2014 or 1914?

The casual racism and insensitivity may be in the mode of 21st century branding—

Federal officials intervened Friday to stop police in Ferguson, Mo., from wearing "I am Darren Wilson" bracelets in solidarity with the police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black 18-year-old there last month.

Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson agreed to bar his officers from wearing the bracelets while in uniform and on duty, and to ensure that other local police agencies did too, according to a letter released Friday by Christy Lopez, deputy chief of the special litigation section of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

But it's not trivial cluelessness— not when the St. Louis area has a long history of violence against blacks.

East St. Louis, 1917: rampaging whites incited by a familiar narrative—that blacks were coming to take their jobs and steal elections.

Public Servants

David Ehrenstein, on the apology forced in Ferguson.

Charles Pierce, on new episodes of police violence against unarmed citizens, and old stories

Something has gone badly wrong in the relationship between local police and the citizens they are supposed to serve. It has taken a long time to get to this point. It probably began during the early days of the "war" on drugs, in which local police were encouraged to believe that almost anything was permissable because they were facing a well-armed and well-financed "enemy" in the streets. This introduced the "Powell Doctrine" of overwhelming force to local law-enforcement, with all that entailed, including arming local sheriff's departments as though they were heavy-weapon platoons advancing on Bastogne. This attitude, and the equipment available to act it out, naturally bled over from drug busts to local police work in general.

As should be sadly obvious, black folks were the first to notice what was going on. In 1990, in Boston, when Carol DiMaiti Stuart was murdered by her husband, Charles, the murderer threw out a fairy tale about a black perpetrator that sent the Boston police on an absolute rampage through the neighborhood where the shooting occurred. It didn't stop until Stuart confessed by throwing himself off the Tobin Bridge.

He concludes his piece with this comparison

In February of last year, two Muslim men were sentenced in a London court for butchering a British soldier named Lee Rigby to death in broad daylight on a public street. The two demanded that onlookers take videos of their barbarity as the two of them literally dripped with blood. When the London police arrived on the scene, the two killers charged them. They were shot. But they were only wounded. They were alive to stand trial, to be convicted, and to be sentenced. They were not killed in the street next to their victim. They were shot by police but they were alive today, which is more than can be said for Michael Brown, killed for being big and black, or John Crawford III, killed for holding a BB gun while black. Something has gone badly wrong in this country.

Retired Captain Ray Lewis (R) of the Philadelphia Police department displays a sign during a peaceful protest on West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson, Missouri on August 23, 2014, two weeks after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown (AFP Photo/Michael B. Thomas)

Derangement

Notes on an anniversary.

Considering the latest, Digby recalls this statement—

All that we have to do is to send two Mujahedin to the farthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qa'ida in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human economic and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits to their private companies… So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. --- Osama bin laden

Tengrain re-posts "Falling into History"—

...originally from the SF Chronicle from 2006, which seems like a lifetime ago; It was written by Neva Chonin, who has long since gone from The Chron. I still think this essay remains the best writing about September 11 that I have encountered. This essay has fallen into the void and is no longer on their servers. I want to ensure that it remains on the web...

Charles Pierce—

So it is the 13th anniversary of the day on which America was successfully encouraged by murderers to lose its mind and, last night, the president gave a speech entangling the United States in another combat situation in another place in that same part of the world against a different group of murderers who have taken it on themselves to encourage America to lose its mind....

The president, says Pierce, is

... groping, still, to find logic to the derangement that broke out on this day, 13 years ago. He is groping, still, for a way out of the profitable trauma.

Undead, Again

A history re-write that's just a little too much, too soon?

The NYTimes suddenly remembers that Dick Blam-Blam Cheney was actually not the president.

Correction: September 9, 2014
An earlier version of a summary with this article misstated the former title of Dick Cheney. He was vice president, not president.

Oh well, perhaps it's an easy mistake for a stenographer. After all, Dick Cheney is a very important man who gets around.

As does Henry K.—who is currently on the book tour and bland revisionism circuit.

Cheney snowglobe
Philip Toledano - America, The Giftshop