"Bad Black People." Why Bill O'Reilly Is Wrong Even When He's Right"
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"Actor Jesse Williams Gets Real About The Relentless Dehumanization Of Black Males"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/08/actor-jesse-williams-gets-real-about.html
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http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/08/actor-jesse-williams-gets-real-about.html
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This has always been America: Ferguson and our dangerous delusions on race and democracy
Politicians both left and right turn to the troubling doctrine of American exceptionalism to justify unilateral military intervention abroad, but what happens when we turn that dangerous delusion of unbounded moral supremacy against our own citizens on our own soil?
This is what’s happening in Ferguson, Missouri, right now, where it’s clear that the police have made an exception to the modus operandi of rights-based democracy by silencing and arresting journalists, seizing and firing on unarmed and peaceful demonstrators and applying military-grade armaments to do so.
And, lest we forget, they have initiated this armed state of exception to cover up for and suffocate dissent against the gravest rights violation of them all: the police shooting and killing of a fleeing, unarmed black boy, who never received due process for daring to step off the sidewalk.
As the nation and the world watch, horrified, at what’s transpiring in Ferguson, we don’t need to ask whether there’s a racial element in play when an overwhelmingly white police force, strapped to the teeth, is exercising extreme state authority to corral and suppress the reactions of a black community mourning the inexcusable loss of one of their children. But how is it possible for this to happen in a nation that proclaims itself the world’s greatest champion of freedom and democracy? The answer, in part, is the logic of exceptionalism.
American exceptionalism — perhaps the most prominent of exceptionalist doctrines — is the idea that the U.S. is qualitatively different from and morally superior to the rest of the world, such that it should act and be treated according to its own special set of rules. We’ve seen this kind of logic in action for decades now. It might not be wholly moral to suspend or violate the law and threaten violence against anyone who stands in your path; but if you believe you’re saving the world from communism, terrorism, “rogue states,” dictators, Muslim “extremists,” nuclear threats, or “suspicious persons,” it becomes a lot easier to justify abridgements of rights and abnegation of sacredly held legal and moral codes.
The U.S. government that admits it “tortured some folks” doesn’t generally believe that torture is OK; instead, it made a few exceptions.
The U.S. government — and, I should add, the libertarian right — doesn’t generally believe that it’s OK to wiretap citizens without due process, to execute citizens abroad without due process, or to hold the accused indefinitely without due process; but again, with the right justifications and exigencies in play, they’ve made some exceptions.
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