August 17, 2014
Ferguson, Missouri, to Gaza, Damascus and SinjarBy Clarice Feldman
An online friend
“Miss Marple” notes the similarities between the thuggery in Ferguson, Missouri and the depredations of the Middle East’s jihadi wild packs:
I read a book by the historian Barbara Tuchman [A Distant Mirror. The Calmitous 14th Century] which theorized that the Hundred Years War was caused by a culture that was adolescent, because so many older people had died during the Black Plague.
All of the nobles and rulers at that time were in their late teens and had not much guidance from older, calmer heads.
That idea has remained with me ever since I read the book, and when I see crowds of angry young men, whether in the Middle East of urban America, I think about it. Adolescent cultures react emotionally, are disproportionately concerned with machismo and being respected, act on impulse, and have no long-term goals.
I think there’s something to that. It is not, however, the only connection between the two places and events.
Obama and his policies -- on foreign affairs hopelessly naive and on domestic matters fashioned only for personal political advantage -- are also intimately connected with this havoc.
Let me explain. Most of us are by now wise to a few things about American race riots.
In the first place, the media has a template that shapes the initial reports -- a template as false as it is incendiary. The slain young black man is always initially described as an honor student and a saint and is pictured as a very young, presumably fragile, boy. When the truth that he was something of a thug comes out and that he was quite a bit older and larger than pictured, the damage has already largely been done. Political figures rush in to make fair trials more difficult and prospective jury pools are invariably tainted. So it is here, where the slain man hardly fits the preferred media “narrative”. Michael Brown was over six feet tall (6’4” in some accounts; 6’6” in others) and around 300 pounds.)
In the second place, the initial eyewitness accounts given press play are fatally flawed or contradictory. In this case, the first account is from Dorian Johnson, who admitted only after the police release of a video of the event that he was an accomplice of Brown’s in a strong-arm robbery just minutes before. His account of the cop trying to pull the 300-pound Brown through the window of his car strains credulity even before the robbery video shone a new light on the events preceding the shooting.
In the third place, what the press describes as “civil rights protests” and “vigils” are unaccountably held in liquor and appliance stores and the looting and burning of the shops in the area are by some mysterious magical thinking supposed to show the moral rightness of the protesters’ cause. In fact, they only harden attitudes against them.
In the fourth place, the press seems to think we’ve forgotten the way the Tawana Brawley, Duke LaCrosse, and Trayvon Martin cases which they hyped, and the Skip Gates incident fell apart under genuine, impartial scrutiny. Most of us over 15 are not so easily misled. (Indications from the continuing release of credible information suggest that this matter will follow suit in time.)
In the fifth place, Obama pals Sharpton and Jackson, and Holder’s community agitators from the Department of Justice, succeed only in stirring up hatred and fattening the pockets of the bereaved and their lawyers at the expense of both the black communities they infest and the community as a whole. If these people cared about young black men they’d concentrate on the overwhelming and soaring number of black on black murders and on reversing the administration’s economic policies driving these young men further into poverty.
more at:
http://americanthinker.com/2014/08/ferguson_missouri_to_gaza_damascus_and_sinjar.html++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
