Extremist Lib Says Cops are Dangerous Because We Revere Soldiers

In an example of conflation that beats the band, a tech blogger on the tech site Scripting News thought he had a brilliant reason why cops are killing more people than ever in this country. It’s because we revere our soldiers, he quixotically said.

The writer, one Dave Winer (what a perfect last name for this foolishness, eh?) is essentially saying that because we venerate those who choose to serve their country as soldiers–and wrongly venerate them, in his opinion–we are setting the stage for cops to think they are above the law. And that, in turn, cops have decided they are above the law and now assume they can just kill anyone they want and at any time because of how we feel about the troops. Here is this confused fellow’s central thesis:

The problem isn’t with the NYPD, the problem is with the blanket total support we give our military when it fights in Afghanistan and Iraq. The price of placing zero value on the lives of the people of these countries is that our lives in turn become worthless. What goes around comes around. You reap what you sow. There are dozens of adages and fables that explain this phenomenon. The lives of the people of the foreign countries are worth exactly as much as ours. We overlooked the behavior of American soldiers in these countries. Now the cops want to know why we treat them differently. And they’re right to ask. Why? If the army can arbitrarily kill thousands in Iraq, why can’t they kill a few people in Staten Island, Missouri, or Ohio? You “support the troops” why don’t you support us, they ask

Of course, his base assumption is provably false. In his formulation he accepts the left-wing assumption that our soldiers go crusading through foreign countries indiscriminately killing women and children. While it is always true that innocents get caught up in war–it really is unavoidable, sad to say–it is simply untrue that the US military not only pays no mind to safeguarding innocents, but has a policy of open season on them. Further, he promulgates this mindless liberal babble even in the face of real indiscriminate killing as evinced by ISIS terrorists who have been killing civilians so quickly and with such abandon that statisticians can’t keep up with the numbers.

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He simply gropes forward with his base liberal inanities in the face of contrary evidence, taking no notice of it and acting as if it simply doesn’t exist. But let’s not let facts get in the way of this platitude-spewing leftist, shall we? Another logical fallacy in his reasoning is that he conflates soldiers with cops. The fact is few people in the USA think police officers are in the same category as our soldiers. While serving similar roles in some ways, they are distinct entities and few confuse the two… well, few who aren’t mindless liberals, that is. Next he goes on to assume that police aren’t being held to a “higher standard.” This is also a silly thing to claim. While there are cops who fall below that standard, the fact is that officers who are involved in shootings are more often losing their jobs after the internal investigations even when they are cleared of wrongdoing by a grand jury, a states attorney, or a jury and judge. In fact, police do have a higher standard of conduct than even our soldiers because they realize personal consequences from their actions far more often and at a faster rate of speed. Here is the lame wrap up from this whiner… er, I mean Winer, fellow.

Let’s stop singing God Bless America at our sporting events. Let’s stop lying about what our military does (I see the recruiting commercials during basketball and football games, they are disgusting). We have to remove this culture of honoring the invasion of countries on the pretense of liberating them when we’re actually protecting the economic interests of the rich and powerful. We allowed this to happen. Now if we want it to stop, we’re going to have to be strong. It’s going to involve a lot more than marching in the streets. We’re going to have to remain seated when we’re asked to stand and honor our imperialism which devalues the lives of ordinary people, like us. That way maybe the police will get the message that we won’t tolerate them killing us.

Yeah, the answer is to kill patriotism? With the line that leads his finale, one quickly comes to understand that his hate for the USA came before his desire to “explain” the nation’s current social problems with police. He hated patriotism to begin with and simply used the opportunity of his article as just another excuse to tear down the country. Finally, another lie buttresses Winer’s piece. The claim that cops are killing more people than ever, especially more blacks, simply is not true. As Heather MacDonald noted on Monday, 6,261 blacks were killed in the USA in 2013 with the bulk of them killed by black civilians, not police. Only some 200 of them were killed by police and most of those incidents occurred during armed resistance or during the commissions of violent crimes. In fact, as Larry Elder noted in his recent article, cops kill whites at almost double the rate that they kill blacks. Elder also found that police shootings are down dramatically from what they were 20 years ago. Finally, we also have to remember that the two incidents that brought us to a slew of cop murders are being sold with lies. It wasn’t true that Michael Brown had his “hands up” when he was shot by police in August in Ferguson, Missouri and it wasn’t true he was innocent because he had just committed a strong arm robbery. Eric Garner was not “killed by a choke hold” as the results of his death were more related to his bad medical conditions, not the actions of police. Further, both of these people who are being touted as innocents murdered by police were criminals, not law abiding citizens merely going about their day when they were unlawfully cut down by police. The whole “No Justice, No Peace” edifice is built on lies. So, what we see with Mr. Whiner’s piece is more mindless, left-wing boiler plate that isn’t buttressed by facts. It’s all about this poor little fella’s “feelings” than it is about truth.