Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!

For years, events have been calling our nation to a serious discussion.  For years, we've turned away from having one, preferring crazy actions to reasoned, respectful talk.  In fact, reason & respect seem to have been thrown out the window over the past six years.

My conservative friends would say that it started farther back, that George W. Bush was disrespected, too.  But let's face it - W was laughed at, he wasn't hated & openly disrepected by elected & appointed officials in very public settings.  Barack Obama has been.  If Bush 43 was considered a joke, Obama is considered by many the anti-Christ.  

The recent tragedy in Ferguson, Missouri has become a flash point of anger over a rising tide of events that seem to target the dignities of African-Americans.  Stand your ground laws that allow people to kill if they feel threatened, which puts the ultimate white privilege - an expectation it's reasonable to feel threatened by someone because of color - front & center.  Voter ID laws that seem to target black voters, ignoring that voter fraud almost always happens in the counting,not the casting.  The inability of the courts to convict, often even to indict law enforcement officers who kill black suspects, however outrageous the situation.

The decision to not indict Officer Darren Wilson should not have surprised anyone.  The evidence was too iffy, the testimonies too conflicting.  It was the only decision they could find, given the realities.  Forget the event, hard as that may be.  All the came after it was one indignity after another.  Leaving the body, uncovered, in the street for four hours - on a summer day.  The police bungling from the start, the questionable actions of the prosecutor to the very end.  To this outsider, it felt like the powers-that-be in Ferguson were trying to trigger upset in their black community.  

What is of interest to me is how people have responded in incredibly inappropriate ways to the whole heart break, from the violence in Ferguson & other communities to Rudy Guiliani's black-on-black crime comments to the St. Louis Rams coming into the stadium with their hands up.

One side can't see the grand jury came to the only possible decision;  another side can't see that the rising anger has a justifiable source, laid out in a growing number of indignities that seem to target African-Americans.  They lash out from feelings rather than reason, which is dangerous ground to be walking.

In a nutshell, that's the thing that most fascinates me about the past six years.  We were once a land of reason & laws;  now, Darrell Issa says he has no proof of intentional wrongdoing by IRS officials BUT he knows it in his gut and the press & public don't laugh him out of his chairmanship.

Let's face it - Barack Obama, as African-American as anyone could ever be, was elected & our nation went cuckoo.  Republican leaders had a meeting on the very night of his inauguration on how to short-sheet his term; at that same time, Mitch McConnell announced that the GOP's #1 goal was to short-sheet what he hoped to make a 1-term presidency - months after the 2008 economic melt-down, Republican leadership had torpedoing a presidency, not restoring our economy, as their top goal.  And that has been how they have acted, both throughout President Obaman's first term & now his second.

The Tea Party made its spectacular debut in the 2010 elections & things in the country have been set on their ear, nowhere more than in the Republican Party, where Tea Party activists "primary" GOP candidates they consider don't come up to their standards of governing.  

We've seen Stand Your Ground laws sweep through state legislatures, seen unions openly being busted, seen voter id laws introduced that disenfranchise the old, the poor & students.  

The Supreme Court redefined campaign finance reform to mean that corporations have the same freedom of speech as a citizen, with all of the privileges & none of the responsibilities.  Corporations can move their headquarters to another country to avoid American tax laws, but still claim incredibly tax right-offs & other $$$ booty funded by American tax payers.

What happened in Ferguson MO & the response to it - on all sides - is just one more sign that the United States of America 2014 has gone cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!

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our nation needs to get into a serious discussion, yet one side can't see the grand jury came to the only decision it could, given the evidence & conflicting testimony, while another side can't see the valid anger over a body left in the street for four hours, over a police force that bungled things from the start, over a prosecutor who acted questionably to the end. our country's laws have shifted over the past six years, highlighted by stand your ground & voter id laws that seem to target & lessen the rights of african-americans. if all of us can't at least understand the growing frustration, then our thinking - & compassion - is muddled beyond reason. nothing says how messed up our nation has gotten over race relations than using black-on-black crime to discount the tragedy in ferguson, mo.