The Dallas Shooting

[browngirl]

The [alleged--more on this below] gunman is dead, three others taken into custody, after sniping twelve police officers, killing five of them (if I read the news correctly). The gunman is quoted as saying he "wanted to kill White people, especially White police officers".

And I am caught between horror and horror.

This man masterminded and committed the murder of five police officers and the attempted murder of seven more...

... or at least that's what we're being told. Not least with the photo of him giving the Black power salute. And it just -- now the police and their supporters can say, "We lost more than you did, Black Lives Matter is morally invalid" and set this atrocity in resistance to any efforts to change the policing culture that leads to deaths like those of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, as if it were a tit-for-tat exchange, as if this had already become a side-against-side war rather than being one society struggling with hatred and violence.

Maybe I'm being no-true-Scotsman about this, but part of me feels that this massacre of police officers fits suspiciously perfectly into one particular narrative of these events. Do I distrust this narrative, what we've been told about who killed these officers, for valid reasons or invalid ones?

Comments

[baranduin.livejournal.com]

And I am caught between horror and horror.

I feel the same, all those things you mentioned are also running through my mind.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

I so hear you. The killing of 5 police officers in Dallas is horrible, but I don't want it to ride over the 2 deaths in 2 days of black citizens by police--that ongoing, nothing-new horror and how it must be stopped. But we're going to have to keep fighting the competing narrative in our split society. The suckage continues.

<3

[danae_b]

*hugs* I can't find the right words to reply to this, but I love you. (But I can at least make out this: I agree with your general distrust in the last paragraph. We only get what they want us to get.)

[danae_b]

Yes, yes, yes. I'm sick today, sorry XD thank you for putting that in a way I can agree with.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

For once in my life, I wanted this to be Daesh-inspired, or al Queda-inspired, because then this narrative wouldn't arise, because then it wouldn't turn into '#BlackLivesMatter are the real racists!', because then it wouldn't pivot directly into 'All police everywhere are blameless and there are no systemic issues!'

There are systemic issues.

Also, murdering five police officers should not happen.

The two concepts can and should stand together.

And... yeah, your last paragraph... it's a really /convenient/ story to have happening.

(Also, JFTR, 4 Dallas police officers and one Dallas Transit Police Officer.)

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[sdelmonte]

There is certainly room to distrust the Dallas cops. While the Feds are saying the shooter acting alone, dismissing the "four snipers" info that we had at the start, the Dallas cops are still insisting that the other people they have in custody are part of a conspiracy but not actually talking about it.

Never mind that the cops killed the suspect with a bomb. I think they used the sort of bomb normally used to detonate suspicious packages to blow him up. Instant dead suspect! Instant ability to blame him and not have to ask him any silly questions!

FWIW, I think this is what it seems, sadly. But something seems a bit off. (And for God's sake, don't read the Dallas Morning News. It was smart and balanced about the Ebola cases there. And totally biased here.)

[lb-lee.livejournal.com]

Goddammit, home state, why do you have to keep churning out infamous snipers? Don't you have something better to be known for? Football, or queso, or SOMETHING?

What an awful mess. I hope we get better information as time goes on, I guess. (As 'better' as such a situation can be, I mean.)

--Rogan

[dandelion-diva.livejournal.com]

I don't have words any longer.

But yes, I'm with you in your suspicions.

I still can't figure out how this became our reality.

Love you.

[rickvs.livejournal.com]

I live in a suburb of Dallas. My immediate question was, "We have a bomb robot, but no taser or tear gas robots?"

[jadelennox]

Conspiracy theorists drive me up a wall, and yet nothing about this does not feel fishy, honestly. I am trying so hard not to believe myself, but WTF. This rando, who was in the military, but in contruction, NOT a sniper, hits people amazingly well (only two civilians even were hit, only), has a Dashiki(!) + Black power salute as his facebook profile, almost like it was made by Jeff Sessions' intern or someone who'd never heard of Netta or Deray or Alicia Garza or TNC or Chescaleigh or even Beyonce! or ANYONE in the current generation of BLM or young activists, and then is a lone wolf with no allies who nonetheless has a coherent conversation with cops in which he explains that he wanted to kill white cops, and then has to blown up by robot bomb? I mean, the last 4 weeks have been completely unbelieveable, so I guess it could be true. And almost certainly is true. But I may not remember Nixon but I was the child of his era and dammit am having to make a very active effort to fight down my inner conspiracy theorist on this one.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

No words, just damn...it's all so depressing and I agree, being suspicious of the given narrative....I'll say no more only because I have really only glanced through headlines as of late, I have no intelligent leg to stand on right now...

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

I, too, am sad, tired, and suspicious as hell. You're not alone, no.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

Yep. Scary world.

[vass]

Even if it all went down exactly as is being reported (and as you said, there's reason to doubt that) the police did NOT lose more people than they've shot, and the gunman was not sworn to serve and protect cops.

[ailbhe]

I smell fishiness from over here.

[sabotabby]

I have been away for three days and haven't heard much in the way of the story, but there tends to be a fog of war in these situations. I think you distrust this narrative for perfectly valid reasons.

[strangerian.livejournal.com]

While it is, of course, a hideous tragedy that five police officers were killed and more wounded, a great many more than five black lives have been wounded or ended by police (in the U.S. overall) just this year. All those matter, too.

If this perpetuates a tit-for-tat model, well, perhaps that's my moral level at the moment. If you can rise above it, please don't let me anchor you.