Saturday, July 09, 2016

Whither the US in the aftermath of all this racial killing?

I don't want to dwell overlong on the recent spate of American police killings and reprisals, a subject which has already been done to proverbial death in the media and on the Internet and social media.
The deaths of two black men - in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and in Falcon Heights, Minnesota - at the hands of the police in recent days, and then the gob-smacking response of black former Army reservist Micah Johnson in Dallas, Texas, (who shot 5 police officers and injured several more police and civilians because he was "upset" and "wanted to kill white people, especially white officers"), has people comparing 2016 to the depths of racial turmoil back in 1968. Although such comparisons are probably exaggerated, it is nonetheless a depressing spectacle to see the United States in this apparent free-fall into chaos.
How the events of this week will play out in the political field, and particularly in the ongoing US presidential race, remains to be seen. One can reasonably foresee it both benefitting and hindering the campaigns of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in different ways. What will be the actual effect is perhaps not even predictable in the current climate.
How the events affect the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is another imponderable. Johnson's massacre of police officers took place just after an otherwise peaceable BLM rally, and Dallas Police Chief David Brown is quoted as saying, "he was upset about Black Lives Matter" as well as upset about the recent police shootings. What should we make of that? Then, former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh tweeted, "3 Dallas cops killed, 7 wounded. This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you." Really? Granted, Walsh resides a long way out on the Tea Party right, and he hastily deleted said tweet (although not before it had been re-tweeted ad nauseam), but you can see from this where it might go. Hashtags like #BlueLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter are now receiving as many hits as #BlackLivesMatter, and the BLM movement will have to be very careful to nuance their campaign beyond simplicities like Black=Good and Police=Bad.
One other aspect of the recent events that seems potentially important to me is the way in which such occurrences, and their aftermaths, are now routinely filmed on cellphones and distributed for all the world to see on YouTube and Facebook. It seems that the revolution WILL be televised after all, whether we like it or not, and it seem to me that this will have at least two consequences (and probably many more): seeing the immediate reactions of distraught relatives, and even seeing the eventual deaths of the victims on video, could amp up the emotional responses of the general public, in potentially unpredictable ways; and/or exposing people to extreme violence and snuff movies of this kind may just further de-sensitize an already de-sensitized population, sated as they are on graphic violence and violent death, both on the evening news and in their peak-hour TV-viewing leisure time.
Where the US goes from here is anyone's guess, but it probably won't be pretty or pain-free.
There again, when one considers that between 100 and 150 have just been killed in clashes in South Sudan, with little or no media fanfare, one has to realize just how First World these problems are that we agonize over.

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