White Kid With A Gun

            Local news of note this past week was the scheduled Third Thursday Conversations sponsored by The Freedom School in Licking County (11-18-21). It was well attended, primarily by folks deeply committed and involved with various community action groups. As this event took place the evening before the acquittal of the white kid with a gun, the immediate concern felt by everyone was the abysmal voter turnout in Newark with the election held earlier this month. Though not the focus of conversation throughout the evening, it lurked in the background like a malevolent spirit, a truly bad stench that could not be ignored. The next day’s acquittal of the white kid with a gun provided little surprise to conscientious students of American (and world) history as well as culture. On a micro level Analysis found this to replicate what was already written in this blog’s 12-9-18 post entitled Polarity And The Burning Of The Reichstag. In this case, instead of a large political apparatus instigating the creation of a catastrophic conflict in order to use force to justify an illegitimate resolution to the manufactured conflict, one found the essential “manufacture a conflict, find oneself losing (failing), commit murder, and claim self defense.” [For those of you keeping score at home, within the purview of an instituted government with an established justice/security mechanism, vigilantes exist only in response to a manufactured conflict. The rest of the script reads as written on any playground] This movie has played, and been playing, many times before. Analysis references the George Zimmerman defense in the murder of Travon Martin (the white kid with a gun was losing to the black kid with the Skittles who was winning). Which brings us back to the spirit lurking behind the scene, the bad stench which cannot be extinguished. With l8% of Newark’s registered voters determining 80% of the folks governing for the city of 50,000+, it only stands to reason that 82% of citizens who could exercise what democracy privileges them (a say in their governance) chose to say “Why bother?” We’ve all heard the high school STEM teachers say that nature abhors a vacuum. The nature of politics is that it adores a vacuum. Where democracy is absent, authoritarianism fills the void immediately. Analysis finds the 82% complicit in fostering an authoritarian government for the rest of us. Imagine, a white kid with a gun could be the way America governs itself; all in the name of self defense at that!

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Tags: Authoritariansim, Democracy, Freedom School In Licking County, George Zimmerman, GOP, Kyle Rittenhouse