the operations set in motion by Operations Mongoose and Northwoods, which used the cover of phony planned attacks on U.S. interests to then be blamed on Cuba to initiate a war. One of the documents with those plans I had published in an earlier post from five years ago.
Hence, it is not at all preposterous that craven and duplicitous interests could make use of a seeming opposite ally to carry out plans to besmirch and destroy a movement the superficial thinker might attach to that selfsame ally.
I myself stand accused of using epithets to attack Black Lives Matter, following an early altercation in which BLM protestors interrupted a Bernie Sanders' speech last year and snatched the microphone from him as he looked on dumbfounded. Instead of charging onto a stage and intimidating a 73-old man who was on their side, e.g.
I challenged the movement and protesters to venture into the realm of risk and upend or screech at Trump rallies and those of other repukes - their real enemies if you will. This they did and as they did so, even to the extent of being punched out by one or more pro-Trump looneytunes e.g.in North Carolina, I found myself giving them a grudging respect
Obama, to his credit, did much more than I did and dared to negotiate the intersection between the millions who support police and the millions who support racial justice. Thus, he called for action to stop the conflict between police and protesters and black and white, admitting previous approaches, including his own, were failing. He added: “I understand how Americans are feeling. But, Dallas, I’m here to say we must reject such despair. I’m here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem.”
Maybe. But so long as division, distrust and hatred occupy too many minds of our fellow citizens we will remain divided, even if not as extreme as things were in 1968. In that year, racial animus reached a boiling point with riots and bloodshed after the slaying of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Let us recall Obama's words from last night:
"I believe our righteous anger can be transformed into more justice and more peace."
But that can only happen if all sides cease to see themselves as the sole beacons of truth and moral rectitude.. In other words, we must be able to see the experiences of others through their eyes. This means rejecting the temptation to brand every black man shot and killed by police as a "violent criminal" including listing his purported arrest record to attempt to minimize the slaying. It also means ceasing to portray all cops as fascist, out of control monsters where the reactionary bullies are conflated with the decent upholders of order.
Probably the words of young Cameron Sterling, son of Baton Rouge victim Alton Sterling, best embody what this nation ought to strive toward:
"It's not right to mix up bad police with the good. The police in Dallas, Texas, they didn't deserve that. They might have had kids to go home to and those kids need their parents. I truly just want everyone to protest the right way, in peace not in violence. Not in beating the police and not in the police beating the people. That makes no sense, that makes things worse. You have to make things better by making peace."
See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/john-feffer/68087/how-this-became-the-era-of-the-gunman
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