All Lives Matter?

Do all lives matter?  Yes.  Of course they do.  Though I dislike the premise that there is such a thing as a "blue life", as if a person in a certain profession is some how a distinctive class of citizen.

Ever wonder why the phrase "All Lives Matter" annoys some?

Well, picture if you posted a post about how the lives of the unborn mattered.  And someone immediately jumped in to say ALL lives matter.  What would that mean?

It would mean they were being dismissive of your concerns.  By stating an obvious truth, that "all lives matter", they are making your specific claim of a specific type of life mattering seem small, or not relevant.

Yes, all lives do matter, but when addressing the issue of the unborn, we are only talking about fetal lives - not "old lives", "middle aged lives", "youthful lives" and/or "child lives".

Pointing out that the young, middle aged and old also die is then, in that context, meaningless at best, dismissive at worst.

Same with the "All Lives Matter" response to those who say "Black Lives Matter".

"Black Lives Matter" is a movement born out of those who were frustrated at the disproportionate killing of blacks at the hands of the police.  This may or may not be an issue that you care about or agree with, but that was their motive.

The same motive that any pro-lifer has - to draw attention to a specific segment of the population that they feel (correctly) was not getting enough attention.

To say back to them that "all lives matter" is to dismiss them.  To belittle their concerns.  And the truth is, minorities are more likely to be killed by police than whites are.  There is no doubt or quibble on that one, and it doesn't matter if more Chinese kill Chinese or more Irish kill Irish or more African Americans kill African Americans.  Or for that matter, that more whites kill whites.

More blacks are killed by police than whites are killed by police.  That is a fact, it is not denied.  What it means may be debated, but that it is the case cannot be.

We can try to solve this problem by denying it.  We can try to solve it by trotting out black policeman to deliver scripted soothing sophistries.  We can try to solve it by that "all lives matter" dismissal.  We can try to - and apparently are - solve it by brute force.  We can even pretend to offer police jobs to the very ones complaining - such of them that are still alive, and have not been gave an automatic record over trivial offenses that no upper-middle class white youth is ever in danger of receiving.

Or all of the above.

Yet we could try and solve it another way.  We could first acknowledge the obvious - that it is, right or wrong, justified or not, true.

We could mandate button cams for all cops, with the footage in any shooting to be released at once, by law, to the public.  If they've nothing to hide, right?  At least I know that such is what the police always tell us.

We could mandate that prosecutors must treat cops like the civilians they are, by convening a Grand Jury to indict them every time one of them shoots and kills a person.  Just like we already do with we regular folks who shoot and kill a person, no matter what our stated reasons are.

We could apply the same rule of thumb to cities that we do with businesses.  Which is to say, that just as the burden of proof of "non-racism" is on the business that has no minority employees, so too the burden of proof of "non-racism" must be on cities that have police that kill minorities in disproportionate numbers to the killings of the majority of the populace.

And really, if a city that is majority white is having the police kill more minorities than whites, then shouldn't everyone - black and white - wish to get to the bottom of why?  You know, so as to then solve it?

We could give all cops a 20% pay raise - but with the understanding that there is a new accountability in play for the first time in history, and when the police department or city loses a wrongful death case, that monetary award will come from the cops involved, and/or their pension funds, not the very tax payers that were their victims.

We could require that all cops be veterans of the armed services, that they all be at least 35, and that they all have college degrees in a law enforcement related field, that they all be fired the first time a Protective Order is awarded a spouse or significant other of theirs.  Or at least some of those requirements.  Or at the least of the least - any of those requirements.

Instead, I suspect, we'll keep up with the propaganda memes and the mantra of "all lives matter", as if any had ever disagreed with that, and as if "all" lives are equally threatened.

Pictured:  Yes, "All Lives Matter".  But some lives seem in a great deal more danger than other lives.