Tag: media

When the Police are in the Wrong – But so is Everyone Else

As a general rule I almost always defend the police.  There are many reasons for this default position, chief among them is that social justice warriors are constantly crying wolf and making exaggerated claims of police brutality.  Whenever a new allegation of excessive force hits the news my initial instinct is to roll my eyes and say, “Here we go again.” 

Fair minded people have been trained to respond this way after listening to these unfair accusations for so many years.   When we heard that Michael Brown was senselessly murdered by a racist cop in Ferguson, Missouri, and then found out that Brown was a dangerous criminal who was trying to assault the officer, some credibility was lost.  When protesters and rioters took to the streets after the incident even more credibility was lost.  When this pattern repeated itself time and time again across America, all credibility was lost.  Now when we hear about wrongdoing by the police we jump to the conclusion that the accusers are either exaggerating, twisting the facts, or flat out lying.

This was my gut reaction when I heard about the incident that occurred in Minneapolis.  “Time to defend another police officer from slander,” I thought.  Then I watched the video and realized something very rare had occurred.  I was wrong.  Making any kind of judgement based on a video is usually unwise because it rarely shows what led up to the events you see on the screen, but the video that shows now former police officer Derek Chauvin with his knee on the neck of George Floyd is different.  The problem is not that Floyd was innocent.  He was a bad guy who had committed a crime.  He then refused to get into the police car, so force was warranted.  The problem is that once he was no longer a threat, Chauvin remained on his neck.  Even if you say that Floyd was still somehow dangerous in handcuffs, the officer remained on top of him even after he had lost consciousness.  This was certainly excessive force.  There is no excuse for Chauvin’s actions and he deserves to be punished firmly.  In fact, the Bible tells us that the punishment for murder should be death.

We should all be united on this.  Unfortunately, there is the race problem.  No, I don’t mean with the police.  In fact, I watched the video multiple times and there is exactly zero evidence that race played any part in Floyd’s death.  Chauvin used terrible judgement and is certainly in the wrong, but there is no reason to believe that Floyd’s race was a factor in what occurred.  So who has the race problem?  The people who are making it about race, obviously. 

The racial division and rioting we have seen is not just because of what happened to George Floyd.  It is a result of the media reporting on the events and ridiculous statements by public figures.  The left is once again trying to divide us.  If you are the one who makes it about race, then you have the race problem.  When the headlines constantly tell us that “an unarmed black man” was killed, they are giving us irrelevant information unless there is evidence that he was killed because he was black.  Correlation does not equal causation.  George Floyd being black was not the cause of his murder.  George Floyd was murdered and he happened to be black. 

The media needs to stick to the facts, remain fair, and quit advocating for the left and trying to divide us.  Last week President Trump said something obviously true, that mail-in voting will make it easier to cheat in elections, and was “fact-checked” for making claims that lacked evidence.  (Could the claim lack evidence because voter fraud is now so easy to get away with?)  If the media wanted to make things better in our country maybe they should fact-check Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey when he said of Floyd, “He’d be alive today if he were white.”  That claim surely lacks evidence considering the fact that 42 white people have been shot and killed by the police this year.  The only reason to say something like that is to pit people against each other based on skin color.  It is evil.

Then we have the protesters.  What is it that they want to accomplish?  Please do not hit me with the Colin Kaepernick memes.  He was supposedly protesting “bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”  Chauvin was arrested and will be prosecuted for his crime.  I just said he should face the death penalty.  Explain to me how Kaepernick or the protesters want a tougher punishment than I suggest, and remember, leftists are usually the people who are against capital punishment.  Also, do not tell me they are protesting for the murdering to stop.  Almost everyone wants that so who are they trying to persuade?  How is throwing rocks through windows and burning down buildings supposed to end murder?

People will point out that some of these feelings are based on historical racial injustices.  They are undeniably correct, but that should be more reason to avoid cheapening real claims of racism by saying everything is about race when it is not.  Remember from the story of the boy who cried wolf, when he actually encountered a real wolf, nobody believed him and came to help.

Why is the left trying to sow division?  The usual reason, power.  They know that if people are united then they will lose votes.  This is why the media is always trying to scare people and cause hysteria.  At least this might give the hysterical people something else to focus on instead of trying to stop friends from eating dinner together, going to church, and keeping kids from playing Little League games.

The Four Types of People

I have observed four different types of people when it comes to the coronavirus quarantine.  Type 1’s are people who are genuinely scared.  They think that we need to hide in our houses because otherwise they, or many of their friends and family members are all going to die of coronavirus.  I mostly feel bad for these people because, as I discussed before, their fears are completely irrational if you look at the odds.  Unfortunately, type 1’s sometimes overlap with the worst group, type 2.

Type 2’s are the people who are spreading the fear.  They consist of those overlapping type 1’s, politicians, and the media.  The driving force of this whole debacle is, by far, the media.  They have a couple of reasons to blow things out of proportion and scare people.  The first is attention and power.  Bad news equals ratings.  When they scare people, those people keep listening to them.  Members of the media love to feel important and affect our lives.  If the media scares enough people the politicians jump on board because they are scared by scared voters.  Plus they also love power over people’s lives.  Second, the media sees it as a chance to take down a president that they have been trying unsuccessfully to destroy since before he took office.  It very well may work.  Every person who dies, every business that closes down, and every person who loses their job is a good thing for Democrats come November.

Some of the many tactics that type 2’s use are: 

  1.  They give seemingly large numbers without providing any perspective.  The new estimate of 60,000 deaths may seem big, but the media doesn’t tell us that about that many people die every 8 days in the United States.
  2. They use models to predict future outcomes.  Later, when the actual numbers don’t match their predictions they simply update the model to reflect the new data.  They expect us to accept their models as truth even though we have seen them be incorrect time and time again.
  3. They tell us about celebrities who test positive for coronavirus.  They have to put a face to the disease and they realize that since almost none of us will personally know anybody who dies of the virus, they have to tell us about Tom Hanks, Kevin Durant and Idris Elba catching it to scare us into compliance.  The thing is, celebrities have always gotten sick.  It just normally is not reported.
  4. They lie about the death rate being much higher than the flu.  Considering the current reported numbers, combined with the fact that for every reported case there are likely 50 to 85 unreported cases, the death rate for coronavirus is hovering in the 0.066% to 0.1% range.  In other words, right around the same as the flu.

Type 2’s are also the people who feel the need to attack and shame anybody who dares to question the wisdom of giving up our liberty or, God forbid, doesn’t socially distance.  You see them on social media posting grim stories about how everybody is going to die, or complaining about people who aren’t wearing masks, or are playing tennis in the park, or want to attend church services.  They mock people as morons or say they have a death wish if they are seen with other people.  Unfortunately, type 2’s are the people you hear the most from.

Type 3’s are the people like me who think that the fear of coronavirus is irrational because the numbers do not justify it.  That does not mean that they think it isn’t real.  It certainly is, and the sick and elderly should stay at home.  Young, healthy people should be allowed to choose for themselves if they want to quarantine or not.  It should be up to that individual instead of the government.  Type 3’s still value individual liberty.  Some ignore social distancing rules, yet stay alive at a massively high rate.  The reason has nothing to do with them.  It is simply because the survival rate is massively high in general.  Type 3’s realize that it is dishonest when people are led to believe that there is a binary choice between quantity and quality of life.  The real choice is between a long, lower quality life and a long, higher quality life.  They choose the latter.  Unfortunately, type 1’s and 2’s are probably lost causes, and they outnumber type 3’s and control public policy right now.

This leads us to our last group, and possibly our last hope.  Right now public opinion is solidly in favor of the quarantine.  I know I’m in the minority, and the type 1’s and 2’s are not going to change their minds because the odds don’t matter to them and liberty is a disposable value to them.  Their numbers are relatively small, though.  The reason the polls still favor the quarantine is because of the type 4’s.

Type 4’s are the largest group.  At this point, they are in favor of the quarantine.  They are simply being cautious.  Their motto is, “better safe than sorry.”  While they are very averse to risk, they are also logical people who look around and don’t see the scary results that the type 2’s keep touting.  I have heard, more times than I can count, things like, “this doesn’t seem that bad, but let’s play it safe and see what happens.”  They observantly notice that nobody that they know is dying.  They also see that the few people they hear about who do catch coronavirus are surviving.  They see the numbers, and the fact that they just don’t match the gloom and doom predictions they heard from the media.  Most importantly, they do see the damage that the quarantine is doing.  They see a third of the country out of work.  They see kids missing out on proms and graduations.  They see people becoming depressed because they are lonely and barred from doing the things they love.  They will start to miss restaurants, sports, and live music.  The reason that they are our last hope is because at a certain point reality will start to become clear and they will begin to feel safe enough to want freedom again.  As type 4’s get more courageous, things will get better. 

As we move forward we will see that type 3’s were right all along.  There will be deaths, but not in the numbers we were warned about.  Frustratingly, the type 2’s will claim that it is because the quarantine worked and stopped people from catching coronavirus.  In fact, it’s likely that more people actually get it, or already had it, but it’s just much milder than how it was portrayed.

What type are you?