What does Ferguson mean, beyond jeering at the bad guys? What does it tell us about America?

Larry Kummer, Editor

11 years ago

Summary: Let’s skip the good guy – bad guy blather about Ferguson. What does it reveal about America? About us? Much of use to those who rule America, and to those who would change it. The next post discusses what it means to everybody else. First of two posts today.

{Y}ou didn’t come here to make the choice, you’ve already made it. You’re here to try to understand *why* you made it. I thought you’d have figured that out by now.
— The Oracle in “The Matrix Reloaded”

The inevitable Ferguson
The gods grant the 1% a gift: stupid foes
Putting Ferguson in a broader context
The system worked as it’s designed to work
For More Information

(1) The inevitable Ferguson

Social tensions in America grow as income growth grinds to a halt for the bottom 80% (and drops for the bottom 60%), the middle class slowly erodes away, and the engines of social mobility freeze up. The response of our ruling elites is the typical one of their peers in the past: increase the power of their domestic armed forces: militarization the police and growth the power and numbers of the security services (FBI, NSA, etc).

Their apostle, Rand Paul, advocates more tax cuts for the rich, more benefit cuts for the bottom 80% (including stripping away the access to affordable health care gained from ObamaCare). Police and the security services are silent partners in the program. Think of them as partners in the program. It’s a hidden codicil to Atlas Shrugged.

Ferguson, representative of the rising incidence of police violence (while crime rates drop), is the natural result. Like 2+2=4. Why does this surprise us? What else do you expect from the 1%? It takes a great people to choose as leader a Solon the Reformer. We instead chose the twins, Bush Jr and Obama (with another Clinton and another Bush on deck).

(2) The gods grant the 1% a gift: stupid foes

The gods smile on America’s elites, granting them 4GW foes — domestic and foreign — that are dumb as rocks (so far — the Islamic State might be different, though I’ll take the other side of that bet). As we see in Ferguson, he Black community and their allies squander a wonderful opportunity through lack of organization, an absence of leadership (i.e., leaders and followers). The street violence is a gift to the local elites, strengthening their support and discrediting their foes.

Samuel Adams would have popped corks in celebration for such a gift as Ferguson from the British in the 1770’s, and exploited it skillfully and ruthlessly. Mao, with a far better set of tools, would have laughed. We will do nothing, so Ferguson means nothing. Like Snowden’s revelations of government surveillance, it generates a thousand headlines and nothing else.

(2) Putting Ferguson in a broader context

(a) Putting this in a larger context of politics and history: “The Day After In Ferguson“, Charles Pierce, Esquire, 25 November 2014 — A rare assertion of public responsibility in what might be the closing phase of the Republic. Excerpt:

There always have been people in whom we invest the power to take a life. There always has been a tendency among us, or at least among the more privileged among us, to give the benefit of a thousand doubts to those people in whom we invest this awesome power, because we give it to them in order for them to protect us and to keep us safe. They act in our name, always, no matter what they do. That, on the other hand, is often what we refuse to admit to ourselves when that power is misused. That is the way it is in a self-governing Republic. Every act of war is done in our name. Every action by the police is done in our name. Every prosecutor does his job in our name. Every governor who makes a decision does so in our name.

… This is a perilous time for the country, and for many of the citizens living in it. Our police are armed and trained as you would arm and train an occupying army. They are given body armor, and armored vehicles. They have been removed, physically and psychologically, from the people they are paid to serve, the people who invest in them to take the life of another. And there is a reason because there always is a reason, when some citizen winds up dead. … As regards to all the incidents cited above, not one person ever served one day in jail. This because there were reasons, and there are always reasons.

(b) Looking at the police in terms of public confidence, compared with our other institutions: we respect them more than any of our political institutions. They’re behind only the military (“small business” is not an institution).

Gallup, Confidence in Institutions, June 2014

No surprise that these results differ by race, as Gallup reports:

The police are among the three highest-rated institutions out of 17 tested in terms of whites’ confidence, behind only the military and small business. Among blacks, police drop to seventh on the list, behind not only the military and small business, but also the presidency, the church or organized religion, the medical system, and television news. This racial gap in confidence in the police has been evident in the data throughout the past decade and a half that Gallup has been measuring these trends on an annual basis.

(2) The system worked (the way it’s designed to work)

Everybody understands and accepts the system, so it’s safe for journalists to write frankly about it. This shows its strength, that it is impervious to criticism (rather than committing misdeeds that must be concealed). More about this in the next post.

“Seven Reasons Police Brutality Is Systemic, Not Anecdotal“, Bonnie Kristian, The American Conservative, 2 July 2014
“Why police are rarely indicted for misconduct“, Al Jazerra, 24 November 2014 — “Grand jury decision in Ferguson illustrates the legal and social barriers to prosecuting officers”
“It’s Incredibly Rare For A Grand Jury To Do What Ferguson’s Just Did“, 538, 24 November 2014 — Incorrectly framed headline. Grand juries almost always do what the District Attorney wants them to do. As the Ferguson jury did.
“Why It’s Impossible to Indict a Cop“, Chase Madar, The Nation, 24 November 2014 — “It’s not just Ferguson—here’s how the system protects police.”
“Justifying Homicide“, Jamelle Bouie, Slate, 25 November 2014 — “Why Darren Wilson was never going to be indicted for killing Michael Brown.”
“The American Justice System Is Not Broken“, Albert Burneko, The Conversation, 3 December 2014