Ferguson

I don't want to weigh in on Ferguson. Ferguson being my shorthand name for the recent pheonmenon of possibly excessive police violence.

Listen, I got good reasons. I'll put it this way. Rioting to the point of property damage is wrong, and I can't condone it. But I understand where it's coming from. There are an awful lot of police killing an awful lot of unarmed men and boys, for dubious reasons. And it doesn't look good that so many of the victims are black, and they're not firing people over it.

On the other hand, I respect cops. They have an impossible job and it's likely that if they did it strictly by the book, we'd be at the mercy of crime lords and thugs every day of our lives. So I get that in individual cases, it makes sense to shoot before they can pull a weapon on you.

The problem, though, is that I can't give a blanket approval to everybody in any one group. I can't say all the cops aren't hair-trigger racists -- most are not, but some of them clearly must be. And I don't think the rioters are nobly expressing themselves. Most are, but a handful of them nationally are taking advantage of the unrest to wreck stuff and steal things.

So there you have it. How do we solve this? I don't know. I'm a goddam blogger, not Ghandi.