{"id":116,"date":"2016-07-09T00:39:47","date_gmt":"2016-07-09T00:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/?p=116"},"modified":"2016-07-09T14:27:49","modified_gmt":"2016-07-09T14:27:49","slug":"tragedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/tragedy\/","title":{"rendered":"Tragedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.<\/i>”
\n– Martin Luther King Jr.<\/p>\n

“Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals.”
\n-Ron Paul<\/p>\n

“There is no path to peace, the path is peace.”
\n-Thich Nhat Hanh<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What a week it has been.\u00a0 What turmoil we face as a nation.<\/p>\n

After two highly publicized shootings by police, I already was feeling compelled to write something about what was going on, and then there was the shooting in Dallas.\u00a0 When a person dies there is no way to describe it other than as a tragedy.\u00a0 Even when it is justified, but especially when it is not.\u00a0 The jury is still out on whether the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were justified or not.\u00a0 Perhaps neither was, perhaps both were, or perhaps only one.\u00a0 From the knowledge I have gathered, I find it impossible to say in Alton Sterling\u2019s case, and I am inclined to think that in the best case scenario, the situation with Philando Castile was a gross overreaction.\u00a0 More facts will come to light as time goes on, and I hope that if either killing was not justified that those responsible will be justly punished.\u00a0 But no matter what, both of those deaths are tragedies.<\/p>\n

In contrast, it is quite clear that the killing of 5 Dallas police officers was unjustified.\u00a0 These officers were not in any way responsible for the deaths of Alton Sterling or Philando Castile.\u00a0 These men were doing their jobs, and protecting the protest of a group that frequently vilifies them.\u00a0 The Dallas police department performed admirably in the situation thrust upon them, and to my mind every officer on duty acted heroically.\u00a0 That we lost 5 brave officers to a coward with an axe to grind is a great tragedy.<\/p>\n

How did we get here?\u00a0 I think there\u2019s a few reasons.\u00a0 Bear with me, I\u2019ll be addressing both issues of law enforcement and protest movements.<\/p>\n

Police brutality is a problem in America.\u00a0 Don\u2019t react too quickly to this.\u00a0 Most police officers are decent people who perform admirably.\u00a0 Much of the time, even if an officer makes mistakes that cost an innocent person their life, the officer is still a decent person.\u00a0 Obviously, there are outliers.\u00a0 There are crooked cops, and racist cops, and just outright incompetent cops, but these are the minority.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to note that police brutality is not exclusive to black people.\u00a0 Not accounting for justified vs. unjustified killings, 49% of people killed by police so far this year were white.\u00a0 24% were black.\u00a0 The remainder were some other race.\u00a0 (source: http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/ng-interactive\/2015\/jun\/01\/the-counted-police-killings-us-database)<\/a>\u00a0 Yes, statistically, 24% is higher than the relative population of blacks to whites.\u00a0 However, statistically, black people tend to be involved in more crime and are therefore more likely to have encounters with police.\u00a0 As I will get to soon, more encounters with police equates to more death at the hands of police (not because the officers are bad people, but because it creates unsafe situations for both the officer and the civilian).\u00a0 Violent crime rates in 2012-2013, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, place white offenders of violent crime at 42.9%, and black offenders at 22.4%, which is not far off from the percentages of those killed by police.<\/p>\n

It is my belief that most of the time (but not all of the time) when a person is killed by police, it is justified.\u00a0 It is always a tragedy.\u00a0 And much of the time, despite being justified, it is unnecessary.\u00a0 To illustrate my point, let\u2019s think about why police pulled over Philando Castile and had an interaction with him that resulted in his death.\u00a0 It was a trivial matter, a broken tail light.\u00a0 Because a person had a broken tail light, he was pulled over, and a situation was created that resulted in a man\u2019s death.\u00a0 Having nothing to go on other than a video of events happening after he was shot, it\u2019s hard to know if a case can be made that the officer who shot him was justified in the decision.\u00a0 However, regardless of if he was or not, if a traffic stop was never made, Philando Castile would be alive.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Interaction between police and civilians is inherently dangerous to both parties, and should be minimized.\u00a0 There is no reason that an officer should need to pull over a driver for a broken tail light.\u00a0 Safety issue?\u00a0 Ok, send them a letter in the mail.\u00a0 That sort of traffic stop is often used as an excuse to stop a car when the officer suspects they might find something else.\u00a0 Drugs is a big issue.\u00a0 Want to send police\/civilian interactions way down (and stop a lot of the unjustified killings)?\u00a0 End the drug war.<\/p>\n

Obviously, I can\u2019t say no police officer has ever killed a black man where he wouldn\u2019t have killed a white man because he was racist.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t believe that it is a systemic problem.\u00a0 Innocent people of all races are killed by police too frequently, and we need to do everything that we can to minimize that number without vilifying police officers who for the most part are doing the best they can at an extremely difficult job.<\/p>\n

The organization Black Lives Matter is also problematic.\u00a0 It is problematic for the same reason that the SJWs of the regressive left are problematic.\u00a0 Under the guise of fighting racism, it segregates people into groups on the basis of race, or gender, or sexuality.<\/p>\n

Specific activists within that community are a problem.\u00a0 There are more than a few who have a clear hatred of white people.\u00a0 It\u2019s not hard to see why those people would spring up.\u00a0 BLM demands that white people all admit that they are racist because, being white, they can\u2019t help but be.\u00a0 The ideology says that minorities cannot be racist, because they redefine racism to be something that only a person with \u201cpower\u201d can be (as though all white people have great political and economic power, and no non-white person does).\u00a0 When you tell someone that ALL white people are racist, and that blacks and minorities CAN\u2019T be racist, then is it any surprise that you end up with a climate in which a black shooter kills 5 police officers and tells police that he wants to kill white people, especially white police officers?\u00a0 This is the same group that chants anti-police rhetoric at their rallies.\u00a0 This is the same group who interrupts and holds hostage events of even people who are ideologically on their side and demands that they be allowed to do whatever they want.<\/p>\n

Other than private conversations with a few people, I have long been silent on how I feel about the Black Lives Matter movement.\u00a0 It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t think black lives matter, it\u2019s that the movement is irresponsible and often ideologically dangerous.\u00a0 No, they did not encourage or condone the shooting last night, but they did, perhaps unknowingly, contribute to the climate that gave rise to it.<\/p>\n

I love my black friends.\u00a0 I would be devastated if any one of them were to die, especially if it was unjust.\u00a0 But I cannot support that movement.\u00a0 I will not ever admit to something that I am not (racist).\u00a0 I will not agree that a minority cannot be racist (I\u2019ve met some who are, and I\u2019ve been hated by them on the basis of my race).<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t solve racism by dividing people up into groups based on their skin color.\u00a0 You can\u2019t do it by dictating that people who have white skin have nothing to contribute to the conversation.<\/p>\n

Racism as an ideology will die out with time.\u00a0 The best thing those of us who are not racist (the vast majority) can do, is to lead by example, and treat everyone as a fellow human, regardless of what they look like.<\/p>\n

Every death is a tragedy, and every life matters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” – Martin Luther King Jr. “Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals.” -Ron Paul “There is no path to peace, the … Continue reading Tragedy<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions\/122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}