Eschew Obfuscation –
By Michael Douglass –

It was all over before the shouting when county prosecutor Robert McCulloch opted to actually try the case before a secret grand jury as opposed to simply and traditionally allowing the matter to be tried in a public court of law.

The fix was in from the start.

Not just a stage set, but the entire drama enacted beneath a proscenium already tainted with a protracted history of racial animus endorsed and facilitated by regional cabal.
McCullough made a conscious decision to forego the proverbial ham sandwich.

It doesn’t take a hundred days to determine whether to try a white cop for shooting an unarmed black teen to death six to ten times from well over a hundred feet away. It does however, take that long to construct an elaborate trail of distortion and obfuscation to to justify the complete exoneration and immunity from any future criminal prosecution and consequence of a white cop who shot an unarmed black teen to death from well over a hundred feet away.

Robert McCulloch labored at least as much as an advocate for the defense of Darren Wilson as he did to discharge his statutory obligation as county prosecutor. He did not charge, nor did he recommend. He orchestrated behind closed doors.

He took it upon himself to prevent a legitimate trial for an undisputed homicide. He eschewed transparency. Was there even a whiff of justification for the use of deadly force? Was there anything at all exculpatory in terms of lethal threat or the absence thereof posed by Michael Brown?

None.

I can’t help but consider these concepts and ideals to be central, vital and thoroughly unimpeachable in the pursuit of justice in any case where a boy is left to die bleeding in the street. Shot to death. Unarmed. From over a hundred feet away by a policeman who suffered a swollen cheek.

Where in McCulloch’s press conference was there any mention of these things? I didn’t hear a goddamn word about them.

McCulloch was thorough, articulate and reprehensibly derelict.

I predicted this exact outcome months ago.

I watch the chaos and violence unfold tonight on my television and it’s hard. Hard to reconcile my heart and my head. It’s so senseless. So useless.

These businesses burning have no dog in this hunt. The destruction is being visited on the innocent once again. That’s some irony right there. Most people won’t understand this. They’ll see it for the crazy that it is. It breaks my heart.

It breaks my heart because there’s a part of me that genuinely understands. There’s a part of me that just can’t bring myself to blame them.

What most people won’t understand, what so many Americans simply cannot relate to, is that this is not merely crazy. It is desperation. It is the realization of a hollow futility.

When hope and justice are revoked by institutions, when the people who are led to believe they can trust and rely on them see them end in vapor, a profound vacuum manifests in that wake.

It is this that we now bear witness to.

Michael Brown was executed for adolescent hubris while being black in a town where he was only guilty of not knowing better.

Drinks for my friends.

Republished with permission from BrainSpank.Org.