The media race is once again on to distill mass murder into a motive that can then be analyzed, debated and profited from long past the burials to come. This is America in 2016, where a bloodbath in the streets is simply more riveting fodder for cable news.
Then again, take any country in which a third of the population would welcome a culture war, stock that country with an endless supply of firearms including military-grade weapons, add in toxic political voices at the highest levels of political discourse, and this is the inevitable result. What is happening all around us is not happening to America, it is America.
Two headlines from Google News, 33 minutes apart:
Official: 5 Soldiers Killed in Shooting in S Sudan Capital
New York Times – 10 minutes agoTwo Snipers Kill Five Officers, Wound Several Others At Dallas Protest
NPR – 43 minutes ago
America is at war. Many of the battles are individual skirmishes, many of the victims have been innocents. Yesterday, however, saw a tactical assault on law enforcement in a major city in the United States. Read those two headlines again.
For more context, read this. If you want a deeper understanding of why we are where we are, follow the link in that post and keep reading.
If you just want to keep yourself alive, recognize that for the time being every peace office in the United States is going to be on the edge of hysteria. That does not exonerate crimes committed by the police, but it does give bad cops even more of an excuse to kill, and good cops every incentive to shoot first if there’s any doubt.
Move slowly. Do what’s asked of you. Keep your hands in plain view.
— Mark Barrett