Where Does "BLM" End?

Many, many times in the 450 preceding pieces, I have decried the lack of an "end state" in addressing different people, organizations and movements.  "Change" in and of itself, as Barack Obama's contemptible service as president has shown, is not an end.

You do things with an expected outcome, and need to expect that the actions you take will be likely to achieve that outcome.  And perhaps more importantly, when you take actions, you have to anticipate the logical outcome.

There is, in fact, a jury instruction that is used in cases where premeditation is a factor, that states "You are responsible for the logical consequences of your actions."  That is to say that if you discharge a firearm at a house, you are responsible if the bullet actually hits someone inside, the same as if you were to have intended to hit the person.

And so we ask ... what is the expected outcome for the Black Lives Matter people?

Let me ask that question a whole lot more specifically.  The BLM movement is accountable for the murders of a sadly large number of police officers recently.  That accountability is associated with their members parading down streets chanting things like "pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon" and "what do we want, dead cops, when do we want it, now!"  That chanting has, of course, happened, and is not subject to challenge.

So that said, what is their end state?  When they have achieved their ends, what will have happened?

I realize that BLM isn't exactly an organized non-profit organization filing tax returns and other things associated with actual organizations.  But it has "leaders" like DeRay McKesson, the professional agitator who as been invited to the White House to meet with the president along with a few of the Al Sharptons of the world, like, well, Al Sharpton.

If there are people speaking for the "movement", they need to be able to be subject to questioning about its intent, and I, for one, want to know a few things.  These are things that the logically-wandering mind would also want to know, and which the press needs to ask in its editorial pages.

For example -- I would like to know what BLM envisions as the local police force in American towns and cities if they were to get their way.  Would it be structured in the same way as it typically is now?  What might be different?  It has seemed to me that BLM's problem is with individual cops' actions, not with an organizational deficiency, but I'd like to hear an answer -- or even hear the question asked.

I would like to know that future state in a functioning, positive sense -- "We envision the police force doing this, that, and that thing over there", not "We want to eliminate this, that and that thing over there."

I ask that because as I always say, "If you don't know where you're going, any path is equally valid."  I realize that I'm giving BLM credit for actually wanting something as opposed to simply murdering policemen as an end in itself.  But someone ought to be asking what the end is that they do want.

Because if all they want is a nation full of murdered cops, they're doing just fine at it.  But if they want something fixed, well, then they need to describe what they're actually trying to accomplish.  Because any end that is achieved by murdering peace officers just might be achieved with a whole less murder if it were what was actually wanted.

Every once in a while it is a valuable exercise to step back and look at what one is trying to achieve, and whether the actions we're taking are likely to achieve that goal.  Sometimes we take those actions on an assumption even when the assumption is wrong; sometimes we have been taking those actions for so long that they no longer can be expected to achieve the desired ends.

In the case of BLM, I don't think we know what their desired end is, and I want to know when one of their "leaders" is going to be asked -- and forced to answer -- what their intent is.  This weekend we saw, for example, Lesley Stahl interviewing Donald Trump and Mike Pence, and being particularly insistent at getting actual answers to certain questions.

So we know the press can ask those questions until they get an answer.  When is Lesley Stahl going to sit down with DeRay McKesson and be pressed to answer a few questions?  You know, things like "Your membership chanted that it wanted 'dead cops' and wanted that 'now'.  Has Black Lives Matter caused enough dead cops yet, or do you need more?"

I'd like to have him asked these:

- "What is your vision of when BLM no longer needs to exist?" 
- "Every community with a police force has the internal process to deal with excessive force; at what point will you believe that those processes are mature enough that you can stop killing policemen?" 
- "How will your vision of local police forces deal with the fact that black criminals will always exist, as will white, Hispanic and Asian criminals, and there will be times when they will start shooting at policemen trying to arrest them and risk being killed in perfectly reasonable encounters?"

Most of all, I'd like to know what the situation will be, the ultimate result, as far as the nature of law enforcement once BLM has indeed killed all the cops it feels it needs to and can stop murdering people.  What is their vision?

We'd all like to know, and the press should be insistent, should hunt down the leaders of the movement and make them answer those questions.

Then they can ask Obama why the leader of a group that kills cops was invited to the White House.

That one is not going to get asked, friends.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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