So this is happening...again. The righteous are being pronounced the wrong-doers. The truth is being christened as the lie, the facts perverted, the common sense twisted. And the blame for the crime is being pegged on the crime-stoppers. Notoriously famed (for limitless violence in his pictures) movie director Quentin Tarantino has turned things upside down and called our police officers "the murderers". This is done at the time when police chief in Texas is being shot in the head and police officers are constantly assaulted nationwide.
Police around the country are doing the hard work of fighting and preventing the crime every single day. There is no normal life without the police, neither in America nor someplace else. This is a sad fact of life. Unfortunately, people need policing as much as they need the health care. Or even food. People need laws and the laws need law enforcement. Is it so difficult to understand, Mr. Tarantino?
Now, after unconditionally blaming the police, Quentin Tarantino is refusing to apologize. He is saying he is not going to be intimidated by his critics and by police groups calling for boycott of his movies. He is claiming he had not labeled all members of the police "the murderers". He only meant the ones which had to shoot and kill at the line of duty.
Have all the shootings done by the police been justified? By no means. Are our lives matter regardless of gender, race, religion and skin color? You bet they do. Is each and every police officer trying to intercepts criminals every day of his or her life, sometimes even being off duty - and is forced by circumstances to use his or her firearm - guilty of police brutality or even a murder? Hell no. Mr. Tarantino explicitly calls some of these guys "the murderers". Notwithstanding his First Amendment rights - and the common sense aside - I would like to remind him about the presumption of innocence. Nobody is guilty of any crime unless declared so by the court of law. Of course, there is a public perception as well. And public figures, like Mr. Tarantino, have means to affect this perception much more than a regular person. One might say some civic responsibility should come with that stance. Does he realize that? Does he use his quite unique position and his fame responsibly enough?
So why exactly is highly educated, rich and famous movie director is trying to brand our police - even just the ones who, unfortunately, made a judgement call to use a firearm - why is he trying to stigmatize them as "the murderers"?
One obvious reason is: he is intended to stir a controversy. Controversies sell, and so do their by-products. Mr Tarantino wants to promote his newest creature "The Hateful Eight". Never mind that immature individuals with criminal minds could take his words as a direct call to attack the police or at least organize resistance to the law enforcement. Never mind that this could cost some members of the police their lives. Everything for the success to his next production and profit to his bank accounts.
Another reason would be that he wants to express the voice of a certain segment of our society that is proclaiming itself as anti-privileged (read anti-middle class) and anti-capitalism. But in a grim nowadays reality it is simply anti-public and anti-American. According to these people, everything coming from the middle-class is a priori bad, everything done against it is immensely good. This notion is quite popular in some (fortunately, far from all) university circles and among people who hate anything American. Now, utilizing populist speech and provoking the worst instincts of the mob is an instrument successfully used by quite a few authoritarian powers in history, known for their vicious crimes against humanity. Does Mr. Tarantino really wants to be in the same bucket with them?
