People may not realize this, but comments like the one pictured in this article, are in fact, more prevalent than they are rare. I know people like to think that the type of views expressed in that comment isn't a central tenant to American thinking. However, let me just tell you, they really, really are. I’ve seen it more times than I can count.
Now, truths, reality, history, and facts can be whatever one wants them to be if you make them up for yourself. However, and there is no more important statement that can be made than this:
Just because you believe it, does not make it true. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Well I guess I just can’t have my opinion huh? What happened to the First Amendment!?!” Look, anyone and everyone, are indeed, entitled to their opinion. However, this is important for one to realize: You are not entitled to having your opinion equate to facts.
Now, let me break down each of these statements of this comment, which are rooted in logical fallacies, confirmation bias, or outright lies:
First, the media did not create racism. The news networks did not establish nor systematically enact and enforce a series of unethical racially motivated legal standings and cultural sentiments. I repeat, the media did not create racism.
Rather, the media’s job is to report on events and topics that are newsworthy to the public. Is the media always fair and unbiased? No, they are not. However, we cannot blame that on liberals. Actually, the blame lays squarely on conservatives, or specifically the dissolution of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 by then-President Ronald Reagan. You are welcome to read all about that fact here
Now, by substantiated fact, the Republican President Ronald Reagan dissolved the FCC regulation that prevented media outlets from being overly biased in reporting.
To suggest that modern mainstream media outlets are predominately liberal in their biases is indeed true. At least in totality. However, this is not based on some collaborative effort or conspiracy against conservatives. It is because media organizations are comprised of human beings. The human beings that are involved in news production, both print, and media, are comprised of a range of specific interests and backgrounds related to visual arts, literature, professional writing, music, entertainment, film, psychology, and sociology. Essentially, all of these subject matters and skills are all contained within the domain of… wait for it… the LIBERAL ARTS.
That’s right, going all the way back to Classical and Hellenistic Greece, the pursuits of matters in life not inherently related to professional, vocational or technical subjects have been actually literally called, “liberal arts” or “liberal pursuits.” To consistently blame or speak disparagingly about the media or performance artists liberal leaning views is absolutely insane, simply because the entire field is rooted in a 1,500-year-old philosophical view of the world through categorically liberal, free-thinking views. Basically, if you’ve ever read a good book, watched a TV show or movie you liked, you can tip your hat to the historical foundations of liberal thinking. Yes, this includes even any book you’ve read or show you’ve watched that said Obama was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood or Hillary Clinton single handily parachuted into Benghazi and killed Americans. They still owe their origins and existence to the liberal arts.
This doesn’t mean that you have to be liberal minded in your political or philosophical views. In fact, the roots of conservativism are in governmental hierarchies and traditional institutionalism. These are indeed important aspects that make a society function and allow for the establishment of governmental institutions, such as the military. Rather, this just means, that getting mad or blaming the media for all of the nation’s or your own woes is absolutely a maladaptive and illogical use of your life. In reality, these two varying cultural views must work in tandem in order for civilizations to function successfully.
Now, this is also important. The media reports on the extreme 1% of life. Both good and bad. They report on the significant events that a culture deems to be newsworthy. They do not report on the mundane 99% of life, which indeed is the majority in which we all live in. So, if indeed a large segment of the minority population is expressing discontent and concerns over their treatment by law enforcement, this indeed represents one of those significant 1% events that fall within the criteria of media reporting.
The idea that the media doesn’t report on all the good things that law enforcement does every day is also a micro-aggressionists and irrational view of things. Of course, they don’t report on the 99% mundane, routine or good that goes on in police work!
“Today, in important news, a police officer responded to a report that someone’s bike was stolen. The police have been unable to recover the bike at this point, however, their presence and the fact they took a police report on the matter, made the victim feel to some degree better and like they regain some control after being victimized. Now to Dale with tomorrow's weather.”
They don’t report all the good things police officers do, just like they don’t report on the millions of cars that successfully drive to their destinations each day and instead report the bad accidents. Which, is important to note, they don’t report on all the accidents. Only the significant 1% ones.
Ok… now, to suggest that the media is responsible for the deaths of police officers is equally ridiculous. For one thing, I’m not aware of any concern or problem that anyone has ever expressed in all of history that was solved by ignoring the actual concern or problem. So if thousands of people are protesting how they feel mistreated by law enforcement, the solution is to ignore that and it will go away?
That’s not even real life. If you were upset at a spouse or significant other, is that conflict solved by them ignoring you? Does anyone sit around with their friends and say, “I just love my spouse! They ignore the s--- out of my concerns.” No! That’s not how conflicts are resolved. They are resolved by listening, respect and working towards solutions.
The people who violently target law enforcement officers do so with the same mindset as any extremist or radicalized zealots do. There is not a distinction between those individuals, or Islamic terrorists and White Supremacist, such as Dylann Roof. Most importantly, rhetoric actually has absolutely zero to do with preventing law enforcement deaths. Take, for example, in 2015 to 2016. All I heard about was the war on the police and how politicians, the media, and social justice groups had sparked this war on the police.
The concept of being under attack and that society was forming a violent rebel resistance towards the police permeated the collective American conscious. Then 2017 came, and evidently, the war ended, because we never heard any more about it. Which, would have been all well and good, except for the fact that to date, police officers in the line of duty deaths are up, 21% overall and 15% for gunfire.
Just in case, anyone would like to make an argument that the recent discontent over the verdict in the Philando Castile case has a statistical recency effect on the data, both categories actually went down 10% of the last week, and they have been higher for 2017 than 2016 consistently all year long.
Essentially, people need to realize, I don’t particularly want to hear your BS about how much you care about police officer’s lives. Because you equate how nicely politicians talk about law enforcement or what the media shows to be an influencing factor over cops dying. However, as actual, literal, real-life facts demonstrate that this has absolutely no influence other, then seemingly, the more these groups “Back The Blue” the more we die. Therefore, the enjoyment of your confirmation biases and willingness to ignore truths, actually demonstrates you could care less about cop’s lives.
When it comes to the idea that the biggest racist or domestic terrorists in America are The Black Panthers or Black Lives Matter is ridiculous. It’s so unfounded on factual basis, that I really don’t even want to spend my time talking about it, but… sigh, I will.
According to the FBI’s UCR data, 81.3% of all reported hate crimes committed in America were committed against non-Whites. Now, I guess these Black Nationalists hate groups you speak of, could indeed be targeting their own race for hate crimes. Overwhelmingly, Islamic extremists commit more acts of terror against Muslims than non-Muslims, so anything’s possible. However, I’m going to go out on a limb and say, that’s probably not the case. In fact, 83% of all hate crimes reported to the FBI occur to three classes of people, non-Whites, the LGBT community and non-Christians (I and my fellow Jews crank that non-Christian hate crime victim stat up. Our bad).
Now, there are 917 recognized hate groups in America. This is based on the Southern Poverty Law Center, and more importantly, intelligence provided to law enforcement. This may surprise some people, but as a real life police Lieutenant, and someone who works on ensuring the safety and protection of the members and attendees of my Synagogue, I do have fairly good access to contemporary intelligence on hate groups. I’ll say it’s at least better than the “Defenders of America’s” Facebook page.
Now, out of those 917 hate groups, 71% are White supremacist groups. According to the FBI’s UCR data, from 2005 to 2015, 83% of all murders committed that had some connection to a right-wing extremist. 77% of the deaths related to domestic terrorism was committed by white supremacists. Now, when I say all of this, these are not my feelings or opinions. Nor are they related to any political favoritism. Rather, they are facts. In fact, they are facts that were compiled in April of 2017, by the United States Government Accountability Office, provided to Congress at their request. You can read the report right here.
Does this mean that there are not incidents of hate crime, property damage, or violence that are perpetrated by far-left, Black Separatists, or other non-White Supremacists groups? Absolutely not! In fact, out of the 917 active hate groups, 193 of them are Black Separatists groups, including Nation of Islam, Black Israelites, and New Black Panther party. Additionally, hate crimes were the victim was White, represented 18.7% of the total racially motivated crimes in 2015.
However, the moral of the story is that it is 100% false to suggests that Black Separatists groups are the main racist and violent terrorist in the U.S. In fact, it isn’t Islamic groups either. It’s actually squarely in the lap of white supremacist and neo-Nazis.
Ultimately, at the end of the day, if you actually support law enforcement, or if you actually desire to see a society that exists beyond the confines of racial disharmony, then you’re going to have to be willing to examine and work with facts and truths. Because to do otherwise is to voluntarily engage in obstructionist behaviors that do not help keep cops any safer and they do not ever really solve any problems.
Now, as mad as I may seem at the people who harbor these views, I’m actually not mad at them at all. What I am is legitimate in my desire to see the experiences between law enforcement and the community be mutually positive and respected. Additionally, call me crazy, but I really do care about people. Yes, even the people who accept falsehoods and prevent progress. Indeed, I care about you too. I don’t actually have to be Black, Hispanic, Asian, Gay, Christian, Muslim, or any other classification of people that exists in order to care about everyone and want to see people live in peace. However, the starting point of peace will always be found in truth. So we must seek truths first, then work towards peace.