If we are to judge from recent events, BLM protestors (and a seemingly overwhelming percentage of Blacks in general) don’t seem able to discern the difference between the impression created by a few seconds of a video clip, and the reality and attendant circumstances behind that video. They know how they feel when they watch a Black apparently being mistreated by police, but any further deductive reasoning is from that point quite impossible. The combination of ignorance and moral certainty is dangerous, as we see in the Dallas shooting of police and other violent protests last weekend.

In their mind, Black Lives Matter protesters have the “evidence” already, because they think that evidence simply means something unpleasant caught on camera. From there they demand immediate retribution, without further deliberation in the legal process. It is ironic that one of the BLM protesters’ trite chants is “No justice, no peace,” considering their complete disregard for the judicial process. But they are good at disturbing the peace, we’ll have to give them that.

The chanting of slogans seems to be the tool of the cognitively incompetent, because it conveniently avoids discussing any facts. The rallying cry, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” is based on a mendacious account of the Michael Brown incident, who did not have his hands up when confronted by Darren Wilson, and did not say “don’t shoot,” but rather went for the cop’s gun. The “Black Lives Matter” chant is repeated in a zombie-like fashion by the protesters. But note that every slogan is based on a faulty premise: that justice has been derailed, that innocent Blacks are being shot, and that the government has somehow devalued Black lives. “We have nothing to lose but our chains,” they chant, enraptured in an orgy of victimization and delusion.

According to Hillary Clinton, Whites are supposed to listen to what Black people are saying, and to feel some empathy. So let’s do that. Here is an individual giving a speech at a BLM rally in Portland last week:

Know your rights, know your laws, and I promise you, if they go about their burden of whatever they said you doin, you pull your pistol out and you fucking bust that. You pull your pistol out and you bust that, because at the end of the day it’s going to be you against them. When we move with the Panthers, trust me, when you see me move, I’m moving in violence.

Granted, this man is affiliated with the Black Panthers, which the media would say has nothing whatsoever to do with BLM. But no one present—at the BLM rally, mind you—objects to his message, and in fact you see an elderly White woman nodding gravely in response to his exhortation to violence. The diatribe darkly foreshadows the events to follow in Dallas.

An Infantile Response

The BLM crowd’s grasp of justice is similar to a child’s familiar lament, “That’s not fair!” A child cannot yet fathom the notion of moral ambiguity, nor can a child understand that justice can be a painstaking process in which the truth is not readily apparent. “It’s not fair!” is not a stance which is open to rational argument nor open to the disclosure of new evidence. Even now, nearly two years after the investigation into the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson showed that the officer was justified, it is routine to hear Blacks acting as if the incident was an obvious example of White racism.

Facts don’t matter. Here’s Jesse Jackson speaking on Fox News Sunday, in which he recites cases where Blacks suffered either death or injury by police, and to his logic, must ipso facto have been dealt with unjustly:

There is a backlog of these killings of Blacks without any consequences. Rodney King was beaten and was on camera, and the four police walked away…Trayvon Martin, the killer walked away, in Michael Brown, Ferguson, the killer walked away. There’s a backlog of pain, and somehow we must look at the issue of violence, on the one hand, which is almost a diversionary issue of poverty.

Rather than re-litigating all of these cases individually, suffice it to say that Black activists such as Jesse Jackson are incapable of objectively viewing these controversies. Likewise, a child has his own highly subjective sense of justice. And however naïve, a child will become indignant and furious when he believes that “fairness” has been violated. His failure to envision a situation from others’ perspectives both defines him as a child, and also reinforces his bullheadedness. Were a child able to consider how his actions were perceived by others, he would be a little slower to make such an embarrassing spectacle of himself in the resultant temper tantrum.

In this situation the temper tantrums are the ridiculous Black Lives Matter protests across the country. These protests have confusingly escalated after the killing of five policemen in Dallas by a BLM sympathizer—whereas one would think they would have some shame and be rather on the defense after that. Let’s also chalk this up to a lack of self-awareness.

In the cases from Louisiana and Minnesota, we have some video footage, and the question is, can the viewer recognize that there is a course of events that precede the video clip, even if it is not on their smart phone’s screen that very moment? Being able to move beyond the emotion evoked by a short cell phone video and ascertain the facts seems like a litmus test for adult-level critical thinking skills. Is this at bottom an IQ issue?

BLM protesters rationally present their position to a Fox News Reporter

Can these activists ever acknowledge that Rodney King led police on a dangerous high-speed chase before being accosted on video? We see Freddie Gray on video being dragged to the police van in a forceful manner, but we don’t see him dealing crack before the police arrive, nor do we see what happened inside the police van. We see the video of Philando Castile shot point blank in his car in Minnesota last week, but less sensational is the background information that he matched the description of a Black man who committed armed robbery days prior, announced he had a gun, and did not comply when told not to move by the officer (who we now learn is Hispanic—a fact that is completely ignored by Black activists committed to their White racism narrative).

BLM members don’t see these extenuating circumstances live in video, and therefore it is as though they do not exist. There is an immediacy of video, which is accessible to all, no matter the viewer’s cognitive level; as opposed to reason, which is something innate and not readily accessible to all.

Hollywood Influence

It is fair to say that in Black culture, watching TV and movies is preferred over reading books; and so this reliance on sensory imagery over logical deliberation is further perpetuated. The intellectual level of entertainment consumed by Blacks, if we are to take Hollywood as our guide, consists of storylines with clear contrasts of right and wrong, presumably because anything more subtle would be too cerebral. This is not Jane Austen-level character development. And because our media overlords are only too happy to play into this narrative, Blacks need not envision themselves or their brethren as ever being “the bad guy.” In the media morality play, White males are typically the antagonist, until such a time as they may see fit to relent and join the crusade against the very power structure they represent; then they are afforded a bit role supporting the minority/hero.

In the movies, the conflict is resolved by the put-upon Blacks asserting their rights aggressively—try picturing a grimly determined Cuba Gooding Jr. Then the White authority finally admits the error of his ways, and we have our resolution. From To Kill A Mockingbird to the Hurricane, we see the archetype of the innocent and wrongly accused Black man persecuted by treacherous White males. After a half century of this storyline, it is no wonder that an entire generation is hardly able to conceive of a black man actually doing something wrong!

Back in reality, the facts on the ground belie this admittedly powerful propaganda. So unfortunately for the Black Lives Matter crowd, their preferred resolution of total White capitulation is not forthcoming. It is frustrating to them that the narrative arc does not hasten to this conclusion as in the movies; instead the antagonist Whites, as perhaps represented by a Rudy Giuliani or a Donald Trump, insist on a stance which is other than apologetic.

Giuliani, for example, points out that the sense of taking responsibility for one’s actions is lacking amongst Blacks. “There’s too much violence in the Black community,” he stated forthrightly on Face the Nation on Sunday. There are all sorts of convoluted reasons why we are not supposed to consider this fact, which “intellectuals” such as Jesse Jackson or Michael Eric Dyson can perhaps better explain. And so cognitive dissonance ensues, because the script in BLM’s mind does not ascribe any quality to themselves other than moral heroism or perhaps victimhood. They are simply aghast and indignant at this contradiction to the cinematic vision of their lives. That is why the climax of the film, when the hero is victorious in a violent struggle for his rights perpetuates the protests, the riots, and the sense of perpetual victimhood. Reality simply will not deliver what Blacks consider an acceptable dramatic conclusion, and so we are stuck at an impasse.

Conclusion

As BLM protestors scream like lunatics about their civil liberties and their victimization, they may not be aware that the rest of White America is largely looking on cringing. Actually, sometimes when I watch a clip of BLM, screaming at police officers illiterately and incomprehensibly, I find myself laughing; and my levity is only increased when I note how deadly serious the protestor is.

As usual, the humor results from a juxtaposition of two contrasting elements: on one hand, they have this passionate abandonment to their own cause; and on the other hand, they are incapable of even articulating a coherent train of thought. BLM has confused righteousness with a child-like petulance.

Contact M. Jaggers