Ferg without the Craigy

Man, I love the smell of racial unrest in the morning!

The situation in Ferguson, Missouri has been commented to death, but I thought I'd add my two cents before the dust of the riots actually settled.

My own position on this situation is a bit nuanced and is, admittedly, based on only a couple bits of evidence that I think are both important and relevant. Obviously, my thoughts are those of a complete non-expert in legal matters, so feel free to commit the genetic fallacy and dismiss what I say because of who I am. That dismissal might not be so fallacious in this case.

As I told my Golden Goose coworker yesterday, I don't think Officer Darren Wilson is completely innocent. This isn't like the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case, which I found to be a clear-cut case of self-defense. True: Brown was much larger, and very likely was enraged, perhaps even to the point of murderous rage. I haven't examined the testimonies closely enough to form an opinion. What I do know, though, is that Darren Wilson undeniably shot Mike Brown six times, and that Wilson, in the hospital photos that finally showed up online, didn't really appear injured, except for a slight discoloration on his face that might have come from a fist or an open hand.

Mike Brown is as large and bulky as I am—maybe larger. If I were of small stature, and if someone like that came down on me like a ton of bricks, I'd probably fear for my life, too. But would I shoot him six times? I doubt it—especially if I had received police training and knew the necessity of keeping my head in a crisis situation. By my reckoning, firing six shots is excessive force, and there's just not enough photographic evidence of Officer Wilson's injuries for me to feel he was justified in emptying most or all of his gun into Brown (I don't know what sort of firearm Wilson had).

I'm not saying flat-out that Officer Wilson murdered Mike Brown in cold blood. That would be committing the fallacy of the excluded middle: going from one extreme notion to another without considering the middle ground. And the middle ground in this case—or maybe we should call it the muddled ground—is that the truth is very likely that neither party was a saint in all this. Officer Wilson could have exercised restraint, and Mike Brown is responsible for making the poor choices that led to his death. The injustice, as I see it, is that Officer Wilson has escaped indictment, thanks to a grand jury's decision that there is nothing to charge Wilson with. (Grand juries aren't the same as regular juries.)

Reason.com recently published an article, linked to by Instapundit, that I largely agree with. On Instapundit itself, plenty of conservative commenters have been expressing vehement disagreement with the article, but I think they're all letting their emotions cloud their ability to think. Most of the comments are along the lines of "putting Wilson on trial would simply be to appease the mob." That's not how I see it at all. I think there are legitimate questions about how Officer Wilson handled himself, and by rights he should take the stand in a court of law to answer them. His hands aren't clean, despite his claims that his conscience is clean.

There are, of course, larger questions of ambient and institutional racism in America that deserve civil, intelligent discussion. I'm not sure how likely it is that we'll ever see such discussion, alas: race in America always leads to the circus. This is Tom Wolfe's world, this bonfire of the vanities, and we're unlucky enough to be living in it.

One final comment: the riots and the rioters are idiots. My coworker pointed out that many of the rioters aren't even from Ferguson, which is sad when you think about it: people actually made the effort to come to another town to trash that town's property. Businesses will be crippled; damage will create huge financial setbacks; nothing remotely like "social justice" will materialize from all this sound and fury. Ferguson has become a cosmic joke, and all truly is moving according to Tom Wolfe's cynical plan.


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