We are all wrong on Ferguson

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

53. Sorry, no.

His first few paragraphs weren't too bad, but then he fell into listening to the kind of stupidity Joe Scarborough was blathering.

Nobody was 'making a hero' out of Michael Brown, making him into 'Rosa Parks'. And, in fact, the fact that this author even used the 'Rosa Parks' line shows that he's simply parroting one of the lines used by RWers, after having just started his 'both sides do it' nonsense. It wasn't and still isn't happening - except in the minds of RWers who can't understand that not accepting Brown as a 'demon' (and, in fact, some even claim he was 'possessed by a homicidal demon' at the time) who 'charges' into a flurry of gunfire, doesn't mean that the other person suddenly thinks any black victim of police violence is suddenly 'Rosa Parks'.

"It’s impossible to imagine that both parties didn’t fear for their lives during that confrontation."

Maybe briefly for Wilson. He was armed, took no real damage at all during the entire episode. A slight reddening along one cheek that was barely visible. Do you 'fear for your life' every time you get in a fight? He possibly was in fear for his life when, after he (according to his own testimony) pulled out his weapon and threatened to shoot Brown if he didn't 'move back', Brown instead tried to prevent him from carrying through on his threat of excessive force. But he ended the part where he had to 'be in fear' when he shot Brown in the hand and Brown ran away from his vehicle. Then he got out and shot something like 9-10 more rounds at Brown, simply because he could. Because he knew that as a policeman, he can shoot a black man and likely never face trial, never be convicted. Hell, he had time to realize that it was better to 'pull a Zimmerman', and give his explanation of a corpse, rather than leave a living victim to tell his own side of the story that put Wilson in a far worse light.

Now you can say that I'm trying to 'read Wilson's mind', and that I can't possibly know 'why' Wilson got out and shot Brown over and over and over. Despite the fact that the vast majority of 'witnesses' relate something radically different than Wilson. But it's no more a show of psychic prowess than your 'copywriting compadre' puts on in 'knowing' how 'fearful' Wilson was.

Your buddy stumbles into a few ok ideas again later on, but then stumbles right on out again into a RW mindset.

Riots aren't 'shameful', unless you mean that we should feel shame that conditions are so bad that people are driven to riot. Riots are the simple manifestation of a release of incredibly strong emotion over a system that isn't a refutation of slavery, but a continuation of it by other means. Votes that don't matter, that don't change anything. Rather than count blacks as '3/5ths' of a human outright, the wealthy use corrupt politicians to gerrymander the districts in which they live to achieve the same ends, assuming they haven't already been disenfranchised in other ways - modern day poll taxes, 'faulty' machines, polling sites that can't handle the traffic, are hard to get to, are barely ever open.

Working conditions that are dangerous, and barely provide enough for families to survive. Sure, you can claim the workers are being paid, but even during outright slavery, they were (not all of them, but many) allowed to keep enough food to keep them alive, poor clothing, shelter, etc, simply to keep them 'alive and functional'. Dead slaves don't work, but dirt poor ones will is a lesson our modern oligarchs know all too well.

And if they 'step out of line', the enforcers are still around, to make sure that they either die to provide an example to the rest, or are thrown even deeper into bondage, to do dirty, dangerous jobs for the state while incarcerated and not able to provide for their families.

So no, it's not about 'retreating into corners'. It's about realizing the system is rotten to its core, and some people are willing to accept that and fight it, and others just want to 'return to normal' after each new murder.