Editor’s Note: Last Redoubt gives his thoughts on the events of the past few weeks. This was written before the recent shootings of Los Angeles Deputies, but the overall view is still spot on.
It’s been busy the last couple weeks, and when not occupied with work, I’ve been catching up on a lot of reading. Also – things have been changing so fast that it’s been futile to spend too much depth on any current event as by the time I mulled it over, the sundry details were beaten to death, and something new came up.
Stepping back – this isn’t even about Kenosha. There have been a number of officer-related shootings in different towns since then, but the attempts to make something of them have furtively fizzled out. I am not sure why. The why of the shootings is predictable: black people, feeling put upon, are not stopping when detained even when their behavior objectively requires arrest or detainment.
It doesn’t help that the articles on these events are just so much bullshit. The shooting in LA of a man wielding a bat tries to make it sound like the cop simply shot a man who’d already dropped his lethal weapon instead of trying to simply restrain him. Deeper in the article the facts come out. Yet, again and again, we have the liars in the news tugging at our heartstrings. “Why did they have to shoot him?”, or “why did they shoot him in the back seven times?”
Yes, the last refers to Blake in Kenosha. Who had the cops called in over his behavior, had an outstanding warrant for domestic abuse, arrests for illegally possessing a weapon, fought off several police officers, walked off being tazed, from the images in the video had a knife in his hands, yet wasn’t actually shot until he tried to get into or reach into his car. And yes, seven times. The guy walked off being tazed, one or two shots likely wasn’t going to put him down. That’s assuming the cop didn’t simply dump the magazine in an adrenaline haze having exhibited nearly superhuman self-control of not shooting him before that. They literally did everything they could to avoid shooting him without endangering others.
“But why can’t we change the system so this doesn’t happen?” – because the guy interacting with the police also gets to make choices – and can make choices that foreclose anything but lethal force as a response.
Since then, we’ve seen more riots. We’ve seen Kyle take kill or injure three in clear self-defense, be jailed and accused of being a mass murderer in the press, have his name suppressed in social media to the point of his lawyer and others getting cut off for defending him, and be cut off from funding while his attackers, convicted felons clearly in the process of breaking the law and committing assault and battery, get effectively official support from big tech.
And yes, it’s interesting how a supposed mass murderer, supposedly randomly shooting into a crowd of people supposedly not a bunch of thugs trying to harm him, can pick out a burglar in the process of committing yet another felony (assault aside), a convicted domestic abuser, and a convicted pedophile.
Must have been the only three – it’s a mostly peaceful protest, right?
I’m sorry for the snark. I’m sick of the posts labeling the man – even at seventeen – a “domestic terrorist”, and so forth.
We’ve seen a Trump supporter gunned down – identified in the street and shot while simply walking – in a claim of “self defense”. The NYT conflates some of the brawling to make it sound like the man was shot in the midst of a fight. But they’ve been liars for decades.
Interestingly, I suspect because the video clearly shows which one was self defense, and which one wasn’t, the news of Kyle quickly was tamped down, as was the news of the Portland shooter.
I don’t think it’s time to plan for more heroes – we should avoid trouble when we can. We should also prepare, because trouble will come looking for us if we choose that our livelihoods and families are worth fighting for. The conversation has stopped. The people around me who would ask how I could defend the police shooting Blake, etc., have not asked a damn thing about Kyle, and so forth.
I just don’t know if this is a sign that the moral tide is turning, or the calm before the storm.
