“What do we want?” “Dead Cops!”



You probably won’t see the above video on network news. It won't be Brian Williams who tells you that Michael Brown’s mother and some of her friends are awaiting trial for assaulting people with steel pipes and robbing them, or Scott Pelley who informs you that Michael Brown’s stepfather intiated a night of burning, rioting, and looting by repeatedly shouting, “Burn this motherfucker down! Burn this bitch down!” And while David Muir will  report Al Sharpton's and Jesse Jackson's words of wisdom and inform you solemnly that your president and the mayor of NYC think racism is to blame when a white cop kills a black criminal, no network anchor will suggest that such rhetoric is reckless or tell you that the murders of police officers were up 56% last year. 


I live in a state where only 2% of the population is black, yet there was a movement here by black leaders to dissuade the local media from mentioning that a criminal or fugitive is black or showing his mugshot on the evening news. They took this stance because Oregon blacks commit a disproportionately high percentage of crimes, so their fellow blacks thought it would be better for an occasional fugitive to escape than for white people to be constantly reminded of black criminality. Some might claim that all of these black criminals in this bastion of white liberality are simply the victims of racist cops, racist juries, and racist judges, and I can’t disprove such a claim anymore than I can disprove earlier
claims that a dead space alien was discovered near Roswell, New Mexico.

The network news will tell you that racist white cops go around bullying black people for no reason, but they won't mention that it was blacks who invented rap music with its glorification of criminality, or that upwards of 10,000 blacks a year are murdered in this country, 93% of them by other blacks. Of course, if you’re one of those who blame white people for black people’s problems, you might argue that white cops kill all those blacks and frame other blacks for their murders. Maybe so—I can’t disprove it anymore than I can prove you wrong if you believe 
Jews run the world or that the Mafia killed Kennedy.

 
Given that 61-years have elapsed since the advent of the Civil Rights Movement, yet large numbers of blacks are still blaming white people for their problems, it's my opinion that far too many blacks are damn feckless at taking responsibility for their own lives. While I believe that, in isolated ways, blacks still get a raw deal, the fact remains that a high percentage of them really are criminals, and that far too many blacks choose to voice their complaints regarding police brutality through rioting, looting, and calling for the deaths of police officers. This suggests that they have problems that go well beyond what white people can remedy, and it doesn’t incline me to turn a sympathetic ear to their complaints. Instead, it  increases my perception that an alarmingly high percentage of them are dangerous.

The top video was made during a demonstration in NYC. Several seconds into it, you can  hear the demonstrators demanding that police officers be murdered. A week later, two cops were shot to death while sitting in their car. Regarding the bottom video, please hang in there until the police chief is asked why he was on his phone during a public meeting.

You might as well try talking sense to a cat



If I follow my own counsel, I have to take responsibility for the consequences. If I follow other people’s counsel, I have to take responsibility for the consequences. This alone prejudices me in favor of following my own counsel.

If I follow my own counsel, I discover my mistakes sooner. If I go to a mentor or take a poll of my friends and behave as they advise, and doing so turns out to be a mistake, it won’t be my mistake, and all that I am sure to learn from it is that they were wrong.

No one can know for sure what’s right for himself much less for me. If I tell you I’m off to teach peace to the Islamic State, and you tell me it’s a bad idea, how do you know it’s a bad idea? After all, I might succeed. At the very least, it could turn out that if I stayed in Oregon, I’d fall asleep while driving and run head-on into a busload of school children, killing them all. No matter how sure we are that something is a mistake, none of us can see the future. I remember a time when I ignored my sister’s advice and later regretted it, but I wouldn’t go back and do things differently because I don’t know but what the right decision might not have led to a worse outcome.

If you feel the need to give advice, it’s better to avoid anger and condescension, because anger and condescension distracts from your argument and causes me to wonder if you’re acting out of a private agenda that has nothing to do with my welfare. At the very least, if it turns out that you were right, you will have made it hard for me to come to you for support because I will anticipate you thinking, “See there, I told you so. Maybe you’ll listen to me next time.”

Sometimes, a person might do as someone else advises because it seems to make sense, but other times, the reason might simply be a lack of self-confidence. Since no one can build self-confidence by ignoring his own best thinking in favor of the best thinking of someone else, advice-givers aren’t necessarily being helpful even when they’re right.

I think it’s nearly always better to ask questions than to provide answers. By asking questions, you’re encouraging me to find my own truth and my own path. By providing answers, you’re offering that which you think your truth and your path would be if you were me, only you
’re not me. You’re a million miles from being me.
 
I have observed that advice is often obvious, left-brain, superficial, and insulting. For instance, if I say that I’m unable to stop grieving the death of my father, and someone says, “You just need to learn to accept that which you can’t change,” he’s implying that I’m such a moron that I never would have thought of this on my own. He’s also implying that he is my superior in that his own life is ruled by logic rather than by emotional need and desire, although I’ve never observed this to be the case.

If I have a problem, I will have spent many hours pondering solutions that the advice giver thinks of off the top of her head. I invariably  know more about why I have the problem and what needs to be done done about it than those who would advise me.

Giving advice to me is hardly more useful than giving advice to a cat because I’ve spent my adult life ignoring what other people thought was perfectly good sense. I’ll give three examples. When I grew a beard during the summer of 1976, the principal at the school where I was teaching assumed I did it for the bicentennial and ordered me to shave before school started. I refused despite growing threats from the administration and the combined wisdom of everyone I knew. Years later, I joined the ACLU and American Atheists, despite the fact that all of my Mississippi friends and neighbors thought that these organizations represented everything that was wrong with America. Every time I’m called to jury duty (eight times in three states), I refuse to take the juror’s oath because it contains the word God. Nearly everyone I ever talked to about this said that I was making a big deal out of nothing.

What might look like a mistake to an onlooker might conform to a guiding vision that is invisible to him and, perhaps, only vaguely known to myself. I am not always able to defend my path to the satisfaction of my challengers, but I don’t take this to mean that I’m in error. I’m more likely to conclude that my would-be advisers are acting out of ignorance, whether of the facts of the matter or of my needs and values.

A decision isn’t necessarily wrong because it isn’t as good as an alternative decision or because it fails to succeed; rather it’s wrong when it originates out of base motives.

I think it might be possible that most people don’t share as deeply as I do on their blogs because when you share deeply, many people assume  you’re weak, vulnerable, and looking for advice. If I were weak and vulnerable, I wouldn’t have the guts to share as I do, and while I’m willing to consider advice, I seldom take it. 


One good thing I can say about advice is that those who give it are at least paying attention. Whether they are paying attention deeply is another matter, but they are paying attention, and I think that in nearly every case, they really do want the best for me.

Well, well, well. Well, well, well, well, well.


The following is a letter that I just sent. I share it as a post because it says what I would say if I wrote a post. I feel badly that I can't keep the people's identities a secret from those who know them, but it's clear, I hope, that what I wrote is my impression rather than their reality. Once I share my blog address, I know that, forever afterwards, the person I shared it with might actually read it even if he or she never brings it up. Furthermore, I can never be sure but what that person shared it with still other people whom I might write about. I know all this, but I can't let it alter how I write because the point of my writing is to write openly about what's important to me.
 
Brent, when I started going to Resurrection last summer, I never intended to keep my atheism a secret, but I didn’t know how or when to broach the subject. I shared it with you, of course, and a month or so later, I shared it with ___ through my blog. I thought he would be likely to understand my position because he too lives with a fact about himself that many, if not most, people at Resurrection reject him for, however subtly. My father was himself a transsexual, and this gave me another tie to ___. When I gave him my blog address, I asked if he would be willing to get together and talk sometime, my interest being in how he made the decision about when and how to tell people of his transsexuality. He said he would, but when I next saw him, I realized that he must have read my blog, because he seemed nervous and intent on avoiding me, a situation that continues. I was disappointed in him about this since he plans to be a priest, but I told myself that he was only one person.

As the months passed, I came to feel badly that I was flying, as it were, under false colors by letting people assume I was a theist, but I didn’t know what to do. Then, ___ started attending the book group, and he seemed like an open and sensitive person. Also I had spent most of my life feeling as shy as he, so that too gave me a bond with him. One night while we were walking to our cars together, I told him about my blog, and asked if he would like to read it. He enthusiastically said he would. The next time I saw him, he said that he had “tried” to read my blog, and offered that it must be strange for me to be in the book group. Nothing more was said, and I got the idea that he preferred to keep his distance.

A few weeks later, I got an email from the lady who was hosting the dinner for new people. Peggy wasn’t interested in going, and I couldn’t go. I let ___ know these things, and she wrote back that her husband felt as Peggy did about church, and she asked if Peggy and I would like to have dinner with them some other time. I wrote that we would, and, after my signature, I impulsively put my blog address. I haven’t heard anything more from her, so I assume the dinner is off, along with the “loving reception” that the original email promised.

I find it considerably harder to tell myself that it’s only three people than I did when it was only one person. Maybe I didn’t share my atheism in the best way. On the other hand, polls show that Americans hold atheists in the same esteem as rapists, so it seems likely that I would have been rejected no matter how I had broached the subject. You anticipated a better reception, and I wanted to believe you, but my experience with Christians has long been extremely discouraging (when I became an atheist, I was shut out of the lives of people whom had always been my friends). Having shared what appears to be regarded as my shameful secret with three people other than yourself, and having been seemingly rejected by all three, I don’t see the point in continuing. I’m far from needing everyone’s approval, but neither do I wish to go where I am treated like a pariah. Nothing is written in stone here, but for now all the joy of attending church is gone for me. I plan to come to class on Saturday because I have to come out and return some books anyway, but I rather doubt that I will continue beyond that. I know that this is a busy time of year for you, and I don’t want you to feel any obligation to meet with me again even when you have more time, yet if you have any ideas that I haven’t thought of, that would be another matter. Emails are good too. In fact, I prefer them in some ways.

I understand that your vision of a church is that it be a place where people are cemented by values rather than beliefs, and where people can safely come together to share the news of their spiritual journey no matter where that journey has taken them. I, too, would love for church to be such a place, but I think that your goodness might sometimes make it hard for you to anticipate the failings of others. Without meaning to elevate myself to what I regard, in some ways, as your level of virtue, I think this is also true of myself, because, otherwise, why would I have ever walked in the door at Resurrection?

Whatever my faults, if the Christian talk of loving one’s neighbor is to mean anything, I have as much claim to that love as anyone. At the same time, I recognize that tribalism is a strong need within our species, and that church is one of its strongholds. I’ve even noticed that those outsiders whom your own church goes to such pains to help can be counted upon to remain outsiders, thereby allowing the church to see itself as helping its neighbors while at the same time trusting that those neighbors are unlikely to draw uncomfortably close. I don’t mean this as cynically as it must sound, because I know that there are other factors at work here. Yet, would you not say that the people who appear to have turned their backs on me are among those who take their religion the most seriously, and who therefore might have been considered the mostly likely to embrace me? You might ask what I would have liked from them. The answer is acknowledgement followed by normalcy. I wasn’t seeking conversion; I wasn’t seeking to convert; and I wasn’t looking for heartfelt conversations about God or atheism. I instead wanted to be accepted as I am, which is how you have accepted me. If, beyond that, someone had shown an interest in my experiences and views, that would have been wonderful, but I didn’t expect it. Truth be known, I got what I did expect, what experience has taught me to expect.