Well, well. It seems the Martyr of Ferguson, Michael Brown, had robbed a convenience store just minutes before a policeman shot him to death. He wasn’t shot because he was a thief, but it would have been appropriate if he had been. If the police officer’s story is accurate, Brown was shot because he assaulted the cop in an effort to grab his gun. People only try to grab a cop’s gun if they intend to use it to kill the cop. So Brown was both a thief and an intended cop-killer. It is probably safe to say his demise was no great loss to society.
The rioting in Ferguson and the howling and bawling elsewhere over Brown’s death is really about a larger issue. The issue is that cops do not treat young black males the same way they treat whites, Asians, black women or older black men. There is a reason why they don’t: they can’t.
The black rate of violent crime is twelve times the white rate. Not double. Not triple. Twelve times. The large majority of this crime is committed by young black males. So when a cop encounters a young black male, he encounters someone who is twenty, thirty, maybe fifty times more likely to be a violent criminal than when he encounters virtually anyone else (the Hispanic crime rate appears to be about three times the white rate; cops are also right to be leery of young Hispanic males). Cops, unlike politicians and professional howlers for “equality,” have to live in the real world. In the real world, young black males must be regarded as dangerous, at least until there is some reason to believe the specific young male is not, e.g., he is on his way home from Bible study.
If blacks want to be treated equally, they have to behave equally. They don’t. It is as simple as that. Until the black rate of violent crime is the same as that for whites, blacks have no right to demand equal treatment. The correct response to their demand is, “First clean up your own act, then come back and talk to us about equality.
Instead, every time, the blacks line up with the black criminals, such as Brown, against the police. They do so despite the fact that most victims of black violent crime are also black. The real oppressors of the black urban community are not the cops but the young black males with guns. Other blacks who support them are supporting their oppressors and reviling those, the police, who want to maintain order in the community. That is, by any standard, remarkably stupid.
None of this is an argument for militarizing the police, something we have also seen in Ferguson. Militarizing the police is a bad idea, because it undermines cops‘ ability to do their job. The state’s bargain with its citizens is that is will maintain order, safety of persons and property. To do that, it must prevent crime, not just respond to it. Prevention requires information, which only comes when there is lots of communication between the police and the civilians they are trying to protect. Militarizing the police interrupts that communication, because civilians are not comfortable talking to cops who look like cyborgs. That leaves the police able only to respond to crime, at which point the peace has been broken and the state has failed.
The tragedy in Ferguson and elsewhere is that not long ago, as recently as the 1950s, the black urban community was a safe place, for blacks and whites. It may have been poorer than surrounding white areas, but it was still an ordered, decent place inhabited by good people, people who lived by standard middle class values. They got married before they had kids, they worked for a living, they served God and their neighbors–white and black–and the crimes they committed were the same ones whites commit, like jaywalking or rolling through an occasional stop sign. There is nothing inherent in blacks that make their communities centers of crime, disorder and illegitimacy.
So what did it? In two words, cultural Marxism. The message the cultural Marxists preached in the 1960s — “If it feels good, do it”– devastated the black Community. After half a century of bombardment by that message in an endless variety of forms, all adding up to a culture of instant gratification, the black urban community is literally de-moralized. Ironically, at the same time the cultural Marxists have made blacks perhaps the most sacred of their “victims groups,” they have also done them more damage than the Klan ever did.
The message to Ferguson from the rest of us is this: We’re tired of the whole black act. Were tired of blacks behaving badly while demanding to be treated well. We’re tired of the violent crime, the endless stream of bastards, the welfare we have to pay to support them, the drugs, the rioting, the looting, the “demands,” all of it. Clean up your act, or the day will come when the rest of us have to clean it up for you. And that would be a shame, because your grandparents and great-grandparents were good people. You could be, too.
Clean up your act, or the day will come when the rest of us have to
clean it up for you. And that would be a shame, because your
grandparents and great-grandparents were good people. You could be, too.
As blacks achieved legal equality, their behavior deteriorated markedly, although it is rude to notice this.
I don’t agree with the timeline or the insinuation that deteriorating behaviour only applies to blacks; but why is it rude to notice this? It is a fact that crime rates and violence are increasing blatantly but you have to realize that their deteriorated behaviour is not self- enacted; the society influences that behaviour. Haven’t you heard the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child”? Society has a big influence and it always had, unfortunately it is a negative influence now.
As William S Lind mentioned “And that would be a shame, because your grandparents and great-grandparents were good people. You could be, too.”
I imagine he was thinking of a better time probably back in the 60s where whites and blacks felt safe. And the whole village raised their children.
Reading your comments about militarizing the police, I was astonished not to find you applying Boyd’s analysis to the situation.
It is indeed true that it’s easier for police to gather intelligence when they enjoy the confidence and cooperation of the community, but that consideration is rather more of an operational issue. One could make a case that intelligence can alternately be gathered using coercion, money and technical means. (More gadgets, bigger budgets — what’s not to like?) By that analysis, the loss of community support caused by the militarization of police is an unfortunate but small inconvenience in the big picture of National Security. So what if some feathers get ruffled?
Looking at the same situation with Boyd’s analysis, I see this policy as stunning failures on the moral and strategic levels. This is a much bigger danger to us all.
Traditionally, one cannot legitimately govern without the consent of the governed, with moral authority being the only kind worth having. Routinely sending in what does a great job of looking and acting like an army to “govern,” be it Ferguson, a drug raid, or some other hotspot sends all of the wrong messages:
1) Mix this is in with dragnet NSA surveillance, etc., and it’s easy to get the impression that the powers that be are *afraid* of the people they’re governing. Fear = Weakness. People will wonder “why else would they be spending all of this money on raising a domestic army?” This may or may not be the government’s conscious reasoning, but a great many people will see or feel this as fear, consciously or not. People have very sensitive noses for this and react instinctively. Signalling fear/weakness is a strategic blunder since weakness is sure be tested, mapped and exploited. That will surely lead to escalation.
2) Fear aside, an army (as opposed to a police force) is meant to send the message “We’re not asking, not discussing, not talking. We *are* coming through. Submit. Now!” In other words, “we don’t need your consent,” and “who needs legitimacy, we’ve got guns and money!” As anybody who’s ever carried a gun can attest, violent power tends to do that to you. Whatever one’s judgment of Michael Brown or the residents of Ferguson is, one thing is incontrovertible: they’re Americans, like the hundreds of millions of other Americans watching remotely, Said Americans are being “governed” by something that can easily be mistaken for an army. In the case of Ferguson, their authorities’ initial (in)actions after the shooting suggest that they were more interested in CYA than legitimacy. The whole coutry is receiving the message “authorities don’t bother with legitimacy because they don’t have to.” Repeat this message enough times in enough ways and government will lose its legitimacy, its moral authority. If I understand him correctly, Col. Boyd predicts they’ll then really need their heavy weapons after losing moral authority.
Mr. Lind, I am not an expert on Boyd or 4GW, but you are. I invite you to explore the evolution of our policing and homeland security in terms of Boyd’s theories in future writings. This “war at home” is much closer than the Middle East, also seems more fundamental to our long-term survival.
Lind addressed militarization in the context of 4GW. Militarization cuts off police from the people they are supposed to protect. When they fail to do their basic job, the state loses legitimacy. 4GW is a contest for legitimacy. Given enough lapses in legitimacy, people’s loyalty moves elsewhere. He did an article on it here: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/cops-with-war-toys/
why is it rude to notice this?
For the same reason it is rude to notice the rise in violent crime that coincided with the loss of white control in South Africa and Rhodesia.
And (keeping in mind that the estimable Mr. Lind blames Cultural Marxism for black social dysfunction) for the same reason it is also rude to notice that the great majority of violent crime in Scandinavia, which is pretty much Ground Zero for Cultural Marxism, is being committed not by native Scandinavians who have been indoctrinated from birth with that Leftist ideology, but by African immigrants whose exposure to it has been rather more limited. Indeed, in one recent year all the rapes in Oslo were committed by African immigrants.
So what is your take on why this is happening?
Thanks for the link, Tnerb. To be perfectly clear, I’m not criticizing Mr. Lind, but urging him deeper into what he started.
The AmCon article mainly makes the same point as the present article, that citizen cooperation is helpful for policing.
My point was that citizen cooperation is not a compelling argument at all, that lack of cooperation in itself is something that the police have already learned to work around in many areas and cultures. Indeed, one of those attempted “workarounds” is militarized police. I certainly wouldn’t base high-level strategy on such operational matters.
The AmCon article certainly does mention the 4GW grid and shows a graphic of it, but disappointingly doesn’t go into any specifics beyond what was previously mentioned, except to state that the militarization of police is a “disaster.” OK… Hardly persuasive unless you’re preaching to the choir, yet hopefully one writes to inform and persuade an unenlightened audience.
If not to persuade, maybe it’s necessary to inform the current mainstream cries against the militarization of police which seem to be based on a vague feeling of malaise with police-like cops. This discussion needs some serious, compelling intellectual underpinnings to counter the “national security” and “force protection” arguments made by the proponents and purveyors of militarization.
In my previous post, I was trying to show two such specific, higher-level catastrophes and suggest that the moral failures of policing blow back on the moral authority of the police’s masters — the government and the social order. After all, everybody knows that the responsible parties are those who hold the purse strings and whose job it is to set direction and parameters. It’s easy for even the least among us to make the connection, to look not at what civic leaders say but what they do.
This is the real catastrophe — the loss of the American state’s moral authority caused by police militarization — and is what I wish Mr. Lind would delve into further.
The purpose of my posts is not to give vent to my views, but to point out that Mr. Lind’s belief that eliminating Cultural Marxism will correct black social dysfunction is no more realistic than was the Neocon claim that U.S. soldiers would be greeted by ecstatic Iraqis waving American flags.
Mr. Lind knows much about a great many things, and I have profited from reading his essays over the years, but his thinking in this matter lacks basic intellectual rigor.
Understood but it is also good to bring to the table different perspectives and share the thoughts rather than reading an article and keeping your opinions to yourself.
Perhaps it might seem that he is leaning towards Leftist ideology because, isn’t it possible to have a traditionalist that acknowledge a leftist view but does not agree nor choose to follow it? At least the way I see it Mr. Lind and the rest of the contributors are not your typical traditionalist; they are wise to take a more realistic approach to the traditional views than the a fanatic. Hence the reason they have my attention.
Understood but it is also good to bring to the table different
perspectives and share the thoughts rather than reading an article and
keeping your opinions to yourself
A frontal assault is not always the best plan of attack.