A sober warning (and one of the best essays I have read thus far about Ferguson):

[people]

62. What is the future?

Someone above talked about the spark this murder lit throughout the country - even outside of the U.S. I heard a woman on the radio who is Egyptian saying you are asleep in the U.S. if you don't understand that what happened there could unpredictably and suddenly happen here. That's what I thought about when I read this paragraph:

"This is a force multiplier for really bad outcomes. This compounding of evil just cannot stand. Recently, an impatient driver plowed into a large crowd of protesters in Minnesota. Nothing came of it. Now, if you are a person who is already out in the streets over the free-pass murder of Michael Brown, do you have any good will towards the authorities to give out any benefit of the doubt here? Or. Does this compound what is already in your heart and mind and take you to an even darker place? Everything in context. Everything in the context of the moment. Certain people can kill a person of color whenever they claimed to feel threatened. Now? Some can even mow down a crowd of protesters for the sin of being inconvenienced. Everything just feeding negative energy into the great puke funnel that is drowning a dream."

My daughter was at that demonstration. I stared at the young woman on the ground for a long time to try to figure out if it could be my daughter. It wasn't.

My daughters' (in their 20's) perceptions of this government and this country are so different than the perceptions I had in my late teens. I was profoundly shocked and disillusioned by Viet Nam and Jackson State, etc., etc. My children were born into a world long past Watergate, the killing of Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Viet Nam, and many other horrors. They never really believed all that stuff in the same way that (white) people of my generation did in our teens. My children are in a much harsher world. They are not surprised by any of this harshness. It's to the point where I try to give them some hope - I say "you are the next generation" and "you will do better than we did" but I don't think they believe me at all. One of them has even said that my generation has screwed it all up for them. So funny that when I was young I honestly was naive enough to think my generation would change the world - make it more peaceful, less racist, etc. What did my generation give to the U.S.? Extreme inequality and George W. Bush. Excuse me while I puke.

It made me feel good to see primarily young people and some older and my age out there protesting all over the U.S. In terms of cops freely killing young black males - this is not worse than it used to be. It's just that it's no longer a purely personal private event, which is good. Maybe the reaction to this lying murdering cop will result in something positive. I feel so terrible for all of these families whose young sons are just murdered by police. Someone give me some hope for the future. I do not feel in any way hopeful tonight about the future I see.