a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment

I'm not any more frightened than I was before now. This isn't some new pattern that's just now started. In fact, the way things are now is an improvement over the way things used to be.

There are three major differences between how things are now and how they have always been regarding police killing citizens:

1) probably the most alarming is that police have been receiving large amounts of military hardware as part of an ongoing government program. Comparisons have been made to the police behaving like "an occupying force", and they are increasingly able to be an occupying force with all the hardware they're getting. They are also able to escalate a situation far above what they formerly were able to because of the increase in hardware - despite the otherwise improving situation.

2) White people are now beginning to also find themselves in the crosshairs

3) Everyone has a video camera in their pocket. So now there is incontrovertible evidence proving what black people have been saying for decades; namely that the police have been beating, killing, and wrongfully arresting people with impunity.

Couple those things with a 24 hour news environment and it could seem like everything's worse now and it's time to be terrified. But I think that the facts point more to the notion that if you weren't terrified ten years ago, then you don't really have reason to be terrified now. It is an objectively bad situation. But as far as it being the End of The Republic, or The End of The American Way of Life, I don't think it's quite up there.

So no, it doesn't frighten me.