Ferguson (part II)

 

One of the missing elements in all of the hubris about what has taken place in Ferguson, Missouri is the cause- the root cause- of the death of Michael Brown, which prompted all of the protests, all of the violence, all of the looting, all of the unrest and, most recently, the shooting of two police officers there, and the shooting of police officers, elsewhere, as well.

 

There is no doubt that the likes of Al Sharpton- emboldened by his friends at the Justice Department, outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, and the White House, President Barack Obama, incinerated a small fire into a conflagration. For their part, Holder and Obama have not helped ameliorate the all-too-incendiary atmosphere when it comes to Ferguson. In fact, they have exacerbated the situation and, through their grandstanding and postulations, and have nationalized an atmosphere of mistrust, resentment and tension. It is not a stretch to suggest that President Barack Obama- ironically, the first African-American to be elected President of the United States, has set race relations back more than fifty years- as if the days of Selma and of Montgomery and of dozens of towns across the South, and elsewhere, have been time-warped to 1964 when racial upheaval found its boiling point in the midst of a decade which saw multiple boiling points.

 

But even beyond all of that, the one thing that has not been discussed- the one element that has not been mentioned is the young man whose death proved to be the spark of this unrest- Michael Brown. As much as liberals would like to blame the white man, blame the cops, blame a “racist society” that placed him into a situation where he lost his life, the fault lies not elsewhere but rather in the way he was evidently raised, by a mother, one Leslie McSpadden, who had this to say, concerning the shooting of two policemen this week:

 

“F*** THEM 2 COPS..DON’T GOT NO SYMPATHY FOR THEM OR THEY FAMILIES…Ain’t no FUN when the Rabbit got the GUN.”

“If my FAM would-a got JUSTICE in August maybe those two comps wouldn’t have got shot LAST NIGHT…”

 

As much as human nature would drive us to otherwise sympathize with a mother who has lost her son, when this is the kind of thing she says, in writing and on Facebook, the true cause of Michael Brown’s death is really an environment which encourages an attitude of hip-hop, gang-bang, shoplifting “get even with whitey” and “it’s all ‘the man’s’ fault” attitude that is all too pervasive in America, today.

 

So all we can offer to those who want to take to the streets and cause unrest, is “clean up your own house and stop blaming others for your own shortcomings”

 

Until that happens, there will be more Michael Browns and more dead cops, and the problem will be repeated, over and over and over, again. What’s worse, a society that was once envisioned by Martin Luther King, Jr, will go down in flames, as a result.

 

-Drew Nickell, 13 March 2015

 

© 2015 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved