Really do they?
This is a much more extensive and more basic issue in our culture and in our country than just the discussion that has been taking place regarding racial relations between police officers and black or minority young men in our communities that has been generated by some acts of violence against individuals because of how we think about them, which has been considered “right”.
One of the most serious of these issues has to do with the deadly violence that is inflicted every day on the living bodies of human beings who with beating hearts are waiting for their bodies to mature to a level when they can be normally born into this world as a living child, but who in their mothers’ wombs can be subjected to intense physical procedures that stop their beating hearts or even poison them or suck out their brains while their hearts are still beating just because their mother has decided that the presence of this living human being in her body is a “threat” to her health or well being or has become an inconvenient unwanted person in her life. Does the life of that human being whose heart is beating inside of his or her mother’s womb really matter?
Another non -racial manifestation of this culture is the current legal right that states that a person who thinks that he is really a woman has the physical right to enter into public restrooms and locker rooms that have been traditionally reserved for the exclusive use of females to provide them with personal privacy and safety from any male persons who might harm them or watch them in their personal physical activities that would allow the personal intimate parts of their bodies to be exposed just because he now thinks that he is a female who has the legal right to be regarded and treated as a female even though he may still have the genitals of a male. Should a transsexual human being have the legal right to emotionally and even physically subject another human being to some impersonal invasive treatment just because he or she thinks that he or she shares a common gender quality with that person?
And to the point of our current racial issues between police officers and black or minority young men, should police officers really have the right to draw their deadly weapons and kill another person just because they think that the person presents them with a deadly threat to their life or that of others who are near by because they perceive that they have a gun or they have been advised by someone else that they “may have a gun” or may have committed an of violence against someone or been involved in another type of serious felony or are reaching for a gun? The right to defend one’s self by the use of deadly force has become a part of our legal culture that complicates this principle of “all lives matter”, particularly when the life and death decision may only be made in an interval of a split second of time. Do the lives of “suspects” really matter in such circumstances where split second decisions can easily be made by armed men because of what they think at the moment?
It should be apparent from these examples that there is a culture of violence in our society that is much more extensive and more easily accepted than the one that we are currently intensely discussing regarding racial relations between police officers and black or minority young men in our communities. And this extensive popular cultural attitude of how we think about others has some very personal implications for the safety and lives of others in our society, some of whom are absolutely helpless in their personal situations to go on living.
Let’s really talk about this
What is it really going to take to change this culture of violence in our society and to really demonstrate that “all lives matter”? I think that it is probably going to take more than a lot of talk about this matter. It is going to take some fundamental changes in our laws and their application in our courts. And it is going to take some real changes in how we think about ourselves and our relationships with others in this most diverse society of men and women, boys and girls, and young children of both sexes who are just beginning to try to learn who they really are in this world and country of a lot of different types of people.
nice and short and to the point. very clear points.
also add about live of those with disabilities – with a “low quality of life” including those in much pain or near “end of life”. all human life is important.