That title represents bold words for a one-eyed-fat-man.  I have two eyes.  I am also the alter-ego of an old white man – and my fellow white people, intelligent political moderates, have come up short in the advancing civilized struggle for morality and justice.

People throughout my life have been weary of any direct confrontation with me – mostly because they know I am willing to engage at any level they want.  When the fight or flight genes were being handed out I did not get the flight part of the deal.  With that said, the modern white political moderate sacrifices justice in the name of order.  The pathetic need for acceptance without conflict at the expense of doing the right thing is abhorrent.

Justice does not prevail in the short attention spans of white adults who long for peace and quiet in this hectic world.  Harmony is more important than justice.

Let us start with local police.  A uniform and a badge are powerful symbols of authority.  I have to say that most of the people who wear the uniform, pin on a badge, and carry a gun are mentally healthy and do not let the authority consume their life.  In 1969 I was a police dispatcher in St. Joseph, Missouri – a moderate town of about 75,000.  In my brief time in that job I came to know the personalities of most of the local officers.  I remember Lieutenant Sherwood who bragged that in 25 years he had never taken his gun out of his holster while on duty.  Another officer had shot and killed two people in his 20 years – both deaths ruled justified homicide.  In the back halls of the police station the officers secretly said the two deaths were the result of an officer feeling a need to be respected and losing his composure in the face of danger.  They said it was about his mental state rather than about the circumstances of the shootings. Who can know?

Our modern world has cameras on every street corner and on every dashboard of every police car – we have more data with which to judge.  This past two years we have seen many videos of rash gunfire by police – generally toward people of color, and often in neighborhoods of poverty.  The question is always motive.  Why did that white policeman shoot that black man 17 times?  Individual cases can be debated but there is little debate that the problem of the mental state of the police officers continues to haunt us.  Here is the rub.  Moderate White people fail to engage the debate in a meaningful manner.  They want the problem to go away so they can go to the ball game.

Check out this disturbing video of police brutality:

The video is out and he is going to pay a price.

This is a clear example of a police officer who has come to believe that he is always right simply because he is a police officer.  In my town, St. Joseph, there is an ordinance that states that we citizens must obey a reasonable request of a police officer.  Some police have come to believe that any request they make is reasonable simply because they made it.

Moving on to our school system and justice for children.  My view is that a child’s education is the responsibility of three components, the child, the parents, and the school.  When a child is on the honor role the parents and the school tout their great success – when the child if failing it is entirely the fault of the child – and the spiritually lazy moderate white adults would rather the child fail than serve justice to the adults.  Harmony and order rule.  Those same moderate white adults send their children to private schools or demand their school board better segregate the troublemakers from those more advantaged.

Desegregated schools too often host segregation within their walls.  Children of the same age and grade, from prosperous families, ore in one classroom and those less fortunate are in a separate room.  The PTA or PTO, whatever, favors harmony and order over justice. The internal segregation reflects skin color and economic strata and social strata – the Principle sucking up to the Administration that sucks up to the School Board.  Order – but no justice.

Civilization only advances when people stand up to injustice, even at the expense of their harmonic life.