Of Sharks and Men

Look, I don’t profess to know the mind of a cop: a good cop or a bad one.  I do know something about fear however.

Fear can be for real and it can also be for not. It can be experienced based, and it can be imagined.

Example.  I’m afraid of sharks. However, I have never had any kind of encounter with a shark in my life. Never been attacked, or bitten.  I’ve see a few small sharks in the ocean and they tranquilly and peacefully left me alone.  But, if I go into the surf, I ALWAYS think of sharks.  There is nothing I can do about it – I will always have fear of sharks tucked away in my head. And while I still go to the ocean and swim, I know in my heart of hearts, that shark fear might very well affect my behavior in a high stress situation.  Meaning that I truly believe I would instantly attempt to rescue a child who is being attacked by a pit bull, but I’m almost sure I would hesitate if the same child was being attacked by a sand shark.

And I have been bitten and snarled at by dogs. One might say I’m prejudicial toward sharks because I judge them harsher then dogs based on no real evidence.

I bring this up because of what is going on with policing these days.

This story is an amazing example of how – in my mind – prejudicial thoughts towards African Americans by white police officers is deeply rooted in fear.  The story juxtaposes how far a white police officer will go to avoid shooting an armed and crazy white man, while showing how quickly another white officer will gun down an unarmed black man.

In my mind, the white officer in the first case simply does not fear the white man – even though he has every right to – enough to kill him.  Whereas the second case shows how much the officer must fear the black motorist, as evidenced by his incredibly quick trigger finger for a non-threatening action.

It seems to me that a lot of (not all) white cops have a deep-seated fear of would-be black criminals that they simply don’t have of would-be white criminals. And like me with sharks, I also believe that fear is based on prejudicial feelings not based in experience or fact.

I’m not saying that the cops in the news recently never had difficult and stressful run-ins with blacks during the course of their policing.  I’m sure they did. But the statistics show us unequivocally that those same cops must have had even more frequent difficult and stressful run-ins with whites. I just believe that the fear of the black criminal is given unequal attention in the mind of many cops than that of the white criminal.

And for the vast majority of us white people, the same holds true.  We fear blacks unequally to those who share our skin tone. 

A black person has never done anything negative toward me.  I have never been punched, threatened or victimized by a black person.  I have been punched, pushed, threatened and victimized by white people.  But if I’m walking down a lonely street at night by myself, who would I fear more walking toward me – a black man or a white man?

I know the answer and I feel shame.

Crime and Terrorism

I remember a Hill Street Blues episode from back in the day where the plot focused on two separate arrests. One person was obviously crazy as he set fire to his entire family. The other was of a woman who was the mother of a prominent politician and had shot an intruder coming into her home. It later turned out she intentionally left her window open and a TV in full view to entice the young criminal to commit burglary.

The climax of the show is when Captain Furillo confronts the presiding judge over the sentencing hearings as said judge bows to public pressure and declares the crazy person sane – so he gets a maximum penalty - while declaring the mother insane so she can avoid jail time.

I instantly thought of this episode when reflecting back on the terrible tragedies in Tennessee and South Carolina.  Both horrible crimes committed by terrible people.

But like the episode of Hill Street Blues, I am left wonder about the role of public perception.

In the first case, where Dylan Roof shot eight unarmed churchgoers in South Carolina, he is being charged with murder and now a federal hate crime.  And while both of those charges are absolutely appropriate, I hear very little in the media or in the public describing his action as an act of terror committed by a terrorist.

However, in the Tennessee episode, where Mohammad Abdulazeez killed five marines on active duty, every news story and every conversation includes words such as terrorist, radicalized, Jihad, etc.

But here’s the thing.   Roof killed unarmed civilians with the expressed purpose of creating fear and terror within the black community.  Just like the intentions of Osama Bin Laden and the 19 high-jackers, the entire reason for his infamous act was to terrorize.

However, and in no way meant to dismiss the barbarous act, Abdulazeez shot and killed soldiers. That’s not terrorism, that’s a crime committed under the auspices of war.

In my opinion, we as a people have to get passed the idea that only people of Muslim faith can be terrorists. The FBI has.  Reading this shows that homegrown extremists are more deadly than Jihadists since 9-11.  The FBI states that terrorism: “Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law; appear intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.”

But we still have the mindset that only young men with long beards from the Middle East are terrorists while white guys who kill minorities are just criminals. Timothy McVeigh was a terrorist.  Eric Rudolph – the Olympic bomber was a terrorist. The KKK are terrorists.

The Trump Card

In my opinion, here’s the thing that everyone is missing about Donald Trump and his “run” for president.  

He’s metaphorically building an enormous, garish mansion that is completely at odds with zoning, neighborhood standards and city codes, and then, once it’s completed, he will walk away and never even occupy said monstrosity. And he’s doing it for one reason and one reason only: BECAUSE HE CAN.       

Allow me to explain.

He’s not stupid.  He’s not smart enough to be president, but he’s not stupid.  He knows he can’t win. He also knows that he cannot damage his reputation or his brand by being crude, tasteless and over-the-top.  His brand IS crude, tasteless and over-the-top.

He’s running for president BECAUSE HE CAN*.

*The Donald loves all-caps, as illustrated by his financial disclosure form that bellowed his net worth at” TEN BILLION DOLLARS!”

He’s rich and famous and he can do whatever he wants. And that is the only reason he is running: BECAUSE HE CAN.

And that is what separates Trump from almost every one of us.  He seems to do everything in life simply BECAUSE HE CAN.

I CAN run naked down the street, empty my bank account to buy a used helicopter, assault a mounted police officer, burn down a 7-11, eat 27 pizzas at once and throw an aquarium filled with exotic fish off the roof of the tallest building in town. I won’t of course, because after doing these crazy things the consequences of my actions would come crashing down upon me. I know this, and therefore I don’t.

But Trump is uniquely unburdened by consequences. And this wonderful condition allows him to do something as crazy as run for president, verbally attack an entire nation, and accuse a war hero of cowardice despite his own lack of military participation. And keep going.  He’s just getting starting on the crazy train toward irrelevancy for executive office.

Will he show up drunk during a debate?
Flip off Charlie Rose during an interview?
Implore Vladimir Putin to “kiss his Irish ass!”

Who knows? 

Look, if Jeb Bush doesn’t get the nomination he trashes the family win-streak.  If Scott Walker fails, he hits the ceiling on his political career. If Rubio flames out, he faces the real possibility that a Latino can’t win with Republicans. They are all driven by fear that they will lose.

But when Trump inevitably exits the race and declares victory for having moved the party more toward his way of thinking, he will gleefully move on to the next thing.

He fears no consequence because there is none.  He can’t lose because he has no objective.

He’s a super-rich loud mouth today and he will be a super-rich loud mouth tomorrow.

His ridiculous mega-mansion of a faux presidential campaign will stand as a monument to a man with no vision, no scruples and no burden.  

And of course, The Onion validates everything I'm saying.

Picture This...

There are more than 2 billion people with camera phones in the world.  There are 1.8 million CCTV cameras in England alone.

Needless to say, the odds of something NOT happening on camera these days is exponentially less than when I was younger. And I grew up in the age of TV and the birth of the Internet and other visual revolutions.

Literally, several billion dollar enterprises that have become some of the most important brands in the world (YouTube, Instagram, etc.) exist mostly as a repository for the detritus of video shot by average people around the globe.

I bring this up because of this: a shark attack caught on video that has now been seen around the world about 16 kagillion times.  In startling detail, we see a surfer being stocked and then attacked – luckily unsuccessfully from the sharks point of view.  However, in detail and clarity that I’ve never seen before the world got to see an honest to goodness shark attack when absolutely none was expected.  It may be – up until this point in history – one of the rarest images ever seen.

And that’s the thing. With so many cameras pointed practically toward every square inch of the world, the rare and the amazing and the impossible to believe are going to start becoming common 

place.

Think of what that could mean to our worldview:

• If aliens visit earth, we will see them
• If Bigfoot exists, we will see it
• Same for the Loch Ness Monster
• Ghosts, check
• The second coming? Film at 11!

“The Revolution Won’t Be Televised? Ha!

One of My Favorite Lies

Mid to late July is typically a pretty slow month for sports in America.  Football is really still a month or so away, basketball has been over for a month and baseball is caught somewhere between the All-Star Game and the playoffs.

It’s also the time of year rampant with one of my favorite lies.

One of my favorite lies is uttered by some of the best liars going…sports commentators.

The lie they all say goes something like this: “Boy, I wish we could stop talking about (Subject X) and get back to talking about the real action on the court, field or ballpark.”

Ha!!!!

Sports commentators love, no need, the off-the-field controversies.  They need them to stay employed and their networks and newspapers need them to stay in business.  A famous commentator and one of the more honest of the bunch often says about his own network: “We don’t broadcast sports, we broadcast competition.”

He’s half right.  They don’t broadcast sports, they broadcast conflict. And controversy and scandal are just synonyms for conflict.

Sports broadcasters and commentators who perpetuate this lie are like politicians who claim they hate government or corporate lobbyists who hate the tax code.  Politicians need government or else they have nothing to lead and lobbyists create odious and burdensome taxes in order to stay employed and rake in huge billables by trying to eradicate the same odious and burdensome taxes.

Think I exaggerate?  Deflategate, Tim Tebow, Johnny Manziel, Caitlin Jenner, domestic violence, Lebron’s hairline, Serena’s size, Tiger’s girlfriends. And networks are in business to make money. Every second they are on the air needs to be paid for.  Do you really think they would spend hundreds of hours broadcasting breathless debates about this if it lost them audience share and advertisers?

And do you really think the breathless broadcasters who keep the story alive really hate doing it?  Of course not.

And so the lie continues.