I saw a post on the book of faces earlier that kinda surprised me. Well the post didn’t surprise me, it saddened me. What got me was who posted it. I won’t say names but it’s some that I’ve been considering more and more enlightened as I see what he posts. He maybe goes a little overboard in some areas, but who am I to judge; we all have our passions.
It was a post about a group of armed civilians going out to protest against violent cops, though they called it educating the masses on their second amendment rights. Before you wander, I don’t mean stocks and stones, I’m talking about assault rifles, at least that’s what they looked like to me, though I have no way of knowing if they were automatic or even loaded. They could’ve simply been for show, but if you’re going out overtly carrying a firearm, you aren’t going out to do anything peaceful. You’re either going out to shoot, or to get shot. If you are flagrantly brandishing a lethal weapon it’s going to cause problems. From a distance the police can’t tell any more than I could whether it’s real or loaded so chances are they’re going to assume you plan to use it and stop you. That’s their job.
The debate on whether it should be their job is moot. You live in a place where that is their job and you should get used to it. I don’t personally believe in killing under any circumstance being a Christian. That whole part about thou shalt not kill didn’t have any caveats when I read it, nor did it specify any extenuating circumstances, but the voting public has decided that it wants to arm people and give them the power to end the lives of others. Right or wrong, it is fact, these people do exist for this very purpose.
Do some take it too far? Absolutely. Are there some who deserve to have their badges taken from them? With question. Is it a tragedy when someone is wrongly killed by police, or any other agency or armed force? You betcha. Sadly our system is flawed and sometimes bad people end up in positions they can abuse. Sometimes they’re caught and sometimes they get away with it. Equally there are times when good people make mistakes. The officer that sees a kid who happens to have grown quicker than those around them playing with a toy gun that looks real and reacts badly. It’s terrible, and perhaps people who can’t be calm under pressure shouldn’t be officers, but that doesn’t mean there was any malice involved. That’s like saying the man who spilled coffee in his lap and was momentarily distracted at the exact moment a toddler walks out from behind a car into his path deserves to spend a decade rotting in prison. It was an unfortunate series of events as unpredictable as a bolt of lightning. Sometimes shit just happens.
Now lets look a little deeper into these freak occurrences because as random as they may be, we live in a country of millions. Even if each of these things have a one in a million chance of happening to you on any given day, that’s still a lot of them happening on this large a scale. That’s a lot of tragedy mixed in with a lot of bad luck, bad decisions and straight up evil, and it’s damn near impossible to tell the difference. There is no method I know of that will prove one hundred percent either way, nothing that can’t be faked or lied about by someone who knows what their doing. With enough skill an innocent man can be made to look guilty or the other way around.
Delve further still and people decide that they know the true intentions of the accused. They claim that not only did the person do with malicious intent, but that it was a race/religious/whatever hate crime and that’s a good reason to go out and do some violence of their own. This is the part that confuses me. You condemn the violence of others yet expect people to accept yours and even claim it’s righteous? What? In what universe does that make sense? How will injuring and killing more people help the situation? These are all questions that go through my mind when I see all the goofy crap that goes on in the world. Whether you’re a cop who hates blacks or a black man that hates cops, how are you any better than the other? There is already far too much hatred in the world, why go create more?
I try never to hate anyone. I was taught to love those around me, but when you’re claiming to be the force of justice while causing riots and doing evil things, I find it really hard to like you. And I’m pretty sure that some of the people you’re rioting against don’t have the same qualms I do with hatred and violence so guess what’s gonna happen. They’re gonna claim you’re evil and they’re righteous and they’re just as deluded and wrong as you are. Each has a sensational, fear inspiring name: rioter, terrorist, dirty cop, tyrant. What’s the difference besides which side they’re on. Each one attacks other people because they feel that they’re better than someone else, that they have more right to something. None of them are doing anything positive. If you want to make life better for black people, volunteer with orphans of gang wars who will end up in the same situation their dead parents got into if they’re not taught that there’s a better way.
See, the thing is that we live in a flawed system, and unfortunately it has to be. If we were all mind readers we wouldn’t have to ask about guilt or innocence. Until we learn to just be nice to each other and stop trying to find reasons to hate one another there has to be a law system, and it will never be perfect. There will always be people who abuse their power and sadly, the ones most likely to abuse it are the most likely to seek it in the first place. If you think you could run things better, try to get elected. In the end it comes down to one little fact: This is the system here, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to be here.
See, the thing is... 