Blogger 365 Day 325 - The blog repeats itself

     Some times I feel like I am repeating myself on here, but then again, sometimes circumstances create a scenario where repeating myself is called for.

     Long time readers know that I used to make an argument in my radio days regarding movements or protests and how good or bad they are.  My argument has always been and continues to be that a movement's credibility and ability to affect change is based not on the numbers of the movement, but the values of its constituent parts.  In making this argument I often referred to Cindy Sheehan, who vigil outside the Crawford Ranch of President Bush would have carried far more weight if it was simply a grieving parent seeking an audience with the President in hopes of learning just what, if anything, it was her son died for.  When her vigil instead became a circus, and anyone with a grievance decided to camp out as well and use the grief of the Sheehan family as a means to piggy back their own pet causes onto.   The movement may have gained numbers, but it lost credibility and thereby lost its effectiveness.

     Not that these causes are the sole propriety of the left, there are plenty of cases where those movements that might have had credibility sacrificed their argument because in an effort to garner numbers they mixed their message with people who did them more harm than good.  Look at the guns' rights activists who were first to rush to George Zimmerman and proclaim him a hero, only later to find he was threatening the women in his life with the very same firearms that he used to kill Treyvon Martin.  Or the people who were quick to rush to Cliven Bundy's side because he was standing up to the federal government, only to find that they were standing next to someone who would make for an ideal member of the KKK, right down to suggesting that blacks were better off on plantations as slave.  Whatever you feel about the federal government's reach into its citizens' lives, standing next to a racist never helps your cause.

     Which brings us to Michael Brown and the happenings in Ferguson, Missouri.  Let's get something straight, blacks are treated unfairly in many instances because of the color of their skin.  They get stopped more often by police, sentences hand down by the courts tend to be longer for blacks for similar crimes (look at the sentencing guidelines for those that use crack versus those that use cocaine as a prime example) are just a couple such instances.  That being said, the pinnacle of this most recent movement is the death of Michael Brown.  Let's not kid anyone, Michael Brown was not a model citizen, only minutes before his death he had committed a robbery.  Chances are his community is going to be better off without him than with him.  And when your movement is focused on treating a thug as a martyr, then your movement loses credibility.  When, in an effort to show how large your movement is, you embrace those who deem destruction of private property as a means to prove a point, including mindlessly destroying businesses in the very community you are trying to help, then again you lose credibility.

     Michael Brown lived a thug's life and ultimately he died a thug's death.  Those that suggest otherwise do the people who do actually suffer injustices a disservice.