Letter 2 America for August 19, 2014

Dear America,

I am always discomfited by things for which I cannot explain.  When I was a child, I can remember hearing on the news about brutal crimes and trying to assure myself that I was not in the group from which the perpetrator chose his victims.  There is comfort in the knowledge that even the most irrational things can be explained, and that there are ways in which to protect ones' self from exposure to danger, for example, that can be fathomed and implemented.  You can avoid IRS audits by always filing a reasonable tax return.  You can keep your self from getting scurvy by eating fruit.  You can avoid being hit by cars by crossing at the cross walk with the light.  You can get your driver's license if you read the book and take the test.  But how do you avoid the kind of chaos that is afflicting Ferguson, Missouri?  And how do you stop it now that it has arrived?  The violence on Ferguson's streets is irrational.  The protesters, if that is indeed what they are, aren't even making a demand as far as I can tell.  Even if the officer who shot Michael Brown were arrested, they would still be in the streets I believe because the protest has a life of its own now.  It isn't really about anything but anger over the way in which the people of the community are being served by its law enforcement establishment, and I can understand that to a large extent.  I was never a fan of policeman myself.  I have found them brutish, sanctimonious, arbitrary, prone to acting based on their own prejudices, and in some cases even corrupt.  I have told this story before, but I was seated across from a Connecticut state trouper at a dinner party one night and we began talking about a case I had just settled in which a man had been beaten by two troopers across the highway from a construction trailer in which there just happened to be someone watching.  I told the trooper at my table how the two troopers had told the story of a large man who was resisting arrest and was belligerent, and how the testimony of the impartial witness put the lie to both of their testimonies under oath.  That's why the cased settled: they got caught in a lie.  I opined that the whole state police organization was tarred by their example, at which point the trooper I was sitting across from tried to vindicate his comrades.  He insisted that 80% of troopers were good guys...his phrase, not mine: 80%.  I noted that what that meant was that there were 20% of a 400 man force driving around in powerful cars with badges and guns who couldn't be trusted.

The relevance of that story is that there may well have been an abuse of police power in the case of the shooting of Michael Brown.  Being no fan of cops I have no trouble believing that such was the case.  But quite shortly after Brown was shot a video from a local store was published, and it depicted Brown stealing cigars and pushing and menacing the person in charge of the store...an elderly, small, seemingly Indian man.  The relevance of all of these facts is that Brown wasn't necessarily a racist as he was not deterred by the brown skin of his victim on the tape of the robbery, but he was a violent bully...a thug as I heard one newscaster call him in his interview of Brown's companion during the petty theft and the subsequent shooting, which by the way appears to have possibly been unrelated to the robbery.  This is where rationality comes in.  This is where the people of the city of Ferguson should be considering the ways in which they are not potential victims of the police in town if they don't behave in certain ways.  This is where the police should be rational as well and release everything in their investigation thus far, and possibly arrest the cop who did the shooting.  There is a way out of this, but only if both sides recognize that the story of Michael Brown's shooting likely has no heroes in it.  Most likely, there is a police officer who at the very least used excessive force in that he shot someone over the fact that he was walking in the road, and there is a thuggish, oversized 18 year old kid who somehow got the message that he could do anything he pleased with impunity, including breaking the law.  In the moral debate that goes with all this, there is no moral high ground.  To me that signifies that there is no justification for the violence that has accompanied the protests in Ferguson, though there may be justification for protest in a general sense.  There is no efficacy in people being in the streets all day and all night.  There is no justification for the self-approving lawless people involved in the protests to wander about the town destroying the resources of the members of the community at random.  Ferguson isn't Watts, and this country isn't what it was in 1965.  This country isn't Eden for a black person today.  But it isn't the purgatory it was in 1965 either. Today we have a president who is half African-American, and he agrees with me on this point.  Today we have an infrastructure with which to address the kinds of abuses implied by the riots in Ferguson as demonstrated by the presence of the FBI and Attorney General Eric Holder...another black man.  And as for the lopsided racial mix on the Ferguson police force, it isn't a good thing, and the Justice Department will certainly look into that, but on that score at least, the point has been made and further riots with their attendant looting and acts of violence will serve no purpose other than internecine destruction.

The Brown shooting should be investigated by outside agencies, and it will be.  But the impunity with which thugs like Michael Brown act in our society, whether they be black or white should be considered by all as well.  Michael Brown would probably be alive today if there hadn't been someone like him with a badge and a gun whom Brown chose to confront, or who chose to confront Brown.  But either way, one person of questionable morality confronted another with the same deficiency, and the worst outcome eventuated.  Neither of them deserves beatification.  And the people of Ferguson should recognize that and start acting rationally because there is an explanation for what happened, and it doesn't redound to anyone's credit.

Your friend,

Mike