I had said earlier that there was going to be a Timothy McVeigh-Terry Nichols type of reaction when LEOs shoot the “wrong type of people”.
I did not expect a retaliation of this magnitude, not over LEO murders of African-Americans, not in #Dallas. The shooter in the video, who is now dead, looks like he had training to shoot at remote targets from around corners. Snipers.
With his accomplices, he was able to kill 5 officers and wound 5 others. They could have killed many, untold numbers of civilian protesters after they were frightened by the shooting, but they didn’t. Just picking off the LEOs.
This wasn’t an ordinary clapback against police brutality. This was planned, the channeling of emotion from abject despondency to stone-cold revenge. The shooters wanted to make a seething nick in the skin of that institution.
“The end is coming”, he said in the garage. Apocalyptic. No one expected this. I thought there wasn’t going to be this sort of channeling. Just more protests, more arrests, more burning of buildings.
But this. THIS. Stone-cold, planned revenge. A selective propaganda of the deed.
Interestingly enough, I read that McVeigh and Nichols were trained and stationed here at Fort Benning in the late 80s. Maybe military training? I’m as mesmerized by what happened in Dallas as I am disgusted and despondent over ALL of the unjustified deaths of the last 96 hours.
NOTE 12/28/2017: This is NOT a justification for revenge killings of police, nor of anyone at all. Stop the killings.