Seasons Beatings In Ferguson
By REY FLORES
For the past week, we have seen what America 2014 looks like in all of her raw ugliness. This is not the America we were taught about in grade school — an America where images of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are forever etched in our memories like cheap cardboard classroom decorations.
Every day in America there are murders being committed, from abortions to drive-by shootings to police officers gunning down criminals as needed to defend their own lives. Apparently in America today, there is an agenda to demonize a policeman who was simply doing his job, found himself in a life-threatening situation, and did what any well-trained law enforcement professional would have done.
Officer Darren Wilson’s biggest crime is the fact that he is white. Had the young man that Wilson ended up shooting to death been white, none of us would be discussing this matter, let alone know who Wilson and Michael Brown were at all.
It doesn’t matter what kind of behavior the young “gentle giant” Mike Brown was exhibiting when he came face-to-face with Officer Wilson. In America today, because Brown is an African-American, he is automatically given a free pass to behave any way he wants to, especially in front of an unmistakably white cop.
Because of the juxtaposition of each man’s lot in life, it is automatically presumed that the unarmed 6’4”, 290 lb. Brown was at a disadvantage with the 5’8”, 160 lb. Wilson. This was a “David and Goliath”-type of confrontation where the young black man held more sway and power over a smaller white man simply because of the stranglehold of political correctness that has our nation gasping her last breath.
Officer Wilson, like David, took courage and became a police officer in a town where he knew he was the minority but nevertheless wanted to protect and serve. On the other hand, Brown the Goliath, like many cocky, disrespectful youth of today regardless of skin color, tramped about Ferguson, Mo., as if he owned the place.
If Brown wanted a package of Swisher Sweets cigars to empty the tobacco and repack them with marijuana, then he could do that. All he had to do was walk into the local grocery store, threaten and manhandle a much smaller Indian businessman, and then get what he wanted. All the storeowner could do was count his blessings and be glad he only lost about three dollars’ worth of merchandise.
The gentle Goliath Brown then strolled through the streets, basking in knowing well that he could do anything and have anything he wanted and nobody could do a thing about it.
Goliath had just humiliated an immigrant store owner not by stealing a cheap pack of cigarillos, but by simply ignoring the fact that the man had come from literally across oceans to live a better life in America, fought hard to start his own business, and was now reduced to being bullied about like a child.
Yes, Goliath Brown was walking on sunshine — that is, until he crossed paths with Officer Darren Wilson. As we are taught, we never know the day nor the hour and we can assume Brown was unaware that he was about to meet not only his deliverer, but his Maker as well.
Brown had come to that one fateful and uncertain moment that all God-fearing men know they must spend a lifetime preparing for. It is doubtful whether Brown had a clue of the eternity that was ahead of him, whatever that may be, according to God’s will.
Brown came to the realization that he did not own the town; that he did not have the right to bully store owners as he pleased, and finally, that he did not have the right to talk to or try to manhandle an armed law enforcement officer.
In a matter of seconds, both men found themselves facing a completely different reality forever; one here still on Earth, shaken but still breathing, the other now a soul on his very own Judgment Day.
Not long after, the vultures came swooping in. The vultures who were interested in looting liquor stores and shoe stores, grabbing what they could while they could. Then the government-controlled news media propaganda vultures came in afterward to stoke the fires of discontent, division, and hatred.
The fires now smolder in Ferguson, Mo., the same way they once did on West Madison Avenue in Chicago’s West Side when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated decades ago.
Many of the protesters do not really care about Michael Brown or the justice they claim they are seeking on Brown’s behalf postmortem, but the smoldering remains of an America on her last breath lay there next to the gentle giant on the streets of Main Street USA.
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(Rey Flores is a Catholic writer and speaker. Contact Rey at reyfloresusa@gmail.com.)
