Fracking Ferguson

The tragic death of Michael Brown has, like water injected into the earth’s crust, pushed to the surface energy and power, with consequences both potentially beneficial (dealing with issues long buried and kept dormant) and toxic (increasing violence, rioting, and looting).

It’s so easy to sit in judgment of others, to say what we would have done in a particular situation, even though we’ve never been in that position nor would we want to be. Darren Wilson, the unfortunate officer who fired the fatal shots, has been both lionized and demonized by people who don’t know him or what really happened. Michael Brown, similarly, has been made into either a martyr or a villain who deserved his fate, again by people who didn’t know him or the circumstances.

I find it ironic that so many of those defending Officer Wilson, saying that we should not judge him harshly because none of us know how we would react under those circumstances (I’ve used the same argument) are also quick to abandon it so that they can pass judgment on the way political and police leaders have responded to the resulting crisis, failing to give them the same benefit of the doubt. 

It’s easy to criticize politicians and others tasked with restoring order and investigating the tragedy. Make no mistake, I’m not defending the politicians; that’s an impossible task anymore. But it’s also too easy to say they should be doing something differently. Are they overreaching, not doing enough, too soft, too hard.... Political and police leaders are being criticized all across the spectrum; no matter what they do, or fail to do, they will be criticized. If they make you happy, they will undoubtedly anger someone else. Can we not at least try to give them credit for doing their best, as they see it, in a no-win situation? I freely admit that the older I get, the less certain I become. But I also am more willing to ask myself, “What if I’m wrong?”

If you’re posting or reposting snarky memes, re-tweets of unverified information, videos, verified or not, that purport to “prove” that there is a simple solution or clear cut evidence, etc., you may be part of the problem. You are certainly encouraging the division and polarization that is at the heart of everything and working at cross purposes to even trying to find a solution, if there can even be one. I am hopeful that, given the time to do a thorough job, an investigation will do what it is supposed to do; it may not be able to discover the “truth,” which, like beauty, is often in the mind of the beholder, but perhaps, just perhaps, it could start us on a path of how we as a society can do things better. Not simple, but, ideally, unifying.