Ferguson - The Collision of Two Mentalities


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Ferguson - The Collision of Two Mentalities

This is going to be a short one.

The grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, just refused to indict police officer Darren Wilson for a crime in killing a young black man, Michael Brown, during an altercation where Wilson stopped Brown as a suspect in a crime. The grand jury determined that Wilson had acted within the limits of the law in deploying lethal force against Brown.

Rioting is underway in Ferguson and that place is currently a hotbed of outside agitators and press.

Since the media coverage is so extensive, and there are pundits and interviewees galore commenting, here is a filter for trying to make sense out of all the yelling.

The individual rights and rule of law mentality: These people are found on both sides of the controversy, meaning some think the outcome was fair and others think Wilson got off because of backstage influence. They state clearly that both Brown and Wilson have rights. They constantly refer to "the system" and working with it or fixing it.

The tribal mentality: These people are also found on both sides of the controversy, albeit the ones against Wilson get a lot more media coverage right now. These people mouth words like justice and so on, but their attitude is clear, which can be paraphrased as follows: "One of ours has been targeted. We don't care whether he's right or wrong. He's one of ours and goddamit, we won't stand for it!"

A variation on this is: "One of the oppressed has been targeted. We don't care whether he's right or wrong. He's one of the oppressed and goddamit, we won't stand for it!"

Often the 'individual rights and rule of law' folks act confused when faced with angry tribalists.

Read any article, watch any TV news program, listen to any radio coverage, hell, look on YouTube right now. When a person speaks about this issue, it is very easy to use this 'individual versus tribal mentality' as a BS detector filter.

Once I started doing this as a conscious focus, I started becoming interested in how much of a caricature some people are allowing themselves to become.

The bad guys--both sides--are not hiding who they are. They are quite open about it.

Michael

PS - Notice I didn't use the word 'racism.' The root of this issue is deeper than that.

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Man dies of gunshot wounds suffered after a belligerent engagement with a police officer, am I missing something?

A grand jury found no criminality on the part of the officer, should he or the department be liable for penalties in a civil action, perhaps.

Everything else is the product of media hype, tribalism ect.

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It is a tough evaluation to make but aren't rioters who burn someone to death WORSE than a police officer who does as he is trained to do? Last night a CNN lady reporter was hit in the head by a stone and a Fox cameraman's camera was broken. A rioter had time to deliberate their actions.

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As I was listening to the radio this morning, I heard Al Sharpton say something like, "Darren Wilson should have been indicted because there have been so many cases of police brutality against people of color."

No surprise, but a particularly glaring example of the tribal mentality at work.

Darrell

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The ABC exclusive interview with the police officer involved is worth watching. I watched about two thirds of it. He seems truthful and his account matches the facts. I am hopeful an objective time-line of the events can be laid out, included the perpetrators gang affiliation, his strong arm theft, his mentality, his criminal leanings, his immense size, etc.

So how did this become a riot? I think the dead mans accomplice immediately put out a story based on lies and some people claimed to have a first hand view of the situation and they lied or they were not even there. The Press put them on the air anyway. So from the very beginning, biased people heard what they expected or wanted to hear. Then the perps Mother acts like a lunatic and encourages violence. Outside agitators like Sharpton show up. Our bigoted President and Eric Holder pontificate and fan the flames.

Just before this latest round of rioting the mother went on another rant ON CAMERA and then the step father screams out to burn this place down. If I were a store owner I would not rebuild and if I were an insurance company I would not insure a store in that area. Unfortunately, as in Los Angeles, that means decent law abiding people will need to walk a mile or more just to get groceries. Yet, the community (to conflate in a sociological way) did this to itself.

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I've also done some thinking on the political action principle of Obama.

Divide and conquer.

Look at everything he's done, not said. I can't think of a single major thing where that principle was absent.

It certainly is present in Ferguson.

I'm not focused on the "divide" part, though. That's obvious. It's the "conquer" part that interests me. Who loses in these hostilities? Both sides of the divide. Who gains? The central government.

Michael

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The following article, of course, won't mean much to those who believe Brown was murdered in cold blood by Wilson and "the fix was in." But here it is anyway:

Grand jury documents rife with inconsistencies
by Holbrook Mohr, David A. Lieb and Phillip Lucas
Nov. 26, 2014
AP

From the article:

Some witnesses said Michael Brown had been shot in the back. Another said he was lying face-down when Officer Darren Wilson finished him off. Still others acknowledged changing their stories to fit published details about the autopsy, or admitted that they didn't see the shooting at all.

An Associated Press review of thousands of pages of grand jury documents reveals numerous examples of statements made during the shooting investigation that were inconsistent, fabricated or provably wrong. Prosecutors exposed these inconsistencies before the jurors, which likely influenced their decision not to indict Wilson in Brown's death.

Read the article and, if you have time, the documents themselves in the NYT link in Post 2.


Friggin' amateurs couldn't even keep their stories straight.

On the scale they did it, this is plain old embarrassing.

Who did they think they were going to fool?

Michael

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And just for burps and giggles:

New York Times Publishes Darren Wilson’s Address

Followed by:

Liberal Reporters Publish Darren Wilson’s Home Address, So Here’s Theirs

Now think.

Use the standard in the opening post.

Are these folks (both sides) individual rights people or tribal people?

:)

See how easy it is?

Michael

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It is a tough evaluation to make but aren't rioters who burn someone to death WORSE than a police officer who does as he is trained to do? Last night a CNN lady reporter was hit in the head by a stone and a Fox cameraman's camera was broken. A rioter had time to deliberate their actions.

There was also a man murdered outside the complex where the "incident" occurred.

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Here is a perfect example of the tribal mentality.

Listen closely to Cornel West's arguments and see if they fit the individual or the collective "wretched of the earth."

http://youtu.be/Hjm48frAF90

West chooses to call folks "wretched," of course, according to a core story that excludes a lot of wretched folks.

For instance, I doubt he is too concerned with hillbilly illiteracy and poverty in the Appalachian mountains or the children constantly abused by drugged and drunk parents in impoverished black communities. Those kids are real wretched if you want to focus on wretched. They are more wretched than their parents, that's for sure.

I haven't heard West say anything about activism for these issues. I could come up with a lot more.

But the point is West's thinking is not based on logical consistency applied to the individual. It is based on looking out for a tribe (a collective) that he defines mostly by a core story.

He now bashes Obama because Obama no longer fits the core story that holds the tribe together in his mind. The fact is, Obama never fit West's core story even though West and a lot of similar people said he did, but that is another story.

Michael

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  • 2 weeks later...

Man dies of gunshot wounds suffered after a belligerent engagement with a police officer, am I missing something?

A grand jury found no criminality on the part of the officer, should he or the department be liable for penalties in a civil action, perhaps.

Everything else is the product of media hype, tribalism ect.

Like this from the Harvard Crimson?

Protesters said that their goal was not to protest Primal Scream itself, but to hold a four-and-a-half minute period of silence before the run for Michael Brown of Ferguson, Mo. and Eric Garner of New York—two unarmed black men who were killed by white police officers this summer—and to join in solidarity for people around the nation who have experienced racism. The organizers of the demonstration had posted a Facebook event describing their plans for the protest ahead of the event.

Here is the article:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/12/12/primal-scream-protest-chaotic-exchange/

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An acquaintance of mine, who is African American, told me today "this is not a good time to be a black man"

We were discussing Ferguson.

I'm sorry he feels that way.

-J

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I've noticed a particular viciousness from the Left when you try to say that cigarette taxes where the cause of this, too.

It's like they love to look at the direct, immediate cause--and then stop there, never to look farther. Obviously the most immediate cause is the officer's actions, but they never stop to think that the situation wouldn't have even happened if it weren't for those taxes.

It reminds me of people who understand the stupid things the banks and such did leading up to 2007/2008, and just stop there, saying the solution is to regulate them, because obviously those actions were motivated by capitalistic greed, and there could be no other reasons behind them.

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Is everyone aware that the supervisor on site was a black female sargeant?

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Is everyone aware that the supervisor on site was a black female sargeant?

Shhhhhesh...facts are irrelevant.

-J

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Is everyone aware that the supervisor on site was a black female sargeant?

Shhhhhesh...facts are irrelevant.

-J

J:

I was on my way back from Wilmington Saturday after a week at the shore and I was listening to a conversation between two of the Amtrak folks. Nice lady conductor, very helpful and good sense of humor. Thee man was a virtual size double of Garner.

Both were black folks.

They were frustrated and were reasonably discussing the "choke hold" etc.

We were all in the Cafe car which is where I always sit for the 1 1/2 hour trip to Newark Penn.

I joined the conversation and said that the real tragedies were that the man died needlessly and the iniatiator of the confrontation was Governor Cuomo. I definitely cost that jackass a lot of black votes next time by explaining that link.

Secondly, I mentioned that the real at the scene tradgedy was that the supervisor of the five code enforcement officers was a black female sargeant.

The look on both their faces was quite reasuring in that niether of them knew that fact.

As I got up to leave at Newark they both thanked me for the information.

One person at a time.

A...

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Adam

Sorry to hear you were on your back. Hope you are ok. I have back issues too.

Next time I see the individual I referred to in post# 19 I will mention it.

Of course main stream media is mum on this. The fire they're stoking wouldn't exist if they did.

-Joe

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