The Insurgents and the Vigilantes

Maurice Clemmons and those who aided him were insurgents -nihilistic murderers believing in a narrative in which they are legitimate, and police (and the society police are protecting) are not. Their aggression against police come less than a month after a cop killer waged a war on the police with bullets and bombs (Guns, Bombs Found In Shooting Suspect's Apartment).

All the people above are African-American. Seattle is a liberal city, where the dialogue that emerges after a crime committed by a black man usually tends towards a critique of the society more than the perpetrator, with a usual wish list of better schools, community services and other government interventions, for the statistically disadvantaged. Something new has happened in public sentiment after Maurice Clemmons. No one in mainstream dialogue is crying out in regards to a history of social injustice as a contributor to the murders. It seems most are glad Clemmons is dead.

For a city of the political profile Seattle has, this unanimity is significant. I believe we've entered a new age, one that can see some as simply wrong and evil, and we proceed to eliminate them without the infinite regress of self-critique.

Then there is the woman who shot man at bus stop, and won't be charged. We may be moving into a golden age of Charles Bronson style public safety in Seattle thanks to Maurice Clemmons. The Seattle PI wrote this story (State cuts to criminal supervision 'are a tragedy waiting to happen') focused on an assumed pacifism and defenselessness on the part of daytime commuters, but what if these criminals face honest folk that put a bullet in them?

Returning to the infinite chasm of self-critique liberal dialogue has tended towards since the 1960's, where America's previous social injustice sins are referenced in the labeling of mainstream society and economy as inherently immoral, and in an eternal debt to those who might have suffered. This ethical framework manifested itself in huge government initiatives designed to right past wrongs. These government programs cost money.

2009: NOW WE ARE BROKE.

A shrinking economy will mean less jobs, locally and globally. If insurgents and criminals are mostly caused by unemployment and poverty, we can expect more waves of angry murderous criminals and insurgents than ever before.

Paradigm over: Hopefully, the era of the wealthy compassionate liberal who directs all guilt to their own economic heritage is over. The wealth is gone, and maybe there have been enough nihilistic murders that the stupider portions of the compassion is gone also.