Walking the knife edge

Three more police officers killed in Baton Rouge over the weekend has brought America to the edge of a metaphorical cliff.  What we choose to do next will be a judgment on the state of our democracy.  By now, many if not most police departments in the country are in the process of adopting a siege mentality of "us against them".  Of course for the past 50 years the original "to serve and protect" motto of the police has morphed to "defend and oppress", especially in inner city neighborhoods.  As the various wars on poverty, drugs, etc. failed, the mechanisms of law enforcement have increasingly been used to keep a lid on deep seated racism and economic oppression of poor blacks and whites.  The culmination of these policies has been the transformation of police departments into quasi military organizations with little connection to the communities they patrol.  The poorly justified killings of two black men in recent weeks and the empowering of the Black Lives Matter movement inspired the murder of police in Dallas and Baton Rouge.  If the nation reacts with more police violence against black men without a corresponding examination of the policies which have spawned the events we have witnessed we will be heading into darkness without a light.