In the minds of the members of the far right - especially the Christofascist/Tea Party element - anyone who is not a white, heterosexual, Christian conservative is not really a citizen of the United States or, worse yet, fully human. In their minds the rest of us, blacks in particular, are not even really fully human. One might say they view us as some lesser species or, at worse, animals. Hence the right's desire to focus on the riots and lawlessness that followed the in appropriate grand jury verdict of not returning an indictment against Darren Wilson (see the images above from Fox News) who by his own testimony suggests that he did not see Michael Brown as a fellow human( some of the Norfolk police I encountered in the past - and I would argue perhaps even two Norfolk Circuit Court judges - did not see me as human because I was gay). They want to use the riots and unrest as justification for police brutality and their own view of minorities as little more than animals. Sadly, those who engaged in looting and the destruction of private property - who are cretins and betrayers of their own community in my view - played right into the hands of the far right, their mortal enemies. Some may think me harsh, but sadly I don't think I am misjudging the "godly folks" and their far right allies. A piece in Salon looks at the far rights desire to change the subject from police misconduct and a law enforcement system biased against blacks in particular. Here are excerpts:
From the very beginning, before St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Robert McCulloch had uttered the first word of his defensive and dissembling speech, the fix was in. The conspiracy this time was not to protect Officer Darren Wilson from standing trial for the killing of Michael Brown, though that was certainly related. This time, the conspiracy was to organize the announcement of Wilson’s exoneration in as provocative a way as possible. The ultimate goal was to manipulate the public and the press into forgetting the real story of Ferguson — of police brutality and racial injustice — and bickering about the morality of rioting instead.
At the very least, that’s the impression I’ve had throughout the Ferguson controversy, especially as the wait for news from the grand jury dragged on, and as the county’s offices began leaking pro-Wilson factoids like a sieve. And after witnessing last night’s spectacle, which was preceded by multiple delays and conspicuous readying of the state’s police forces, I’m no less convinced that the powers that be in Missouri approached the Wilson verdict with little concern for accountability or justice. All they wanted was to improve the Ferguson power structure’s battered images — not by doing good, but by making the protesters look even worse. It’s a tried and tested strategy; as Rick Perlstein has documented, it helped make Richard Nixon president.
A quick look at the nation’s front pages on Tuesday indicates that the plan worked on some, but fewer perhaps than these would-be Pat Buchanans wanted. By maneuvering to incite disorder and polarize public opinion along race lines, these would-be Nixons probably thought they could “cut the … country in half,” as Buchanan recommended, and walk away with “far the larger half.”
Put simply, we must not allow supporters of the Wilson verdict to distract us by making this a conversation about rioting or poverty or race. That’s not to say we should condone the riots; and it’s certainly not to say we should avoid subjects that involve issues of race and poverty. What it means instead is keeping in mind that riots are nothing new, that the unique struggles of the African-American community can’t be simply attributed to poverty, and that discussions of “race” that aren’t linked with specific policy changes often result in little more than frivolous declarations of privilege.
If we can combat the dual influences of a Ferguson elite that wants national attention to drift elsewhere; and a national media that dislikes policy and favors more watchable, clickable, shareable and fundamentally empty manifestations of the culture war — if we can do that, there’s hope that even though the killing of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson will always be an obscenity, it won’t have been entirely in vain. So let’s ignore those in American society who would rather debate the merits of trashing a bodega than the killing of a child, and let’s not listen to those who would use this opportunity to re-litigate the civil rights movement, the Rodney King riots or the Trayvon Martin case.
I by no means condone looting and violence. Martin Luther King was onto something when he called for peaceful protests. That said, gays and all other minority members need to remember that these same elements of the far right hate us too and look for every opportunity to denigrate us and depict us as less than truly human. We cannot allow ourselves to fall for their propaganda.
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