It seems like the world, or at least the media world, is obsessed with the happenings in Ferguson, Mo. No detail is too insignificant to speculate about, no matter how wild the speculation. I know more about it than I should, and I bet you do too.
We’ve been marinated in best guesses, wild speculation, hypotheticals and enough flat-out lies to make Tommy Flanagan blush. At this point, about the only thing we don’t know is what actually happened. But even after all this, I still can’t bring myself to care about any of it.
Maybe it has to do with the lies: Michael Brown “was shot in the back!” Well, he actually wasn’t. Nor was he about to start college, or a sweet, innocent child who’d never done anything to anyone. He was a human being with all the stupidity and potential that goes along with that existence.
How he ended up dead in the street probably never will be known. And even if we found out, I doubt it would matter. People on all sides have made up their minds to the point that no story, no set of facts, will change their minds. They range from “Mike Brown was a thug” to “Officer Darren Wilson is a racist who was looking to shoot a black man,” and everything in between. All of which is mindlessly simplistic, and none of which is true.
I don’t know what happened that day, though I have a guess just like everything else. It’s more complicated than much of what you hear on TV, but it’s just as irrelevant.
More importantly, and perhaps more oddly: I don’t care.
I didn’t know Mike Brown, nor do I know Darren Wilson. Unlike many people interviewed on TV, I feel no kinship with either. I’ve known people who’ve died, committed suicide and been murdered, and I’ve felt something for all of them because I knew them. I don’t know these people.
I’ve also been harassed by police, pulled over and searched and asked “What are you doing here?” for simply driving a piece-of-junk car in a nice neighborhood.
I feel sorry for the Brown family for losing a child, and I feel for the Wilson family because no matter what happened, his life is pretty much over. Brown will be buried; Wilson will be hunted and haunted, guilty or innocent.
I get the professional grievance industry and why they’re in Ferguson – there’s money and political power to be had. But I don’t get people taking to the streets. Protesters (not the rioters, they’re simply scum) march under the belief that police are shooting black men like, well, they were black men themselves.
There is nothing more dangerous to a black man then another black man, but that doesn’t warrant marches or any lasting movement. Only when a white person is involved does it seem to matter to “community activists” and politicians. Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, etc., might as well not exist to them.
If they care so deeply about black people being killed why don’t they mention where black people are being shot and killed at a Third World rate? Again, because there’s no money or power in it. They’ve already got their support and votes, and those aren’t going anywhere, so they don’t have to even pay lip service to caring.
The progressive agenda of “you are your race first, American second” pays off in these situations. People having been inundated with the message that you should feel part of a “community” based on skin pigment makes it easy to manipulate them into believing “what happens to one, happens to all.” But only when someone with different skin pigment does it matter.
It’s sick, it’s sad, it’s racist, it’s progressive.
I’m not a progressive, so I don’t feel a kinship with people who share common traits with me or my ancestors, only people I know. Crazy, right?
So when a black off-duty police officer shot and killed an unarmed white man on the side of a freeway in Maryland and was found not guilty because the man was charging at him in a fit of road rage, I thought to myself “Well, our justice system has spoken.” The jury heard the evidence—I didn’t—and drew a conclusion. I didn’t demand his head or take to the streets until I found out why pulled off the road to have the confrontation in the first place. The jury heard the evidence in the justice system, where it belongs, and delivered their verdict.
But the calls for “justice” in Ferguson are nothing close to the definition of justice. Those calls are not for following the evidence wherever it leads. They’re calls for a man’s head regardless of what happened that day. There are lots of words for that, none of which are “justice.”
What happens next will be under a cloud of suspicion no matter what. Progressives and their fellow travellers in the media will keep a lid on the facts, leaking only what fits their narrative. People will make fools of themselves. People will become “media celebrities.” Lawyers will get rich. And the two men involved eventually will be forgotten until the next time the media finds a story it decides matters more than the scores of black men murdered by other black men, and ratings can be made. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I’m getting off the merry-go-round by not caring in the first place. I’ll still talk about the race-baiting and the media manipulation meant to divide us as human beings, but that’s it. I can’t stop the ride in Ferguson by myself. I can’t change its course, but I’m damn sure not going to be a party to it. If you want to get wrapped up in events that don’t affect your life, if you want to be a pawn in the progressives’ manipulation game, knock yourself out. But like “global, thermal, nuclear war” in War Games, the only way to win is not to play. That’s the only way to stop this progressive political and media monster of manipulation and division.
I can’t be the only one, can I?