I don't have a gun, stop shooting!
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About Me
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- John Bedell is an archaeologist, historian, and father of five living in Maryland. He has self-published two novels and is writing a third.
2 comments:
Conceptually I understand the intent of this, but personally this evokes entirely the wrong response from me, because my inner skeptic pipes up with questions like "Are any of these actually verifiable via physical recording, or are they merely hearsay?", as well as "Even then, isn't this still sensationalist and manipulative, purposefully seeking to prey on charged emotions?" and "Are last words, even with accurate, actually meaningful in any rational way?"
American police are out of control, but surely this is entirely demonstrable by simple fact, without having to inflame passions and appeal to base outrage? Surely logic and reason alone provide ample incentive for the average person to care about this issue? Surely our response to the injustices of our broken justice system should be rational in nature, not emotional?
That is of course not to say that people's emotional responses to police abuses are unreasonable or wrong. But it certainly is to say that people need to not let their emotions be manipulated by others merely for the sake of general outrage, and that whatever longterm solution we hope to arrive at to fix the problem of police forces running wild, we're not going to reach it via blind rage and unthinking emotion.
Well, you and I agree that the police are out of control, but millions of Americans don't agree and in fact can still be seen on the news saying that criminals are out of control and the police need to be tougher on them. Plus politicians are still scared of fighting with the police, so there have been no new laws cracking down on police misbehavior.
Reason having failed here, we try emotional manipulation.
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