I wasn't going to comment on Henry Louis Gates Jr. getting himself arrested after breaking into his own home and then mouthing off to the police officer who had been sent to the home to investigate a potential break in at the house by a neighbor's call to police. Yelling at a cop is almost always a dumb idea unless you are yelling, "Help me officer!" or "Have a good day officer!" The police report was pretty clear about the incident. Even if you are inclined to believe that police officers as lying abusers of power there appear to have been plenty of witnesses present to speak about what they saw occur.
Having read the police report I was puzzled when the President of the United States chose to answer a question about the incident at the end of his press conference on health care reform last night. I would have thought that a savvy politician would refrain from getting into the middle of such a squabble before all involved had had a chance to speak their piece or refrain from getting into it at all. The question about the Gates incident was a "no comment" question if ever I heard one. Instead the President of the United States, after first admitting that he was biased because he is a friend of Gates, then admitting that he didn't actually know the facts of the incident, and then getting the reported events wrong, none the less chose to claim that the police officers acted stupidly.
Got that? The President of the United States, the President of the officers in question, claimed that they acted stupidly after acknowledging, and demonstrating, that he didn't actually know the facts of the case.
He then followed up with a rambling retelling of the well worn racial narrative of suspiciously frequent encounters between law enforcement officers and blacks and latinos (added on to reflect the new demographic shift in the nation or to reflect who the he was hoping to appeal to?). Frankly I would have expected this from any talking head on the news or the usual array of race hustlers. But coming from the President of the United States it was disappointing. Was the President of the United States attempting to excuse Gates' behavior with his admittedly uninformed response?
I can't say that his response changed my opinion of my President but I certainly hope that next time he'll wait a bit for the facts to come to light before letting himself get carried away from truth and reality by a racial narrative.
The officer who had the misfortune to respond to the call to Gates' residence has said about as much as he can on the issue namely that he is not a racist and there won't be any apology for doing his job. Gates is apparently already considering a documentary on racial profiling. I hope this officer isn't further tarnished by Gates' bad behavior and the rush to judgment in adherence to the racial narrative of the racist cop hassling the black man. It's sad that one need only yell "racist" to get a pass on bad behavior and this President of the United States on your side in the matter.
Obama's self-chosen disability.....
ReplyDeleteDeterministic systems, ideological symbols of abdication
by man from his natural role as earth's Choicemaker,
inevitably degenerate into collectivism; the negation of
singularity, they become a conglomerate plural-based
system of measuring human value. Blunting an awareness
of diversity, blurring alternatives, and limiting the
selective creative process, they are self-relegated to
a passive and circular regression.
Tampering with man's selective nature endangers his
survival for it would render him impotent and obsolete
by denying the tools of variety, individuality,
perception, criteria, selectivity, and progress.
Coercive attempts produce revulsion, for such acts
are contrary to an indeterminate nature and nature's
indeterminate off-spring, man the Choicemaker.
Until the oppressors discover that wisdom only just
begins with a respectful acknowledgment of The Creator,
The Creation, and The Choicemaker, they will be ever
learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth.
The rejection of Creator-initiated standards relegates
the mind of man to its own primitive, empirical, and
delimited devices. It is thus that the human intellect
cannot ascend and function at any level higher than the
criteria by which it perceives and measures values.
Additionally, such rejection of transcendent criteria
self-denies man the vision and foresight essential to
decision-making for survival and progression. He is left,
instead, with the redundant wreckage of expensive hind-
sight, including human institutions characterized by
averages, mediocrity, and regression.
Humanism, mired in the circular and mundane egocentric
predicament, is ill-equipped to produce transcendent
criteria. Evidenced by those who do not perceive
superiority and thus find themselves beset by the shifting
winds of the carnal-ego; i.e., moods, feelings, desires,
appetites, etc., the mind becomes subordinate: a mere
device for excuse-making and rationalizing self-justifica-
tion.
The carnal-ego rejects criteria and self-discipline for such
instruments are tools of the mind and the attitude. The
appetites of the flesh have no need of standards for at the
point of contention standards are perceived as alien, re-
strictive, and inhibiting. Yet, the very survival of our
physical nature itself depends upon a maintained sover-
eignty of the mind and of the spirit.
It remained, therefore, to the initiative of a personal
and living Creator to traverse the human horizon and
fill the vast void of human ignorance with an intelli-
gent and definitive faith. Man is thus afforded the
prime tool of the intellect - a Transcendent Standard
by which he may measure values in experience, anticipate
results, and make enlightened and visionary choices.
Only the unique and superior God-man Person can deserved-
ly displace the ego-person from his predicament and free
the individual to measure values and choose in a more
excellent way. That sublime Person was indicated in the
words of the prophet Amos, "...said the Lord, Behold,
I will set a plumbline in the midst of my people Israel."
Y'shua Mashiyach Jesus said, "If I be lifted up I will
draw all men unto myself."
As long as some choose to abdicate their personal reality
and submit to the delusions of humanism, determinism, and
collectivism, just so long will they be subject and re-
acting only, to be tossed by every impulse emanating from
others. Those who abdicate such reality may, in perfect
justice, find themselves weighed in the balances of their
own choosing.
"No one is smarter than their criteria."
Jim Baxter
semper fidelis
- from "2010 AD: The Season of Generation-Choicemaker"
http://www.choicemaker.net/