The Lie: Hands up. Don't shoot.

[DeistPaladin]

Funny you should use the term "racebaiting."

Forensically, the Michael Brown case is an easy call. The evidence did not match the witnesses at all, in fact it took away all  possibility that the false witnessing was not a fraudulent attempt at lynching a white cop.

The safe conclusion about Ferguson is that the city is very racially polarized with majority racist blacks hating minority racist whites.. It's an argument of "which came first the chicken or the egg" except it's about racial distrust.

Personally I would bet that the black men in Furguson are more likely to nurture a racist attitude against whites than the whites against blacks. I don't know for sure because I don't live there, but here in Columbia SC, I guarantee that this is the case.

But for the police reaction in the aftermath, the entire shooting might not have even made it to the national radar, certain not for as long as it has. I've said from day 1 that the individual shooting was made moot by the police thuggery. By "moot", I mean we could grant every claim the police made about Michael Brown and still the whole incident would have been overshadowed by far more disturbing problems ranging from the militarization of the police to the double-standards in how right wing vs. left wing protests are handled to the institutionalized racism of the Ferguson Police. 


The militarization of the police is getting to be a serious issue in America. A Theist and other apologists for thuggery can evoke images of rioters all they like but we have video footage of media camera crews being fired upon, police firing tear gas cannisters into back yards indiscriminately and reports of them arresting and roughing up reporters just because they were typing on their laptop computers in a restaurant. The militarization of the police gives departments an incentive to use the shiny toys they get from the military or lose them. We need to deal with this issue or what happened in Ferguson can happen anywhere. 

The double-standards between left wing vs. right wing protests couldn't be more stark, comparing Ferguson to Bundy Ranch. Conservatives shriek about how "hands up, don't shoot" is somehow irresponsibly fostering violence and yet the Tea Baggers can not only use incendiary rhetoric ("don't tread on me", "we came unarmed this time", and quoting "the tree of liberty...") but romanticize insurrection and violence as a means of getting political results. Yet, the same conservative shriekers like A Theist won't say a peep when some deranged right wing terrorist decides to go murder some federal agents. See also my thread on "It's OK to Kill Cops if You're a Republican". 

And of course, the institutionalized racism of the Ferguson Police is completely glossed over in this latest tantrum of right wing manufactured outrage. 

So say what you will about Michael Brown. Maybe the shooting really was justified. In light of these much larger issues, the point is virtually moot. A Theist's attempt to make that the focus is a tactic of poisoning the well.