I watched someone die yesterday. I wondered about the thoughts going through his mind — the amount of pain he must have suffered — as his murderer stood outside his car window pointing a gun in his face. Was that the last thing he saw? As his girlfriend recorded his last breath. As a little girl, now scarred for life, watched from the back seat.
If this had happened in Iraq or Syria, that little girl could very well grow up to be a terrorist.
Then there’s Micah Johnson, the 25-year-old veteran who shot 12 police officers, murdering 5 of them. Here are the most informative articles on this tragedy so far:
#StoptheKilling
I am a part of the Black Lives Matter movement. We did not ask for this. The protesters in Dallas did not want or ask for this.
However, and this is as uncomfortable for me to say as it may be for you to read, we should not be surprised by what he did.
Micah Johnson is the cake that this country has baked.
I’m not sure that the Micah Johnson tragedy was about race. I think it was about his mental health, and because he was black, his brain made it about race.
Micah was about the age in which schizophrenic symptoms can start to appear. Those who suffer from this condition are quite normal before symptoms begin. Everyone who knew him described him as quiet, yet he obviously had some kind of mental break, turning his home into a weapons storage unit. As if he was paranoid and felt threatened. But he also seemed to feel invincible (or suicidal), starting a war with the police. And in the middle of this war, after he was shot, the cops said Micah was laughing.
After a long showdown, during which he was reportedly laughing, singing and bragging about training for the attack…
I would imagine that it’s not too hard to radicalize someone who suffers from a mental health condition. And I assume that anything radical would be appealing and a temptation for someone with an unbalanced mind.
Is racism a mental health condition? How about gun addiction?
#BlackLivesMatter
All Things Chronic 
What’s for sure is that mentally ill people can buy guns
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In his case, it’s quite possible. I do have to wonder about some of the officers as well. What kind of psychological screening do they go through? Is it a one time thing? Or do they require frequent screening? At the very least, I think better training could help prevent some of this.
Some argue that just as many whites get shot by police as blacks, so it’s media focusing on fatal police shootings involving black people. So far in 2016, 13 black people have been killed, versus 17 white. So the argument is that there isn’t a race issue at all. The number is nearly the same. What they fail to take into account, is that less than 15% of the population is black, yet they account for 40% of deadly police encounters. Add Hispanics to that, and the number goes up to 60%, for a group that makes up less than 30% of the population. That’s fucked.
All of the stats aside, it’s awful. It hurts. And it should. If it doesn’t, then that person is part of the problem.
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This is a touchy subject. Do I believe that racism is a result of mental illness? No. I believe it is a result of ignorance.
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Ignorance of… what? DNA? History? Logic? Compassion, tolerance, love, humanity? I know some people aren’t as smart as others, but we don’t live in a vacuum. Sorry, I’m just not buying the ignorance excuse anymore.
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That’s a good question. I think maybe ignorance of the value of human life. I too, am tired of the abuse excuse, the “entitled” excuse…and yes, the ignorant excuse but truthfully….there is a lot of ignorance in the world. Maybe a better word would be intolerance.
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you bring up some interesting points, good for gnawing on. but as for me, i too feel racism is from a culture that bred it and from lack of education.
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Some people who are highly educated are still racist, but then I guess it depends on the kind of education you receive. Still, being educated means you have to believe in logic, so I guess culture can trump logic. That’s some pretty strong culture.
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I’m not certain people can make an accurate determination of someone else’s mental state during a crime that is anything more than speculation. In the case of the sniper though, we are told he did set out to deliberately kill white people, especially cops (if you can believe the police report).
One thing is certain though. The mass media and organizations like BlackLivesMatter portray every incident of police violence against blacks whether justified or not as if it is some sort of racist execution against an innocent person. This is dishonest and reeks of an agenda that seems more concerned with generating racial antagonism than doing anything substantive about police brutality. An honest evaluation of police violence would show that at least some incidents involve the legitimate use of force, while others may indeed be racially motivated.
The fact that the mass media completely ignores police brutality against whites even though whites are the majority of victims by a factor of 2 to 3 times is also a reason to suspect an agenda. Anyone truly concerned with police brutality would not ignore 2/3rds of its victims, nor would anyone concerned with “BlackLives” ignore the fact that most blacks are killed by other blacks and not cops or white people. Nor would they claim it is “racist” to point out these facts.
But that is about what I expect from the mass media and an organization financed by George Soros, who as it happens also financed many of the groups involved in the Euro Maidan protests in Ukraine, which were also interrupted by highly suspicious sniper attacks which were blamed on the government, but later turned out to have been staged as a false flag attack by groups associated with the opposition. Now we have “Micah X” (no shit, this is what they are calling him as it recalls that other scary black guy of yesteryear, Malcolm X. The agenda here is to generate hatred and fear between whites and blacks and keep us from uniting against the 1 percent and its predations. That, and disarming us so we can’t fight back against the cops or the military if it comes to that.
By making police brutality about race, it sets us up for the usual establishment liberal bullshit “reforms” such as more training (by Israelis, no less!) and more black and Hispanic stormtroopers to replace the white ones. None of this goes to the core of the matter which is to question the fundamental purpose of the police and whose interest they serve. Are they there to protect the citizens or intimidate and control them on behalf of the 1 percent? I vote for the latter, and believe blacks and whites need to unite together and demand that current police forces be disbanded and replaced with a more democratic institution that represents the citizens who pay for it. The media and its owners clearly don’t want to see that happen.
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Black Lives Matter has its own agenda, true, just like every other group or organization. But they’re not trying to say that white lives don’t matter. And they are addressing black-on-black crime, which you would’ve known if you had clinked on one of my links. Of course, you know we can blame the drug war for most of this kind of crime, along with Republicans (and some Democrats) for decimating the middle class (including government jobs).
All I have to do is put a white person in any of these situations with police to know how racist the results were when it’s a person of color. And I read plenty of stories about police crimes against white people, but those stories usually end up with the victim surviving, so maybe that’s why they don’t get as much media coverage.
The drug war made police brutality about race, as people of color are its easiest victims, mostly because you can’t tell if someone’s poor (and won’t fight back) just by looking at the color of their skin. Really, the poor are the easiest victims of the police and what’s left of our justice system. I can see the big picture, but then I’m white and I don’t have to put up with discrimination against my race (only my gender, disability, and financial condition).
Since I’m a liberal, I’d have to say that I don’t agree with the idea that more training will work. You can’t educate those who believe that one race is superior to another. That’s part of who you are, like what kind of music you enjoy and what kinds of food you love. Like if you believe in a god. Racism is about belief, and there’s only so much education can do to combat beliefs.
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I think racism is a learned behavior that starts at home. This guy from Dallas might be an exception though. Who in their right mind would laugh at the shootings? I am raising my son to accept others for who they are. There are good and bad people from all walks of life. All lives matter not just black lives. I understand they’re upset but I don’t think all whites, cops, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, etc. are bad.
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When gay people advocate for LGBTQ rights, does that mean they think heterosexuals don’t matter?
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Yes and no. I’m not sure if I agree with Black Lives Matter though. I looked at their website last night. I need to read up on it more in order to make a more educated decision. The police chief here upset a lot of people by saying Black Lives Matter is a radical hate group. You are the queen of asking challenging questions. 😊
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Troubled times doesn’t begin to describe how our culture is behaving. I don’t think that there is one easy answer. I do know we better figure this out now. My fear is that we won’t.
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BLM representatives are on record dismissing the issue of “black on black” crime as a “myth” which they claim is used to divert attention from the problem of police violence against blacks. This theme is also echoed in the mass media.
http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/black-lives-matter-organizer-black-black-crime-myth
Of course they don’t claim white lives don’t matter that would be silly, but their alleged concern for black lives is highly selective and based entirely on the race of the killer. Where are the BLM protests over blacks killed by black cops?
Blacks killed by cops are a small percentage compared to blacks killed by other blacks, or whose lives are shortened through the rigors of life in poverty or even those killed by doctors. Less than 1/3 of one percent of black murder victims are killed by cops.
It’s similar to the opium wars, where the medical profession, government agencies and the media endlessly obsess over the deaths of 16,000 individuals who allegedly died of overdose while largely ignoring the deaths of the 450,000 people who die as a result of medical error every year. Deaths by opioid overdose are less than 1/3 of one percent of total iatrogenic deaths. There have been thousands of hysterical articles on the manufactured “opioid epidemic” yet none seem to bother mentioning people who die from drugs other than opioids or other iatrogenic causes of death.
This kind of highly selective filtering is always suspect, and suggests an agenda that has more to do with promoting the drug war than patient safety. If the “PatientLivesMatter” crowd truly cared for patient safety, their focus would not be so obsessively narrow but they would act to address all causes of patient death and injury. The same must be said for BlackLivesMatter. Their narrow focus on a very small percentage of black victims is incongruous at best, suspect at worst. Being financed by George Soros throws my opinion heavily into the latter category.
I’m glad as a “white” person you never experienced discrimination. I have experienced police brutality, discrimination based on my race, ethnicity and perceived religion, as well as racial violence based on my skin color. So have many members of my family and friends. All those things we are told don’t happened to “white” people.
It’s measure of just how toxic the racialization of these issues has become that many people are otherwise completely ignorant of the struggles of non-black immigrant groups and working class white people in this country or feel compelled to dismiss them out of hand.
The BLM protestor who broke up a Bernie Sanders rally proudly displays this brand of ignorance and racism by dismissing the legitimate concerns of white people with the vulgar and stupid “white tears” meme:
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