Donald Trump Wants You To Believe His BS Narrative about BLM and Protests! Wake Up America to What is Really the Truth…
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By Ron Signore
Being liberal, not even so much a democrat, gives the perception of a more opened mind than most. Sometimes, we forget the true fight in some of these smaller battles. We know in the end our vote is voicing the ideals of a broader citizenship than ourselves. Heck, we are voting for the benefit of those who support the right-wing agenda without understanding they are only hurting themselves.
These smaller battles magnified by the media get us lost in the weeds to our own main principle.
Make no mistake, these smaller battles are indeed a big deal. Do not associate the word small with irrelevant or unimportant. It is an ongoing war with no end in sight and we can think of these events in the media as fights on different battlefields. The impact of these battles can be huge to any one person, maybe even more so than a whole group of people. The problem is we de-humanize the opposition in many instances. As a nation, we stereotype associations and their members every day in a hypocritical fashion. The hypocrisy we are typically fighting from the left can find itself being hypocritical. I am guilty of it. The chances of changing my views on certain matters will be difficult to change. However, in self-reflection, this openly gives me something to work on from a self-improvement perspective.
Each day there is something new that crosses our newsfeed. Sometimes it is not new, but further detail to something present in prior reports. This past week’s prime example of the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, WI is just another small battle in the larger war of Police Brutality specifically against blacks. The media plays very well to pull the heart strings in these events. The conceptual headlines around a man paralyzed from seven shots to the back by police draws the attention of the nation and further magnifies the bi-partisan war on topics like Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police.
Like frying an ant under a magnifying glass, the burning that pursues yet another event of nationally publicized police action escalation against African Americans is life altering. Our immediate responses set the tone for the future. For many Caucasian citizens that align to the left, the reaction is one of empathy directly for the victim and a fighting attitude with hatred to the police. For law enforcement, the feelings are more around a sense of a lose-lose. Many law enforcement officers draw to anger because people bring judgement without knowing the exact details of the event, or how it pertains to how they have been trained to handle a situation, no matter the color of one’s skin.
For African Americans, we have tended to see two general responses. One I am very much in favor for is the use of our first amendment and peacefully protesting the injustice we see. The other is one that none of us like in protests that have had instances of rioting and looting. I am one who believes, whether conspiracy based or factual, that outsiders from the Black Lives Matter movement come in and instill these escalated events. Furthermore, there are many video and photographed instances showing violators of many races, yet the media escalates an image that it is all African American driven mob action. This is simply not the case and should be identified in a much bolder statement in the portrayal of the mainstream media. The negative connotation of these acts helps fuel the fire for the right-wing ignoramus who think the battle is against anarchy and chaos. A battle to destroy our society’s law and order. A perception to govern our city streets in the same gangland manor many poverties ridden areas are becomes rampant in the fear and paranoia agenda presented by the right from Cheeto Man on down.
We forget that we are battling with uneducated intelligence levels in many cases on the right where it is a simple association of African Americans against the police. These observers and believers to the right cannot separate the legit efforts of the movement and the set ups to help drive the right agenda. We forget that the ability to be brainwashed based on perception messaging from the media is very much present in people today. A prime example is this focal point on the aftermath of the Jacob Blake event in Kyle Rittenhouse. While we see these villainizing photos and video around his actions in the proceeding events, this is a kid who is brainwashed by racism, fear, and paranoia from the right-wing agenda.
The right wants to paint Rittenhouse as a vigilante hero who killed in self-defense while preserving the “Great America” Trump envisions. Cheeto Man echoes that view with the knowledge Rittenhouse is a supporter of his. But let’s break this down to the simple-stupid. You have an Illinois resident under the age of 18 with an assault rifle engaging a riotous event well prepared to fight. He put himself into that position. I carry a firearm and have taken all proper classes in order to do so. The first thing discussed about firearms are that you never pull a gun unless you have intent to use it. Whatever his reality is of the world, or lack thereof, he had intent to use an assault rifle. He should go to jail for the rest of his life because of his actions.
Which adds to another point I am not sure anyone is talking about in this case (maybe they are and I am ignorant from the lack of attention to specific details of events) in white privilege. We have a white male out after dark in a riotous situation with an assault rifle in which he opened fire. Though many were calling out that he was shooting as he maneuvered away from the victims, the police ignored that and flowed to the victims, in a way ignoring the armed assailant. A detail I seemed to see was that of him approaching police carrying a loaded weapon. They, in so many words, peacefully took him under arrest. I am one who believes that if Rittenhouse were African American, it would have been another brutality vision for America to see while taking him into custody. The presence of an armed suspect, with an assault rifle nonetheless, typically does not go that smoothly.
The ability to keep an open mind on any of this latest saga is extremely difficult. This child should be punished for his actions. This child should be held accountable as if he were an adult. The rest of the noise around the matter should be irrelevant. Maybe it is my generation, or just simply being alive for Columbine, but this concept of right versus wrong as dictated by what is adopted from television (any media source) is a driving factor. The disconnect to our own country even in just the bi-partisan views separated between rural and urban populations is a huge reason for the increasing fight to support one’s views on any given topic. Money and business over you and I seem to be the balance.
It has always been clear to me and the thoughts I get down typically support the left. The root of that is the fact that I have an ongoing need for change in an improving fashion. I remember being very angry at the “Make America Great Again” slogan because I felt America, and do feel, America is great. I did see areas of improvement I would have liked to see, whether that was tied to a candidate or party could be debated. A clear example of this is basic human rights supporting the LGBTQ being accepted; Another is supporting the continued fight for racial equality. The tensions between understanding the difference between Black Lives Matter versus the All Lives Matter ignorance.
We do not know what we do not know as humans. We believe what were exposed to. In many cases, if we use rural versus urban living, the rural citizen is less exposed to diversity, less exposed to multiple views of life. They fight for what they believe true, just like those in urban areas do. Even urban areas have different levels of society and understanding of the world. The battle between law enforcement and the topic of brutality is probably the connecting factor to all citizens here. There is no doubt that we continue to see brutality and excess force exercised in the field. While the media shows the message of racism, the truth is that this is not only a much wider topic than one race and more of an authority versus those evading accountabilities. Yes, there is racism instances, but the truth goes farther and wider in most instances.
In discussions with a friend that is in law enforcement, the conversation on the Jacob Blake event is an incident that can have one video shown and have people see a million different things. We forget that we really do not live in a country where in the grand scheme of things, we probably do not have to fear the police. I have written and believed in the long ongoing social injustice battle African Americans have gone through and my previous statement is not to minimize that. That is a huge impact to the drawn perception of hostility towards the police. We have law enforcement in all races and creeds, and our own inability to not see that maybe there are police that are in a strong amount of danger just doing their everyday job has helped raise these tensions.
With Jacob Blake, do I believe he needed to be shot 7 times at point blank range, and in the back? No, not 7 times. I personally feel that was excessive, as do many. Are the police who shot racist? I have no idea without knowing them. Where the “reasonable doubt” comes into play in any of this are the considerations to what his actions are being told to be after not cooperating with law enforcement on the initial reason for their presence. His movements into a vehicle we cannot see past the door of and claims of having a gun or knife near by raised tensions to a point that officers drew fire. There are a lot of details, maybe some are true, maybe some are false, but the original call that let to not cooperating with police who were called to a scene, resisting and escalating a situation through (allegedly) being stunned with the taser put officers in a tense position. What is the line between cooperation, resisting arrest and the need for force? I am not a cop, so I am not trained to make these identifications. In my opinion, this was someone who was wrong for not cooperating and resisting arrest that caused the escalation leading the wrong action of excessive force resulting in 7 shots to the back and Blake being paralyzed. Two wrongs do not make a right. National headlines do not make one wrong more wrong than the other. We need to further identify the wrongs and separate color. A bad person and a bad act does not favor or discriminate one race or religion.
It is a very controversial topic. Not just the scenario at play, but the battle over the last 5 hundred years. I am not preaching knuckling under to those who cannot think openly. I am encouraging the notion that all people take a step back and look to live in a peaceful manor. We need to deal with these scenarios one by one while we continue to push for improvement. It is unfortunate. In the meantime, we need to look at everything objectively and identify a negative event and try to sort out where the breakdown for cause and effect was. These events should drill to a defunding of police in many instances and redefine the training in high intensity situations. As much as many want to believe, the world is not so black and white, and hate is not the way to peace.
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