Violence And How To Stop It

51% of the country cheered when they first heard police were shot by snipers in retaliation for the unnecessary shootings making the rounds these past two days.  The other 49% reacted with regret.

But those other 49% cheered the two blacks being killed.. Ha, take that, Obama!….. (referring to Tea Party Congressman Walsh’s currently calling for both Black Lives Matter leaders and Obama’s assassination).

Social media today is full of everyone’s pontifications. The point lost however, is that shaming is ineffective when the people you are trying to shame, are proud of what they did.  Just as when you are proud of what you do, you care little about how your enemies try to paint you, probably because their reaction, justifies your original action.

True “Wisdom” calls both sides out for being wrong… Because if there is one lesson taught by world history, it is that violence  begets violence and the only way to stop it, is for one side to completely disappear, as in down to zero, or… both sides become so tired of the costs they negotiate a solution,… the latter which could have just as easily been wrought WITHOUT all the costly violence transpiring.

War’s only solution is to stop it cold prior to the very first provocation.

To understand this train of thought, one first needs to understand violence. Violence occurs when people become frustrated that justice is being ignored by a majority of the status quo.  Whether you are ISIS, black, or a Republican Christian like Timothy McVey, you resort to violence because you can express your anger on that playing field, whereas you are completely boxed up on all others….

In study of conflict after conflict, there is roughly a six month window in which solutions acceptable to both sides can occur.  The first violence is a surprise. Neither side is mobilized and interior battles are still ongoing between the moderates and extremists of either position.

If things quickly change for the better, in each group it is the moderates who gain more followers as extremists lose them: “Whew, good thing we didn’t start fighting; everything worked out well”. BUT, if nothing quickly changes, it becomes the extremists who gain the upper hand in each organization, simply because what they offer is something different than inaction:  “not fighting the bully” is not working; “fighting the bully” is the only viable plan left.”

It is at these points where controlling governments make their mistake.  They respond reactively instead of proactively. They are reacting logically which does nothing to appease the rampant emotions surrounding the issue. If they prosecute these officers and prosecute the police murderers (the logical solution) they do nothing to stem future racist officers from killing other blacks or other angry blacks from killing future police officers… the violence continues which conveys the frustrating message that nothing has changed

When the perception appears that nothing has been done, the attraction to more violence, grows.

Today’s events blatantly illustrate this.  Louisiana’s Democratic Governor turned the Baton Rouge case over to the Feds. who we all know could never be persuaded to white wash what happened and lie to protect the police officers.  That should had ended the controversy behind the first shooting. Over! Done! Justice will be served…  But that reaction was dwarfed by another event, a totally unrelated video shot a thousand miles to the north.  And now that video just got overshadowed by the sniping at cops in Dallas.  Are we done yet?  Or will another video surface today?

To prevent chaos, you have to jump over the crises of today and intercept tomorrow’s crises before it happens.  This usually requires an illogical action that is so bizarre, it puzzles the will and stops all in their tracks while they analyze what in the heck you just did. Successful tyrants have done this across history. Imagine for example if we arrested and imprisoned without bail, the Koch Brothers and the officers of the NRA, and shut down Fox News.  This shock would be enough to stop the violence.  You reacted and stopped cold the root cause of the violence; instead of just treating the symptoms.

Were you to do this, those racist officers intent on starting a race war, would be afraid that doing so would put their superiors in jeopardy, which would be harder for them to live through than going through what has now become the standard acquittal process. Particularly those superiors feeling the threat, would seminar those in the streets with daily reminders to shoot no one for any reason, lest the “real Law” comes for the boss to take him away….

This immediately changes the culture in police departments everywhere.  Within hours. You go from being afraid for your life, to being afraid of losing your job which to a police person, is a far greater fear than that of losing ones life, a risk you accepted when you took the job.

Admittedly, this would be difficult to do in America because we are a nation founded on the principle of moving slowly by consensus. But it was quite effective in Soviet Russia during Stalin’s tenure and in North Korea today.  That is how autocratic nations are run. Grab someone randomly who is no more guilty of crimes than were those dead police officers or the two black gunned down, and punish them.  Since you don’t know who your actions will hurt, you don’t propagate any. Here in America, the equivalent would be to arrest the Koch’s…. and since they’d be a flight risk, … no bail.

But just imagine if the NRA, Koch’s, and Fox News were suddenly leaderless.  Silence on the NRA’s part, no secret money funneled to hate groups on the Koch’s part, and no propaganda on Fox News Part..  Instead we would see it for what it is: crazy people doing crazy things and being punished by the calm rule of lawt.  We would be told such was the cost of freedom and shown fractions like 7/319,000,000 to drive home the point that 318,999,993 of us have little to worry over… We would be reminded of how there are 900,000 police officers in the United States, and how only 3 of them killed with no provocation these last two days.  We could be told that if you get pulled over you have an 899,997/900,000 chance of having no life threatening situation occur.

And if we become convinced that we have little to worry over, the costs of instigating violence to ourselves and our families far outweigh any gain we would otherwise see….

 

Because when you deal with people who access to weapons, you can’t stop violence with force… Iraq’s occupation was one example.  Britain’s domination of Ireland is another. Palestine versus Israel is a third.  You only stop violence by making those individuals who are armed, not want to hurt anyone….

And that will require a lot of changes… A police force can offer free hugs in a university town all it wants, but until you stop the posts of:  Like and Share if you support Police Officers killing Blacks for no reason, it is just one molecule in an ocean.

When you have a fire, you don’t add gasoline… Arresting the Koch Brothers, the NRA leadership, and Fox News would do a lot to remove gasoline which we all know, shouldn’t even be near a fire to begin with…

As anyone who has dealt with terrorism knows, if you build a hospital to display goodwill and the terrorists come in and kill everyone there, no one goes to that hospital anymore… no matter how sick. You have to take-out those who call for violence and arresting the Koch’s, NRA leadership, and silencing Fox News, would take 98% of those promoting this insanity, off the streets and out of the public eye in 24 hours.

We need to focus on the REAL problem, not the symptoms.