Black lives matter

Subject: Black lives matter.

The human psychic seems so easily shifted from peace to violence. It doesn't take much for football fans to erupt in anger at a decision which goes against them. It doesn't take much for law abiding citizens to be confirmed opponents of a scheme if news papers publish incendiary stories or the news editor contrives a headline which reflects the papers bias not the facts on the ground. Young men easily whipped up by the jingoism of Kitchener, enlisted in their hundreds of thousands to go to war, or the mob on the streets of Minnesota who become frenzied  as they egg each other on and focus their helpless rage against authority. 

'A policeman's lot is never a happy one' according to Gilbert and Sullivan in their Pirates  of Penzance opera and watching the police face off with the angry crowd one is reminded of the dreadful dilemma of a 'them and us' situation where the police are seen as the enemy, not the security we need in our neighbourhoods.

The world has its fair share of really bad people and of course, since the police force is made up of people there are some amongst them. Actions made under the pressure of a conflict situation exacerbate the action and confrontation overwhelms common sense.
The latest killing seems to come from the contempt and the brutality inherent in overt authority. I don't think it was the policeman's intention to kill but the power of knowing that the uniform protected him from the constrains which limit our own violence meant he was obsessed with that power and failed to listen to the pleas of the victim. His fellow officers were similarly constrained by their collegiate understanding of non interference between each other and the mantra 'watch each other's back'.
'It's a war out there', I'm sure is the common refrain amongst law enforcement officers, particularly in the USA,  who's job it is to stick their noses into the sewer which awful conditions breed amongst those forced to live there. The hostility and the brutality are on both sides but we rarely hear from the well meaning protesters of the drug inspired brutality meted out by the gangs who the police regularly come into conflict with.

The contempt is on both sides but of course we expect more from a trained force of men who should be guided into letting the courts decide what to do with the detainee but savagery is never far away from the human condition. The marvel is that there is so little overt savagery around given the daily contest which goes on for a limited piece of bread.

Savagery is a strong word. One thinks of a savage dog, out of control and dangerous, one thinks of violence, viciousness, ferocity, all words which could be interspersed with savage when one sees a crowd rampaging through the streets hurling rocks or breaking windows to gain access to shops. We see a disciplined line of police officers protected by their helmets, staves in hand advancing towards the crowd.  What goes through our mind.  Is this state brutality.  The weapons, the tear gas and the indemnity make the police hold the upper hand but we fear this overt use of force when used on civilians. We see the civilian as one of us, a protester with rights, a needful counterbalance to the power of the state. We see the State as representing other interests to our own, interests of the few and not the many, we see the police as upholding those powerful minority rights and are unhappy with our inequality.
The 'them and us' is at work sowing it's seeds of hate and distrust on both sides, neither side having the moral upper hand. The Constitution (if there is one) lends an ear to both and it's only afterwards when the people go home and the rocks are swept away,  do we ask ourselves the question " how did we get here".

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