The media and Brown: what’s wrong with this picture?
I was going to write a lengthy article describing how the media has distorted the facts of the Brown/Wilson case, purposely encouraging misperceptions that have led to outrage and destructive rioting. I was planning to list a whole bunch of articles, and then the omissions and/or lies in each one.
But I was overcome with a vast sense of weariness. I feel as though I’m in an ocean liner that’s taken on enough water to sink, and I’m equipped with only a teaspoon to bail it out while the entire crew is hard at work punching more holes in the hull. That may be a poor analogy, but I think you get the idea. Suffice to say that the entire MSM, the administration, the professional racemongers, and the left in all its glorious manifestations (including the preening, self-righteous Hollywood crowd, scrambling to outdo themselves in showing their allegiance with the Brown forces) were determined to make Michael Brown into the post-Trayvon martyr du jour.
No matter what the facts would reveal. Facts are for the little people.
Summary version of their general argument: Brown was unarmed. At one point, he was running away (briefly; he turned back and charged Wilson). Wilson, in the heat of being attacked by a really, really large and powerful and tremendously aggressive man, who had tried to beat him up and take his gun from him (although this last fact is usually omitted or trivialized), should have somehow figured out a way to stop him in the heat of a few seconds that did not involve shooting him.
In other words, just as in the Zimmerman case, their armchair-philosopher position is that white police officers and white-Hispanic neighborhood security watchers should just lay down and die rather than harm their aggressive black attackers. Whites have no right to self-defense when faced with an imminent threat from a black person.
However, it should go without saying—but I’ll repeat it anyway—that a person (white or black or whatever) who punches a police officer (white or black or whatever), tries to take his firearm, and keeps charging when that officer points the weapon at him and says to stop, ought to consider him or herself a dead person, because that officer has every right in the world to protect him/herself with the use of deadly or possibly-deadly force. This is particularly true if the attacker is a large strong person who could easily overpower the officer in the physical sense. Claiming that the attacker is “unarmed” is sophistry, because the attacker has shown no tendency to be deterred by the officer’s weapon and his/her own lack of weapon, and can easily disarm that officer and then will have a 100% advantage in terms of force. The only chance—the only hope—the officer has of staying on top of the threat is to actually use that weapon to stop the attacker.
In the Brown case virtually all the credible evidence seems to concur in absolving Wilson: the officer’s own testimony (which one would expect would be self-serving), the eyewitnesses (many of whom were black), and the forensic evidence.
But the court of public opinion is bound by no such constraints, unfortunately. And that court is determined to make this case conform to the Narrative. You know the drill. Racist America. Trigger-happy white cop. Gentle Giant.
[NOTE: Rich Lowry makes a good point:
…[W]e don’t try people for crimes they almost certainly didn’t commit just to satisfy a mob that will throw things at the police and burn down local businesses if it doesn’t get its way. If the grand jury had given into the pressure from the streets and indicted as an act of appeasement, the mayhem most likely would have only been delayed until the inevitable acquittal in a trial.]
/raises hand
I thought the Natl Guard was pre-positioned to prevent the violence we’ve just seen. The hell happened to them? Did Chocolate Nixon call *Governor* Nixon and tell them they’d interfere with this week’s race-baiting or something…?
Seriously. WHERE IS THE GUARD? The entire country was told they were called up and on alert. And then they suddenly vanish.
I know how you feel, Neo. I had a version of this conversation with my 15-year-old this morning. She’s been eating this up in the media, is convinced she understands it all, and was telling me authoritatively that Michael Brown was murdered just because he was black (insert some large number of exclamation marks here)… and that she couldn’t believe anyone would be on the side of the “white police officer”.
I didn’t try to explain the facts of the case as I knew them. I simply pointed out to her that this is how the system works — that a grand jury, formed of Brown’s peers in the Ferguson area, listened to all the evidence available — including evidence we probably haven’t seen yet — and decided not to indict, meaning that they didn’t think it made sense to proceed with an actual trial.
That is how the system is supposed to work, no matter how many teenage girls say that Officer Wilson is “obviously guilty”.
Her response was to change the subject to an argument about gun control.
Evidence? Who cares about evidence. The media long ago gave up reporting the facts and became political advocates.
Remember the Rodney King case? King was driving thru Los Angeles at 100 MPH with two friends. The police stopped them and told them to get out of the car. The other two men complied with the police orders and nothing happened to them, but King assaulted the police. The police thought King was high on PCP and they lost their tempers and beat the crap out of him. There was a three minute video of the beating and the TV played that video endlessly. It looked like the cops were beating the poor guy 24/7. The video fit the narrative of the evil racist white cops beating up innocent black motorists and that was the media portrayal. If the evidence doesn’t fit the narrative, ignore the evidence.
About the grand jury being “formed of Brown’s peers in the Ferguson area” — I guess that’s true technically, since it seems to have been drawn on a pool of jurors from across St. Louis county. But as for being representative of Ferguson itself, it was very wide of the mark of representing his peers — Ferguson is two-thirds black, which would have meant a grand jury with seven or eight black members, while the actual grand jury had only three blacks.
You’re not alone in your weariness.
“The best response to false beliefs is not necessarily providing correct information.” – Dr. Brendan Nyhan, health care researcher at Dartmouth College in Hanover N.H.
Which leads me to:
”It may well be that a society’s greatest madness seems normal to itself”. – Allan Bloom
“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?” –Miguel de Cervantes
There’s also Tom Wolfe’s Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers re the conflict between black rage and white guilt written some forty years ago – regarding which:
“My vision of the future is so bleak that I would find it laughable to care about any insulting label which one could pin on me. The price for the temporary cowardice today is the constant horror of tomorrow.” – Alex Kurtagic (Why Conservatives Always Lose)
We are now witness to what forty years of standing down leads to – the maelstrom is the zeitgeist.
All of the misinformation being spread about this case is exhausting – especially after just going through it with the Zimmerman/Martin altercation.
Frankly, I’m tired of these cases exploited by the media and activists. Yes, I’m upset when a life is taken, but I refuse to get caught up in the emotional and political circus, and racial discord, that they intentionally foment.
Fight the good fight neo. Never surrender, never surrender!
I *HATE* the MSM. They are doing terrible damage to our country.
Phil Ossiferz Stone:
The Guard is there now. It is very curious indeed, though (and suspicious) that they were not called that first night, when most of the destruction occurred, although there was plenty of warning mayhem would occur.
It is spitting into the wind. The battle is on multiple fronts against the media for whom this is an important revenue and notoriety stream, as well as the opportunists, like pols, and activists who exploit these events for their own self aggrandizement. Then there are the self important, but needy, people for whom this is an occasion to exhibit their hero complex; a raison detre to justify their existence. Nobody wants to face just being a brick in the wall, after all.
It seems to me that, in a lot of places, the event was hijacked by white people for their own purposes. It is a pity that a family’s grief and loss becomes just grist for the mill. I think it is ultimately demeaning to them, not that they didn’t play a part in it.
All, I can tell you is that there are a lot of people who do not leap to conclusions, who wait for the evidence, and who are not grubered. They will read enough of the GJ evidence to decide for themselves
As, for the guard, did anyone see any non-white faces? It made me wonder if that was why they were not in the forefront. I hate to second guess, because there are many scenarios where the trade offs are unknown, and the reality is that sometimes you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
While I see the point of your sinking ocean liner analogy, and while I feel exactly the weariness and despair you describe, I did feel heartened that the grand jury no-billed Wilson. Not only was it right-thinking; it was brave. I felt the same way about the Zimmerman case, and I think it means that all is not lost.
A pedantic postscript: I’m shocked, Neo, to see that you misused “lay.” It’s not LAY down and die;
it’s LIE down and die. !!!!!
mizpants:
I was using the expression in its colloquial sense. It’s kind of like “I could care less”—which also is incorrect but an expression people use all the time.
Its deja vu all over again. 🙁 We saw this type of anger and destruction throughout the 60s and 70s. But back then it was somewhat understandable. The team obama – msm cabal is truly an axis of evil, they have successfully created a zombie horde.
This was zimmerman 2…… this time tho they orchestrated the outraged since there was MEH from the aggrieved in
The florida verdict…..O and Holder were not going to be dissed again by a self absorbed , “stupid”, to use grubers description, uncooperative sheeple.
I just watched two German reports on this. Totally ignorant. The anchor was asking whether the riots would bring about a new civil rights movement. The academic who supposedly is an expert on America mentioned the number of people shot by the police and the large number of blacks who are incarcerated. No mention, of course, on the number of black on black crimes. Nothing to shake their cliche ideas about America. No one will ever read Jason Riley’s Please Stop Helping Us, just as no one has ever read John McWhorter’s pieces on the effects of rap. No one has ever heard of Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams. No one has ever talked to people who live in gang-dominated black neighborhoods. But they all know how racist America is. It makes me want to pull my hair out and scream. Maybe I should just get some bricks and toss them through some windows to protest.
Yes, there should be outrage – I know I am. But, not the way the rioters are outraged.
I just read on Fox News that the New York Times published the street that officer Wilson and his new wife live on and in what town. (I’ll take Fox News at their word since I don’t bother to read the Times)
They are hoping for “street justice” since they didn’t get it the way they wanted.
Thugs are thugs, whether they be smashing and grabbing in the streets, or sitting in the office of a newspaper.
or even for that matter sitting with their feet up on the oval office desk.
They are still thugs.
Ezra Klein argues that what Darren Wilson said in his testimony almost certainly couldnt possibly be true, unless it was.
Klein typically bases his opinion in what we’ve come to expect, not on the ability to dispute supporting evidence, but simply because he says it doesnt sound like it fits the narrative he’d like to hold on to. I mean, he pretty much just lays it out just like that:
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/25/7281165/darren-wilsons-story-side
Neo: “I feel as though I’m in an ocean liner that’s taken on enough water to sink, and I’m equipped with only a teaspoon to bail it out while the entire crew is hard at work punching more holes in the hull.”
You and I have commiserated about this before. On my blog, I’ve written several versions of:
As you know, my hobby horse is setting the record straight on the law and policy basis of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It ought not be difficult. The law and policy of enforcing the Gulf War ceasefire – US statutes, UNSC resolutions, UN findings, Clinton’s enforcement precedent, etc, over a decade-plus – are straightforward and plainly show OIF was right on the law and justified on the policy. Setting the record straight on OIF should be as simply dispositive as quoting primary sources.
Yet it’s not that simple.
It’s the narrative contest for the zeitgest in the activist game, where narrative is elective truth, as plastic as needed to compete, and truth is merely a competing narrative. Facts are the reified opinions of the winner of the narrative contest. And the contest loser’s facts are no more than opinions.
The activist game is the only social political/cultural game there is. For you to be as effective as you (and I) want to be, you need to be part of a competitive activist social movement.
Your Rich Lowry link appears to have the quote inserted in the URL.
Folks, you’re witnessing what OfA DOES.
Organizing for America = Media brown shirts for anti-White racism.
Barry has played it like a Sith lord should: funding and organizing the rabble…
Then…
After the pot boils over, issuing platitudes about harmony and restraint.
The last time I saw anything this perverted, Anakin Skywalker turned traitor.
These cultural fiascos are DIRECTLY attributable to B.S.
Who needs a Reichstag fire when you can burn down middle America?
B.S. is doing the Wright stuff — and chickens are out of the coop.
A full on race war is Barry’s agenda. Then, like any Sith lord, he will toss over the US Constitution to restore law and order.
The boy is so cheesy that he’s running on George’s script!
Jacob Sullum at Reason has some problems with the grand jury’s process/result and thinks there should have been a trial:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ferguson-decision-and-its-aftermath-more-a-media-event-than-organic-moment/2014/11/25/b506ff72-7256-11e4-ad12-3734c461eab6_story.html
Ann, from what I’ve heard, the DA couldn’t find ANY physical evidence that backed up the nasty allegations — instead everything backed up officer Wilson.
Sullum has jumped to a confusion.
This was surely compounded by the reality that the accurate eye witnesses had conflicting accounts — that under cut each other.
&&&&
My late Uncle WAS a DA. He informed me that eye witness testimony is inherently weak proof at trial. Unlike TV shows, real people wander all over the place during trial.
The more eye witnesses you have, the more they cross over each other’s version of events.
This causes virtually every jury to fall back on physical evidence.
If you recall, during the OJ Simpson trial, the prosecution never recovered from the glove-doesn’t-fit fiasco. Of course, now that his end is near, Simpson is relating to cell-mates that he DID kill Brown.
Once the physical evidence pointed the ‘wrong way’ the DA HAD to drop it.
My Uncle threw out case after case — even when he felt the perp was guilty — when the evidence was sketchy. Trial is SO expensive, court time so dear, that no DA wants to push cases that are solid bets to fail at trial or upon appeal.
And you wouldn’t believe how badly most Blacks are in the witness stand. May I remind you of the Zimmerman trial?
Every DA has to take in consideration whether a given eye witness will be credible to the jury; and in this case, so credible that the jury will sentence an officer to life in prison — or some such.
The trial would come out of the county budget. For this matter, one should figure on a multimillion dollar tab.
[ My Uncle had one case against the Mafia that cost about $1,000,000 per month! The trial had to be held down in LA because of the massive publicity in the Bay Area. When this happens, his office is back-billed by LA County for all of their expenses — and at a VERY bloated rate. This is topped off by hotel rentals and more for EVERY SINGLE officer/ witness to the bust requested by the defense. (Over 150 cops busted the Mafia that morning!) These horrific charges were ultimately picked up by the US Department of Justice budget. The Feds don’t allow the Mafia to win at trial by bankrupting the local counties!]
And then there’s the legacy of Zimmerman. No DA wants to have THAT circus replicated in his county. If you recall, the Florida DA didn’t think Zimmerman could possibly be convicted — on the evidence. He was right, of course.
Both Wilson and Zimmerman were set-ups for political show trials. The trial, itself, would be the theater!
And no trial would ever chill out Barry’s brown shirts.
You must realize by now that when Barry is raising campaign funds — for a man that can’t run for higher office — that these monies are going out to support his rabble army. (ex-ACORN)
He’s a criminal, they’re criminals, but no-one is going to prosecute them — any more than the Nazi street thugs ever were. Back in the Nazi era, they’d beat up party enemies — right in front of the local police — with total impunity!
This is where Occupy Wall Street was coming from. If you recall, OWS was getting catered meals — from top line NYC restaurants — courtesy of Leftist elites! Many OWS fellows admitted that they were gaining weight — and massively so!
THIS is what a ‘Community Organizer’ is all about.
Daniel in Brookline: I assume that’s Massachussets.
I empathize, greatly. Obviously, she did not pick up her distorted view of reality from you. That leaves her school, her peers and the media as the culprits. It is grievous to see the next generation be so terribly misled, because when it all comes down, they will pay a terrible price.
Does your local police force have a “ride along” program? If so, would they allow your daughter out in a squad car on a night patrol in a bad black neighborhood? Maybe she would benefit from some tough love.
I find this a bit troubling:
“A public airing of the evidence, with ample opportunity for advocates on both sides to present and probe it, is what Brown’s family has been demanding all along.” –“Reason” Police Hater Sollum
There are nearly five thousand pages of just that released by the prosecutor. However, the secondary miscreants declare they will not believe a word of it nor even read it. So what’s the point of a trial? To create a mockery of justice, a farcical show trial, an opportunity to impugn and slander, to create new false narratives, to provide a stand for the haters and the ignorant, and, most importantly, to have always the fact that the prosecutor took the cop to trial, setting the stage for a slam-sunk civil court case against the cop and the city and the county and the state and every deep pocket these destroyers of racial amicability can find. An indictment, no matter how weak the case, is a ticket to riches for the likes of Brown’s family and their corrupt lawyers. Also, I would fear a jury with the moral fiber of that which freed OJ.
“Ann Says:
November 26th, 2014 at 6:34 pm
I find this a bit troubling:”
One, the prosecutor is not of the low moral fiber of his accusers who presume that his father’s demise makes him a Bat-Man like character that is on a life long quest for unjust justice. He is a good man with a strong reputation and the slurs against him speak more of his accusers than he.
On the second point, prosecutors are not required to hide exculpatory evidence and to play up falsehoods and rain down hellfire upon the accused to obtain an indictment. What this prosecutor did was extraordinary, in the sense that all grand juries should be conducted in this fashion. Nothing was hidden, no agendas forced on the jurors, nothing but all the evidence and every single witness, and “witness,” who cared to come forward. It is being praised by many in the justice profession as the standard that should be sought in all GJs. It was extraordinary, it was just.
I find disturbing your acceptance of the lies being put forth to discredit a process and a finding that are above repute.
That’s right. The core issue is their belief that you have no inherent or natural right to self-defense.
After the Zimmerman case, I mentioned to a self-described left wing activist that no one was obligated to allow others to lay unwelcome hands on them and to tolerate a beating or maiming. I noted that I would not allow it if I had any power to prevent it, and neither need anyone else.
His response was to wave off the principle involved, i.e., one’s right to physical integrity, and to rage at me and ask who the hell I thought I was.
Yes, after all, who was I to stipulate that I would not submit to a beating if I had the means to resist? How dare I so disrespect the collective …
‘Your desire to stand on your own reputation is merely further evidence of your guilt.
You did not build that. You did not get there on your own. (Read the Time essay linked to on Drudge) You are guilty of depraved, if not criminal indifference. You have no right to life or anything else. ‘
Your selfish desires Neo, for illusions like “truth” and autonomy and moral responsibility make you the postmodern moral nilhilist milieu’s equivalent of the “wreckers” so despised in the old Soviet Union.
I have been involved in debates with leftists for more than a decade now. Superficially the dispute always appears to be about deciding on policies to achieve ends which we all supposedly can agree upon. Or, so it once seemed to many.
But it is increasingly obvious to everyone, that this is not the case.
“Nihilism” is the key word here. Not just moral nihilism as with Nietzsche. He at least believed in the reality of the world.
As one of the authors of the links I followed from your site mentioned the other day, the new breed doesn’t even believe in reality. It’s impossible to argue with them since they cannot agree that there are objectively preferable ways of describing reality: much less that one can draw objectively preferable inferences from those descriptions.
In a world of the gleefully irrational, he who dares to reason commits an outrage.
It’s bedtime here, so let me wish everyone a great Thanksgiving. All of us can be thankful for Neo.
Because we were embroiled in the orchestrated social justice psychodrama, we missed an opportunity to see a real contrast between haves and have-nots. A week ago was World Toilet Day. Take a look and see one more thing to be grateful for this Thanksgiving.
That certainly seems to be where this is going. Outlaw self-defense, as has already happened in England. Middle-class and working-class white people will be at the mercy of criminals and the authorities. That makes real self-reliance impossible.
The actual shooting incident was not racial at all. I’m white, and if I assaulted a police officer and tried to grab his gun, I would be just as dead as Mike Brown, and rightfully so. The race of the cop wouldn’t even matter.
But Obama, Holder, Sharpton, the media, and the communist/anarchist groups have been working 24/7 for months to whip up racial hatred.
As usual, the media has particular responsibility, since they have been breathlessly predicting violence if the grand jury failed to indict. Practically every single media story I’ve heard included the phrase “a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teen”, without mentioning that the “teen” was 6’4″, 290 lbs., and attacked the cop.
I don’t know how long WSJ will make this available; it is not behind a pay wall. I have read an autopsy report and three witness statements; it is unbelievably tedious. There is a great effort by those questioning to sort out what was seen. from what was heard, from what was assumed, and an effort to tease out facts from “memories”that were embellished and influenced by rumors. I was struck by the observation that the chest shots had a trajectory that was down and toward the back. Not conclusive and I don’t want to make too much of it, but I don’t see the officer as Treebeard or visualize him standing on a step stool. The three witness statements that I have reviewed so far all contradicted each other, but I didn’t think they were liars, just humans.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2014/11/25/prosecutors-release-ferguson-grand-jury-evidence/?mg=blogs-wsj&url=http%253A%252F%252Fblogs.wsj.com%252Flaw%252F2014%252F11%252F25%252Fprosecutors-release-ferguson-grand-jury-evidence
“But I was overcome with a vast sense of weariness. I feel as though I’m in an ocean liner that’s taken on enough water to sink, and I’m equipped with only a teaspoon to bail it out while the entire crew is hard at work punching more holes in the hull.”
Very close to an analogy used by Sebastian Haffner, whose memoir of Germany between the wars has been discussed here before. In 1933, shortly after Hitler had become chancellor, Haffner attended Berlin’s spring carnival. He had a hard time getting in the Carnival mood, however:
“All at once I had a strange, dizzy feeling. I felt as though I was inescapably imprisoned with all these young people in a giant ship that was rolling and pitching. We were dancing on its lowest, narrowest deck, while on the bridge it was being decided to flood that deck and drown every last one of us.”
Exasperated Says:
November 26th, 2014 at 8:03 pm
Some witnesses said that Brown put his head down and charged at Wilson like a football player, in which case those trajectories would make perfect sense.
Shorter version of Ann:
“Why oh why couldn’t the DA hide enough evidence to get an indictment?”
“That’s right. The core issue is their belief that you have no inherent or natural right to self-defense.”
Not only that, but there’s a growing belief in some bizarre right to initiate physical attacks for any perceived excuse – generally with the concession that one must do so unarmed.
Apparently, you can attack people for pretty much any reason, including just because you’re angry at other people, and once you do so without a gun, you are “unarmed” and the person you’re attacking now must either be able to defeat you in hand-to-hand combat or lie down and die. Should that person defend him or herself with a weapon, you, the one who attacked them and started the physical confrontation for no legally or logically justifiable reason, are the VICTIM.
I first really started noticing this weird set of beliefs around the time of the Zimmerman incident. People (probably teen and 20-something boys who couldn’t beat a Chihuahua in a one-on-one encounter) would declare how they would attack someone who looked at them or followed them or whatever other imagined crime, and having been attacked, that person was expected to “take their beating like a man.”
They simply do not get that there is no legal right to physically attack another human being … except in cases of self-defense. Stupid, and unable to grasp the irony.
I hope all of you have a Happy Thanksgiving and will continue to count our blessings.
****************************
This is the right thread to mention, however, that I just finished Paul Theroux’s “Last Train to Zona Verde (2013),” an easy-to-read travel journey that vividly shows the end-game of the power-mad alinskyites.
Theroux traveled from South Africa through Namibia and into Angola. He describes how Angola went from primitive village cultures to urban trash heaps where the elites take all the money and the populace lives in lawless squalor. Racial and tribal differences are exploited in various ways but the end result is open sewers and disgusting filth.
Please read this book for a quick look at humanity’s possible future. I also recommend (many times) Ann Coulter’s “Demonic.”
Both these books are good for understanding alinskyite strategies and goals.
I have ideas for solutions to the problems, and I’m sure most of you do too.
Promethea Says:
November 27th, 2014 at 12:16 am
Oh yes, I sure do.
***
Happy Thanksgiving, Promethea. 🙂
Daniel in Brookline
Such as take guns out of the hands of police? 😉
“Suffice to say that the entire MSM, the administration, the professional racemongers, and the left in all its glorious manifestations (including the preening, self-righteous Hollywood crowd, scrambling to outdo themselves in showing their allegiance with the [forces of evil]….”
Yes! They are!
Therefore…?
Once one recognizes what one is up against, then you you’ll know what to do. Fine little arguments pointing out the flaws of Hitler’s Invasion Plans and how they might be “really bad” for lots of things is not going to stop Hitler’s invasion plans or make all of those “really bad” things not happen.
It’s always back to Malone. What are you willing to do to fight Capone?
Here’s a question: Why do we even care what the MSM says about anything, or Obama, or even one Democrat anywhere?
I would be interested in your answer.
Thugs and Barbarians do not listen to reason. That’s why they are thugs and barbarians. If they did listen to reason they would not be thugs and barbarians.
But they are! Now what do you do with thugs and barbarians. That’s your second question.
We don’t try people
The number of Americans whom this describes gets smaller every day. The number of professional American intellectuals, journalist, and politicians whom this describes is already near zero.
In order to bring about Progressive utopia, I join with Sullum at Reason (quite the ironical name) that America needs more show trials which demonstrate the majesty, authority, and power of the state.
If state prosecuting and persecuting to achieve the goal–well, what exactly–isn’t a libertarian ideal, what is?
Wow, it’s the little details that undermine “Masterminds”. You couldn’t make this up:
‘BOMBS FOR BUMS: Alleged plot included bombing Gateway Arch, killing St. Louis County prosecutor. “The men wanted to acquire two more bombs, the sources said, but could not afford to do it ………………………..until one suspect’s girlfriend’s Electronic Benefit Transfer card was replenished.”
from Instapundit
Apparently, you can attack people for pretty much any reason, including just because you’re angry at other people, and once you do so without a gun, you are “unarmed” and the person you’re attacking now must either be able to defeat you in hand-to-hand combat or lie down and die.
Somewhat convenient for those that slip through the cracks due to their H2H training. Which sometimes includes martial artists or other types. But usually those are not the ones the Left targets for extortion or abuse.
Should that person defend him or herself with a weapon, you, the one who attacked them and started the physical confrontation for no legally or logically justifiable reason, are the VICTIM.
This was seen in the past with criminal cartels that enforce the law, their law.
Also knocking out random people for gang status, was also seen before. If you shoot that person or if you shoot the burglar that has a license to steal, then the Law punishes you. That includes Biden’s much favored “warning shot” in the air.
As for Ez Klein.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2014/10/13/ezra-klein-men-need-spike-of-fear-with-sex-to-prevent-rape
You know that propagandist is out for innocence and self defense with that, right.
Gringo: precisely! She argued, with the momentary passion of a teenager, that NOBODY should have guns, not even police.
I wished her good luck with that. We’ve been using guns for a long time, and they’re not going away. (The Beretta company has been manufacturing guns for over four hundred years.)
I didn’t get into the immorality of her wishes. If one could wave a magic wand and make all guns disappear, this would leave the weak at the mercy of the strong, the old at the mercy of the young. I very much doubt that’s the outcome she’d want.
Daniel you have a good opportunity to influence a young mind, & make her a reasoning individual instead of in a non thinking emotional herd ! Best of luck !!
In our own situation the son who went to higher ed is a lefty
(Appaled by guns, even mace shooters, whereas the boy who
Is just working class, comes to the shooting range with us &
Has brought his lovely new bride along!!!
( we continue redoctrination on the *educated* one) lol
The MSM have learned that “there’s gold in them thar hills”, the “hills” being occasional, but inevitable and predictably recurring white vs. black conflicts in which violence has occured and the judicial system gets involved. This provides a ready-made template that is not only easy to cover but comes with predictable, archetypal characters (the oppressive white cop(s); the oppressed and disadvantaged black male “child”; the crooked or incompetent prosecutor(s); the flashy, slick defense attorney(s); an array of colorful and dramatic witnesses (including those who will provide comic relief); the gaggle of reporters; the crowd/ mob which restlessly, anxiously looks on; the courthouse, and the courtroom all of whom or which are provided FOR FREE!
Rodney King, OJ, Trayvon, and now Brown. No wonder the MSM are howling; this wasn’t supposed to end with a grand
jury! The GJ was only supposed to be the opening act of this,
the latest production of their favorite Morality Play.
carl in atlanta,
It’s old school. They’re putting on passion plays.
It’s worse than i thought. At first i wondered why the moms and/or dad’s let their teenagers out after 10 in this situation.
Then i saw videos of mom’s and dad’s holding the hands of their 9 and 10 year old and even 4 year old hands to LOOT.
It has been depravity through and through.
It is not family vs. Criminal element.
It is good vs. Evil but the evil don’t think they are evil.
I followed the link to the Ezra Klein piece and for those not familiar with the “No true Scotsman” logical fallacy, read it for a classic case. Klein argues that Michael Brown would have no motive for first challenging and then assaulting Officer Wilson. The reasons given are that he was an 18 year old “college bound kid”, was stoned on marijuana, not PCP. It makes as much sense as arguing that Wilson wouldn’t have shot Brown without justifiable cause because he was a well trained professional. One has to look at the evidence. Eyewitness accounts, including that of Wilson are often flawed and colored by after the fact rationalization and projection. Taken in the aggregate, consistencies appear, however. One is the autopsy report, which showed that Brown was struck by numerous bullets, all from the front. Another is the toxicology report showing Brown had a THC level of 12ng/ml. Researchers debate the practical effects of impairment but since 5ng/ml is often used as a threshold level, it’s no stretch to believe that Brown’s judgment may have been impaired. Klein doesn’t offer his personal experience with cannabis to refute the assertion that Brown was impaired. I’d be interested in learning of it. The positive toxicology undermines the credibility of Brown’s companion, who stated multiple times that although he and Brown were together from just after 7 AM until noon, they didn’t smoke any cannabis, although that was always their intent. Clearly, he’s lying about that. And if he smoked as much as Brown, his ability to recall events may have been compromised as well.
Ballistics evidence shows that Wilson’s handgun fired twice in the car. That’s where two cartridge casings were recovered. Both Wilson and Brown’s companion Johnson state that Brown starting bleeding at that time. The first shot entered the window well and shattered the window. Wilson didn’t think his second one hit Brown, but it was fired at point blank range. Some of his injuries are consistent with a single bullet grazing his right thumb, right bicep muscle and entering his right chest cavity. This could have produced enough of an injury that Brown started to run, but was soon forced to slow down because of increasing pain and internal blood loss. Wilson saw Brown grasp at his right hip as he turned back toward the police officer. An eyewitness thought Brown was starting to double over. The phenomenon of referred pain in medicine is well established. An injury to the lungs and pleura could certainly produce pain referred to the abdomen. What Wilson didn’t–and couldn’t–know was that Brown was moments away from collapsing on account of a critical wound. We have no way of knowing if Brown was intent on continuing to attack Wilson when he turned and walked back or if he was going into shock and his sheer physical bulk was keeping him on his feet. In any case, he got close enough to Wilson that the officer fired the fatal head shots.
I’m not a legal expert, but the reading I’ve done convinces me that Wilson was within his rights to use lethal force against a man who had already shown an intent to injure him and was disregarding commands to lie down and surrender as he advanced toward the officer. All of the bad choices that day were made by Mike Brown, and he paid dearly for them.
Chris Rock hasn’t commented directly on the Brown/Wilson collision, but this video he made:
‘Chris Rock – How not to get your ass kicked by the police!’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR465HoCWFQ&index=1&list=FLsGpPg98skS5oKgC5jFv5Dg&spfreload=10
sheds some light on why Brown ended up dead.
Several years experience studying in one of the grappling arts taught me that if faced with an angry 300 lb man a 150 lb dude has two viable choices 1) run – most 300 + pounders can’t run all that fast 2) shoot them aiming for something vital. There is no 3rd choice of physically subduing that dude (unless he has the skill level of Bruce Lee) Given that Wilson was morally and professionally committed to confronting the suspect and then once the in-auto confrontation had happened he had to arrest him, his only real choice when Brown resisted and then attacked him was to shoot.
testing
Seen a couple of folks surmising that the race baiters chose this and the Trayvon Martin case precisely because they were slam-dunk self-defense cases and could absolutely be expected to result in acquittal.
Then they began lying–Zimmerman stalked and murdered–the case so that the inevitable acquittal would look like the system approves of murdering black men.
Had there been convictions, the point would have been lost. So you have to pick your cases carefully.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FERGUSON_HANDS_UP?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-11-27-15-46-08
This ^^^^^ get back to what I posted above: the accurate eye witnesses contradict each other on most points, multiple points.
The only witness that has a tale consistent with the physical evidence ends up being officer Wilson.
B.S. has so politicized the matter (via OfA … the ex-ACORN crowd) that only rage is left standing.
Our tyrant does nothing to uphold our culture or our law.
One detail: one police officer who has a weapon but CAN´T use it, it´s actually unarmed.
You can consider yourself armed as long as you can use the weapon. If a police officer is not allowed to use his weapon to defend himself, he should be considered “de facto” unarmed.