Ferguson Killing Illuminates How Sociopaths in Power Act
People without conscience pay big to whitewash white cop who kills
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. ~ fucking nazis & "their" ilk always act the same ...when did the American People become the enemy ? when did the shit ...happen ! huh .... right before our fucking i's & we think the monsters r in the "movies"
The same night the manipulated Ferguson grand jury delivered the
unjustifiable non-indictment sought by a prosecutor nursing his own
childhood hurts, the lawyers for homicidal cop Darren Wilson issued a dishonest statement in Wilson’s name, concluding with this falsehood:
‘Moving forward, any commentary on this matter will be done in the appropriate venue and not through the media.’
At the same time the Wilson team was making up this statement, they were also
running an auction with
TV networks to get the most money for Wilson’s first “exclusive”
interview. NBC dropped out of the bidding when the price rose into the “
high six figures.” Less then 24 hours and close to a
million dollars after his lawyers said he would not comment “through the media,” this unindicted killer was at ABC News getting a
toadying interview from George Stephanopoulos. The full
edited version runs about 46 minutes of mostly fawning deceit and truthlessness.
This is the way our world works these days, when you have commercial
television determined to get ratings for any popular fraudulence, when
you have mercenary “journalists” ready to follow any unbelievable script
their bosses buy, and especially when you have lawyers who are
determined to get paid by any means available. The Ferguson story is a
perfect storm of corrupt practices, none of them admitted, much less
reported accurately. From the outside, it looks like ABC paid big bucks
to affirm the corrupt practices of a Missouri prosecutor playing to race
hatred, even if that meant the network was setting up its own employee
as an after-the-fact accessory to state-sanctioned manslaughter.
Looked at honestly from the inside, these institutions would likely
appear even more horrifying to a morally aware observer, but to their
inmates they may well seem normal. Corruption like this tends to be
situational, not pervasive. The participants spend most of their time
acting like “solid citizens,” creating a context that always leaves room
for the required corrupt exception, the necessary evil, the false
choice among self-limited “bad” options, the self-serving situation in
which “we had no choice.” That is always a lie. There is always another
choice.
Currently such behavior is called “sociopathic.” In the past, the
clinical level of this condition has gone under such descriptive terms
as “guiltlessness,” “psychopathic inferiority,” and “moral imbecility.”
In recent decades, the United States appears to have been increasingly
controlled by the moral imbeciles among us, including at least the three
most recent presidents (but that’s for another piece).
No one coerced Americans to choose to enslave other human beings
Ferguson was a corrupt paradigm of a corrupt nation long before a
homicidal cop executed an unarmed black teenager. Polling appears to
show that a majority of Americans is reasonably pleased with the turn of
events there so far. Among white people, a much greater majority is
pleased. In other words, when Americans get played by the mainstream
media on stories like Ferguson, most of them seem to like it (if they
actually notice). ABC News knows this about its American audience, ABC
News (like all other network news) has always known this. ABC News
pandered to power and popular delusion with similar corrupt reporting on
the Viet-Nam War (which, when I suggested a different choice, got me
fired).
Common to the performance of all these personal and institutional
corruptions is a behavior that appears sociopathic, in the sense that
the performers show little sign of having an active conscience. It is
the absence of conscience that defines the sociopath, as discussed by
Martha Stout in her book, “
The Sociopath Next Door”
(2005, Broadway Books). As Stout observed people’s reactions to
September 11, 2001, including irrational enthusiasms for war, torture,
suspension of civil liberties, a terrified search for homeland
“security,” she found herself asking: “Will the shameless minority
really inherit the earth?” Without naming the president at the time, or
members of his administration,
she began her book this way:
“Imagine – if you can – not having a conscience, none at
all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting
sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even
family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in
your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or
immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of
responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to
accept without question, like gullible fools.
Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other
people that your psychological makeup is radically different from
theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among
human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly
effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or
shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness.
The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of
their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your
condition.”
Does this mean that either Wilson or Stephanopoulos is a sociopath?
No, but there’s no way of being certain, short of the clinical
evaluation neither will probably ever have. The point is not to label
them, but to observe how some of their behavior is both commonplace and
consistent with sociopathology. Stout says one in 25 Americans is a
sociopath, that they come with all degrees of intelligence, lucidity,
ambition, and other human qualities, and that they hide well in plain
sight.
Wilson expresses no remorse, no second thoughts, no empathy
Under his present circumstances, with other possible investigations
pending, there is no reason to expect Darren Wilson to display the full
range of human emotion on national television. But even just a little
apparently real emotion would have helped persuade us of his fundamental
mental health and basic humanity. For Darren Wilson to go on national
television as he did and express no emotion about anything, is more than
passing strange and reinforces the notion that this appearance was all
about staging a performance designed to avoid accountability.
Asked again and again in different ways to express any pity or sorrow
or understanding of how others might feel, Wilson came up empty. After
45 minutes of dead-voiced repetition, Wilson had achieved no further
illumination of the Ferguson story or his own central role in it. Wilson
ended up expressing the same, numb perspective/cover story that he’s
expressed for months:
“I just did my job. I did what I was paid to do and that was my
job. I followed my training, the training took over, the training led me
to what happened, I maintained the integrity of this investigation,
that’s it.” (Blackout, as the interview tape ends.)
I just did my job. When you “just do your job” and you end up killing an unarmed person with a 12-shot fusillade,
doesn’t that suggest something is wrong somewhere? It’s an obvious
question, but Stephanopoulos didn’t ask it, nor did he ask any
follow-up, clarifying questions about what Wilson thought his job
actually was. Stephanopoulos never asked any version of the simplest
possible question: isn’t it your duty, first, to do no harm.
Stephanopoulos asked a tepid question about other, non-specific
people accusing Wilson of racism, which Wilson impassively denied: “They
are wrong. You can’t perform the duties of a police officer and have
racism in you. I help people, that’s my job.” The interviewer might then
have asked something like: if your job is to help people, how did you
do your job with Michael Brown? Stephanopoulos went a different route,
changing the subject to the racial nature of the neighborhood (he called
it an “anti-police neighborhood). This gave Wilson the opportunity to
call it a “high crime area” and talk stereotypically – as well as
counterfactually – about drugs, guns, burglaries and assaults, neatly
reinforcing his context for being afraid in broad daylight.
The shooting took place on a dead end street
When Wilson first came upon Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson, Wilson
was on his way out of a cul de sac. He was not on a heavily-traveled
public roadway, but on
Canfield Drive,
one of the quiet streets more like driveways in the midst of a housing
complex. (Canfield Drive matters so little to the city’s traffic
circulation that, after the killing, police
shut the roadway down,
inconveniencing almost no one but the people who lived there.) Wilson
was leaving a residential neighborhood, on his way to get lunch. And it
was Saturday, around noon.
By his own testimony, Wilson did not know the young men in the
street. He had no idea when he first saw them that they might be
connected to any theft of cigarillos. All he knew, though he didn’t put
it this way, was that he saw two young black men walking toward him down
the middle of the road, presenting a cause for caution, but not even
blocking traffic. Wilson drove slowly up to them and stopped abreast of
Johnson.
This is the beginning of the first beat of the three-beat event, and
it is both the least discussed and most provocative beat in the event.
This is the beat that, played differently, leaves everyone still alive
and relatively well (the cigarillo theft would have remained an issue).
All that needed to happen at this moment was for Wilson to keep driving
and leave those kids behind on a residential street where they were
doing no harm and getting close to home. Worst case, they were kind of
jaywalking down the middle of a street where people were supposed to be
driving slowly anyway. They were doing no harm.
I just did my job. Has anyone asked Wilson: was it your job
to go after jaywalkers on a little-travelled residential roadway when
they present no threat and are causing little if any harm?
Stephanopoulos didn’t ask that, he didn’t even seem to understand that
there was a question to ask. Wilson doesn’t seem to have asked himself
that question, either, then or later. And he hasn’t been asked what his
training dictated as the best thing for him to do
after he stopped beside
Johnson and learned that Johnson and Brown were “almost to our
destination.” In other words, he knew with reasonable certainty that
they would be off the almost empty street very soon. He could have gone
on to lunch, confident that he had done all that was necessary for
public safety under the circumstance. Instead, what he did next set off
the calamitous sequence of events. First Wilson called for back-up. Then
Wilson backed up.
“To Serve and Protect” should mean: first, don’t make things worse
According to Wilson on ABC News, he had seen the cigarillos and had
connected that with the fragmentary radio report he said he’d heard
earlier. “It all sort of clicked then,” Wilson told Stephanopoulos, who
just listened. Stephanopoulos did not ask Wilson why he told St. Louis
County detectives a different story on August 10 (with Wilson’s lawyer
present). Then, less than 24 hours after the event, Wilson made no
mention of anything “clicking” about the theft report. “Prior to backing
up I did call out on the radio” for another car, Wilson
told the detectives. He didn’t say why he called for backup and they did not ask. (Did they do their job?)
Wilson’s supervisor has said Wilson had no knowledge of the cigarillo theft when he encountered Johnson and Brown.
I just did my job. I did what I was paid to do… I followed my training…. This
suggests that Wilson was trained to turn a near non-event into a deadly
confrontation, since that’s what he did step by step. There’s no reason
to believe that, at that point, Wilson had any basis to think that he
was dealing with anything more than two recalcitrant teenage jaywalkers
who would soon reach their destination on a little traveled street. He
had already decided not to go to lunch, the most peaceable choice. He
had already called for backup, which he says he expected within a minute
(backup apparently arrived in
about 60 seconds).
He could have just stayed where he was and kept the two young men under
observation as they slowly walked away. Or he could have slowly
followed them at a discreet distance.
We don’t know why he chose not to take a less provocative course of
action. And we don’t know what had already been said. And we don’t know
how racially charged the words had been. We don’t know why Wilson
decided to back up and ratchet up the confrontation. All we know is that
he did back up, and that he did so very aggressively. And he did so in a
hurry. What was Wilson’s hurry? Stephanopoulos didn’t ask.
Stephanopoulos even got the timeframe wrong.
In the one minute it took backup to arrive on the scene, Wilson
pursued and killed Brown. Wilson first backed his police cruiser up to
Brown and Johnson, swinging it close to them and across their path. The
cruiser was close enough that when Wilson tried to open his door, it
either hit Brown or Brown pushed it shut. This is the beginning of the
second beat of the event, although most accounts treat it as the first
beat of a two-beat event. The elements of this second beat are familiar
as reported: backing up, blocking the way, pushing the door, grappling
at the window, Wilson firing two shots, Brown wounded and running away.
Precisely how these things happened is uncertain. There are several
conflicting accounts and no single, complete and credible account.
Wilson, in his
grand jury testimony (p.211)
has Brown holding cigarillos in the hand with which he’s hitting
Wilson. That seems unlikely on one hand, but on the other, it would help
explain why Wilson had no serious injuries, nothing cut or bleeding.
“Hulk Hogan” holding cigarillos doesn’t do that much damage apparently.
All accounts seem to agree that this beat ended with Michael Brown
running away, leaving Wilson in his cruiser with eleven bullets
remaining in his .40 mm handgun.
Again, Wilson chose to escalate rather than wait patiently and safely
I just did my job… I followed my training, the training took over, the training led me to what happened…. If
this is literally true, it suggests that Wilson went into some sort of
fugue state in which rational thought was no longer an option. And if
this is true from another perspective, it raises the further question of
why anyone would get the sort of training that turns you into an
automaton when you need to be alert, flexible, and careful.
Stephanopoulos did not raise these questions, he didn’t ask any
questions about how Wilson’s “training” led him to pursue and kill a
wounded unarmed man. He didn’t come close to asking why Wilson chose to
execute Michael Brown even though Wilson had the near-certain knowledge
that backup was only about half a minute away.
Wilson’s version of events relies for its justification on others
believing he was in reasonable fear for his own life – even though
Wilson himself says he was in an unreasoning state. For his
justification to be believable, Wilson has to be a head case. Time after
time, his behavior consistent with uncontrolled rage, Wilson chose to
make the situation more and more dangerous. Wilson wants us to believe
that, even though he had already been afraid for his own survival, he
felt the need to put himself at risk once again in chasing Brown. Yet he
refuses to take any responsibility for the death that resulted from his
hot pursuit of a “dangerous” jaywalker.
“I just did my job. I did what I was paid to do and that
was my job. I followed my training, the training took over, the
training led me to what happened, I maintained the integrity of this
investigation, that’s it.”
I maintained the integrity of this investigation, that’s it. That’s
a strange, mid-sentence shift of focus from the events on Canfield
Drive to the aftermath of those events. “This investigation” is all
about Wilson’s use of deadly force. “This investigation” was a secret
process relating to public events. “This investigation,” from the start,
was all about vindication of the killer, starting with police leaks to
demonize the victim. Time and again Stephanopoulos asked Wilson why he
told the grand jury Michael Brown was a “demon.” Time and again Wilson’s
non-answer was some variation on Brown’s seeming to have “such high
level of intensity.” Neither Wilson nor Stephanopoulos came close to
talking about another reality: that it was necessary for Brown to be a
“demon” if Wilson was to evade indictment.
The short
interview clip that
ABC News chose to run on its Sunday show November 30 highlighted the
lazy, soft questioning Stephanopoulos used throughout the interview,
instead of asking direct questions like “what happened?” or “what did
you think?” Even the Sunday host’s intro to the clip played into the
Wilson cover story: “Darren Wilson told George, in their exclusive
interview, that what happened on that night in August was the result of
his training.” It wasn’t “that night,” it was noontime, but night is
scarier and offers more support to Wilson’s claim to fear.
Stephanopoulos proceeded like this:
STEPHANOPOULOS: You describe, I guess, the fear you were thinking. You thought he was coming after you.
WILSON: Yes.
STEPHANOPOULOS: On the street. But is any part of you angry?
WILSON: No.
STEPHANOPOULOS: No anger?
WILSON: No. There was no time for anger. Like I said, training took over. It was survival mode.
Asking questions that can be answered with a monosyllable is an
excellent technique to allow an interviewee to avoid saying anything
harmful to his self-interest. It’s a technique that is unlikely to
produce any interesting answers, but allows the interviewee to stick to
the script that your network has just bought for close to a million
dollars.
The rest of the ABC News Sunday clip illustrates another way
Stephanopoulos pandered to his guest. Notice how, when Wilson answers
with two sentences, still completely on script, Stephanopoulos
immediately intervenes, avoiding the risk of Wilson’s going off script
and saying too much:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Because some of the witnesses have said they thought you were out of control, that somehow you had snapped.
WILSON: That would be incorrect. There was never — the only emotion
I’d ever felt was fear and then it was survival and training.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And the training kicked in?
WILSON: The training took over. It didn’t just kick in, it took over.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And in your training, there was no option in those moments when you were faced with Michael Brown but to shoot?
WILSON: Correct.
“Clean conscience,” no second thoughts, no remorse…
Later, Stephanopoulos helped Wilson out some more with a
non-question: “It does really seem like even from the moment this all
went down in those 90 [sic] seconds that, um, you are, you, you have a
very clean conscience.” Wilson’s whole response was a non-verbal
“uh-huh.”
Stephanopoulos went on: “And so there, there’s this way, and you
would imagine that when you go back in that time and you think, what
happened there, what, what could I have done? Uh, it, it, something
would grab hold of you and say wait a second, maybe, maybe this could
have been different, maybe it could have worked out a different way.
Nothing?”
Nothing it was. Wilson’s full response was: “The reason I have this clean conscience is because I know I did my job right.”
A minute later, Stephanopoulos commented on Wilson’s impersonal
language: “It sounds like you don’t think you were responsible.” And all
Wilson said was: “I did my job that day.”
Eventually Stephanopoulos asked directly: “Do you feel any remorse?”
Wilson doesn’t say he feels remorse, he doesn’t say what he feels, he says:
“
Everyone feels remorse when a life’s lost. I had told you
before, I never wanted to take anybody’s life. You know, that’s not the
good part of the job, that’s the bad part of the job. So, yes, there’s
remorse.”
The day after the ABC News interview, Wilson’s lawyer
Neil Bruntrager told
CNN about his client, “His remorse and his sadness about what happened
is there, and it’s real.” Even in a courtroom, what a lawyer says for
his client is not evidence. And what Wilson has said for a fee on his
own behalf offers little support for any conclusion that he feels
remorse, or that he understands how he might have avoided killing
Michael Brown, or that he has a conscience.
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I can only imagine what the numbers might be like in California, Texas, and New York. 4,317 charges of sexual assault on minors were recently recorded in a 12 month period in America’s 10th largest state — North Carolina.
