I put on CCTV * news earlier this week and heard this comment: "America's policing and racial relations problems."
Own it folks. Own what has become our "ugly American" reputation worldwide. Given our not so distant past when we financed and excelled in education and innovative technology, it would seem we should be able to get it straight, as an entire nation of people, about our foundation priorities like ethics, equality, and equal opportunity, for starters . . . all of which are basic needs that promote and nurture peaceful coexist, domestically and internationally. Without a functional degree of peace in our nation, continuing academic excellence is near to impossible and when our academic excellence erodes so does our nations potential.
Truly, minds are terrible things to waste (thank you UNCF). Efforts by a few create societal problems, and are exacerbated by others creating confusion for the purpose of victimizing many, with the result of everyone becoming "collateral damage" in some way or another. And that created unrest, folks, redirects our valuable attention, time, and energy away from personal peace which in turn interferes with all other aspects of our lives, including educational endeavors; not to mention it highly interferes with our joy in life as is the intent of those who work to create divisive societal problems.
Consider how much worse "America's policing and racial relations problems" have become because of outside agitators some of whom have become part of our nation's police forces, trained to be aggressively and illegally militarized. Agitators are like a "match"; and a gathering of righteously angry people is like gasoline. One spark ignites the crowd . . .and it becomes a riot which justifies police action becoming a vicious circle that continues pitting we, the people, and the police against one another with each "side" insisting they are justified. Part of the problem is that not enough folks are wary of "outside agitators" who make it their job to create confusion and divisiveness, be they police, or part of the crowd. (I say "job" meaning either voluntary support of an ideological belief or a paid position, at some level, in some way, by a political ideology's management structure).
Agitators are always attracted to highly emotional issues about which people are passionate, and they often organize demonstrations about the issues or advise others they have encouraged to be leaders to organize them. Highly emotional crowds encourage agitators to create a chaotic frenzy . . . then everyone loses at the first sign of violent behavior, no matter from whence it comes. There are good reasons our Constitution's Bill of Rights states "the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances" . . . emphasis on peaceably. Our freedom of speech is to be tempered by respectful peaceable behavior, particularly when assembled. And as citizens we need to make it our business to present our grievances to government in ways that lead to them being resolved. Assembly that is not peaceable is not one of the ways.
The article cited below refers to the police as "outside agitators", rightfully so because of hires having been primarily from outside the city, then tasked to work within the city far from the communities in which they live. But with or without a "police problem" that creates unrest, riots are also ordinarily caused by outside agitators on the demonstration side, and Baltimore has been no exception. All it takes is one incident - one person to fire that shot, or light that match, or get up in that cop's face and be belligerent - and a riot is considered to have started because it is no longer a peaceable assembly.
Consider the following from a recent article by Max Blumenthal:
"While the Baltimore Police Department recruits its manpower outside city limits, its leadership is regularly junketed to training tours in Israel, the occupying power whose hyper-militarized settlers act as some of the Middle East’s most aggressive outside agitators. In September 2009, members of the Baltimore PD “toured [Israel] and met with their Israeli counterparts to exchange information relating to best practices and recent advancements in security and counterterrorism,” according to the trip’s sponsor, Project Interchange. A separate Israel tour organized by the neoconservative Jewish Institute for National Security saw members of the Baltimore PD “begin the process of sharing ‘lessons learned’ in Israel with their law enforcement colleagues in the United States.”
Back in Maryland, the rate of citizens killed by police officers is skyrocketing. A report by the ACLU
has found that 109 people died after encounters with Maryland police
between 2010 and 2014, that almost 70 percent of those who died were
black, and that over 40 percent of them were unarmed. In Baltimore
alone, the city was forced to pay $5.7 million in lawsuits by suspects who accused police officers of beating them brutally and without cause." from: "You’d be surprised who the outside agitators in Baltimore really are"
It should not be necessary for anyone to point out that it would be more appropriately realistic and honest for the Jewish Institute for National Security, JINSA, to refer to itself as ZINSA (replacing "Jewish" with "Zionist in it's name") instead of trying to blame Judaism for the undue foreign influence on policing in America. Instead, it is a result of Israel's Zionist political ideology and it's henchmen, the illegal "Israel First" lobbies which represent Israel's interest to U.S. government at all levels, in preference to what is in America's best interests.
And consider this from an article by
"For some, dispatching American police to train in a foreign country battered by decades of war, terror attacks and strife highlights how dramatically U.S. law enforcement has changed in the 13 years since al-Qaida airplane hijackers crashed into New York’s World Trade Center. In many places, the image of the friendly cop on the beat has been replaced by intimidating, fully armed military-style troops. And Israel has played part in that transition.
As these trips to Israel became more commonplace, the militarization of
U.S. law enforcement also was driven by the creation of various homeland
security initiatives and billions of dollars of surplus military-grade
equipment donated to local departments through the 1033 program after 9/11." from: "US police get antiterror training in Israel on privately funded trips"
Our nation is designed to be ethical and equitable. Ethics, equality, and equal opportunity are all a main focus of the values that are addressed in our Constitution, for God's sake. So folks whose attitudes prevent them from getting with that program need to get out of the way of those who are dedicated to it. Especially we need the duds to get out of the way in government and law enforcement at all levels, to make room for folks who, instead of being greedy for income and power at the expense others, want to serve our entire nation's best interests; want to improve and sustain the quality of life for all - but not at the expense of victimizing some in the myriad of ways in which the the greedy "feed" off of those they consider less than equal, like vultures feed on carrion.
There are too few elected and appointed government folks who are not motivated by greed and control issues; too few who are not swayed by the corruption that is extortion from corporations, lobbies, and exorbitant "donations" all of which intend to buy votes and actually do so in too many cases. Many of the corporations, lobbies, and donors dance to the tune of foreign influence. If that were not the case, then the decent folks in government would speak up instead of too meekly allowing themselves to be badgered by the bullies whose philosophy is "any means to an end" at damaging expense to the American people.
Along with the too few trustworthy elected and appointed government officials, are military folks primarily the only other people who take to heart our nation's stated mission and the path to achieving it; with their "reward" from government and we, the negligent people, being to become frontline cannon fodder?
News flash folks. The all volunteer military does not volunteer to be front-line cannon fodder. Individuals volunteer to support and defend the our nation's constitution. Trusting our government to make good decisions about appropriate use of our military comes with the territory of volunteering. And sometimes being front line cannon fodder also comes with that territory . . . but "sometimes" has increasingly become too unnecessarily often in recent past decades. And contrary to what has become misinformed popular opinion, prior military folks who join a police force are no more inclined to become a corrupting influence in a police force than anyone else is. And they are less inclined to be political agitators with violent double-standard attitudes who imagine themselves to be anti-war and pro-peace while promoting conflict and revolution.
Consider that our nation has actively been involved in military
conflict for the entire life of our young adults who will soon be coming
of age. What is wrong with the parents and grandparents of these young
folks who have allowed this unacceptable ongoing life of military
conflict to become our young adults' norm? Who do they imagine benefits from this circumstance and how? Those who can answer that question know who is pulling the puppet strings of ongoing military conflict in which our U.S. troops are involved. It's complex . . . and it sure ain't purty.
Our system of government is designed to make armed revolution unnecessary when we, the people do not neglect our responsibility to actively be participatory citizens in the self-governing process with which we are empowered. To be negligent of that responsibility means we have not embraced the revolutionary spirit that is our inheritance as citizens. That inheritance demands of us that we continue to be vigilant about the potential that exists for all the rights that were originally won in our Revolutionary War to be usurped. It demands of us that we continue to fight for those same rights when they are being usurped, by using our system of government as it is designed to be used. We have been empowered to fight peaceably to keep our freedoms and we are obligated to do so - for posterity and for all the generations before us who have died trying.
In other words, a successful revolution does not end. Instead it evolves for the better so that violence is not necessary to achieve needed change. Those who refuse to evolve in the direct of that envisioned peaceful coexistence are part of "America's policing and racial relations problems" which includes but is not limited to both government policy makers and law enforcement.
Yes, of course it is only some individual cops who seem to be determined to give all police officers a bad reputation - but clearly there have become far more of those "bad apples", nationwide, than many knew of, until violent reactions made that evident. Something is seriously wrong with that picture. What's wrong is the result of neglect on the part of too many Americans. I suggest those who didn't know have not been being vigilant about the potential usurpation of our rights. Governments will always evolve toward dictatorship unless prevented from doing so. We, the people, had our sacred honor pledged long ago for the purpose of preventing that from happening.
But the first line of defense against our problematic cops is the decent officers - on behalf of we, the people, and themselves also. Just like there is a mandate for the decent folks in government to speak up against corrupt folks in positions of trust in government, there is a mandate for good cops to speak up and inform the appropriate "powers that be" about problem cops. Period. End of sentence. If they can not or will not then they are part of the problem which is earning their profession the bad reputation of being untrustworthy, and in turn contributing to the process of actively eroding our rights.
It is vitally important for our elected and appointed government officials, and our first responders including law enforcement, to be trustworthy. We need to get to know those who serve; shoot the breeze with our local cops on the beat; vote for candidates who are trustworthy, regardless of their personal political viewpoints. Otherwise the negligence of we, the people when it comes to being
empowered to self-govern, will continue to come home to roost in
increasingly damaging ways.
Those police officers and government officials who do not make themselves accessible to we, the people and instead dance to the tune of 1) corporations 2) lobbies 3) and other donors all buying their opinions, votes, and divisive victimizing through the use of "ism"s (like like racism, among others) can not be trusted to have in mind the best interests of the people in their communities or in our nation.
As it now stands law enforcement training and personnel problems seem to be the most obvious symptom of racist damage that has been recurring. I say recurring because America's "racial relations" are primarily an institutionalized problem, rather than a problem among we, the people, collectively, who for the most part long ago moved beyond the institutionalized prejudicial attitudes still demonstrably to be found in local police forces, nationwide. A few untrustworthy cops on a police force give the entire force a bad name. A few cities with law enforcement policies ill equipped to promote, mandate, and enforce ethical attitudes and behaviors in their officers give law enforcement, nationwide, a bad name. This is nothing new. So why are we allowing the appropriate people who are responsible for stopping it, to continue to allow it to occur?
We don't need a "new" revolution folks, because if we're doing it right we are still participating in the one we started that gained us political independence over two centuries ago. Those who suggest we do are merely "tools" - agitators dedicated to a political ideology that is
not our nation's. What we need is to continue to fight the revolution we
originally started via the evolving path that was laid out for us in
our Declaration of Independence, and after the Revolutionary War continued on in our Constitution. Both, along with all that occurred between the time that each was adopted, are why and how we are enabled as citizens to continue our revolution without violence . . . when we take the
responsibility we have to one another to do it right, by using our
system to improve our system as necessary.
Part of what we ALL need to do right, truly, is to question the issues of hiring and training of law enforcement personnel which have resulted in unacceptable, damaging, and dangerous law enforcement policies at local, state, and national levels. We need to question those who make the dysfunctional policies. When individuals in those positions refuse to improve hiring and training standards, and refuse to rigorously enforce established good standards, then we need to replace the individuals in those positions of trust with people who are capable of doing so. We need to put an end to government by political favors, neoptism, and all the other relationships people feel extorted by and use as excuses to be incompetent and/or to intentionally do damage, selectively, by virtue of holding positions of trust they can not be trusted to hold.
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* CCTV, for those who do not know, is an excellent China news channel which presents world news in English.