Your Politics Determines Your Reality
By
Leonard Zwelling
All one needs to do is flip channels between Fox and MS Now and you will understand the veracity of the title of this blog.
Let’s say an event occurs that is newsworthy. For the week I wrote this, it was the shooting of a civilian in her car on the streets of Minneapolis. Within minutes of the fatal shots being fired by an ICE agent, the Democratic mayor of the city is sure ICE made a deadly error while the entire Trump Administration is sure that the shooting was justified by self-defense. The videos being shown, and there are several, reveal this much for sure.
The victim’s car was blocking a road and the ICE agents drove up to her car. Two approached the driver’s side window on foot and one attempted to open the door, most likely asking her to get out. The car lurched forward toward a third agent in front of the car. That agent shot once at the windshield, moved out of the way, and shot twice more at the head of the driver.
There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the ICE agent fired the fatal shots. It will take a careful investigation to know what was said by the agents who approached the car. Was the driver told to get out of the car, but resisted as the videos appear to show? Was she told by anyone to drive forward as she did?
None of this is known definitively yet. If an honest investigation is done, these facts should be known. In the meantime, perhaps everyone should stop grinding on their political axes and wait to find out what really occurred.
I am sure of one thing, however. It was only a matter of time until an incident like this would occur with federal troops on the streets of our cities. I saw this myself many years ago on February 13, 1969, when the African-American students at Duke University took over the Allen Building, the administrative center of the university. Rather than wait the students out as night fell and temperatures plummeted, the Duke Administration called on the Durham Police Force to empty the building by force. Forewarned by the fastest player on the football team who was scouting Durham’s finest as they donned riot gear in the Duke Garden, and alerting those in the building to the impending invasion of the Allen Building by the Durham PD, the Black students cleared out of the building. But once you ask the police on campus, they are bound to do something. Having nothing to do inside the building, the police gassed the quad to disperse the gathered students—including me.
Once you bring an armed force into a space where they do not belong, bad things are likely to happen.
It seems that ICE agents (and the FBI, and the Customs and Border Patrol for that matter) are being diverted from their real jobs to chase non-criminal immigrants for political purposes. ICE agents should not be roaming our streets any more than Durham police officers should be on the Duke campus.
That being said, the competing spin on what really happened in Minneapolis substantiates the political nature of people’s reality. Where Fox viewers see a justified shooting, the MS Now viewers see more Trump-instigated violence against innocent citizens. For me, I see it both ways. The woman should not have had her car blocking the road, and the use of deadly force was uncalled for.
For now, what you see in the news footage will be determined largely by your politics. This has been true for January 6, Charlottesville, and the responses to the killing of George Floyd.
What really troubles me is that in the case of January 6, investigations were done. People were indicted and convicted and sent to prison only to duck accountability when they were pardoned by the president.
Everything, it seems, is political. I have no idea where the truth is any more.
