Community is an important thing and we want to develop our communities as much as we can to ensure they thrive in a increasingly global and nimble world. Sometimes there are people who hold beliefs that are antithetical to community building. While I very much wish that such situations never have occurred, they nevertheless did, and that requires a level of responsibility so others can learn to avoid the same mistakes. Its important to help perpetrators prior to them becoming destructive and/or radicalized in a way that wastes community resources and causing heartache in the wake of their path.
What Are the Issues?
The issue is that mental health, greed and poor values got legitimized through a hate projection process. Hate was just a tool to be used to silence good moral conscious and ostracize the targeted family in a way that seeks to pit some members of the community against minorities in their midst (A learning organization mindset needed for improvement.). While the initial intent was to be destructive, I'm not 100% sure they knew how far it would go, how it mixed with clan based bias of a few officers, and their inability to control whom was being targeted (That is why telling the truth should be encouraged and lying should be discouraged. These are still conservative values that still make sense.).
Lesson on Hate: Poor values are often associated with hate and hate becomes a tool that once launched can grow wildly out of control through social mimicking.
Where there would be normal checks and balances they seemed almost non-existent in the initial wave of hate (Likely the same mechanisms that cause sacking of capitals. Semi coordinated efforts mixed in with efforts to mask those behaviors in group responsibility.) Instead of fact checking there were lots of assumptions and that exposed an internal default in a way that could be harmful to the community and still carries with it ongoing risks. That default ranged from the local social leader who started the problem all the way up the local system (I cannot tell you how far up but based on the slow response, lingering in decision making that hinted of not wanting to be wrong, and some of the maladaptive ways to deal with moral hazards, I would say all the way up the local system! That is why truth and wisdom are part of decision making.). Appropriate fact checking, fraternization policies, and "outside" system review might have veered the path.
Lesson on Hate: The need for adjustments can help reduce the impact of the hate narrative on decision making and infuse additional evidence oriented processes.
Once the dishonesty has been debunked and everyone sort of got an opportunity to stand back and look at how destructive they where, and relative inability to control their deep seated rage (inward projected outward), they began to see themselves in new light and that makes a big difference in future rectification. Good communities come to support and rally around higher moral codes embedded in human-to-human assumptions of safety and exchange. They have shown that while they may be gossipy and inadvertently spreading inappropriate information (Drawing a difference of rumor as information sharing and rumor as intentional manipulation) at the end of the day they share certain American values. Therein lies the hope for our communities and our nation.
Lesson on Hate: After the initial wave of hate it is possible for the general will of the people to correct against hate.
Not all things are rosy of course even after the smoke has cleared and visibility has returned. Those associated closely to this good old boy clan are not going to come out of their hate wrapped shell for a higher moral purpose anytime soon (I think in some ways they are also just buying their time.). I suppose it is a little like looking across the room at the people who tried to harm you and your kids and knowing more about them then they know about themselves. The color of one's skin or religion didn't cause this issue as it is comes from something much deeper beyond their conscious. A type of truth that comes from knowledge of some of the dark depths of human agony all the way over to what has inspired generations to grow. These are the things a lifetime of unique experiences can tell you in ways that most will never understand for themselves.
History should teach us the importance of community, systems and integrity ....and then you know why I'm afraid of saying too little. 😢
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