Shutdown

Rudy Giuliani blames Barack Obama for the killing of those two NYC cops. (Credit to Lindsey Graham, usually one of the basest and alarmist of the right wing crazies, for mostly staying off the blamewagon.) The police blame their mayor and protesters. Me, I blame right-wing media and self-enamored assholes like Mr Giuliani. So there.

Why? Because they've made it impossible to have a much needed open minded, open hearted honest discussion of race and racism in this country. Anyone who brings it up is "playing the race card." By bringing it up, in unusually thoughtful and even personal ways, President Obama is called "the most divisive president" in history, personally responsible for the racism, which doesn't exist, that exists in this country.

There simply is no way to be rational about it as long as that's the response by the Foxolimbeckibaggers. And rationality on the subject is what we desperately need, in quantities this country is no longer capable of mustering.

I'm sorry the guy who killed those officers killed himself, and I'm sorry there are no longer public hangings for people like him. I think cops do the most dangerous and (sadly) necessary job there is; I'm sure I don't have the guts to have been one. The people who rioted and caused destruction after the grand jury fiascos did their cause no good; nor do those who accuse all cops of racism. And, I have to say, nor does Al Sharpton, more often than not.

But there's no doubt there's racism in this country, and that it includes some cops; and that, whether on the street or within courthouses, justice is meted out unfairly, often, to black people. And other minorities. (We're learning there was raw dishonesty spewed to the grand jury in Ferguson, and the prosecutor knew it and rationalized it away. It's no surprise that the outcomes of that and the Staten Island juries engendered outrage.) The causes and the effects are deeply rooted on both sides, probably too deeply to be solved in the lifetime of anyone now living. But as long as there are craven narcissistic dishonest politicians like Rudy Giuliani, and media puppets hell-bent on carrying water for the worst of such people and for those paying their salaries, and plenty of people ready and willing to swallow it whole, we may as well just stop even trying.

Without doubt the intentions of the guy who killed the cops were far more despicable and his mind immeasurably more perverted than those who killed Michael and Tamir and John and Eric; there's no comparison to be made. But to use the event in the most cynical way, to shut down any further conversation on the subject, is to do untold harm to the prospects of eventual resolution.

And to think that, for the first several hours after the attacks of 9/11, I actually felt admiration for the guy.

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