Anarchy

Anarchy has been the word many have used to describe the state of many areas of this beautiful land lately. I looked up the word to see what the dictionary definition actually is. It is the state of disorder due to absence or non recognition of authority. I would have to say this would be an accurate assessment of what we are seeing and hearing lately in many of our cities and communities.

I will address the absence of authority first. Since the death of George Floyd, since this is where lately this anarchy has started, there has been a state of disorder. Peaceful protests filled the streets, true people from the very community that George Floyd lived in and worked. They had connections and actual perspective for this horrible situation that was brought on by an evil man who took power over another human being and killed him for all to see.

Many have said he abused his authority. I agree 100%. He absolutely did. He had a position of power that he manipulated to drain the life from a man who did not deserve to die on the street. Nobody does. I have not heard anyone argue that they believe that he does. George Floyd’s past has nothing to do with his present. What happened was unequivocally wrong and despicable. No questions asked. End of story. Period. God gets to decide life and death. Not us. Never.

However, when the protests turned to riots, and the police became the “enemy of the people”, those who fundamentally disagree with any sort of authority over their lives took over our communities and took away from the conversations and honoring of George Floyd and his memories. I am here to tell you, no amount of privilege assessments, white guilt or police shaming will get us to where we need to be to fix this horrible situation. George Floyd died at the hands of a person who killed him. This is a person who happened to wear a uniform, but the uniform does not equal murderer. The statistics on police killings are NOT overwhelming. If you look at the actual data from the Washington Post, you would see that the amount of police interactions, in persons involving the police, that law enforcement does not have the biggest impact on the death rate of black males or even females in our society. It just does not. Those who argue that it does not matter, it does people. You are saying it is their fault, that they are solely to blame for this corrupt culture that takes black lives. This is fundamentally flawed. It is untrue. The people feeding you this load of shit know this. They know that this just is a distraction and that nothing really ever gets solved.

There has never been an absence of authority in these communities. Some might argue that they are over-policed. Why do you think that is? Well, I will tell you why. The statistics on black-on-black crime are staggering. According to the FBI website, in 2019, 2870 individuals who identified themselves as African-American were killed. Those people identified as killing them were overwhelmingly the same race, at 2570. This is 89%! This statistically similarity held true for all races in this analysis. The fact of the matter is that black people are killing people at alarming rates in their own communities, and this goes unreported by mainstream media, or blamed on policing, education and social programs, when in reality, it is the communities themselves that are destroying each other.

So now I tried to analyze and make sense in my mind why we would blame ALL police officers for the mistake of one, or for the sake of argument, even a few. Here are those hard and fast numbers people: 14 unarmed black men were shot by police in 2019. 14. I will agree that all life is precious, and that 1 is too many, but this is just a number, and we need the entire story. Did these people fight with the police and resist arrest first? Were they high and therefore able to overpower the police due to their state of mind? I will tell you that this does matter people. It matters, because many are claiming that POLICE kill unarmed black men at alarming rates, and as I look at these numbers I do not see the connection. I see 89% of black men killing black men, versus 14 out of 5424 people in 2019 shot by the police, with that being .002% .

I have heard the baseless argument about the proportionality of killings by police and the percentage of the populations that the races make up, but that argument does not hold any water, for this assumes that all people, the entire population of people are the numbers that we should look at, and it assumes all people commit crimes. This is an inconvenient truth left out of that argument to serve a political purpose. I just wish people would wake up and realize this. When you look at the Washington Post statistics, you should be looking at all races, and white people are killing white people at the same rates, but 25 people killed by police are unarmed and this is still more than black people at .004%.

I really want to understand why people want to refuse this and I can only come to one conclusion. Anarchy is what people are searching for. They must want no actual authority over their daily lives. They are happy to call the police when they cannot handle a dispute, one they cannot handle themselves, even when they in theory view the police as a threat. I know that it just takes one positive encounter, or even one encounter period to view the police as necessary. I know that the rule of law keeps us from being savage and brutal to each other and that someone ultimately needs to enforce it.

What I will tell you from personal experience is that you have discouraged a whole population of peacekeepers who love these communities and who are invested. You armchair quarterback a job that I guarantee most of you would run away from. You say “well it is just a job and they chose it!” Of course they chose it, but that does not mean you have a right to discredit something that you know nothing about. You tell them constantly that they are never enough. That they as a group have design flaws. You have told them they are killers, bastards and untrustworthy. You will not let them do their jobs, patrol their neighborhoods or even grab a bite to eat in your establishments because you are afraid of a stereotype that is perpetuated by those who despise authority. You are FALSE AND INCORRECT in your narrative, but I know who you are and despite this, you will refuse to believe it.

I think that if you want to enjoy your freedoms of going to Starbucks without someone jacking your car or taking your wallet, sitting in your backyard patio and visiting with your neighbors or taking a peaceful ride on your bike to your local farmers market, I would suggest stop bashing those who fight the ugly on a daily basis. Their proactive policing in your neighborhoods keeps the peace you are looking for. They can no longer continue this for their OWN SAFETY. You are killing the morale of these men and women. You cannot discredit everyone and everything they do. You continue to support a false narrative.

Ugly will always exist in this world. We cannot eliminate it by watching a TED talk or apologizing to others for behaviors that we have never committed. We must commit to walking forward, stop blaming authority and telling anarchy to take a flying #$@! out of this world. We need to realize that anarchy has no place in this beautiful country and work to heal what is broken. Anarchy does not belong in America. It is a beast that is savage and is unwelcome in our hearts.