Age of the Geek

Polarized Opposites
  
     I'd love to write about "Pokemon Go" this week.
     It'd be great to make this column about how this nostalgia powered app has gotten me to do more recreational walking in a few days than I've done in years. My legs may be sore, but it's a soreness that I've needed.
     I'd like to write about how amazing technology has come. Twenty years ago I searched for Oddish on a fictional Route 5 looking at a gray tinted screen. This weekend I found one near the Subway looking through my cell phone.
     I'd like to explain how nice it's been to see so many other people walking around town with their heads buried in their phones. I'm eager to get to know my fellow Red Team players and coordinate with them to lock down possession of the city's gyms.
     It'd be great if the biggest conflict sweeping the nation was the three way rivalry between Team Valor, Team Mystic, and Team Instinct, but it's not.
     Last week began with back-to-back fatal encounters between law enforcement and black men who had otherwise been going about their day. First Alton Sterling, killed during an attempted arrest by Baton Rouge police under questionable circumstances. Then, before you could say, "he shouldn't have struggled," Philando Castile was shot to death in Minnesota, reportedly after informing the officer that he had a legal firearm and reaching for his license.
     Their deaths sparked another round of protests from the BlackLivesMatter group, rightfully angry that the system had yet again failed to prevent law enforcement from escalating a mundane encounter into a deadly situation. The fact that such protest rallies have become commonly predictable is already an issue, but last week that predictability facilitated an even greater tragedy.
     In Dallas, far from either incident, just as the protesters were wrapping up a relatively peaceful march through the streets, Micah Xavier Johnson decided he was going to make things exponentially worse for everybody. Where the protest was intended to remind police that they aren’t supposed to treat civilians like enemy combatants, Johnson turned downtown Dallas into a warzone, spreading fear and death on a scale that stands out even among our now commonplace mass shootings.
     Johnson's motivations were obvious. His actions were nothing short of monstrous.
     Targeting anybody in uniform, Johnson shot twelve people. Five did not make it through the night.
     Odds are good that none of the men and women that Johnson shot were the "bad apples" that so frequently capture national attention. It's likely that many of them sympathized with Johnson's grievances. The distrust of police that these events generate helps nobody. As an officer once told me, "Other officers in America have made my job harder."
     Instead of making things better, Johnson has polarized things even further. The protests are getting worse and tensions are increasing on both sides. A show of force is met with another show of force and eventually the inevitable happens.
     If the last week's events have proven anything, it's that assuming the worst in people often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are always bad apples, but it's important not to let anecdotes color objective reality. Indiscriminate prejudice alienates the very people that are needed to come together to make things better.
     For most of you reading this column, the events of this week are largely a non-issue. We'll sit here in our sleepy towns and be quietly thankful that we don't have those kind of problems here in rural Iowa.
     And that's fair enough, but the greater point stands. It's so easy to take the lazy way out and lump everybody into groups. Gamers, Muslims, Republicans, Democrats, Police, Protestors, with the internet providing everybody their own personal echo chamber, it's no wonder that the world seems more polarized than ever.
     It has to stop. Contrary to popular perception, the world isn’t black and white. You can support the police and still want them held accountable when they mess up. You can support the ideals of BlackLivesMatter while condemning their methods. You can be against ISIS without insulting the religion of a billion people. You can even support women and still think the new "Ghostbusters" movie looks like crap. These divisions do us no good and distract us from the things that really matter.
     Like Team Valor taking our gyms back from those yellow cowards and blue pansies!
 
     Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and is looking forward to defending the gym at the Franklin County fairgrounds this week.