Summary: Five officers are dead and seven are injured in
Dallas in what has been called the worst mass killing of police officers since 9/11.
At this stage, we are still too early in the process to have a definitive idea
what happened. Naturally, narcissists like
Donald Trump, former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, the Republican national
committee, and the Westboro Baptist Church have weighed in, and the usual
political food fight is just ginning up. But at this stage, it really is too
early to draw definitive conclusions. Instead, it’s time for a considerate
silence as we try to figure out what do we think? What do we know? What can we
prove? Nonetheless, I feel disgust at having to have yet another go at this
column. Jesus Christ, not again.
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When the news hit concerning the mass shooting in Dallas,
which left five officers dead and seven injured, my immediate frame of
reference for comparison was the Sandy Hook school shooting, the events in
Tucson which led to the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the
death of United States Chief District
Judge John McCarthy Roll, and last month's horrific mass shooting at the Pulse
nightclub in Orlando, Florida. But, even
before that, my very first reaction was the almost invariable one of invoking
the Deity.
Oh, my God. Jesus Christ, not again
My second reaction, equally ineluctable, was to ask who has
done this and why.
The immediate temptation under such circumstances is to
begin pointing fingers and assigning blame.
Certainly, the last 12 hours have seen a veritable feeding frenzy, as
commentators, pundits, and others on both sides of the political divide lob
verbal broadsides at one another, as former Congressman Joe Walsh probes the
outer limits of the First Amendment with race baiting tweets, as Donald Trump
tries as usual to make political capital, and as Hillary Clinton and President
Obama do the adult thing, the right thing, trying to calm a shocked nation, and
as the rest of us try to make sense of the worst killing of police officers since 9/11.
At some point, however, we must allow ourselves to be moved,
if not by the better angels of our nature, at least by a sense of personal and
professional responsibility to step back, putting our emotions aside and
seeking truth from facts.
In short, we need to ask some basic questions: what do we
know? what do we think? What can we
prove?
At the moment, what we know is that five officers are dead
and seven officers have been wounded. We
know that a suspected shooter is dead, not shot by the police or by himself, as
is usual in such situations, but blown up by a robot-deployed bomb. We know that the suspected shooter is Micah
Xavier Johnson, 25, a veteran of the Army reserve from Mesquite, Texas. We know
little beyond that at this stage, such as, were there additional shooters,
where their connections to any known terrorist organizations, or was the
shooter just another crazy man, acting on some sort of sense of grievance, but
alone?
What we think is a more problematic issue. From this morning’s events, politicians,
activists, commentators, pundits, and plain old bomb throwers have drawn
whatever conclusions suit their own agenda and confirmation bias. Certainly,
Donald Trump, who has been dogged recently by accusations of anti-Semitism, has
seen this incident as a godsend to restore the hopes of his failing, flailing,
floundering, foundering, campaign. Meanwhile, the Westboro Baptist Church,
which can always be depended upon to say something outrageous in such
circumstances, can be expected let fly with its usual hateful tweets, and
former Republican congressman Joe Walsh has already made a fool of himself with
a race baiting tweet on the subject that serve no purpose other than to probe
the outer limits of the First Amendment. About the only conclusion that seems
to enjoy any support at all across both sides of the aisle is that perhaps we
need as a country to take a timeout, to think long and hard about the extent to
which the tone of our political dialogue has served to enable extremists who
prefer bullets to ballots, and about the ease of acquiring guns and ammo in our
society. We also need to think long and hard about the extent to which we are
enabling fanatics of every description.
Winston Churchill once famously defined a fanatic as someone
who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. By Winston’s definition, there may be a
disturbingly large number of fanatics abroad in the land. Fanaticism is in many ways an infantile
disorder; many of us have passed through phases in life in which we have been
tempted to treat every difference of opinion as irreconcilable, and every issue
as a matter of unalterable principle, but for most of us, the operative word is
“phase.”
What separates the fanatic from the well-adjusted person is
that the fanatic remains stuck in that infantile phase. The fanatic cannot, or will not, acknowledge
the possibility that reasonable minds may differ, even on contentious
issues. Moreover, the fanatic, by
forever misapplying first principles to trifles, will inevitably convince
himself (and most of the great fanatics of history have been men) that not only
does he possess truth with a capital T, but that those who disagree with him
are in error to such an extent that they cannot be suffered to live.
Fanaticism of that kind, with its stark rejection of any
view not absolutely accordant with its own, and with its sense of exclusive
custodianship of the Truth (with that capital T), and its concomitant
insistence that those with other views are not merely to be silenced, but
eliminated, invariably arises in contexts in which disputes and controversies
tend to become inflamed.
No one would argue that the downturn in our American economy
has left many Americans of all political stripes fearful, fretful, and
frustrated. Difficult times have a way
of fraying the fabric of civility which is -- or ought to be -- one of the
critical components of a successfully functioning democracy. When people are angry and afraid, extremism
becomes not merely easy, but tempting. And indeed, we need to take a look at this
incident in the context in which it has emerged. Though it is become easy for
some on the conservative side to demonize the Black Lives Matter movement, it
has awakened the mind of non-black America to a disturbing trend in which
much of the law enforcement community apparently has declared open season on
black males. Since March, 1991, when a group of LA cops administered a beatdown
to Rodney King, the trend has been noticeable in American society.
Indeed, it is nearly 2 years since Michael Brown was “executed”
by a street cop in Ferguson, Missouri. Since then, we have become accustomed to
a doleful litany: Eric Garner in Staten Island, Walter Scott in North
Charleston, South Carolina, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, and in just the last two
days, Philando Castile outside of Minneapolis and Alton Sterling in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana. And yet, we continue to point accusing fingers at Black Lives
Matter as if they, somehow, were the problem, as if there were a "war on cops" that is about as legitimate as the "war on Christmas" that forms a predictable trope of Fox "News" and Glenn Beck at every holiday season.
It’s easy, if you enjoy a certain measure of white
privilege, to dismiss the concerns raised by Black Lives Matter. If, for
example, like me, you can pass for straight, your interactions with the police,
as a white male, are generally going to be respectful and professional. If your Otherness is too obviously manifest, that dynamic is altogether different.
If my demeanor were to suggest to a cop who does not know me that I am in fact
a queer fellow, as I am, the tension in our interpersonal dynamic would be much
greater. Because, in fact, like my African-American brothers and sisters, I am
an Other. And law enforcement doesn’t
deal well with Others. Law enforcement in America tends to see itself as the
curator, custodian, conservator of what it considers “ought” to be the “correct”
values of society. Those values tend to reflect a default paradigm of whiteness
and straightness. Thus, like my African-American brothers and sisters, I tread
lightly around law enforcement, because I can’t know if the cop I encounter is
an ally, whether he is actually queer like me, or whether he represents that
traditional law enforcement paradigm which tends to view queerfolk as cultural
subversives. Though my understanding of the African-American experience with
law enforcement is at best incomplete, seen through a glass darkly, as St. Paul
wrote in his first epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 13:12), it does give me enough knowledge
for empathy.
But while I can empathize with what Black Lives Matter is
trying to say to us, I can also empathize with the pain and suffering of the
survivors of last night shooting. What happened last night appears, at first
approximation, to a been a cowardly and dishonorable act, meriting the
strongest possible condemnation. Nonetheless, it’s too early to do more than
that.
Thus, when shocking events occur, such as those which
transpired in Dallas yesterday, the first and greatest challenge is to take a
metaphorical deep breath, to wait before rushing in with theories, allegations,
or accusations. As Donald Rumsfeld might
have put it, we have very few known knowns at this point. There are far more known unknowns, such as
the true motivations of the shooter, or whether he had assistance, or whether
there were in fact others involved. It’s a pity Mr. Rumsfeld’s fellow Donald,
that cheeto-faced ferret-wearing shitgibbon Donald Trump apparently had neither
the decency, nor the impulse control, nor the self-awareness to clap a muzzle
on his foolish mouth before sounding off in an unhelpful way that has only made
the situation worse.
In the days to come, the situation will develop further;
more information will presumably become available about the shooter, his
motives, whether there are accomplices, and whether this morning’s events were
an isolated occurrence or part of something larger and more ominous. At the moment, however, none of these facts
have been developed; the evidence is too thin to justify drawing any
significant conclusions, as much as we may be tempted to do so.
In short, we know
very little, we think -- perhaps -- too much, and at the moment we don’t know
what, if anything, we can prove.
Nonetheless, whether this morning’s shooting was a political
act, or merely the random crime of an unbalanced individual, to the extent it
may have arisen from the embittered tone of our political dialogue, or to the
extent that it is a false flag, Reichstag fire incident designed to benefit the
Trump campaign, it should still be a warning to us that when we lose the
ability to disagree agreeably, we put our democracy at risk. It should also be
a warning to us, however, that there is truth in the scriptural admonitions
that as we sow, so shall we reap (Gal. 6:7) , that they who sow the wind shall
reap the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7), and that those who draw the sword shall die by
it (Matt. 26:52). We do not know, and should not venture opinions on, whether
the shooting was truly an insurrectionary act – in which case, there are larger
issues in play which require our urgent attention — or whether the shooting was
what it may well have been in truth, the random crime of a crazy person
So today, let our thoughts and prayers be with who were
injured for their recovery, as well for the repose of the souls of the five officers whose lives were so tragically cut short. Tomorrow, and on the days that follow, it
will be time again to ask what do we know?
What do we think? What can we
prove?
For now, we should observe a principled and considerate time
of silence, leaving off with partisan rhetoric and poisoned comments. A decent respect for the dead and the injured
should demand no less of us.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney in Cathedral City,
California, where he practices law. He
served two terms on the Cathedral City city Council from 2002-2010. The views expressed herein are exclusively
his own. This post is adapted from the
one he wrote when Congresswoman Giffords was shot and U.S. Chief District Judge
John McCarthy Roll was assassinated. Like President Obama, Mr. Marchand is sick
and tired of having to rework the same comments every few months.
NOTE: comments on this post will be much more strictly
moderated than might otherwise be the case.
Comments containing any personal attack will not be published, nor will
comments that, in the view of the author, are intended to shed more heat than
light.
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