This is why I have contributed so little writing to this particular hot-button issue. I really do think I can see both sides, and it is so sad. As Trump said (in another context, of course) “there are good and bad people on both sides…”

But I think I do disagree with you about one thing…this story is fundamentally economic. Its about money and class. Sure history and race play a role, too, as do reporting and media and politics and culture, and much of it has to do with gun control, but things happen for a reason, and as far as I’m concerned, the main reason here, the real deep reason, is economic.

I know absolutely nothing about the case you are discussing here, either the race or the income level of the participants. By itself, it means nothing, because it is an isolated case, I’m talking about the whole category of white on black police shootings, (and gun crime in the black community, including black on black violence) and the problems in the black community that lead to these shootings.

Its all about economic divisions connected to race. But they are not caused by race. And until we realize that, the killing will go on.

Black folks, and Hispanics, Jews, and/or any other ethnic minority, can join the country club, or marry white girls, or run in the Republican primary, or send their kids to a good college, or move into a posh neighborhood as long as they are members of the right social and economic class. Unfortunately, class mobility isn’t what it used to be, and people, particularly those in the rapidly shrinking working and middle classes, are finally starting to get hip to that. The real “elites” in this country aren’t the people who are well-educated, or work in media, or are intellectuals, or have careers in the arts or work in politics or government bureaucracies. They’re the people who own or manage big commercial enterprises.

Once you understand that, you understand class conflict, and then everything else makes sense.

Most cops treated us tolerably, but there were more than a few who obviously tried to provoke something every time there was an encounter. And I suspect that many would have welcomed any “back-talk” or “guff” as an excuse to give us the third degree. A few of my friends learned that the hard way. I remember once, after a minor fender-bender, the trooper was giving me so much shit that the other motorist (a kindly old gent) had to intervene and tell the cop he was at fault in the accident. I had no doubt the cop was not going to accept my version of events.

Of course, those were different times. A black friend of mine was run out of town because he had the audacity to marry a white girl who bore his child. He could not go anywhere without getting a traffic ticket, or be delayed for hours. Twice, I was stopped for no good reason simply because a black fellow was riding in my car with me. These are anecdotal, isolated events. They really are not evidence of anything. But they stay in your mind, and if one of these episodes ever goes south on you, it can change your attitude, or your life, forever.

Again, I want to make it perfectly clear my own police experiences were completely benign compared to the “Black Lives Matter” incidents we hear about today, but I can easily extrapolate how a community of citizens can easily come to see themselves as being in a city occupied by a foreign army. And I can easily see how the soldiers in that army might be infuriated by the citizens not accepting them as liberators fighting for their “freedom”. We are a nation full of Baghdads. I’m surprised the IEDs haven’t appeared.

One night, my buddy and I went down to the local pub and were stopped at the door by several cops who questioned us, scrutinized our ID and had us empty our pockets-for no good reason. They were superficially polite, but they would never had done that to a couple of “straight dudes”. We were fair game as far as they were concerned. The bartender gave us a pitcher of beer “On the house, on account of getting hassled by the pigs.”

But I can sympathize with the cop who has to go day after day into neighborhoods were crime is rampant, civil order has broken down, drugs are everywhere, and everyone hates him and wants to kill him. In his place, I might be a little trigger-happy myself.

It was taken from what looks like 80-100 feet away, which produces a pretty poor video on a camera intended to document up-close encounters. There’s an enlargement with slo-mo, but you can’t really make out where Francis’s hands are…though I did get the distinct impression his right arm (the left was obscured by the door frame) was about chest high, forearm horizontal, at the time of the shot. I think.

I dunno, Rob, it’s still shady. There were reportedly lots of police officers on the scene–did nobody else see what this one cop saw? It seems their collective judgment was to withold fire, except for this one guy.

And do you think that the “prank” of “swatting” would work anywhere but in America? We invented SWAT teams, we shoveled surplus military weapons down the throats of the police; we created a powderkeg waiting for a spark. And sick pukes like the guy arrested in LA for this have noticed.

This incident is a sign of the rot at the heart of American policing.

That’s too sweeping a generalization to get by without clarification. “Bad apples” tend to be a minority of even the worst police force, but their rot spreads, especially when the rot starts at the top. The bad apples have a disproportionate effect on the quality of policing, because the community learns to distrust all cops because of the few.

The situation is only going to get worse as Republicans skew the priorities, through legislation and rules and grants, away from uniform national standards of justice for all, in favor of “local standards”, i.e. be just as racist and thuggish as your local knuckledraggers will turn a blind eye to. And neuter the Justice Department as the final enforcer of standards of quality policing.

You know, the good old days.

This problem ain’t going to go away any time soon. And it isn’t restricted to our urban ghettos. You have the same situation with Palefaces and Redskins on the reservations, revenooers and moonshiners in Appalachia, Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank, Algerians and Frenchmen in the Paris exurbs, and Chicanos and Anglos in the barrios. Eventually they get organized and incorporate: Italian Mafiosi, Vietnamese Tongs and Chinese Triads and the Irish Mob. Today its the Central Americans, the Columbians, the Cartels and Cocaine Cowboys. One community oppresses another, and it employs its most vulnerable and oppressed members to enforce the oppression. Sure, the crime is real, and so is the oppression, but the roots are political and economic, and yes, ethnic. Except in America its worse, because everybody’s armed. And the cops are always smart enough to leave the really nasty ones alone, and pick on the amateurs to push around.

Yes, there are racist cops and vicious gangstas, the system breeds them on both sides, and each side justifies its abuses as responses to the outrages of the other. But those who aren’t either one soon find themselves stereotyped by the other, and both sides soon find themselves forced into their roles. And too often any attempt to break the cycle is either mistaken as weakness…or “hands by the waistband”. All the things you mentioned are true, but the real villains are neither redneck pigs nor surly blacks. Its The System, or as they call it, The Man.