Society – Page 15 – The Wrongologist

Can a Main Stream Party Win Millennial Voters?

Millennials seem to be on the fringe of the political action in 2016. A new survey “The Millennial Economy” by Ernst & Young (E&Y) shows that they are also on the fringe economically, and that they distrust many American institutions.

That may explain why they are disaffected with the current Presidential race. A mid-June survey of 1,200 18-34 year olds was conducted online and via cell phone buy E&Y. It has a margin of error of ± 2.83%. E&Y found that coming of age during an historic economic downturn has severely impacted Millennials:

30% of respondents live with their parents, and it’s 40% if they are still single.
Nearly one-third believe their local community is still in a recession.

Millennial stress levels are high:

78% of Millennials are worried about having good-paying job opportunities.
74% are worried they won’t be able to pay their healthcare bills if they get sick.
79% are worried they will not have enough money to live on when they retire.

Millennials are the most educated generation in US history, but they are not convinced of the cost/benefit of higher education. Instead of education opening doors, many Millennials feel that student debt has boxed them in. The WSJ reported that among college-educated Millennials, 81% had at least one source of long-term debt, while The Atlantic reports that real wages have fallen for Millennials (and only Millennials) in the past five years, even as education costs have skyrocketed.

E&Y surveyed Millennials’ views of the establishment. They find that Millennials have very little confidence in many of our established institutions, but they are patriotic and supportive of a leading role for the US in the world. This chart is from the study:

millennial-view-of-institutions-png

Millennial men have greater confidence in US institutions than women, with 34% of men expressing confidence in the institutions polled compared to only 25% of women. Overall, Millennials:

Had the least confidence in the News Media (73%) closely followed by the Federal Government, Governors, and Corporate America (72%).
Had the most confidence in the Military (55%), followed by Colleges and Universities (51%) and Professional Sports (32%).

Millennial men remain more optimistic than Millennial women, although the clear majority of both genders think the country is headed in the wrong direction:

Men are nearly twice as likely to believe that the country is headed in the right direction (33%) as women (17%).
Hispanic men and black women are the most optimistic group within each gender, with 41% of the former and 27% of the latter believing the country is headed in the right direction.

So the $64 question is: How to win the vote of Millennials? E&Y says that economic uncertainty greatly influences Millennials’ political priorities. They found that Millennials are looking to politicians to alleviate their financial insecurity:

64% of Millennials believe public education should be a top priority for federal tax dollars, a consensus that crosses party lines.
Social Security and Medicare were their second priority (46%), while National Security was third at 45%.
47% of Millennials identify as independents.

Finally, as a crib sheet for debate prep, E&Y have this checklist for Millennial hot-button issues:

millennial-vote-checklist

Politicians always play to a checklist. Trump mentioned every battle ground state in the last debate, but fell in the polls. And playing generational politics can result in the candidate seeming completely inauthentic. That has been Hillary Clinton’s problem with Millennials. Al Gore tried it with Social Security in 2000 vs. GW Bush, and it did not work.

Polls show Clinton running far behind where she would hope to be with Millennials. She is winning just under half of Millennial votes, while Obama got over 60% in both of his campaigns.

As we have said, Hillary is not Bernie, and doesn’t stand for what Bernie stood for. So while millennials loved him for it, Hillary will not do as well with them.

Wrongo is concerned about how many young people are considering voting for Gary Johnson. Johnson’s libertarian views are far worse for their interests than anything Hillary stands for.

Johnson certainly would never support the government doing anything with student debt. Yet apparently, many young people will be voting for him, with no apparent concern about how it might help elect Donald Trump.

Perhaps Millennials and the rest of us need to have a busload of faith to get by between here and Election Day in order to survive. Here is Lou Reed live on Letterman in 1989 with “Busload of Faith”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNZm89wLaBw

True to Lou, he sang about a busload of faith, minus the bus, and minus the faith.

Those who view the Wrongologist in email can see the video here.

Sample Lyrics:

You can’t depend on your family
you can’t depend on your friends
You can’t depend on a beginning
you can’t depend on an end

You can’t depend on intelligence
ooohhh, you can’t depend on God
You can only depend on one thing
you need a busload of faith to get by

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 25, 2016

So many stories competing for our attention this week. The bomber, the “driving while black” shootings, the upcoming debate.

Let’s start with Tulsa and Charlotte:

cow-aaa-b4-cops

And how many news reports do we hear about a stranded white motorist being shot, or a social worker lying on the ground with his hands in the air getting shot? The smart phone camera is the only disinfectant that may end this.

The Presidential candidates’ response to NYC and NJ bomber taught us quite a bit:

Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press

This shows the difference in the way Democrats and Republicans view the world. Democrats are trying to figure out why people are getting radicalized, who they are, and how to stop them. Republicans want to carpet bomb the place until the sands glow and let (their) god sort them out.

The Wells Fargo hearings gave us a rare moment of bi-partisan solidarity:

cow-shoot-wells

Wrongo does not endorse killing anyone at Wells Fargo or any other bank or Wall Street firm. But is putting a few behind bars too much to ask?

The debate is tomorrow, but what on earth will they talk about?

cow-debate-topics

Is Ignorance Bliss?

If so, we all must be blissed out. Yesterday, we talked about how the media love to air candidates’ ’’dirty laundry”, rather than concentrate on examining their policies. Today, we ask the question, “Where and how do people get their news?”

The current US population is around 320 million. Of that number, there are 219 million people eligible to vote, of which 145.3 million (66%) are registered to vote in the US. So, how many people are watching the news on ABC, CBS or NBC? In August 2016, the number was 22.5 million. That’s down from 48 million in 1985, and from 24.5 million in 2013.

And how many watch the cable giants Fox News, MSNBC and CNN? Overall, Fox News averaged 2 million total viewers while MSNBC averaged 1.13 million, and CNN trailed with 844,000. That’s four million viewers total, folks.

Taken together, major network and cable TV account for 26.5 million viewers, or 18.2% of registered voters. And we have no data on the overlap between viewers and voters.

How else do the campaigns reach voters? Social media. From the Wall Street Journal:

Of the two candidates, Mr. Trump has the largest following on social media — with 10.3 million Twitter followers and 9.9 million Facebook likes, compared to Mrs. Clinton’s 7.78 million followers and 4.8 likes.

This means that the two campaigns have more direct reach than any individual TV or cable outlet. Clinton has nearly as many Twitter followers as CBS has viewers, while Trump has even more, and also has FIVE times as many Twitter followers as his friends at Fox have viewers. And we can assume that all of those followers are likely voters, not passive viewers.

The campaigns use different strategies. A new Pew study of the campaign websites of Clinton and Trump found that Clinton’s website focused on original news content, while Trump mostly re-posted stories from outside news media. Clinton’s campaign has almost entirely bypassed the news media; instead, they post news stories produced in-house. Trump’s site offers mostly content from articles produced by outside sources like Fox News or CNN.

Pew also surveyed where people get their news:

where-to-get-news-png

As of early 2016, just 20% of US adults get their news from print newspapers. This has fallen from 27% in 2013.
This decrease occurred across all age groups, though the age differences are stark: Only 5% of 18- to 29-year-olds often get news from a print newspaper, whereas about half (48%) of those 65 and older do.
Compared with print, nearly twice as many adults (38%) often get news online, either from news websites/apps (28%), on social media (18%), or both.
TV continues to be the most widely used news platform; 57% of U.S. adults often get TV-based news, either from local TV (46%), cable (31%), network (30%) or some combination of the three.

If you are watching a traditional TV newscast, you are a dinosaur: Fully 70% of those ages 18-29 either prefer, or only use mobile for getting their digital news, compared with 53% of those 30-49, 29% of those 50-64 and just 16% of those 65+.

According to Pew, radio is a more frequently used news source than newspapers. In fact, 13.25 million people listen to Rush Limbaugh, while 12.6 million listen to NPR’s Morning Edition, making both more followed than any of Fox, MSNBC, CNN, CBS, NBC, or ABC.

While there has been an explosion on the digital front, readership (viewership?) is now totally fragmented. This fragmentation is a key to understanding today’s political landscape. Twenty-five years ago, we had a core of news outlets that helped the political parties build a public consensus. That’s no longer the case. Traditional media are at best, just one stream in a whole chaotic flow. Picking and choosing whom to follow (and trust) in this river of chaos isn’t easy. The fundamental questions are:

Does watching a specific news feed inform you, leave you asking questions, or create confusion?
Does the power of images displayed on an individual news feed interfere with understanding the context of a complex situation?
Are news outlets providing users with both education about events, AND a sense of civic responsibility?
How do you know you can “trust” a given news feed?

With so many options for learning about our world and government policy, we could either be on the cusp of a reboot of the Age of Enlightenment, or, the news feed chaos could help bring on another Dark Ages.

Choose wisely.

Happy Birthday to our National Park Service

100 years ago yesterday, Woodrow Wilson signed the bill that created the National Park Service (NPS). The National Parks are truly a great American resource, showing us nature in a near-pristine form, much as it might have been thousands of years ago. The parks also give us insight into places that are an important part of our national heritage, such as battlefields, or landmarks, like the Statue of Liberty.

There was a time in America when protecting our heritage through preserving open space was thought to be a civic duty. Alas, that is no longer considered a responsibility by recent Congresses. Obama has used the Antiquities Act as a way around the stasis in Washington, creating several national monuments.

The most recent is the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in northern Maine. There have been calls for a national park in northern Maine for a very long time, but the lack of federally controlled land and the hostility of local residents who believe the timber industry is going to make a comeback, made it impossible to get a park designation. But Roxane Quimby, founder of Burt’s Bees, gave almost 90,000 acres of pristine land to the government to help make something happen.

Opinions in Maine were mixed. There are more than a few folks who want the land to remain available to the paper mills, should the paper industry ever return to Maine. Republican Gov. Paul LePage denounced Quimby’s donation:

That’s one way to get out of paying taxes to the state of Maine…It’s also an ego play for Roxanne Quimby and Senator Angus King. It’s sad that rich, out-of-state liberals can team up with President Obama to force a national monument on rural Mainers who do not want it.

Last time we checked Quimby and King were in-state liberals, and the land was given to America, not to Mr. Obama.

Of course, the NPS faces major problems on its 100^th birthday. An NPR report indicated that the service is facing challenges like climate change, overcrowding, underfunding and relevancy. Regarding climate change, the parks are having to adapt to rapid changes as we saw in Glacier National Park, where most glaciers could be gone by 2030. The parks are trying to educate the public about climate change, despite continued hostility from Republicans who refuse to fund it.

Relevance is a big issue. Surveys show that the average park visitor is 41 years old and white, not the future of a young, diverse majority America that will be here about the same time as the glaciers disappear.

Finally, the number of sites managed by the NPS has grown from 35 in 1916 to 400 sites today. That has led to substantial deferred maintenance, and given that Congress is unlikely to come up with additional funding, the NPS is seeking corporate funding, and possibly sponsorship.

Imagine Yellowstone: brought to you by Coca-Cola…

This brings into question of the very meaning of the commons: If we sell sponsorships, who owns the Grand Canyon? Who decides how Glacier National Park should be managed?

But, in a world where the GOP won’t agree to fund the parks, that’s what you should expect.

On a happier note, here are photos taken on our final days in Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. Here is Moraine Lake, a small, jewel-like glacier-fed lake, created by gigantic rock slide:

DSCN5657

The distinctive color is from the sunlight reflecting off of dissolved particles of finely ground rock called “glacial flour”. And here is a photo of Lake Louise in Banff:

DSCN5694

Lake Louise was named after Princess Louise Caroline Alberta (1848–1939), the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria. Apparently, the Province of Alberta is named after her as well. She never visited.

Here is a close-up of the Louise Glacier above the lake:

DSCN5676

The glacier is 300’ thick at the edge of the cliff wall.

Glacier NP Musings

We stayed in Whitefish Montana for the first two days of the trip. It would be difficult to come up with a town that feels so welcoming and comfortable for tourists. It is a small place, with about 7,500 residents.

The town lives on tourists, with some 800,000 visiting this year in July alone. Anyway, notably nice people, and great food is on offer in the restaurants. We ate at the Tupelo Grille, and at 48° Latitude, both were fabulous. We spent today in the Lake McDonald area of the Park. We took a few pics.

First, on a hike on Beehive Mountain, we walked through an area that had burned in 2003, when 57,000+ acres went up after high school kids failed to put out their campfire. After the fire, plants and flowers grew in profusion. Here is a photo of fireweed, which only grows after the fire is out:

DSCN5149

We moved on to Lake McDonald. There is a fire near Missoula, some 137 miles away that had smoke drifting over the lake. So our photos were hazy, but here is a photo Wrongo took from a small boat:

DSCN5185 Finally, we spent time at the Lake McDonald Lodge. It is run by Xanterra, who also have properties at the Grand Canyon, Zion, Yellowstone, Crater Lake and many other National Parks. The Lodge is an old property, built in 1913, and it’s located in a wonderful spot. We were struck by the huge chandelier in the lobby:

DSCN5205

The chandelier was designed by members of the Blackfeet Indian tribe almost 100 years ago. Here is a detail photo Wrongo took on Tuesday:

DSCN5201

You know Wrongo has to close with a political comment. Montana was the first state to send a woman to Congress. Jeannette Rankin was elected to the House in 1916, four years before women won the right to vote after the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. She was a Republican and the only Congressperson to vote against the US entering both WWI and WWII.

Glacier Park had its 100^th Anniversary in 2010. Visit it soon if you expect to see glaciers. They are forecasted to be gone by 2030.

WTF Is It With Cellphone Cameras?

The NYT had an article last Thursday about a suicide rescue on the George Washington Bridge by a bicyclist. Julio De Leon, 61, was biking home from work across the GW Bridge when he saw someone about the jump off the bridge and into the Hudson River. From the NYT:

Then he saw it: a dog in the pathway, tethered to a rail. “This is something unusual, and I looked to my left, and I saw the guy,” Mr. De Leon said.

Why is AARP Funding ALEC?

Yes, you heard that correctly, AARP, the insurance company that styles itself as a champion for senior citizens has become a corporate sponsor of ALEC.

Let’s remember what ALEC is: The name stands for the American Legislative Exchange Council. It operates by offering model legislation to its members, who typically are big corporations and conservative Republican state legislators. It was initially funded by the Koch Brothers.

Its legislative ideas cover practically every area of state government, from education and health to energy, environment and tax policy. State legislators introduce the ALEC-drafted bills in their home states, allowing ALEC’s legislative concepts to metastasize in almost identical laws in statehouses across the country.

ALEC has pushed for:

The repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which has saved Medicare enrollees millions of dollars by closing the Medicare drug benefit “doughnut hole.”
It opposed Medicaid expansion under Obamacare.
It has targeted public pensions, pushing to cap benefits and shift workers toward defined contribution plans, which shifts market risk onto the shoulders of individual workers.
It advocates for privatizing at least a portion of your Social Security taxes.

Governing, a publication for state and local policymakers, says that roughly 1,000 bills based on ALEC language are introduced in an average year, with about 20% getting enacted.

Since 2011, ALEC suffered a backlash, as a number of its corporate sponsors, (more than 100 corporations), pulled their support including Ford, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, among many others. Eric Schmidt of Google told NPR after deciding to leave ALEC:

I think the consensus within the company was that that was some sort of mistake and so we’re trying to not do that in the future.

So why would AARP sign on as a corporate sponsor of ALEC? From the LA Times: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Among the policies that have been promoted by ALEC are several that arguably undermine the interests of seniors and retirees, AARP’s core constituency.

Despite that, the Center for Media and Democracy has learned that AARP joined ALEC, and that it is a named sponsor of the ALEC annual meeting that took place in Indianapolis, Indiana from July 27-29, 2016.

AARP didn’t hide its new financial relationship with ALEC, at least to ALEC legislators. The AARP logo appears in the conference brochure and attendees at the conference were each provided with an AARP branded portable USB power pack as they registered for the event.

Here is AARP’s corporate response when challenged about their new ALEC relationship: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

In 2016, AARP paid a fee to ALEC, which gave us an opportunity to engage with state legislators and advance our members’ priorities from a position of strength at ALEC’s annual meeting.

AARP’s engagement with ALEC is NOT an endorsement of the organization’s policies either past or present. As is the case with other groups AARP engages with, there are many issues and areas where we strongly disagree with ALEC’s position or approach.

So, who in AARP’s marketing department convinced the top brass that they need to “pay” to meet with state legislators? And wouldn’t AARP members be very interested in what AARP’s management asked of state legislators?

From the LA Times:

Yet in arguing that a relationship with ALEC is necessary to “engage” with the legislators affiliated with the group, AARP is taking a different approach from the dozens of corporations that have abandoned ALEC.

Focus on the Doughnut

(There will be limited blogging until 7/26, as Wrongo and Ms. Right spend an extended weekend in Philadelphia)

From Vox:

The first night of the Republican National Convention ended dominated by one bizarre question: Was Melania Trump’s convention speech plagiarized from a Michelle Obama convention speech from 2008?

OK, she probably would have gotten an “A” from Trump University, but pulleez, people! This isn’t a big deal.

Melania Trump is not a major figure in the GOP, and plagiarism of parts of a speech doesn’t have the same connotation in political speeches that it does in academia. So she stole a few lines from a Michelle Obama speech. So what? She isn’t running for anything, and the statements were largely clichés. If you are hoping to show the incompetence and dishonesty of the Trump campaign, there are bigger more important examples.

Why should anyone care about this? If Melania Trump has one interview with the press, and says she liked the ideas in Michelle Obama’s speech, this is over. Why is the media so focused on this? Why are they not focusing on the things of substance that were said in Cleveland yesterday, things that are legitimately terrifying because they could actually become policy?

They could have focused on Rep. Steve King (R-IA) going full white supremacist.

Or, Rudy Giuliani going off about the imminent (?) terrorist threat facing America, saying:

You know who you are, and we are coming to get you.

Or, the extended poutrage about “The Battle of Benghazi”.

Or, convention speaker actor Antonio Sabato Jr. who questioned Obama’s religion, saying the president is “absolutely” a Muslim.

Or, if they were truly interested, they could analyze the GOP 2016 Platform, its most socially conservative platform ever.

But our media wants to keep it simple: Everything else spoken from the stage last night requires explaining something complex, like matters of policy. That’s hard work for the reporters, and maybe for the people to understand. But when a candidate for first lady steals parts of the opposing party’s speech, that’s easy to report and to understand.

It appears that the media is incapable of making the sort of deep, factual critique of policy that we need from them. Wrongo can be annoyed about it, but that’s how it is.

The press should focus on the doughnut, and not the hole, particularly when the hole isn’t a policy speech.

OTOH, when a goofy low-stakes gaffe like this one gets the media saying negative things about Trump, we’ll just have to go with it.

Make America Safe?

Wrongo has tried hard not to write again about the murderous and divisive actions taken against police over the past few weeks, but it seems impossible. From the NYT:

The twin attacks — three officers dead Sunday in Baton Rouge, five killed on July 7 in Dallas, along with at least 12 injured over all — have set off a period of fear, anguish and confusion among the nation’s 900,000 state and local law enforcement officers. Even the most hardened veterans call this one of the most charged moments of policing they have experienced.

Never one to let bad news pass without blaming, the Pant Suit criticized President Obama’s response:

FireShot Screen Capture #104 - Trump

Monday kicked off the GOP Convention. The theme for the first day is “Make America Safe Again”. In case you thought that despite the recent spate of cop killings, you live in one of the safest places on earth, the Trump team is out to scare you up good.

The central theme of Trump’s campaign is that he plans to protect you: From scary Islamic terrorists, from scary immigrants who steal jobs, rape and pillage, and from scary black men with guns.

This resonates with many Republicans who are in the grip of overpowering nostalgia for the1950’s. Republicans see this as a time of stable marriages, respect for authority and economic dynamism. They are not alone: Democrats see it as a time when most men could leave high school and walk into a well-paid job, with pension and health-care benefits, which would allow them to support a family and retire comfortably.

There was much to like about this era of 25₵ gallons of gas, sport coats and cars with tail fins, but it is far from the whole story. It forgets the specter of nuclear annihilation that was ever-present. It forgets that women had little chance of a career beyond the typists’ pool, or that society forced African-Americans to the back of the bus.

Feminism, the civil-rights movement and economic progress in other countries swung a wrecking-ball at the society of the 1950s. But, to regret its collapse, as many Tea Partiers and Republicans do, is also to wish those improvements had never happened, which is absurd. Life was NOT good for the working person in the 1930s and 1940s. Even in the halcyon days of the 1950s -1970s, life was not good for women, people of color, gay people, and others.

Republicans see our politics and our culture decaying, so we see the sharpening Trump “law and order” rhetoric, and the success of the Tea Party in setting our national political agenda.

An alternative view to Trump’s is that Obama’s eulogy for five Dallas police officers a week ago was an eloquent plea to Americans to acquire “a new heart” – a new empathy toward others across the racial divide. And rarely has a president talked so bluntly about the limits of his ability to bring about the changes he seeks. Mr. Obama:

It is as if the deepest fault lines of our democracy have suddenly been exposed, perhaps even widened…Faced with this violence, we wonder if the divides of race in America can ever be bridged…We must reject such despair…I’ve seen how inadequate words can be in bringing about lasting change. I’ve seen how inadequate my own words have been…I confess that sometimes I, too, experience doubt.

In an era of partisan polarization, the problem isn’t merely a deficit of leaders capable of binding us together; it’s a shortage of citizens willing to listen. According to the Pew Research Center, only 14% of Republicans approve of Obama’s conduct, compared with 80% of Democrats. That’s a record high in polarization – except that the previous record held by George W. Bush, who was supported by only 23% of Democrats. Trump is exploiting that.

When we zoom out from the “Make America Safe Again” meme, we remain in a competition between divergent views. We will not even start on the road to consensus until two conditions are met:

Our solutions strive for the preservation of a value called “the greater good”.
Our solutions rely on the preservation of a value called “in good faith”.

We have never changed ethics by legislation, although we can impact behavior. What we have to change is whether or not we as a society will accept the greater good and good faith as inextricable parts of our society.

But as long as there are those among us who can defend the rights of people to use a weapon of war to kill policemen and children, or people who threaten the careers of the elected representatives who stand up to them, we will be seeing this happen again and again, and we’ll be stuck asking the same questions over and over.

Our Thin-Skinned Blue Line

When we see each other as enemies, we are the Middle East, and we can no longer work together for the common good. Consider what happened last week at a Minnesota WNBA basketball game:

Four off-duty Minneapolis police officers working the Minnesota Lynx game at Target Center on Saturday night walked off the job after the players held a news conference denouncing racial profiling, then wore Black Lives Matter pregame warm-up jerseys.

Lt. Bob Kroll, president of the Minneapolis Police Federation, the union that represents rank-and-file officers, praised the officers walk out:

I commend them for it… If [the WNBA players] are going to keep their stance, all officers may refuse to work there.

What is lost in the police union grandstanding was that the Lynx jerseys in question read “Change starts with us, justice and accountability” and on the back had Philando Castile’s and Alton Sterling’s names along with “Black Lives Matter” and the Dallas Police Department shield. How is that seen as anti-cop? This highlights how thin-skinned police forces around the US are whenever criticism emerges about bad policing.

But what can be done?

The most recent report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics quadrennial “Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2008” shows that there are 17,985 state and local law enforcement agencies with at least one full-time officer or the part-time equivalent in the US. All of them are managed by local, county or state governments, and the majority of police are members of a local union. Wrongo is not anti-union, but the social identity of being in law enforcement cultivates a code of unduly protecting members, hiding evidence, and blindly supporting the position of other officers simply because of their collective identity. The “Blue Wall of Silence” around cops is the excuse to cover up bad behavior in the face of investigation.

Creating an equivalency between #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter is wrong. Consider this thought from Jonathan Russell, Professor and Chaplain at the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

A black life is a life under the threat of social death, a social life constituted by precarity and the potential of imminent death…Blue lives have no analogous history, no precarious location from which their collective lives need recovery…Blue lives are not…living under conditions similar to black life. It is the history of black lives not mattering that gives meaning to the hashtag. Blue lives have no such analogous history.

Russell goes on to say:

Blue lives have always mattered, present and past. Their experience of social space is (for the most part) one of…deferential treatment… It is profoundly misrepresentative and disrespectful to develop an analogous hashtag, as if blue lives have an analogous experience of social life in America as black lives have. This hashtag is wrong in so much as it connotes that the lives of law enforcement officers have failed to matter sufficiently in the broader public consciousness.

For the umbrage-takers out there, relax. Wrongo isn’t saying that cops don’t deserve respect, they do. He thinks that cops have a tough job, and that we must mourn any cop killed on the job. But, we can’t be blind to the power of this confrontation between #Blue and #Black to tear us apart.

Here is ginandtacos: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

I keep holding out hope that we will learn something from this, that police can say to themselves “All those Dallas officers wanted was to do their job and go home alive at the end of the day” and have some moment of inspired transference wherein they realize that every black person they pull over in a traffic stop wants the same...

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Society