Note from the counterinsurgency

Mike Brown.

I really understand, I think, why the Justice Department finds it so hard to prosecute murderous police officers like Darren Wilson for civil rights violations against the people whose lives they have taken like Michael Brown. Only Wilson can possibly know what he meant to do to Brown and how he felt, whether he truly was in terror of what he perceived as a vicious giant or was rather high on his own lethal power, and nobody can make him testify. And he probably doesn't altogether know himself, for that matter, the ability of the human unconscious to hide our own motivations from us being what it is.

Elementary, my dear

Gustave Doré, 1872, Wentworth Street, Whitechapel. Copyright Wellcome Images.

I had called upon my friend David Brooks upon the Monday after Thanksgiving, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing-gown, a laptop computer within his reach upon the right, and a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand, while I wondered how many times I could work the word "upon" into a single paragraph.

“You are engaged,” said I; “perhaps I interrupt you.”

“Not at all. I am glad to have a friend with whom I can discuss my results. The matter is a perfectly trivial one”—he jerked his thumb in the direction of the machine—“but there are points in connection with it which are not entirely devoid of interest and even of instruction.”

I seated myself in his armchair and warmed my hands before his crackling fire. "I have been much concerned of late," he went on, "with events in America. I allude, of course, to the case of Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri."

A Murkier Situation

Image via Tiger Beatdown.

Well, a bit over a year ago, Monsignor Ross Douthat, the Apostolic Nuncio to 42nd Street, was feeling pretty chipper about the state of race relations in the United States, to the effect that it was probably somewhat better than 50 years before, when Dr. King had dreamed his dream in the Washington Mall:

Retroactionary justice

Via.

I would like to announce my intense disapproval of clever Judd Legum at TPM explaining how Prosecutor McCulloch did it wrong because hahahaha Antonin Scalia said so in United States v. Williams (1992):

It is the grand jury’s function not ‘to enquire … upon what foundation [the charge may be] denied,’ or otherwise to try the suspect’s defenses, but only to examine ‘upon what foundation [the charge] is made’ by the prosecutor. Respublica v. Shaffer, 1 Dall. 236 (O. T. Phila. 1788); see also F. Wharton, Criminal Pleading and Practice § 360, pp. 248-249 (8th ed. 1880). As a consequence, neither in this country nor in England has the suspect under investigation by the grand jury ever been thought to have a right to testify or to have exculpatory evidence presented.

And therefore there should have been no testimony from Darren Wilson or evidence suggesting his innocence.

Scalia's ruling in that case was pernicious and an invitation to prosecutorial misconduct and historically wrong. As Justice Stevens explained.

Not just blaming the victim...

...But convicting and sentencing him.

McCulloch said that we should work to make sure nothing like this ever happens again, although he also seems to think that nothing untoward happened. Or that Officer Wilson at any rate did nothing he should not have done. He doesn't seem to have needed a reason for what he did, because none was suggested.

McCulloch also denied that the grand jury's declining to charge means that police officers can kill young black men with impunity. He looked quite startled by such an idea. But what does "impunity" mean again? Wilson is not going to be punished. Impunity is exactly what he got.

Who got punished was Michael Brown. It was apparently up to him to not get killed. That's what you need to do to make sure this never happens again, young black men: don't frighten the cops, which you can do simply by existing, because they can't be held responsible. We don't call it impunity, maybe we could call it immunity.

Liked what President Obama had to say and in particular his relaying a generous and activist and peaceful message from Michael Brown's father. That's about the only positive thing I have.

Vincent van Gogh, Old Man in Sorrow. Via.

Also Holder's statement.

At a time when we must seek to rebuild trust between law enforcement and the local community, I am deeply concerned that the deployment of military equipment and vehicles sends a conflicting message. At my direction, Department officials have conveyed these concerns to local authorities.

Good. Although it seems it was too late. We'd been hearing about the Ferguson police preparations for tonight for weeks, now, I think, and I'd imagine the Justice Department could have been hearing about them too, and relaying their concerns a little sooner.

On the plus side, the 17-year-old ran out to demonstrate peacefully up Broadway. He also escaped doing the dinner dishes so his motives may not have been wholly pure.

That broad historical perspective

Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III. Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/New York Times.

1

That tense moment of involuntary desegregation...

Knowles is famously tone-deaf. As the racial tensions flared on his city’s streets 10 days after the shooting, he told MSNBC’s Tamron Hall, “There is not a racial divide in the city of Ferguson.” When Hall pushed back, Knowles said, “That is the perspective of all residents in our community. Absolutely.” He said later in the interview, “The city of Ferguson has been a model for the region about how we transition from a community that was predominantly white middle-class to a community that is predominantly African American middle-class.” (Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post)

For Mike Brown and the witnesses

BooMan says he's "tired of trying to figure out what happened" in a case like the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO, and I am too. I've been tired of it since Trayvon Martin was killed, this whole situation where one set of people is obviously lying and another set of people is plainly telling the truth and I'm going to sit there and try to weigh all the evidence, judiciously, and come up with my own independent conclusion, and I'm not going to do it any more.

I mean, not unless I want to and think I can make a contribution nobody else is making.

Because I don't know much, and am not likely ever to learn much, about the forensics of the thing, the bullet entries and exits, the angle at which the person fell, the identification of screams off cell phone audio, all that. But I'm pretty confident I know who's lying, and who's covering up, and fairly confident I can find out who's corrupted.

The cops of Ferguson are lying, and covering up, and motivated by fear, of being exposed as bigoted murderers and bad cops. The community witnesses (including this one who turned up today at Kos) are telling the truth the best and the most precisely they can. That's all the story I need. You go ahead and sift your evidence, and do your diligence, for the court system and the gearheads, and I'll read it as far as I can, but I'm not working at it. I'm on strike against taking those liars seriously. I'm on strike against disbelieving, "just for the sake of argument", those who are true to the complicated and novelistic way I understand the world.

Michael Brown, via 3chicspolitico.