Doing what the state does best

Police

I was watching the news on MSN reporting on the San Bernardino shooting when the image above caught my attention. It was part of a video shoot, the camera panning around while we were listening to the voice of the police chief talking about the incident. The video was taken obviously after the shooting has stopped and the clearly identifiable shooters have left. It shows heavily armed deputes escorting/herding people around before panning over to the image above where policemen are frisking people who obviously have nothing to do with the shooters. In another news a witness from the neighbourhood was interviewed over the phone. He was describing how his house was searched. He did not complain, he emphasized how readily he was cooperating with the authorities but I found it odd. Why would they search the houses in the neighbourhood when the perpetrators already fled the scene in a car? The answer is sadly obvious as well. The police does what the police does best. Projecting power and its own self-importance. Projecting machismo to cover up their impotence when it comes to doing something about it.

Just imagine the situation. The incident has happened, the dead and the injured were taken away, the scene is investigated by some specialists, the perpetrators are chased by some swat teams while there are dozens (if not hundreds) of beat cops standing around with not much to do. While the whole world is watching them through cameras of the news helicopters. What can they do? They can’t really go for doughnuts, they have to act policemen-like, so they do a little herding, a little frisking. When the police does not know what to do, they will do what they do best: Control the people they are supposed to protect.

Politicians

Politicians do what they do best. All Democratic Party presidential hopefuls are calling for gun control. (CBS – Breitbart – The Blaze – Huffington Post). Obama “will get to the bottom of it.” At this stage he does not know whether it is terrorism, it could be workplace violence. We just don’t know why they did it. What he does know is that: "We're going to have to, I think, search ourselves as a society to make sure that we take some basic steps that make it harder -- not impossible -- but harder for individuals to get access to weapons." He said that about an event in a state where the possession of assault weapons is already strictly prohibited.

When politicians have to deal with an event that exposes the problems with their policies, they pass new laws to make the citizenry more defenseless and more dependent.

Press

The press is clueless, as usual, but they are very good at speculating: Sam Stein (‏@samsteinhp) tweeted:  “Planned Parenthood is about 1.3 miles from site of shooting. CNN, however, is reporting that the shooting didn’t take place there.” A little reassurance can never hurt. The press knows how concerned and protective Americans are about Planned Parenthood, so they had to be reassured that one massacre will not stop the…….. well, whatever is going on at Planned Parenthood.

There are many other things we simply don’t know. They interviewed the shooter’s father so we know that he was very religious, we just don’t know what his religion was! I still don’t know it myself. In dozens of articles and news reports I have not herd it mentioned once. We know that he went to Saudi Arabia and came back with a wife (or girlfriend, we don’t know). He may have gone there to visit one of the many Buddhist temples or Christian monasteries. We just don’t know and the press have to make sure that we do not get the wrong impression, because: When the press have to deal with something that goes against the politically correct narrative, they do what they do best, keeping all news within the boundaries of allowable public opinion.

Terror

The definition of terrorism is “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.”

I suggest that there are two possible interpretation for this definition, intent and effect. The president and the press insists that we cannot know the intent, but the effect is already clear. The state, the politicians and the press are all taking advantage of it to serve their own political aims.