The Slow Rolling Crisis of Legitimacy

Barack Obama was recently quoted in regard to what he termed the "slow-rolling crisis" of unarmed people of color being murdered by police in the United States.  He did not, however, use the word "murder."  While he he expressed his nuanced concerns over "too many instances of what appears to be police officers interacting with individuals, primarily African-American, often poor, in ways that raise troubling questions," he was very quick to unequivocally condemn the increasingly violent reactions to the ongoing police killings of unarmed African-Americans. 

The trouble with all of this is that the "troubling questions" mentioned by Obama have equally troubling, yet perfectly obvious answers.  The problem with mainstream America is that many Americans are engaging in a game of dodge 'em with the truth.  The dodges fall into one of two categories.  The first category consists of closing one's eyes, plugging one's ears, and singing "La, la, la" as loudly as possible whenever anyone suggests that the United States is an inequitable society founded on murderous white supremacy, and that oppression and unjust treatment are alive and well today.  The "La, la, la's" become especially loud whenever the U.S. is about to attack, destabilize, bomb or otherwise harass a country whose overthrow might provide some economic benefit to the plutocrats who run things here.

The other dodge category consists of excusing the inhumane treatment of minorities by exaggerating their criminality or lying about the circumstances of their deaths.  This kind of lying was fairly obvious in the case of Michael Brown.  But there are even more egregious examples of lying, including some which predate Brown's murder.  For instance, there is the case of a Hispanic teen in North Carolina in 2013, who supposedly shot himself in the head with a hidden pistol while handcuffed in the back of a North Carolina police cruiser.  (A neat trick, that!  Better than Houdini!)  A more recent example of creative fiction is attempt by certain voices to downplay the impact of organized police violence against the Black American community by saying that the problem of "Black on Black crime" is far worse.  Such people quote former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's claim that 93 percent of Black murders are committed by Black perpetrators, and that this statistic proves that we are indeed a dangerous, criminal race.  However, actual statistics paint a far different picture.  See this, this, this, this, and this for example.  And be sure to read the linked articles in their entirety - unless you'd rather sing "La, la, la" as loudly as you can with your fingers in your ears.

Both dodges are scale-free characteristics of narcissistic abuse.  For instance, you can see the same wilful ignorance of trauma inflicted, or self-justification of trauma inflicted, on the part of domestic abusers.

Back to Obama.  He is in an interesting bind, having been supported in 2008 by a broad spectrum of people who saw the ruinous direction the U.S. had taken under his predecessor.  Instead of fulfilled "hopes" for "change", what we got was a genial apologist for the continuation of those same policies.  In 2009, blogger Dmitry Orlov compared Obama to Gorbachev, saying of him that he is"...the smiling face behind the crumbling imperial façade, the personable, non-threatening loser."  To the Black American community, Obama's mission was to be a pacifying, genial token.  But reality had a way of rendering his tokenism ineffectual.  (By the way, Obama's disease is characteristic of the entire Democratic Party.)  Had he been an honest man being "held hostage" as many of us believed during his first term, he could at least have been honest enough to refuse to run for re-election.  But now many even in the Black community no longer care what Obama says; he's become irrelevant.

And so we come to a few further comparisons between the Gorbachev of the end of the Soviet Union and the Obama of today.  As the senile apparatchiks of the Soviet Union staged a putsch to restore themselves and their empire to its former glory, so senile redneck rich people in this country have hijacked the political process in a bid to restore their supremacy to its former glory.  Ultimately they will fail, but not before they seize every opportunity to make a mess that someone will have to clean up afterward.  Slow-rolling crises have a way of boiling over.

As for me, I seek as much as possible to be a pacifist.  (These are my Boss's orders.  Matthew 5:38-41.)  But if I can in any way help the current American system to survive and thrive, that help is henceforth withdrawn.  And I will seek to disconnect from that system as much as possible.  Both it and its owners are illegitimate.

Self-Healing in a Traumatizing Society

A boy is born in hard time Mississippi,
Surrounded by four walls that ain't so pretty
His parents give him love and affection
To keep him strong, moving in the right direction,
Living just enough, just enough for the city...

– “Living for the City,” Stevie Wonder 

In the building where I work, there is a very nice lunch room, in which there are a number of magazines for people to read at lunch or on breaks. In the late spring of last year, someone left a magazine containing an article about the treatment of trauma and mental illness in the developing world. (When I first started working there, most of the magazines tended to be on the geeky side, although someone later started bringing in clothing fashion magazines and copies of Better Homes and Gardens.)

I read the mental health article with some interest. It described the prevalence of psychological trauma caused by organized violence such as war, as well as the trauma caused by sexual exploitation. (It may have also mentioned human trafficking, but I can't remember.) It also described how health-oriented NGO's were becoming involved in the training of primary health care workers in poorer countries in order to equip them to heal psychological trauma caused by organized violence. The focus of the training is the use of relationships of support and communities of support to help survivors heal. Medications are not the primary mode of the treatments studied, largely because the medications are expensive and therefore mostly unaffordable. However, the relational methods boast a high rate of success in helping survivors manage and heal from trauma. (One of the sidebars to this article described the decline of “talk” therapies and the rising use of medication in the treatment of mental illness in the West, especially in the United States.)

At the time I read the article, I didn't realize how appropriate its information would be for dealing with the events of the last several months. Both the article and the magazine which carried it were thrown away at some point, to be replaced by a clothing fashion magazine. Over the last few months I have tried without success to find an online version of that article. If anyone who reads this blog knows of the magazine, the article, or the authors of the article, please feel free to send me a comment.

In my research, however, I have found a wealth of other material on the subject of managing and healing the trauma caused by organized violence. Almost all of the material was written by researchers and health care workers dealing with traumatized populations in the developing world. But even the most cursory look at events in the U.S. over the last several months reveals that there are plenty of people being traumatized right here by the wealthy, the powerful and the privileged in this country and by their minions. Think of the many unarmed Black men and women who have recently been shot to death by white police in this country – think also of the bereaved families of these victims – and you will have some idea of the trauma being caused by organized violence against the powerless here in the United States. Think especially of the shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12 year old boy in Cleveland, Ohio, last year. Or think of the shooting of John Crawford in a Wal-Mart in Beavercreek, Ohio, as he was buying a toy for his children. One media source reveals that police in the United States killed more people last month than any other nation killed in 2014. That includes China, a country four times as populous as the U.S., a country which, according to Western media, is supposed to be both godless and evil, yet whose police killed far fewer of their own citizens in 2014 than American police did this last March. (See also this and this and this.)

Consider also that the purveyors of trauma have for a long time been expanding their efforts beyond groups traditionally considered to be scapegoats in this country. For instance, there's Governor Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), who recently signed into law a bill that will allow anyone in Kansas to carry a concealed weapon without a background check and without training. This is yet another victory for American gun manufacturers and purveyors of the American myth of rugged individualism and the license to kill in the defense of white American “liberty.” Kansas is the sixth state to enact such a law. I am sure more states will follow. Now all the Constitutional “sovereign citizens” who worship the Second Amendment can traumatize each other, as I'm sure they will, after reading a recent study which links gun ownership to uncontrollable anger. (There are also many studies which irrefutably link gun ownership with domestic violence.)  In many other ways, the wealthy of our country – and the politicians they own, especially the Republicans – are trying to give us all a case of PTSD, as one blogger recently noted.

If you're poor, nonwhite, or both, and you live in the United States of America, it is therefore quite likely that you will have to deal with the trauma caused by organized violence at some time within the next few years. It therefore also necessary to learn how to recognize the effects of trauma, and how to manage and recover from trauma. I have written before about the narcissistic motivations of those who are causing the trauma. (Yes, yes, racism and oppression are expressions of narcissism.) What is the goal of those who abuse their fellow human beings, and how does that message affect the targets of abuse?

The goal of the abuser is to magnify his own grandiosity by invalidating and destroying his target. The height of success for an abuser is therefore to get his victim to internalize the abuser's message – for the victim to come to believe that he or she is worthless, that he or she is worthy of the treatment perpetrated by the abuser, that the treatment received is the victim's fault, to get the victim to endlessly ask, “What did I do to bring this on myself?” Indeed, one of the things that makes the abuse so traumatizing is its unpredictability, and the resulting powerlessness of the victim in avoiding the abuse or managing encounters with the abuser. This is why self-rejection and self-harming behaviors are the pervasive effects of the trauma caused by organized violence. The self-harming behaviors then serve to reinforce the message implanted in the victim that the victim is worthless and deserving of the abuse inflicted by the abuser. (See this, this, and this for a discussion of self-rejection in victims of gender violence. See this for a discussion of self-rejection as one of the outcomes of colonialism, and this for a discussion of self-rejection in victims of racism.)

What then is the key to managing and healing from the trauma inflicted by organized violence? This question has been explored by a number of mental health professionals, among whom is Dr. Richard Mollica, author of Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World. In a presentation given in 2011, Dr. Mollica described the importance of the trauma story in the healing of trauma victims, as well as the creation of a safe space for trauma victims to share their trauma stories. In his words, “Dialogue and empathetic listening between survivor and therapist maximizes the benefits of emotional disclosure.” He also described how to facilitate and encourage the natural process of self-healing of emotional wounds inflicted by severe violence. In that same presentation Beth Filson, a certified peer specialist, described the benefit of relationships of support which can arise within a community of survivors, and the need to foster those relationships. One of the keys to activating the self-healing response in trauma survivors is survivor involvement in projects or teams performing altruistic service for others who are also disadvantaged or who have suffered trauma.

A good example of a healing community of survivors engaged in altruistic service is Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois. This is the church which was pastored by the good Reverend Jeremiah Wright for a number of years. This church has a strong Biblical commitment to social justice and the healing of those who have been broken by the injustice of the United States of America. In their statement of the Black Value System, they address many of the same elements of self-healing discussed by Dr. Richard Mollica. The statements in the Black Value system also address the legacy of self-harm produced in the Black community because of the oppressions of a dominant, exploitative society that is hostile to anyone who is different from its members.

We need to form many such communities of healing. The communities need not be large or highly visible, yet they should be deep, rich and full of mutual support. We will need to learn all the healing techniques at our disposal as the United States becomes an increasingly traumatizing place to live. One of the chief goals of our healing must be the recovery of our human ability to observe, orient, decide and act wisely in the midst of a hostile space.  And we cannot wait for someone else to do this recovery for us. We are the ones we have been waiting for, as a writer said a while back. The tools are at our disposal. Let's get to work.

For more information, please read:

“Bringing Order Out of Chaos: A Culturally Competent Approach to Managing the Problems of Refugees and Victims of Organized Violence,” Eisenbruch, et al., 2004

“The ISTSS/RAND Guidelines on Mental Health Training of Primary Healthcare Providers for Trauma-Exposed Populations in Conflict-Affected Countries,” Eisenman, et al., 2005

“War Exposure, Daily Stressors, and Mental Health in Conflict and Post-Conflict Settings: Bridging the Divide Between Trauma-Focused and Psychosocial Frameworks,” Miller and Rasmussen, 2010

“The Impact of War and Atrocity on Civilian Populations: Basic Principles for NGO Interventions and a Critique of Psychosocial Trauma Projects,” Summerfield, 1996

"Invisible Wounds: A Practitioners' Dialogue on Improving Development Outcomes Through Psychosocial Support," World Bank, 2014

Not Someone Else's Bonsai

The attitudes of a culture toward the people it touches are seen in the impact that culture has on the people and things it touches. Sometimes a culture can turn those it touches into works of art. Sometimes a culture succeeds only in turning everything it touches into garbage. Not infrequently, the culture in question can become confused as to which category its works belong to, and as to whether or not its modifications of the “wild” are actually an improvement.

Consider the practice of bonsai, an Asian art which is over 1,400 years old. The word bonsai is a Japanese modification of the Chinese word penzai. Both words can be rendered as “tray plantings” and penzai is related to penjing, which literally means “tray scenery.”  The object of bonsai is to recreate a large-scale, wild landscape in miniature, using the same living elements which comprise the large landscape, yet at a scale which can be as intimate as a tray in the living room of a house. The living elements of bonsai are trees such as fir, maple, alder and elm – trees which in the wild grow to many times the height of a man. Yet the bonsai sculptor trains these trees from the seedling stage – using wires, bands, pruning and other techniques – to shape the tree into a living sculpture which is usually no taller than a man when mature, and which often grows to less than half as tall.

Imagine for a minute that you are a child in a locale where a large population must inhabit a limited living space. Now suppose that this population comprises a culture which loves greenery and cultivation of living things, yet which is forced to adapt its love of cultivation to limited spaces. Thus they become practitioners of bonsai. Throughout your youth, therefore, the only landscapes you see are miniature, planned down to the centimeter, carefully crafted. Then a day comes when you must travel to another place far away, and you must pass through a wild forest – full of maple, fir, alder, and elm trees, big and tall. Would the sight make you uncomfortable? Would you say, “A tree that is left growing in its natural state is a crude thing...”? 

I mention bonsai, not as a criticism of the art form, nor of Asian culture (for which I have the highest respect), but to use bonsai as a metaphor.

Each of us is a sculptor of others at some point in our lives. But how the sculpture turns out is often highly dependent on the intent of the sculptor. If the sculptor complains that his finished sculpture looks like garbage, maybe we should look at the motives of the sculptor rather than blaming the material which has been sculpted. When sculpting human beings, what material do we start with?

Here I look to the Good Book for answers. Acts 17:26 says that “[God] made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth...” That is, according to biblical Christianity, every one of us has the same origin. Therefore, every one of us is fully human. There is only one race within the human race, and that is the human race. We have the same basic genetic makeup, and therefore the same basic potential. This assertion is backed by science, which has determined that the concept of individual “races” within the human race has no factual validity. In other words, the human race has no subspecies.  The abundant proof of this is seen in such things as the success of “colorblind” organ transplants and blood transfusions.  It is also seen in the similarity of outcomes in those children across all “racial” and ethnic classifications who are exposed to the same “sculpting” process – also known as nurture.

That nurture has been scientifically examined in recent years, and the relative weight of nurture versus nature in producing specific outcomes has been examined as well. In 1993, a team of cognitive psychologists led by K. Anders Ericsson published a paper titled, “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.”  That paper asserted that innate talent is vastly overrated in the making of an expert in a particular field of endeavor. Rather, the key to the making of an expert is regular, consistent, “deliberate” practice. (Ericsson's definition of “deliberate” is itself deliberate.)

This research turned out to be rather controversial, and it deeply offended a number of people who had come to believe that they and their offspring are innately “all that and a bag of chips.” But there are several examples, both historical and modern, which justify Ericsson's assertions. One example cited in Ericsson's paper is that of Laszlo and Klara Polgar, a Hungarian couple who set out to train their three daughters to become chess masters. As a result, two of them became the best and second best women chess players in the world, and the third is ranked sixth in the world. Ericsson's research is also confirmed by the documented experiences of Shinichi Suzuki, originator of the Suzuki method of music instruction.

The focus of Ericsson and his colleagues, as well as Suzuki, was the outcome of healthy nurturing by mentors with good intentions. But mentors with evil intentions can be just as effective in producing the outcomes they want to see in their protégées. This is why adult children of alcoholics (ACOA's) and adult children of narcissists (ACON's) suffer such damage. Benevolent mentors lovingly encourage those in their care to develop their full potential, but personality-disordered and evil mentors seek to destroy those in their care – through constant put-downs, negativity, and active sabotage.

And when a society is itself narcissistic and dysfunctional, it destructively mentors those populations within it who are targeted as scapegoats. This was the motivation for laws in the antebellum South which made it illegal to teach African slaves to read and write. (See this and this.)  This was the motivation for segregated schools in the American South, and schools in the North which were de facto weapons of mass destruction.  This was the motivation for the first counterattacks against the minority education victories won during the civil rights struggles of the 1960's.  This is the motivation for the continued disparity in expectations, discipline and outcomes between white and minority children in American mass education, whether public or private. This is also seen in the portrayals of minority culture which are deemed to be acceptable to mainstream media (see this and this), media whose owners tend to look for the most dysfunctional elements of minority culture (especially Black American culture) in order to make sweeping generalizations about an entire people from one small element of what is after all a heterogeneous culture. Then they endlessly rebroadcast this elements to a defenseless and clueless public, saying thus that “THIS is what minorities are, and THIS is all they will ever be.” And they turn around and attempt to use the school system again as a weapon of mass destruction as the Oakland school district tried to do in the 1990's when it tried to force all Black children to be taught in the language of “Ebonics.”  One of the crowning successes of American mass media has been its ability to convince broad American society that Black Americans constitute a “criminal race” even though the facts contradict this. (See this and this for instance. Did you know that there are studies which indicate that actual rates of drug use among Black American youth are far lower than among White American youth, and that there is a higher percentage of White youth selling drugs than Black youth?)

The experience of minorities of color therefore continues to be similar to that of trees “sculpted” with fire, chain saws, battery acid and Roundup by a sadistic bonsai gardener who likes bare dirt better than soil “contaminated” by living matter. Yet seedlings manage to escape and turn into something much healthier than their sculptors planned. Some examples of plants which turned out differently than their sculptors intended include Junot Diaz, a writer from the Dominican Republic who made a name for himself by publishing gritty stories about life in inner-city ghettos in the American Northeast. Now he is working on a passion which for a long time was secret, namely, his desire to become an author of science fiction.  There is also Lloyd Ferguson, PhD, an emeritus electrical engineering professor who is also part of the Affordable Learning Initiative at Cal Poly Pomona. For many years Dr. Ferguson taught electromagnetics using a textbook written by another notable Black academic, namely Dr. Matthew N.O. Sadiku.  And there is veteran astronaut Robert Curbeam, and Vladymir Lamadieu, an information technology professional with a law degree who is also a good guitarist.  And there is Candace Makeda Moore, a Black American doctor now practicing medicine in South Africa.  I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of other female Black academics, professionals, or intellectuals, nor the vast number of Hispanics in the United States who are turning out differently than the masters of our predatory society had hoped. These all turned out as they did because they were not sculpted by American culture, or they learned to sculpt themselves in spite of American culture. In daring to be different, they risked the wrath of those who would accuse them of not “keepin' it real.” Not a few of the accusers are white!

Although high achievers in a scapegoated group can arise even in the midst of a culture which seeks to destroy them, the fact is that the scapegoating is almost always damaging. Dysfunction almost always results in the targeted group. This is seen across cultures and in many nations. The example of the Burakumin of Japan is illustrative, showing that the sort of dysfunction which arises from cultural scapegoating is very similar to that experienced by many members of the Black American population. It is also the same sort of dysfunction produced in Irish and Welsh populations by British occupiers from the 1700's to the early 20th century.

What scapegoated groups must therefore do is to disconnect from their abusers as much as is humanly possible. You're not somebody else's bonsai. Stop letting abusers treat you as if you were their plant to be ruined by them. There is also a need to heal the damage done by sadistic sculpting. And those who have been damaged will have to take charge of their own healing. That will be the topic of my next post.

Homeschooling As An Exit Strategy

 Here's a repost of an essay I wrote back in 2010.  It's just as relevant today, in my opinion.  The educational choices described therein are now being adopted by families belonging to other ethnic minorities, as reported here, here, and here.  In the near future, I hope to begin a series of posts about reaching the poor in our communities.  As I wrote in "A Clinic at the Meeting Place of Nations," the American urban poor now come from a great diversity of backgrounds, including those who through various circumstances are now finding themselves disenfranchised from former places of privilege.  Many of the poor, regardless of background, are running wounded.  Whoever wants to help these people in the project of soul repair and culture repair wants to do something truly worthwhile.  The project of culture repair does not, however, begin by lashing out at these people and calling them "overfed clowns," etc.  You won't get anywhere with that approach.  For those of us who have been targeted by privileged pontificators who blame our wounded-ness on us rather than on those who did the wounding, this repost can serve as a can of gadfly-repellent. 

August 2023 - One other thing: this post originally contained favorable references to Russia and to Dmitry Orlov.  However, the interference of Russia in the 2016 U.S. elections combined with Russian interference in other nations' internal affairs (including the invasion of Ukraine) have shown Russia to be a toxic regime headed by a thieving little man in a bunker and have shown Dmitry Orlov to be one of Putin's flying monkeys.  Therefore the favorable references to Russia have been stricken out.

In my posts, “The Polyculture of Resilient Neighborhoods,” and “My (Somewhat) Walkable, (Somewhat) Russian Neighborhood,”I described people, families and communities whose choices have positioned them for maximum survivability in this present time of resource depletion and economic collapse. I described the cultural motivations for the choices these people have made. In today's post, I'd like to describe a segment of the native-born U.S. population, and how many of its members are finding a way of escape from a culture deliberately designed to destroy them.

Upon liberation from de facto slavery, the Black American population found that there was still a strong campaign throughout the broader society to keep us weak and subjugated. One of the tools of that campaign was the creation of “separate but equal” schooling. History abundantly shows how unequal that separate education actually was. (See “Brown versus Board of Education” from the Brown Foundation website and “Early Civil Rights Struggles: Brown v. Board of Education” from African American History.)

This unequal, sociopathically administered child education supposedly ended with the 1954 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Brown vs. Board of Education case. What really happened, however, is that where schools were forced to integrate, these schools were turned into a weapon against minority children. Jonathan Kozol, a well-known school teacher, activist and author, described how this process worked out in his 1967 book, Death At An Early Age. (You can read excerpts here and here.) I believe the process really kicked into high gear from the presidency of Ronald Reagan onward. Mr. Kozol documents this ongoing process in later books such as Savage Inequalities: Children In America's Schools and The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, which was published in 2005.

The transformation of the nation's public school system into a weapon of mass destruction against minorities (especially black boys) has led to an environment in which minority children are negatively labeled, treated to disproportionately harsh discipline, ignored by incompetent teachers and administrators who refuse to push their students or expect anything of them, and who instead tell their students that they will never amount to anything. Consider the following fact: Black American boys are far likelier to be targeted by teachers for special education classes, medication or expulsion than non-minority boys who display similar behavior. In the United States, special education was a $60 billion industry in 2009. (Additional sources: “Institutional Practices and the African American Boy,” “Lorraine Forte: Suspensions in Chicago Schools Target Black Boys,” and “A national trend: Black and Latino boys predominate in emotional support classes.”) Entrance into college is becoming increasingly difficult for those Black youth who go through the public school system: more and more high school guidance counselors are deliberately trying to steer minority youth away from college, either by giving bogus advice or by withholding information about options for college entrance and tuition support. (Sources: “More Than Gatekeepers,” “Study finds segregation in universities.”)

The hostile degeneracy of the public school system is one factor that has helped to foster a dysfunctional culture in minority communities. But a growing segment of the Black American population is finding a way of escape – via homeschooling.

Homeschooling is a phenomenon that is sweeping up an increasing number of Americans of every cultural background. In 2009, there were about 2 million home-educated students in the United States, and the homeschool population is continuing to grow at an estimated rate of 5 to 12 percent per year, according to this study. Another source suggests that the actual rate of growth may be fifteen percent per year.

About fifteen percent of these homeschooled students are nonwhite. The fastest growing segment of home-schoolers are from the African-American population. These homeschooling families cite many reasons, both religious and secular, for their choice; yet a recurrent theme is the recognition that the public school system is a predator that is deliberately trying to destroy their children. Consider these stories:

A 2009 survey of 24 African-American homeschooling families found that nineteen of these families cited discrimination in their public schools as a prime motivation for choosing to homeschool.

A 2005 article in USA Today describes choices two young Black families made to homeschool their children after experiencing disappointment with the public school system.

In an article titled, “On Being an African American Homeschooler,” the author states that “Our people fought and many died for the right to be educated alongside everyone else, in integrated schools. It is an insult to turn your back on it. As far as I can see, however, what we fought for no longer exists.”

Homeschooling is not nearly the exclusive province of the rich; according to a recent USA Today article, around 40 percent of homeschool families earned less than $50,000 per year in 2009. (But for a rather different take on the data behind the USA Today article, read this.) In 1996, the number was over 60 percent. According to blogger Valerie Delp, “The school system spends on average $5,700 per pupil while the average homeschooing family spends only around $600 per pupil. Despite the monetary gap...homeschooled students outperform their public school counterparts significantly.”The desire to homeschool among economically challenged and single parent heads of households is also leading to innovative solutions. In fact, the Black community is producing many centers of excellence and repositories of best practices for homeschooling. Thus a new, valuable, homegrown culture – of dignity, self-respect and, above all, competence – is emerging in at least one minority population.

The abandonment of the public education system by many members of the Black community has led to attempts by some in the school system to persuade us to “hang in there and try to reform the system” for which we all fought so hard to gain access. (I wonder if some of this attempted persuasion is motivated by the fact that school districts lose money when they lose students?) Also, many public school districts, threatened with a loss of funding due to the withdrawal of students, are now trying to woo these students back with “magnet” schools and virtual “charter schools” whose curriculum is provided and administered by private, for-profit corporations.

But attempts to woo or badger Black homeschoolers back into the public school fold are falling on increasingly deaf ears. Black American parents are increasingly unwilling to force their children to suffer the onslaught of a broken educational system while pleading with the system to reform itself. I am reminded of something I heard during a recent C-Realm Podcast interview of Dmitry Orlov, author of the book Reinventing Collapse. Among the things he said concerning the American criminal justice system was this:

“I think that people who think there's something to be gained by writing more laws or changing laws or anything like that are basically helping legitimize a system that shouldn't have any legitimacy at this point. There are a lot of examples, but it's sort of like, if you rape a girl a few times and then ask for her hand in marriage, should you get it? Is that a good thing to do? So this is what you have to look at as the system slowly unwinds – should we really shore it up? Should we forgive it? Should we approach it with an outstretched hand, saying, 'Oh – you can be better...we can reform you' as opposed to 'Let's watch you die'?...If you look at what the criminal justice [system] in this country has done, it has committed a series of crimes for which no apology would be acceptable.”

On every hand there are signs that the system is indeed dying, due to the ongoing economic collapse of the United States, as the notional “wealth” of many sons and daughters of privilege evaporates and the best public schools suddenly discover that they are underfunded. (For examples, see “School Budget Cuts: No End In Sight,” “Survey: School budget cuts even worse next year,” “School budget cuts threaten gains,” and “ACLU suit: 6 OC school districts charge illegal fees” – an article describing the travails of some unfortunate formerly trendy schools in formerly affluent Orange County, California.) A deflationary depression can become a great equalizer.

The system is dying even as it has begun to destroy its own sons and daughters of privilege. How many uneducated, incompetent graduates of high school “advanced placement” and “honors” programs are there? (See “Most High School Kids Cheat -- and Don't Think There's Anything Wrong With That,” “Academic cheating, aided by cellphones or Web, shown to be common,” “75% of High School Students Cheat Their Way into College,” and “"Graduating" from Graduating From College.”)

Yes, the system is dying. As it dies and leaves a vacuum in its wake, that vacuum can be filled by a network of home educators, armed with adequate resources, sharing best practices. Homeschool networks can contribute to the rise of resilient neighborhoods, and the reversal of negative culture in neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, we must be on our guard against continued dysfunctional moves on the part of the system in its continued attempts to destroy those who are escaping from the system.

For More Information, Please See The Following:

• “I Can't Homeschool Because...”, a YouTube video by a homeschooling mom who seeks to dispel the fears of people new to homeschooling.

• “One main step to take before homeschooling,” “Homeschooling on a Budget and Outside of the Box,” “Organize Your Homeschool Part 1,” and “Black Home Schoolers: Fresh ideas in homeschooling.” These are but a sample of the many YouTube videos now being made and disseminated by African-American homeschoolers eager to share advice and best practices.

• “Black Homeschooling on the Rise”, “Homeschool Diversity,” “Beyond Statistics: A Real Look At Black Homeschoolers,” and “The Home School Court Report: The New Pioneers – Black Home Schoolers.” These articles track the early stages of the explosion of interest in homeschooling in the Black community.

• “Homeschooling Basics: How You Can Teach Your Child At Home,” a short piece of advice for those considering homeschooling.

What "Boycott" Means To Me

Sometimes it's very easy to start a fire, and sometimes it's very hard.  It can also be hard to channel fire to useful purposes, and sometimes it's hard to know whether your efforts to do so are succeeding.

The #blackoutblackfriday boycott, however, seems to have lit a fire, and it seems to be succeeding.  To me, one evidence of success is the fact that retail sales on Black Friday this year were down 11 percent from last year.  The explanations offered by the pundits for this drop all omit the economic boycott of major retailers by Black Americans who are tired of being harassed by people in this country who want to turn the clock back on human rights.  Because the pundits don't take this into account, their explanations sound rather lame.

Now it seems that my call to extend the boycott through the entire holiday season is catching fire.  A number of other websites are echoing the call.  However, I think some folks may be confused over the meaning of the word "boycott."  I think of one site which urges its followers to do the following:

"Purchase ONLY necessities during the holiday buying season.  "Necessities" include:

• Day-to-day items needed for grooming and hygiene
• Gasoline
• Food that can be cooked or prepped at home
• Electronic devices vital to businesses and personal communication.

 "Boycott the purchase of non-essential, high price retail items.  These include: ...Entertainment, unless the entertainment has to do with justice (e.g. - has a social commentary as its subject matter.  Hunger Games, yes.  Horrible Bosses 2, no."

 I say "Amen" to limiting purchases solely to "necessities."  But what is "necessary"?  Personal grooming items like soap and toothpaste, yes.  Gasoline, yes.  Food that can be prepared at home (raw meat, uncooked beans, rice, vegetables, etc.), yes.  But electronic devices??  Let's see...to the owner of the aforementioned site, do you see the potential for watering down your proposed "boycott"? 

And what about entertainment?  Of course, we should not consume "light" entertainment this season.  But what could possibly be wrong with Hunger Games - except that the story told in Hunger Games is already being played out in real life in the Greatest Country On Earth, and we don't need a movie to get the point.  That, and one very significant difference between the book and the movie.  (For another example of the same thing, see this.)  And what about the Book of Exodus?  It contains a great deal of social commentary, but why should I support the Hollywood dream-maker machine by watching that movie?  Just about every drama in the theater nowadays can claim to "have social commentary as its subject matter."  Yet they all share the same characteristic: they continue to portray one group of people, and one group only, as genuinely human, while all the other peoples of the earth are either ignored or caricatured.  To go to the movies at all right now is to continue to support Hollywood in its efforts to provide the privileged members of a dysfunctional nation with narcissistic supply for a little while longer.

Meanwhile, in real life, Syrians are being bombed for the "crime" of simply wanting to exist as a people separate from the control of the United States.  This is the same "crime" that was committed by the Iraqis, the Libyans, the Afghans, the people of Ukraine, the people of Vietnam, the Native Americans, and others too numerous to mention.  And in the United States, people of color are still being targeted and framed by police for crimes they did not commit.  "Conscious consumerism" won't stop these things from happening.  The only thing that will is to starve the beast.  I don't feel like watching a movie.  I'm not spending any money for the holidays.  Not one dime!

Blackout the Year End

Here's a condensed and simple version of yesterday's post:

In memory of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager who was shot to death by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and in honor of all the other people of color who were shot to death without cause by police in 2014, please do the following:

1. Pray for the United States of America, that God would chasten and correct this country for its murder.
2. Please don't buy anything other than food this holiday season.  Please also avoid all movies and other paid entertainment.
3. Spread the word!

Thank you.

A Holiday Season Boycott

In his book, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis stated that it is impossible to remedy the fact that one is going in the wrong direction by continuing in the same direction. Repentance consists of turning around and retracing one's steps in order to travel in the right direction.

The United States, a nation founded on oppression and bloodshed from its very beginnings, finally began to come to its senses during the 1960's and 1970's, as a result of massive protests against violations of the civil rights of its oppressed classes, both at home and abroad. But almost from the moment the ink began to dry on the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960's, the holders of concentrated economic and political power and privilege in this country began plotting to tear apart the civil rights gains that were achieved. They began plotting to reverse the U-turn which American society had begun to make. They began plotting during a time of plenty for the nation as a whole, a high point of resource availability and economic power, thus giving the lie to the notion that societies become fascist and oppressive only during times of leanness and economic contraction. They plotted thus and have continued to plot and to act on their plots over a period of more than five decades, thus showing the pathology of their plotting minds.

This week it looks like these plotters have won – among whom are Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney, the Bush family, Rupert Murdoch, Charles and David Koch, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Rudy Giuliani, Charles Butt (son of Howard E. Butt, the owner of a large supermarket chain) and a whole host of fellow-traveler multimillionaires and billionaires. And the Republican Party is a revived, rampaging beast, seeking to dominate the world in the name of a hypocrisy masquerading as a theocracy. But all hope is not lost. In a post I made last week, my last prediction regarding events in Ferguson, Missouri is that I expected many disenfranchised people in this country to become quite creative in the art of passive rebellion.

And that is just what is happening. Many, not only African-Americans but others as well, sick to death of being oppressed by narcissistic, sociopathic supremacists, have decided to strike back in a way that is both non-violent and perfectly street-legal. Today, many of us are celebrating Blackout Black Friday, a day in which we are boycotting all the sales at retail outlets trying to move commercial trash. Many of us have pledged that we will not spend one dime today. (Disclosure: I am at Starbucks typing this. But that's because over two years ago, I swore off paid Internet service. Once I'm done here, I'm done spending money.)

I hope Blackout Black Friday is a roaring success. However, I think we should extend our boycott to the entire holiday season. And here's what I mean. I know we all need groceries. But let's swear off buying anything other that what is needed for everyday life. Let's forgo buying toys of any kind, whether toys for kids or toys for grown-ups. If your TV breaks between now and New Years, take it as a sign that you should give up watching TV. If your computer breaks between now and New Years, find a used computer or borrow someone else's. If the phone you have now still makes phone calls, don't upgrade it. Trust me, you don't need more consumer electronics. Let those who still drink the Kool-Aid of supremacy take on the burden of trying to save this shopping season. Let's see what happens when they max out their credit cards.

If such a boycott really takes off, expect whining multimillionaires to dominate the airwaves complaining about how we're “hurting the economy” and “depriving people of holiday celebrations.” I have an answer for that also. If you still feel the need to give gifts to people this season, then give food to the hungry. Extend hospitality to the widows, the orphans and the strangers – especially the dark-skinned strangers from foreign countries who have come here because economic and military policies of the United States jacked up their former homelands. A hot meal is always in season.

In short, let's have a holiday season devoid of materialism. For those who are Christians, let us return to a pure celebration of the birth of Christ, and let us remember His concern for the oppressed, laid out in Matthew 25:31-46. For those who are Jewish, remember the God who commands His people to care for the orphan, the widow and the stranger; and remember that God is not a “respecter of persons.” For those who are not religious, remember that you are connected to your fellow man, and that “an injustice against one is an injustice against all.” Take time this season to reconnect with your fellow human beings.

A good place to boycott is Wal-Mart, where John Crawford was shot to death by police in Ohio in August for buying a toy pellet gun for his children. Some good toys to boycott include pellet guns from any and all manufacturers because of the shooting of 12 year old Tamir Rice by Cleveland police while he was playing with a pellet gun in a public park. (Here is a list of more shootings that have taken place since Michael Brown was shot to death.) A good company to boycott is Emerson Electric, which is headquartered in Ferguson, Missouri, and which manufactures appliances and tools under the ClosetMaid, InSinkErator, Metro, ProTeam, RIDGID, and WORKSHOP brands. Some good entertainment to boycott includes all sports events (including all bowl games), all celebrity shows, all movies, and any other entertainment designed to distract us from the horrible injustice we are seeing in the “greatest nation on earth.”

One other thing.  We now know that the picture circulated on conservative media of police officer Darren Wilson sustaining injuries from his encounter with Michael Brown was a fake.  (See http://www.snopes.com/info/news/wilson.asp)

Michael Brown as a Rorschach Test

Well, it looks like my powers of prediction regarding Michael Brown were pretty good so far. (This doesn't make me very happy.) Then again, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how things would go. But what has been interesting to me (in an unpleasant way) is the discussions of the verdict and its aftermath, both on-line and in person, in which I have been involved this week.

First, there is a widely spread rumor that has been accepted as Gospel truth, that Michael Brown was stopped by Darren Wilson after robbing a convenience store. For those who believe this, allow me to point out the following facts:

1. Michael Brown was not stopped by Officer Wilson for being a suspect in a convenience store robbery. At the time Brown was stopped, Wilson did not know of the alleged robbery of the convenience store which Brown is accused of robbing. (Source: http://www.ksdk.com/story/news/local/2014/08/15/ferguson-chief-officer-didnt-know-about-robbery/14124259/)
2. The video which purports to show Brown robbing the store is of such poor quality that no faces can be recognized in it. (Source: http://thewellrundry.blogspot.com/2014/08/how-to-digitally-fake-video-or-they.html)
3. The employees of the store allegedly robbed by Brown have admitted that they made no 911 calls regarding a robbery on the day that Brown was shot. (Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/18/1322560/-Ferguson-Store-Owner-Says-NO-ONE-From-His-Store-Called-Cops-To-Report-Cigar-Theft)
4. Michael Brown had no criminal record on the day he was shot. (Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/14/michael-brown-no-record/14041457/)

Lastly, no cigars were found on Michael Brown's body or on the ground next to him after he was shot dead.

But one interesting element in all these facts is that either they have been buried under a flood of right-wing propaganda and scapegoating, or that many people don't want to hear them in the first place. When people only see what they want to see, it's always a sign of an underlying issue of character or personality. So allow me to suggest that Michael Brown has become something of a Rorschach test for the American public. In this, he is like Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, ISIS, and Vietnam, except that what happened to him hits a lot closer to home. If the Rorschach test is supposed to differentiate between sanity and insanity, then the United States has been badly failing over most of its history. And times are coming – in fact, they are already here – in which we'll need all the sane people we can muster, because of the consequences of a failure of sanity among many members of the general public, who continue to believe that we can continue to scapegoat those who are crushed by the cowboy conquistadores of this country in their search for a little more Lebensraum.

The High Cost of Living Room

Many people in the United States are anxiously awaiting the announcement of the grand jury verdict in the case of the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by Ferguson Police officer Darren Wilson. It's interesting that several weeks ago, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder resigned from President Obama's cabinet. And it's also interesting that a number of law enforcement agencies are “preparing for the worst”: to wit, the Department of Homeland Security, the Missouri National Guard, and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, among others.

This leads me to make a prediction. First, I expect the grand jury to refuse to indict Officer Wilson. Secondly, I expect that the authorities, from Missouri Governor Jay Nixon downward, along with President Obama, to have known all along that this is how the verdict would turn out. Third, I do not expect the U.S. Department of Justice to prosecute Officer Wilson or the Ferguson police department. Fourth, I expect protests to result from these things. But while the protests will be largely peaceful, the response of those who hold power will be anything but peaceful. Thus the rest of the world will get to see a fresh display of the hypocrisy United States, which is busy bombing and killing other nations in their quest to bring “democracy” and “human rights” to those nations.

Fifth, I expect a flood of right-wing commentary from the blogosphere, as well as some rather surprisingly right-wing comments from people who brand themselves as “left of center.” The commentary will seek to justify what is in actuality a campaign of oppression and extermination designed to grant a little extra “living room” (in German, Lebensraum) to the largely white ruling classes in the United States at this late hour of their existence. Some of the commentary is likely to come from people who willfully ignore the history of their own forbears who endured the cruelty of nations looking for Lebensraum in the last world war.

Lastly, I expect many disenfranchised people in this country to become quite creative in the art of passive rebellion.

I pray that I may be proved wrong about predictions #1 through #3.

Strung Out On Anodyne

The United States is a selectively forgetful nation, thanks to the mainstream media in this country. We are trained to remember everything that reinforces apple-pie patriotism, while any news that challenges the notion that America is the greatest nation on earth is quickly buried.

So it is that many American media outlets have begun to forget Michael Brown, the unarmed Black teenager who was shot to death by a white cop in the town of Ferguson, Missouri. (Just as we've been made to forget our ongoing problems with mass shootings in this country, and the implications for American society.) I have to confess that I am a bit amazed by the speed with which Mr. Brown's story was replaced with stories about germs on keyboards, a rehash of the last moments of the RMS Titanic, the saga of Michael Sam, and a list of freaky things that happen to ordinary people, such as “8 year old girl saved by adoring pit bull.”

Fortunately, Mr. Brown's story isn't entirely buried. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has issued a condemnation of the shooting of Michael Brown and a call to the United States to eliminate ongoing racism and discrimination in this country. The committee also called attention to the pernicious effect of “stand-your-ground” laws in this country, and the continued inequitable enforcement of the law by police departments which remain largely white. But that's not front-page news today at Aol.com, or the New York Times, or USA Today, and certainly not at the Wall Street Journal, which was eaten a few years ago by Rupert Murdoch, a bigoted rich Australian who applied for US citizenship in the 1980's so that he could consolidate his ownership of American media. And Michael Brown certainly didn't make it onto the cover of People Magazine and other magazines like it, which have indeed at times chosen to publish stories about ordinary Americans caught in extraordinary circumstances. I guess he didn't have the potential star power of Elizabeth Smart.

Forgetfulness can be dangerous. As can be the refusal to think through the implications of a thing. When the town of Ferguson erupted in unrest after the shooting of Michael Brown, the doofus mayor of Ferguson declared that “We don't have a race problem here.” That statement is an example of willful blindness. And as Margaret Heffernan stated in her book titled Willful Blindness, problems that are ignored only become worse. The problem in the United States is that for a very long time, the members of one dominant culture have subjugated, oppressed, exploited and in many cases murdered other peoples both in the United States and abroad, simply on the basis that the skin of those other peoples was not white. The privileged people of the U.S. did so in order to secure all the benefits, both material and psychological, of being at the top of a heap. Such behavior has unintended consequences, even though the consequences may seem to be a long time in coming. Eventually the heap comes down, due in part to the consequences of the actions of the people who built the heap in the first place.

Consider the “Stand Your Ground” laws, the latest outgrowth of the rabid devotion to “2nd Amendment Rights” on the part of many Republicans and white supremacists. A Wikipedia article states that, according to many researchers, the effect of those laws was “...a significant increase in homicide and injury of whites, especially white males.” (Emphasis mine.) Consider also something I wrote in an earlier post, namely, what happens when a large, dominant group scapegoats another smaller and weaker group. Eventually, if the scapegoating is cruel enough, the smaller group is eradicated or removes itself from the scene – but the dysfunction which led to its scapegoating continues to exist within the larger group. There must always be a scapegoat in such groups. Therefore, a fight ensues to see who gets to create a new heap, and who will be at the top of it. The losers get to occupy the place of “poor trash.” Some of the newly-minted trash will be quite surprised at the change of identity bestowed on them by their newly-minted masters. With that change of identity will come the deprivation of civil rights and the denial of due process, along with pervasive, yet subtle discrimination based on the place of one's birth, one's income level or the last names of one's parents. All these things have happened before – even in seemingly homogeneous societies.

But all this assumes that the builders of the heap are allowed to continue sitting at its top. Those who comprise the lower levels of the heap might just decide one day to tear the heap down. That sort of thing has also happened before. A nation can't unrestrainedly exploit its natural resource base without reaching a point of diminishing, then negative returns. Neither can it exploit other peoples without the same thing happening.  So if you're not in a forgetful mood, here's something to think about: first, how, in the midst of diminishing resources, to create a society (or a social circle) in which resources are shared equitably and people are valued equally.

The Grey Town of St. Louis County

If a person wants to read about racist policemen killing Black men or using excessive force against them, there's no shortage of stories this week. New York City has come again into the spotlight, which isn't surprising, given their long history of questionable policing. But for this post, I want to continue to focus on Ferguson, Missouri, and Saint Louis County, where Ferguson is located.

An early indication of the fairness of the “justice” which Michael Brown's family can expect is the refusal by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon to appoint a special prosecutor to replace Robert McCulloch, the St. Louis County district attorney who will likely be prosecuting the case against the officer who shot Mr. Brown to death while he was unarmed. I see no justice coming for Michael Brown or his family from St. Louis County or the Missouri state government.

But a Business Week story that caught my eye a few days ago provoked a few strands of thought. The story concerns the description of the causes of the extreme fragmentation of St. Louis County. Over time, the county has fragmented into 91 municipalities that “range from small to tiny, along with clots of population in unincorporated areas.” Why this fragmentation? First, because the law allowed residents to fragment themselves. Secondly, because of the hellishly selfish motives of the residents, who “set themselves up as municipalities to capture control of tax revenue from local businesses, to avoid paying taxes to support poorer neighbors, or to exclude blacks.” One of the municipalities has only thirteen members – all of whom are white. And according to the Business Week article, the extreme fragmentation of St. Louis County is a key factor holding back economic development in that county.

This description of St. Louis County reminded me of the description of Hell in The Great Divorce, a short novel written by C.S. Lewis in the early 1940's. In the story, Hell was likened to a shabby gray town (or grey, if you prefer the British spelling) that seemed to go on forever, where the time was always evening, and where it was always raining. Why was the town so big? Because all the residents were so selfish and self-centered that within 24 hours of arriving from Earth, a new arrival would have quarreled with his or her neighbors and decided to move on. Because their selfishness was by now incurable, the residents continued to quarrel, and to move farther and farther apart. When the narrator in the story asked whether one could meet any famous people, he was told that they all lived really far apart. He was also told of an expedition undertaken by a few ordinary people to visit Napoleon Bonaparte – a journey which took 20,000 years. In order to locate his house, the expedition had to use a telescope. It seems those who hold power in St. Louis County have turned it into a little bit of Hell, which is ironic considering how many churches there are in the county. Truly “the salt has lost its flavor!” (Matthew 5:13)

But St. Louis County seems also to be a shining example of Dmitry Orlov's Fifth Stage of Collapse, in which “faith in the goodness of humanity is lost.” People lose their capacity for selflessness and concern for others, and become like the Donner Party, except that they don't wait for each other to die before trying to chew on each other. Anglo-American supremacist culture is an organism born already collapsed, with its emphasis on self-reliance, “freedom” from responsibility to anyone but oneself, and unrestrained competition. Even the privileged members of our society cannot rest easy, as their identity depends a great deal on who and how many people they can identify as being beneath them.

And that leads to the third strand in this web of thought, namely, how typical St. Louis County is of a narcissistically disordered family, whose head cannot stand the presence of people different from himself unless they are under his heel as scapegoats and dumping grounds for unresolved anger and insecurity. The thing that many white supremacists in this country don't realize is that even if they succeed in ridding themselves of the “named” scapegoats, that won't be the end of scapegoating, for some of their own number will be selected as the replacements for the old scapegoats. They don't seem to have the imagination to picture what that will be like.

St. Louis County, Missouri. This is the sort of place where Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, was shot to death by a white policeman.

How to Digitally Fake A Video (or, They Only See What They Want To See)

My attention was drawn this week to some rather arrogant and ignorant comments made by a blogger/gadfly/wanna-be pontificator who, it seems, would like to dictate to everyone in the world what their assigned places in the world should be. This particular blogger mentioned the murder of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, by a white policeman in Ferguson, Missouri, and stated that a surveillance camera video had surfaced that showed Mr. Brown allegedly robbing a convenience store shortly before he was shot. Thus, in the mind of this particular blogger, the shooting of Mr. Brown was no crime, but rather the judgment of a righteous society against a Black population that insists on remaining stubbornly dysfunctional.

There are only three problems with this argument. First, it is very easy nowadays to alter digital video – assuming that the original video was authentically made by a convenience store video camera. If you want to know just how easy video can be altered, read this 2007 article from Scientific American. Or you can read this, or this.

Or, you can just watch the video yourself. And that leads to the second problem.  The video sample I have selected is representative of the quality one would expect from typical store surveillance cameras; in other words, you don't use cameras like these to take pictures of the rings of Saturn or to shoot blockbuster movies. You tell me: who can positively identify the faces of anyone in the video? (If you want another version of the video, watch this. See how much clearer the image of the Fox News liar is than the images of any of the people in the alleged robbery video? Also note in the beginning of this clip, that Michael Brown wasn't the only person in the world who liked red hats and white T-shirts.)

The third problem, of course, is that the police let slip the fact that officer Darren Wilson did not know about the alleged robbery when he stopped Michael Brown. Thus Mr. Wilson's act looks increasingly like what I have called it: murder.

A person who has learned how to think would ask the following questions about video evidence: first, what are typical surveillance camera capabilities (i.e., image quality, resolution, low-light performance, etc)? Second, how easy is it for an ordinary person to alter a digital video (and the vast majority of videos nowadays are digital), or to create a fake video from scratch? Third, are there unaltered, untampered 9-1-1 calls from Ferguson, Missouri, describing a convenience store robbery on the day that Michael Brown was shot? Fourth, what motivations would the various players in this drama have for lying? Fifth, what sort of track record does the Ferguson police department have in regard to misconduct? Sixth, how often are unarmed Black men shot in this country?

The answers to all these questions might be deeply upsetting to those who enjoy the rapidly fading vestiges of Anglo-American privilege. But the willingness to ask the questions and to face the answers would separate honest people from dishonest gadflies who hold and voice opinions simply because they like them, regardless of the facts. Again, I am thinking of the blogger I mentioned at the first, who said during the most recent race riots in England that the British had a problem with immigration (and who disregarded the way the British violated and victimized nonwhite residents and citizens), and who said that Haitians were starving because Haiti had a population control problem (without considering how multinational corporations had stolen everything they could steal from that country). How easy it is to blame the victims for the injuries you have inflicted.