He’s reportedly confessed, so it’s fair at this point to say “what an asshole”, firing into a crowd from 100 yards away because of some earlier argument.

Lots of speculation on this thread about it. How’d we do solving the mystery? Well, apparently it was an idiot’s problem with anger management and impulse control that was behind it all, so no false flag conspiracy or racial animus (violent bloodthirsty black protesters out for cop blood, as the rightwing media so charmingly and predictably decided in the first microsecond; or, conversely, white vigilantes on the rooftop who were either very poor shots or false flaggots, as I vaguely wondered). I suddenly find myself with nothing left to analyze. The dickhead did it. I think the story is over. Little to see here after all, folks, move along.

I got the part about the caliber of the shells right, so I win.

(Reuters) – Nearly 48 hours after two officers were shot in Ferguson, Missouri, investigators had dozens of leads but no arrests to report on Friday in the hunt for a gunman who turned a late-night protest against police into bedlam.

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said authorities had “a pretty good idea” where the gunshots that wounded the officers had originated, without providing specifics, but added that an arrest was not imminent.

The kind of gun used, the shooter’s motivation and any connection to the protesters remained a mystery, prolonging uncertainty for a town that has come to symbolize America’s struggle with race and policing.

I think what happened is, the police and the rest of the authorities in Ferguson have this narrative stuck on a loop in their heads about ultraviolent bloodthirsty black rioters out for the blood of poor innocent white cops, and it spooled automatically from the Chief’s lips the first time he was asked to comment on the shootings. Then he had to back up his words, and it seems like he gave it a try, but 48 hours later it doesn’t seem to be working.

The shells in the parking lot don’t necessarily have to relate to this incident. I mean, shell casings on the ground in front of the police station in a town that’s seen nonstop demonstrations and occasional violence for months? Go figure. They could be salt-free.

My prediction: The shells on the ground will never be heard of again, and eyewitness accounts of where the shots came from will be acknowledged…while the motivation will forever remain a mystery. It’ll be tied up with a bow and forgotten about.

What is really at stake here is the economic agenda that underlies it all and that is tapping into these pathologies. I don’t want to live in a country where the New Deal is rolled back, the safety net is gone, social welfare disappears, health care, old age pensions and education are privatized, unions are non-existent and a regressive flat income tax and sales tax pays for the prisons and aircraft carriers, while corporate and capital gains taxes are banished altogether for the benefit of the job creators.

Oh, and lets not forget, safety, employee and consumer protection, and environmental regulations will be just a memory. And we will wink and look the other way while illegal aliens are encouraged to come here and take American jobs–provided they work dirt cheap and cause no trouble on pain of deportation.

These are not ideological consequences, or the product of runaway religious fundamentalism; they are the inevitable result of economic pressures unrestrained by human empathy and common decency. Its the Gilded Age all over again, but this time administered with computers instead of scriveners.

The question is, were those cops hit by murderers (black or white), friendly fire, or a deliberate political act designed to provoke whites into initiating a race war. I think all three possibilities are equally likely.

What I fear, though “fear” may overstate how I see the future at an advancing age, is religious extremism. Both the “Oathkeepers” and the KKK are explicitly Christianist organizations, and they’re the perfect archenemies of Islamists…and together they’re a hypergolic Armageddon cocktail with a nuclear-tipped twist. I fear being collateral damage in an insane holy war.

The police report finding casings where the crowd was, approximately, and said they were rounds for a pistol, but with no more detail. So why did they raid the house on the hill? And how does positing the shots came from a pistol close by jibe with the nonlethality of the wounds? The notorious inaccuracy of a pistol (grazing shot to one head)? Lower muzzle velocity?

It’s been just under two days now, and it’s no surprise that there are still paradoxes and contradictions in what we know. The police can’t unfind the shells, so no doubt the paradox will be resolved, officially, by saying that the raid was unrelated or based on false info or something else.

The notion that there was some kind of a false flag operation can’t rely on good fortune to explain why the two cops survived–no sniper is good enough to place the shots with that kind of precision. Or was the crowd the intended target, and the shooter had a very bad aim? The picture is cloudy…ask me later.

Both were discharged from the hospital within hours.

Believe it or not.

Remember how they originally depicted the welfare cowboy Bundy and his hillbilly militia as freedom fighters? And to this day, they lionize the Waco wackos and the Ruby Ridge rednecks as patriots, crushed under the bootheel of liberal tyranny.

Right wing media aren’t just biased, they are Nazi propagandists. But unlike the original Nazis, who promoted their twisted ideology out of a misguided but sincere belief in their own racial superiority and historical inevitability, the Right wing media fans the flames of hatred and discord simply because it is profitable. There’s an infinite market for hate in this country, and capitalism is ready and eager to meet the demand.

When my 16 year old cousin came from Cuba under the Pedro Pan program, escaping Castro’s tyranny, he stayed with my family and he attended high school with me. After his first homeroom recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, he said to me, “My parents sent me here to
save me from just this kind of political brainwashing.”

But his most perceptive remark came during his first high school football game, when the bleachers erupted into a wildly enthusiastic rendition of “Dixie” prior to the game. The song routinely followed a more sedate “Star Spangled Banner” just prior to kickoff. I explained to him the context.

“I thought you guys fought your Civil War a hundred years ago.”

Yeah, I’m paranoid all right. I’m scared shitless.