5 Policemen Murdered: America Beware the Dallas Effect…

Snipers shot and killed five police officers ‘ambush-style’ during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, according to Dallas police Friday. At least six other police officers and one civilian were also injured in the deadliest day for police in the U.S. since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown said early Friday three suspected snipers were in custody and police were still in negotiations with another suspect, who was being uncooperative and at times exchanging gunfire with officers in a parking garage.

Local media reported that the suspect involved in the standoff later died.

(Huffington Post, July 8, 2016)

Blue Lives Matter! Or is it still too politically incorrect to say that…?

And don’t let it go without notice that David Brown, the impressive Dallas police chief – who is liaising so effectively with the public, is a black man.

In any event, there’s no denying the correlation between this ambush and Facebook videos showing white cops killing black men in Baton Rouge and Minneapolis this week. Not least because the snipers only targeted white cops. But this unhinged reaction shows how easily a few misguided idiots can make a mockery of national outrage against police brutality.

It speaks volumes in this regard that, mere hours after leading national condemnation of white cops for killing black men, President Obama had to trample over his still-resonating words as follows:

I speak for every single American when I say that we are horrified over these events, and that we stand united with the people and the police department in Dallas … Let’s be clear: There is no possible justification for these kinds of attacks or any violence against law enforcement.

(White House.gov, July 8, 2016)

Clearly, no person in his right mind can think that launching guerilla warfare against cops is the way to deal with the continuing menace of police brutality. Never mind that this shooting could have been as motivated by Islamic jihad as by racial vengeance.

And, with all due respect to the usual talking heads on TV:

If I hear another political or civic leader calling for a ‘conversation on race,’ I’m going to puke.

(“Ferguson Grand Jury Decides: Officer Wilson Walks,” The iPINIONS Journal, November 25, 2014)

Talking about the issues of race will do no more to prevent future incidents like this than talking about them after the beating of Rodney King, the fallout from Katrina, or the killing of Michael Brown has done. It is despairingly self-evident that far too many political leaders are all too willing to engage in all talk but not action.

Action, for instance, like implementing gun control, community policing, and other measures that would actually make a difference. With respect to gun control, only gun merchants and their political stooges would deny that limiting personal ownership of guns to single-action firearms would greatly reduce the impact of gun violence in America.

In point of fact, chances are very good that at least four of those five cops would still be alive if the gun involved in this shooting rampage were a single-action handgun instead of a military-style assault rifle.

I have delineated these measures in many commentaries, including “Ending Mandatory Minimum Sentences; Reforming Stop and Frisk,” August 13, 2013.

That said, I am loath to get started on how social media incentivize misfits to perpetrate these atrocities as much as they desensitize voyeurs whose prurient interests turn them into viral sensations.

Making the police wear body cameras for deterrent and investigative purposes is one thing. But I’m not sure what redeeming social value there is in watching viral clips of cops going rogue, or of lone wolves (or a rag-tag bunch of psychopaths) out-gunning and gunning down policemen who are trying to protect and serve … with honor.

What is certain is that, thanks to the NRA, the capacity to perpetrate wanton gun violence is now a fact of life (aka “a new normal”) in gun-crazy USA. Moreover, if the Ferguson effect led to increased violence in poor, black communities across the country (as the FBI director famously lamented), just imagine what the Dallas effect will lead to….

But who needs to fear the specter of ISIS, when insidious racial crisis can trigger this?

Meanwhile, with all kinds of protesters planning to disrupt the political conventions later this month, anyone who remembers the summer of ’68 can be forgiven for being afraid, very afraid. Perhaps nothing is more foreboding in this respect than the attention-seeking protesters who appear only interested in provoking violent confrontations with the police.

Mind you, it’s not as if they do so in a misguided attempt to further a noble cause. Because their only discernible aim seems to be getting arresting selfies (figuratively and literally) to post on Facebook, which is the very definition of rebels without a cause. Of course, they know all too well that the more lurid or provocative their image or video, no matter how contrived or staged, the more people are to “Like” them (aka “clickbait”), thereby conferring the attention they seek.

But nothing indicates how tragically misguided these protests can be quite like the shooters in this case targeting the Dallas police department. After all, it is one of the most exemplary departments in the country in terms of institutional reforms, diversity, including black leadership, and community relations. Not to mention this:

There would be fewer of these fatal encounters between black men and white cops if more (unemployed) black men became cops to police their own communities. I mean, am I the only one who was struck by the contrast between the black men looting and vandalizing and the predominantly white cops trying to restore, and maintain, law and order in this predominantly black community…?

(“Killing of Michael Brown: as much about Resisting Arrest as Police Brutality (only against Black Men?),” The iPINIONS Journal, August 12, 2014)

Regardless, it cannot be overstated how oxymoronic it is to engage in marauding and murderous violence, especially against the police, to protest wholly legitimate grievances about police brutality. But, evidently, these nincompoops couldn’t care less.

All the same, we really are teetering on the precipice of violent racial conflicts not seen since then. It is particularly noteworthy that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, seems every bit the embodiment of and cause for such conflicts today as the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, was back then.

But add to this long-simmering white vs. black cauldron the acute grievances of Mexicans and Muslims, and you get a sense of what unrest portends … if cooler heads do not prevail.

Which brings me to no drama Obama. Because all of this restiveness compels me to reprise the way I pooh-poohed talk about his election in 2008 ushering in a post-racial era:

I’m not sure why people are so ‘shocked, shocked’ by this phenomenon (of Obama’s election giving White folks license to express ‘deeply rooted’ racism)…

I’m on record stating my suspicion that many Whites voted for Obama in 2008 more as a gesture of racial absolution than of political faith. These AP findings bear that out. And having thusly absolved themselves of their sins of racism (with this one, historic act), many of them now feel liberated to give way to their racial prejudices without fear of being called racists.

(“Romney vs. Obama: Race (Still) Matters,” The iPINIONS Journal, November 1, 2012)

I submit that this sense of white racial absolution explains everything from Republican obstruction in Congress (from day one of his presidency) to the unprecedented rise in NRA membership and the seemingly inexplicable phenomenon of Donald Trump.

God help us.