Another Round...

I was asked recently why the killing of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson in Ferguson, MO last summer is generating so much anger, demonstrations, rioting, violence, etc. "Why this case? There have been so many instances of police brutality lately, what made this case different that there is so much action?" I wish I knew exactly why this particular killing of an unarmed black kid has sparked such lasting anger and continuing action. I will offer a few historical observations and some conjecture that I hope can create some threads of understanding about race and our past that could bear on the events.

Missouri is a bit of an odd case, the compromise named for the state established the line between North and South but it was the exception as a "Northern" state with "Southern" values. Those values being mainly slavery and all the attending attitudes toward equality (bad), aristocracy (good), and white supremacy as the rest of the South. This was because it was mainly Southerners who settled the state, snapping up the best land and leaving a strong impression on the institutions of Missouri. They also brought lots of slaves with them, meaning that unlike most Northern States Missouri always had a significant African-American population. Significant but always a minority, slaves in Missouri were generally treated better than in other parts of the South. However, in the eyes of the law it was just as bad with no recognition of human rights or constitutional protections.

Therefore, two trends emerge. First is that unlike say African-Americans in Chicago or other Northern cities, the black community of St. Louis and its surrounding areas have roots there. Traditions and institutions in that community have a past, a history of many generations. It is possible that a black father could bring his son to see the tree where his father was hanged, or see the site where the slave market once existed that brought his family to that area. Macabre? Horrific? Apocryphal? Perhaps, but possible. Also possible is the persistence of attitudes towards law enforcement that were designed to treat African-Americans as property. After generations of progress, we have seen a real backlash against African-American dignity and rights. And the history of African-Americans in Missouri means they are less likely to submit to degradation and official violence because it has been home for many generations.

Crane Brinton once wrote that revolution becomes more of a possibility when people perceive that progress has been made but stymied or even reversed. After witnessing a black man become president, the African-American community in St. Louis and elsewhere has seen increasing brutality and disenfranchisement directed against it by the ole' massa' class. The law has been stacked against them in the past, and seems to be again. This second trend is simply that the rioting and protest are a reaction to a reaction, that unaffected members of the African-American community will not stand idly by through so much injustice to the victims. In effect, Michael Brown was unjustly killed for a minor infraction if anything, while his killer faces no punishment for his actions. The immediate response by police to the protests, in their body armor and militarized vehicles could also have reawakened cultural memories of slave patrols, bloodhounds, and lynchings as symbols of state repression by the white majority.

To reiterate, this is all conjecture on my part. It is impossible to know the minds of so many people, whether they share an attitude about the past even remotely similar to the hypothesis presented here. Only one thing is self-evident, race relations in the United States and especially Missouri are particularly tense in 2014.

Shootings at Oak Creek Sikh Temple

Why?
Another lone gunman. Another massacre.
The murders near Milwaukee today are heartbreaking. It may be cliche, it may not help in the slightest, but this GH really does extend the greatest sympathy for the victims and all their loved ones.
But still; why?

Because they look a little different from what Wisconsinites are "supposed" to look?
Uh, oh, bad gh! How dare you suggest race, ethnicity, religion, or any other reason may have influenced the white male shooter! If there is anything more likely to bring squeals of protest from you know who(s) than questioning why their gun rights are more important than my or your life, it's using the "r" word.

Oh, but who cares? They aren't "us." They are really faking it in order to get sympathy or gummint handouts or something right? They, whoever the "they" is in what ever circumstance, don't love their children like "we" do; or their neighbors, or anything else. Right?

I'm sure the cops love the publicity. Wonder how professional, trained law enforcement officers really feel about the idea of armed civilians getting in their way as the concealed carry advocates fantasize about? One thing is for sure, I didn't start this. The nra was politicizing guns before I even got out of the service. So when the problem of wholly preventable gun murders became an issue for the second amendment worshippers has nothing to do with me. I just have to live in the society they made.

Seriously though gun maniacs, when the police look like this do you really think you would stand a chance against them in open revolt? So what is the deal?

How many times will this happen? How many times will maniacs rise up to commit these horrific acts of violence? And are they becoming routine, almost normal occurances? A society is sick that cannot even question its assumptions about who holds the monopoly on violence.

"The blade itself incites to violence"

America's Eichmann?

Amid the hubub of celebrity deaths, one may have been overlooked. While certainly not a celebrity in the conventional sense, Robert McNamara was known to the public during the 1960's. He was Secretary of Defense during both Kennedy's and Johnson's administration and architect of the military attack on Vietnam. McNamara was a brilliant statistician and employed his talents equally to both achieve a measure of standardization in the US military and perpetrate great war crimes. Serving in WWII, he analysed the effectiveness of bombing raids on Axis cities with coldly calculating efficiency in a clean office. This service arguably shortened the war but caused vast harm to innocent civilians in Japan, but when repeated over targets in Vietnam was as ineffective as it was criminal.

These actions were analogous to Hannah Arendt's famous thesis of the banality of evil, the inevitable by-product of a highly specialized division of labor in modern states. The pilots and aircrews dropping bombs on "enemy" targets took comfort in knowing that they were just following orders while the planners were safely ensconsed far from the destruction, not seeing the results of their decisions. McNamara could have easily declined to participate in the devestation in Vietnam, instead remaining at Ford Motor Company and employing his skills for production of useful products. Division of labor means that others were in charge of propaganda to lure talented individuals into service to harm mankind. We did lose in Vietnam despite dropping more bombs on that little country than in all of WWII, as a result, nothing happened.

McNamara had a counterpart in Nazi Germany, a similarly skilled statistical manager named Adolf Eichmann who made the trains to Auschwitz run on time. It is a useful comparison and very telling in how war criminals are treated in America. Eichmann was captured, tried and executed despite never actually pulling the trigger. McNamara lived a long life and died comfortably in his bed. I don't want to play hindsight gotcha, McNamara was doing what he felt was his duty for his country but had WWIII occured and the US lost, he almost certainly would have been executed. At very least he was a very intelligent, dedicated public servant who actually felt some connection to something beyond profit.

How about the current crop of war criminals that were (are) responsible for vast death and destruction in Iraq? There is nothing banal, dedicated or even competent about either dick cheney or donald rumsfeld (the memory hole has claimed the former's role in the 1991 war). McNamara did what he perceived as necessary to protect his country from the existential threat of world communism, the contemporaries may claim that islamic fundamentalism is equally threatening but there is no way they can actually believe it. In fact, the irresponsible and callous actions of the bush administration may in time lead to America's collapse.

That is a story for another day however, the passing of Robert McNamara harkens back to a day when the US actually took aggression seriously, instead of simply manufacturing a threat to destroy for fun and profit. I imagine McNamara would view the outsourcing of military functions, rebuilding efforts and all of the completely insane moves of the bush criminals for what they are. It really goes without saying how far we have fallen.