It’s a Shakespearian world.
We’re surrounded by villains, heroes with tragic flaws, mischievous
players, innocent, but naive people and uncontrollable Fates.
Take John Crawford III for example. He’s the innocent, naive person. Our villain, who later admits he lied about
what he saw is Ronald Ritchie. He called
the police with a lie.
The lie? That he saw
a black man walking up and down the aisles of Wal-Mart with a loaded AR
threatening people. One paper even claims Ritchie reported he saw Crawford load
it.
The reality was Crawford picked up a MK-177
BB/Pellet rifle off the WalMart rack while shopping.
What motivated this lie?
Maybe Ritchie doesn’t like black people.
Maybe he doesn’t like police.
Maybe he just a stupid asshole with funny (not Ha-Ha funny) ideas. Later he backed off the lie and makes funny mouth
sounds like: well, it was a rifle and I was afraid…..
We’ll cast WalMart as the Fates, moving people to final,
unforeseen conflicts that only the Fates could change.
Too far-fetched?
Not at all. Who sells
a toy that is an identical look-alike to a firearm without packaging? In hindsight this tragedy in three acts could
have been prevented if the MK-177 BB/Pellet rifle had been in a box or blister
package.
The police are the tragic heroes and not Crawford. Crawford is the victim and victims are tragic
in themselves.
What else could the police be? They are given faulty information, respond to
a situation that most of us would have opted out of. They arrive and find exactly what they were
told they would find, a man with a rifle in a store filled with people. Fearing for their and the lives of bystanders,
they engage the man and shots are fired.
According to Aristotle, a tragic hero ought to be a man
whose misfortune comes to him, not through vice or depravity, but by some error
of judgment.
Boy, that sure fits the two
cops perfectly. They do what they
believe is the right, heroic thing only to be vilified, punished and possibly
have their lives ruined. Even if that
doesn’t come to pass, who is to say next time they wouldn’t pause a second, or
two and it will be their last time?
Sounds pretty freaking tragic to me.
For a little black comedy we have the 36-year old woman who
is frightened to death by the gunfire and dies from a heart-attack. Yeah, they took her out in a body bag.
The dead man isn’t at fault, even though the city will
attempt to put the blame on him. I guess
you could say, if he hadn’t been purchasing the BB gun or if he had it in a
shopping cart the outcome might be different.
The cops will be blamed.
People who never held a gun, never responded to a “man with a gun” call
will point fingers and hold them responsible because they should have done
something. Again, that something is
never clearly explained.
Our villain
will continue to exclaim that he was positive the man had a gun and did threaten
other shoppers regardless of what the in-store video tape shows.
Is there a tactical aspect to this?
No. Maybe.
Be aware the world is filled with people like Ronald
Ritchie. They may overreact out of
ignorance, out of stupidity, or perhaps they just like making trouble. There was once an Irish prayer that asked God
to twist the left ankle of our enemies, so they and we would know them by
their limp. Clearly this hasn’t
happened, so we don’t know who’s who.
Video cameras are everywhere and Wal-Mart’s cameras are
playing a big part in this case. Privacy
is becoming a thing of the past and one day, like the current generation of
Russian drivers, we’ll all wear video cameras to support our claims.
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