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Short answer: It's complicated. And it has very little to do with the encounter between Michael Brown and Darren Wilson.Really, Really Long Answer (You've been warned)My suspicion is that the reaction and the attention both have great deal to do with economics, race relations, media hype, tensions between citizens and police, and unrelated social movements - both in and around Ferguson, and nationally. I don't think the facts of the incident itself have much at all to do with the reaction, except as the facts relate back to those other issues.Here's why:I'm in law enforcement, so I have my own perspective and my own biases. They're a result of my training, and my personal experiences. I recognize they exist, and I recognize in myself a knee-jerk reaction to trust the statements of other police officers, even ones I haven't met. Because I recognize that about myself, I try to hold off on forming an opinion about high profile incidents like this until facts become available.After following this case (somewhat religiously), and now that many facts have come out that weren't available in the first days and months after the shooting, I truly believe the evidence clearly indicates Officer Wilson was justified in his actions.I DO understand how reasonable, unbiased people might believe the evidence is less clear, and that the question of Officer Wilson's guilt or innocence has not yet been satisfactorily answered.What I do not understand is how any reasonable, unbiased observer could continue to believe that it is clear that Wilson did wrong. With that in mind, I simply don't understand why this case, rather than many others (shootings and otherwise) in which police misconduct is much clearer - or even much more likely - has captured the nation the way that it has.I can only assume such people fall into two groups:1) People who do not believe police are EVER justified in shooting an unarmed assailant. If you read a lot of the left-leaning blogs, or look at the social media posts by celebrities supportive of Michael Brown, often the one concrete fact that is most objected to (once you strip away phrases like "black," "white," and "in broad daylight," which are factually irrelevant to whether a shooting is justified or not) is the fact that Brown as unarmed. And to some people, it is simply unacceptable that police would ever shoot an unarmed individual. (This perspective is simply and verifiably wrong. Others have explained why in numerous other posts.)2) People with an interest in the shooting being considered unjustified. This includes the family of the victim, who I do not blame at all for their unrelenting belief their son was victimized; any parent can understand why people might respond in that manner. (I have a harder time understanding the alleged violence between family members over who gets to profit from Michael Brown memorabilia, but that's another issue.) But it also includes people like Al Sharpton, or organizations like Cop Block - individuals and institutions for whom I have nothing but disdain, and whose perspectives I tend to discount out of hand. The problem is, a lot of good people DO listen to folks like Al Sharpton or to organizations like Cop Block, and are therefore getting their information from very dubious, biased sources; it would be like me saying, "Nope, Wilson's union rep said he didn't do anything wrong, so the shooting was justified!"That still doesn't answer the question of "Why Ferguson?" The question's author makes a good point - why has this response been greater, versus Sean Bell or Trayvon Martin?I'd submit that there are some clear differences between those two cases and the death of Michael Brown:JURY TRIALOne of the biggest differences is that, in both the Bell and Martin shootings, the suspects were acquitted only after a jury trial. One of the chief complaints against the grand jury process in Ferguson has been that the prosecutor did not adequately present the grand jury with facts, and that justice might have been better served by an adversarial questioning at a jury trial. With that in mind, I wonder if the backlash in the Ferguson case might have been less severe following a jury trial, even if the verdict were "Not Guilty," than it has been to the grand jury's non-indictment.This may explain some of the current reaction, but it doesn't explain the protests, looting, and accompanying media/political firestorm that occurred immediately following the shooting of Michael Brown.POLICE INVOLVEMENTAnother difference, between Michael Brown's death and Trayvon Martin's, is that Wilson was a police officer, where Zimmerman was a neighborhood watchman. Wilson represents the Ferguson Police Department, and law enforcement in general, and thus may be a focal point for grievances against those institutions, locally and nationally; Zimmerman was an individual, acting against the advice of the law enforcement officials he contacted immediately before the shooting, and rejected by police after numerous job applications.This may explain why the reaction to Martin's death was different than that to Brown's death. There was the same media circus, and there were protests (and some limited violence nationally), but nationwide the conversation was almost exclusively about racism as it relates to young black men, and less about the institution of law enforcement.Following the Michael Brown shooting, the protests - especially nationally - have been as much anti-police as they have been about civil rights. For that reason, some of the online pundits who are currently supportive of the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" protest did NOT throw in with Martin's supporters. Like it or not, there are a lot of groups out there who will throw in with just about any anti-authority, anti-government, anti-police cause that will have them. (My suspicion is that these are the thugs who are burning buildings, smashing windows, etc.)FACTS OF THE CASESEven if you accept as true the statements of George Zimmerman or the NYPD detectives who shot Bell, the questions of legal guilt or innocence - and moral culpability - still seems up for grabs. In Zimmerman's case, you have the fact that he admits to following Martin (over the objection of a 911 dispatcher), thereby prompting the altercation, when he had no lawful reason to do so; in the case of the NYPD detectives, there are legitimate questions about whether opening fire was their only available recourse, even given their claimed suspicions and fears.On the other hand, IF one accepts Officer Wilson's testimony as true - which I realize is something many will not do - but IF you do accept it as true, then the shooting is clearly justified, both legally and procedurally.At first blush, you would think this ought to lessen the backlash against Ferguson PD, Officer Wilson, and cops in general - or at least increase the backlash in the Bell shooting. The reason I believe this did not happen is below....RELEASE OF INFORMATIONI think this is one of the biggest reasons this case has received so much attention nationally.In both the Trayvon Martin and Sean Bell shootings, a cohesive narrative was offered by George Zimmerman's supporters and by the NYPD Detectives, respectively, shortly after the shooting.After Michael Brown was killed, the Ferguson Police Department mishandled its release of information. They bizarrely publishing the video of Michael Brown committing assault and robbery but never clarified that Wilson had in fact recognized Michael Brown as a suspect prior to their altercation. The media backlash to this perceived "character assassination" of Brown - especially on social media - was so overwhelming, I believe FPD simply shut down.And in the meantime, with the exception of one anonymous "friend of Darren Wilson," no one was putting out Wilson's side of things. Not the police, not his union, and not the media. Contrast this to the Brown family and their supporters, both locally and at a national level, who were on morning talk shows, giving speeches, and leading protests.In addition, the media interviewed alleged witnesses, including Dorian Johnson (the young man Brown was walking with), and then published their statements without any fact checking or vetting. A cursory check of Johnson's background would reveal he is hardly an ideal source; not only is he biased, as Brown's close friend, but he has a rather extensive criminal history, including crimes of dishonesty. It boggles my mind that people believe this guy but think everything a cop says is a lie.Those are some of the differences, are I see them. Here are my thoughts on why Ferguson did touch off such a national reaction.THE MEDIAPeople have criticized the media for providing too much coverage of Ferguson. I understand the critique, but disagree. The problem is the quality, not the quantity.For better or worse, almost all journalism is for-profit. This is especially true of TV news, and also to a lesser extent print newspapers - and those venues are how most Americans get their news. Ferguson immediately captured national attention; it was a cash cow.My problem is that the media does very little to police itself. Sensation is everything. That's partly the result of the for-profit mantra - controversial sound bites get more attention than contextualized opinions, and a picture of looters burning cop cars nets more clicks than a photo of peaceful protesters. It's understandable, but inexcusable. Phrases like "in broad daylight" and "in his own hometown" are utterly and completely irrelevant, and serve only to inflame.I think there is also a great deal of media culpability in the fact that so much attention has NOT been given to other shootings. Compared to Ferguson, the shooting death of a twelve year old with a pellet pistol has been virtually ignored; when it's reported, it's almost always mentioned in the context of Ferguson. Now, that shooting MIGHT be justified, legally, but I find the facts, as reported so far, very concerning. But that is only one example. Why are the deaths of young people in our inner cities - black or white - not reported on?The mainstream media ignores these deaths. The liberal media ignores them, unless a police officer pulls the trigger. The conservative media ignores them, except to point out the hypocrisy of black civil rights activists. What's wrong with this picture? If every gang related shooting got even a half a percent of the national coverage that the Michael Brown shooting has garnered, we would be aware of a national epidemic.POLITICSOur politicians are our media, really. Or vice versa.I have no doubt that President Obama meant well when he said, of Trayvon Martin, that if he had a son, the son would look like Trayvon. I don't think he meant what the conservative nutcases think he meant; it wasn't race baiting. I think he was genuinely heartbroken to know a young man was dead.I don't fault the President for his remarks on Ferguson. He was right to urge peace. He was right to urge restraint on the part of cops.At the same time, I wonder why he has been silent on the sixty-plus police officers murdered in the line of duty this year. I wonder why he is silent - except in his pursuit of gun control - on the dozens of young men gunned down weekly in our inner cities, many of them black.I also wonder why left-wing politicians and pundits have trumpeted the notion of a "genocide" by police, against black young men - when the larger genocide is black-on-black violence - and when the term "genocide" is so misapplied, that even if every police shooting were unjustified, it would still be a truly gross exaggeration.The answer, of course, is votes. In the same way that subscribers and website hits drive the media, votes and dollars drive politics. Even if the President privately thinks Al Sharpton is a hack, he can never say so; too much is at stake.It's why the justice department is investigating Darren Wilson for civil rights violations. There's no evidence whatsoever that race played a factor in Wilson's decision to stop Brown, or to shoot him. But politics demands action, even ridiculous action, and we don't have a government courageous enough to stand up to the mob and demand action.RACE AND POVERTY AND THE INNER CITYNo matter on which side you fall as to whether Officer Wilson acted rightly, race has undeniably been a key issue in the ferguson case: some would argue in the shooting itself; undeniably in the national response to the shooting.As a white male, I know some people will say I am uniquely unqualified to comment on this topic. I would respond in a couple ways.First, since when does being of a particular demographic limit one's right to form an educated opinion? My worldview is limited to my own experience, but that is true of everyone, on every topic. I cannot speak to how it feels to be a young black man, but I have a right to form educated opinions on the broader topic of race, just as someone who is not a police officer has less credibility when saying how a situation "should have been" handled, but is still entitled to an educated opinion about what procedures should be.Second, just because I am white doesn't mean I have never experienced discrimination; when I was a teenager, it was widely known that reservation police would target white drivers for harassment and chippy tickets. It happened to me. It didn't bother me at the time, but it does in retrospect. Being judged for the color of your skin is uniquely unfair - as is being judged by any immutable aspect of ones nature.If I as a white male have experienced bigotry in this small way, how much more do black men?I am fortunate to know more than a handful of young men of character, some of whom happen to be black. Almost without exception, they report encounters with the police that I have never had to deal with. Many report being stopped, searched, and sometimes handcuffed, usually in urban areas, for "fitting a description." In addition to these negative interactions with police, the same young men report regular citizens locking their car doors on sight, avoiding them on the street, or dialing 911 for trivial issues.I know the latter occurs regularly. When I worked for a rural sheriff's office in an otherwise very liberal county, folks in a privileged, white, largely Democratic community would consistently call 911 to report a black male walking their streets. My wife, a dispatcher, would ask what the "suspect" was doing, and often the caller would have no meaningful information. Simply seeing a black male in that rich white community caused enough fear or suspicion on the part of these callers, that they dialed 911 - and in some cases complained when police did not respond as they'd hoped. Whether it came from a place of hate or a place of misguided fear, I saw no explanation for these calls other than racism. (On one memorable occasion, however, the young man was loading a teenage girl into his trunk, and the girl appeared to have a bag over her head. This turned out to be a prank abduction for a surprise birthday party, but it got our attention none the less.)My own experiences with reservation police acknowledged, I cannot imagine the stress that such instant judgments place on young black men. I also do not claim to have a solution, let alone a simple one.I do think we may need to re-frame the discussion.Civil rights leaders like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson offer rhetoric and race-baiting, ignoring the facts of individual incidents to champion their cause. They rightly ask for peaceful protests in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting, but never pause to question their own narrative. They preach "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" without an ounce of irony, never mind that the "hands up" bit is discredited by physical evidence.The civil rights movement points to statistics that show blacks dramatically overrepresented on nearly every sociological index that one would wish to avoid: crime commission, crime victimization, incarceration, poverty, the list goes on. This is held up as proof positive of systemic discrimination against non-whites, occurring at virtually every level of society, in every aspect of public life. From this perspective, the disproportionate incarceration of young black males is due to racial inequality in the justice system and society at large.Pushing back, conservative groups suggest the disproportionate incarceration of black males is due to failings in black culture, particularly inner city culture. They point to fatherless homes, high crime rates, and high jobless rates as proof that the black culture simply needs to collectively pull itself up by its bootstraps.Both positions, unfortunately, ignore concrete sociological data that indicates poverty itself has a far greater causal relationship to crime than race does.When you control for income level, much (though not all) of the racial disparity in other sociological numbers (victimization, incarceration, etc) disappears. Seen in this light, poverty becomes the true factor in societal inequality. Bigotry is certainly still at work, in every day interactions and in interactions with the system as a whole, but the reality is that the economic class into which you are born has a far greater impact on your life chances than the color of your skin.You only need to look at white ghettos - which we have aplenty in the Pacific Northwest, certainly far more than non-white ghettos - to see this play out. Poverty and crime go hand in hand, no matter what color you are.None of this is to say that civil rights leaders in the black community are wrong, exactly. One only has to look to history - uncomfortably recent history - to find that the system has overtly and intentionally discriminated against non-whites. (And even against some whites - the Irish - although that was longer ago, less systemic, and for a short period of time.) The repercussions of Jim Crowe laws, racialized housing policies, and white flight all left non-white populations holding the bag for urban blight and the collapse of American industry.This, to me, is the most cohesive explanation for the simultaneous progress and lack of progress we as a country have made in race relations. We have a black President, black leaders, black CEOs. Institutionalized segregation is over. Diversity is a cultural watchword. And yet...And yet, Black Americans were segregated into poverty, and as such are more likely to be born into poverty. Poverty tends to perpetuate itself generationally. And the impoverished are more likely to commit crime, to be victims of crime, and to come into contact with the justice system.We have a nation full of inner cities, in which non-whites are dramatically overrepresented when compared to white Americans, which are crippled by poverty. There are no viable jobs. Criminality is encouraged through pop culture and consumer culture ("The Code of the Street" by Elijah Anderson is one of the better books I've ever read). Drugs are everywhere, with all the accompanying horrors; drug dealing is a viable (if risky) path to quick money.This has been a long digression. It's time to bring it back around.The police have a historically contentious relationship with the poor. So the poor tend not to like the police.No human likes to see their friends or family arrested, whether deserving or not. Many young, poor children in our area have told me "I don't talk to the police," or "Fuck cops," even when I'm in uniform. And I get it. Last time I was at their house, I arrested dad for domestic assault. A five year old only knows that mom and dad argue, and it sucks, but it's way worse when the pigs take dad away.Even those who resist the lure of crime and who live relatively lawful lives are more likely than their wealthier peers to run afoul of the justice system. As someone who has been poor - when you're poor, it can be hard to afford the license fees and tabs that go with driving a legal car, or pay the ticket in time to avoid a suspended license. When charged with a crime, a wealthier person may be able to afford a better attorney, or at the very least pay their fines. They are less likely to find warrants issued for their arrest.The system itself is big. It's confusing. It often doesn't care, and when it does, it's often understaffed and underfunded. It employs public defenders who couldn't make it (or haven't yet) in private practice, court clerks who make cops seem downright empathetic, and judges who are called upon to weigh the character of people they have often never met. First chances are rare, second changes are almost unheard of, but ninth and tenth chances for rapists, child molesters, and murderers somehow seem to be easy to come by. No one who is involved in the system is happy with the way it works, we cops least of all.But speaking of cops...PROBLEMS IN MODERN LAW ENFORCEMENTI am not suggesting police are not part of the problem, too.A lot of it is attitude. Cops tend to come from working middle class backgrounds, and lead working middle class lives. Like many blue collar workers, cops often regard some of those who live in poverty with disdain. In many cases, the disdain is understandable - the crack house mothers with underfed babies, the drug dealers with seven children by eight or nine women, the welfare abusers. But no human, no matter how deserving, likes to be treated with disdain. And the working, honest poor - who far outnumber those deserving of disdain - are particularly undeserving of judgment from law enforcement. The best cops avoid this trap entirely; many of us try our best; some don't care at all, or simply aren't aware, or work in areas so bad that to leave any chink in their armor is to risk their life and career.Cops also tend to be conservative. We are big on personal responsibility. The realities of socioeconomic forces do not impress the average cop as an excuse for why Schmuck #1 has stolen an iPhone. The lack of opportunity in the inner city does not generally effect a cop's lack of empathy for a gang member. We may have a soft spot for someone who is clearly doing their best, and many cops are downright friendly to and protective of the mentally ill in their jurisdiction (even the ones we've wrestled with in ERs, and secretly fear we may one day have to shoot). We might even go out of our way to help a particular victim, or buy groceries for a particular family. But damned if we have much sympathy for anyone who commits a crime.Which may be understandable, but is also dangerous. Because not all criminals are Criminals. Cops who are assholes to teenage petty thieves, or recreational marijuana users, do nothing for our public image. Instead, it creates a vicious cycle in which otherwise decent people who make one or two missteps develop animosity toward police in general. That's a bad cycle to start. It can be broken by respect.As someone who follows a lot of law enforcement publications, I've been encouraged to see articles championing respectful treatment of inmates by C/Os, and "tactical civility" on the streets. Many cops (and many conservatives) have an attitude that respect is not something someone is due, but something they earn. Although I agree with the principle, I don't agree with its application; respecting someone is different than treating them with respect. If I'm a dick to a guy I know to be a liar and a child molester, that may be all well and good for me, but for the person across the street who doesn't know either of us, it just looks like I'm being a dick.Hopefully, by emphasizing the utilitarian value of treating even the most evil dirtbags with respect, cops will stop acting like assholes, and start acting like professionals.So, yes, some of it is attitude. But some of it is also the nature of the job.Cops are mostly type A personalities to begin with. We are taught to take charge. When we show up to answer an emergency call, or pull a person over to investigate a traffic violation, or encounter someone who has a warrant - it is not a negotiation. We are in charge. A lot of people objected to an article that was posted right after Ferguson, that basically just said, Obey the police, and we won't get violent with you. It's an uncomfortable thought, but it's dead on.People complain a lot that we don't serve and protect. It's not true. We do get to serve. We do get to protect. Those are our favorite things. If my entire job could be helping homeless families find shelter, educating kids about traffic safety, and arresting violent criminals caught in the act, I'd be a happy man. But that's not the job. It's the goal. The job is law enforcement.When we show up, it's not to bargain with you, or hear your opinion. It's to do a job, and that job is to enforce the law, regardless of your opinions.Unfortunately, looping back to poverty, enforcement is also felt hardest by the poor. Cops are more nervous in high-crime, impoverished areas; quicker to call for backup, to draw a gun, to use force. We as a culture are more likely to do stupid, negligent, criminal things, like tossing a flash bang into a home with kids toys in the lawn, for a drug warrant.Which brings me to the war on drugs. Don't get me wrong - I hate drugs like meth, crack, and heroin with a passion. But I also recognize that we will never win our "war," and the victims of this war are disproportionately the people at the bottom rung of society.Obviously, none of this is conducive to a positive relationship with police.Some of the problem is profiling. I live in a largely white area; most of my criminals are white. Most of them also drive crappy cars, wear saggy pants, and have bad tattoos, piercings, and bad attitudes. It's easy to fall into the trap of assuming everyone who looks a certain way is a criminal, simply based on personal experience. In urban areas, where large groups of non-whites are often concentrated in high poverty, high crime areas, I imagine young black men wearing current fashion do find themselves unequally targeted by law enforcement. To some extent, this can be good police work; profiling is a valid technique, so long as it is not based on someone's immutable attributes. (I can profile if I recognize gang-affiliated clothing that fits with age, race, and gender, and this is legal and, in my opinion, ethical; I cannot profile based solely on age, race, or gender.)Some of the problem has to do with culture. If criminals dress, talk, and act a certain way, perhaps parents should discourage their children from dressing, talking, and acting in that way. My generation - kids growing up in the 80s and early 90s - really embraced the whole "Don't judge someone on their appearances" mantra. I agree, when it comes to immutable attributes. I disagree when it comes to the ways people present themselves. Perception can become reality.None the less, the line between acceptable and unacceptable profiling is contentious and fuzzy. What seems reasonable to me as a law enforcement, not knowing you or your actions, and seeing you in the back seat of a car I have stopped, noting that you are wearing gang colors near a known gang area, may seem like racial profiling to you as a young black male who knows you've never been in trouble. And although I do believe that you should have the right to wear whatever color you want, the fact that your manner of dress alerts me to possible gang ties is not evidence of racial bias on my part. It's simply the result of my own observations and experiences. But to you, I'm just another cop, treating you with suspicion. I don't have an easy answer.Then there's the whole militarization thing. I've said in other posts, and I'll say it again: the gear isn't the problem. It's the mentality, and it's the tactics, and its the circumstances.I don't know that St. Louis County or Ferguson PD, or any entity up until the State Police arrived, were in any way prepared for what happened in Ferguson the nights following Michael Brown's death. So it's hard for me to place too much blame. I recognize their mistakes, but I also have a feeling they were flying by the seat of their pants.Remember that St. Louis County Sheriff's Deputy (a sergeant, I believe) on YouTube, pointing his rifle at the heckler and threatening to shoot him? Thank God another cop saw, intervened, and led the sergeant away. A lot of people may disagree with me, but that was not an example of a jack-booted thug; that was an example of a cop who was completely unprepared for his surroundings, and scared out of his fucking mind.The guy was probably a desk sergeant, and probably hadn't worked a beat in a while. Even if he was working active patrol every day, it was clear he'd never handled a riot. And there he was, surrounded by angry, angry people - people jeering, people filming, people cursing and yelling threats. No training, wrong equipment. He shouldn't have done what he did. But he shouldn't have been there in the first place.The fact that police showed up with armored vehicles and snipers to the first day of protests in Ferguson was, in my opinion, perfectly reasonable. They just shouldn't have put that foot forward. You hold that stuff in reserve, in case things go south, and you used trained, uniformed officers to interact with protesters. You use riot police with shields and helmets and batons, you use bike cops, you use actual tactics to deal with riots. But you don't send armored cops carrying AR-15s to go nose-to-nose with protesters; that's the sort of shit that the National Guard will do should actual anarchy ever hit the fan.The days that followed proved they were learning. The way Seattle PD, Portland PD, NYPD, and Austin PD in Texas, to name a few, have handled their own subsequent Ferguson protests provide positive examples. And the way law enforcement in Ferguson has handled the most recent round of protests and riots shows they've had the training they need to improve their response.But that's not what they looked like in the first days of the riot. And good intentions don't really matter in the court of public opinion.So, yes, some of the problem is absolutely with the institution of law enforcement.We don't publish the good we do, and when we commit justified violence, we don't explain ourselves. We are the physical embodiment of a system that often doesn't work, and we go into neighborhoods that are short on opportunity and long on blight, to arrest people for laws that they often disagree with. And sometimes, to top it all of, some of us point rifles at protesters while we panic.Even a cop like me can see how that can cause some resentment. Resentment that might be ignited by the spark of an incorrect narrative about Michael Brown's death.IN CONCLUSIONThe issues above are big ones. My opinions are my own, but I don't think anyone would argue that poverty, race, historical oppression, drugs, the war on drugs, and the state of modern law enforcement are NOT big issues, or that they are NOT tied into what has happened as a result of Michael Brown's shooting.These are issues that are long-standing. They have been simmering across the country since before I was born. They disproportionately effect the poor, and especially the poor in the inner city; thus, they also disproportionately effect black Americans.And the people who are impacted daily by these issues are far more likely to believe the narrative, told by witnesses with dubious credibility and fed the rest of us by the media, that Michael Brown was bullied by Darren Wilson for no reason other than his race, and was subsequently executed while his hands were in the air.In my home, all I knew was that the story Dorian Johnson told didn't make sense. "What? No cop would reach out his window and grab somebody to drag them inside. That's just stupid."But a lot of people didn't have that reaction, because they're not me.If I were pulled over on a regular basis for "fitting a description," I'd be more likely to believe the story the media initially relayed. If I lived in poverty, in Ferguson, and had good kids who had been profiled and detained by police, I would probably believe it too. Hell, if I had kids who were getting into trouble but told me the police were racist jerks, I'd probably believe the narrative.And if I were one of those people, and I really believed a white cop gunned down a black young man in cold blood, hell yes I'd be in the streets protesting.And if I were a civil rights leader, or a community activist, and I saw all the energy, all the hurt, all the anger, all the organization - why would I not move to assist? Why wouldn't I cater to the populist narrative, especially if it's one I believe? Why wouldn't I use these protests to advance the cause; why shouldn't Michael Brown be a martyr, a symbol?Then again, if I were a criminal who hated cops, I'd be more likely to believe it, because, hey, fuck the police. And I'd see the protests as an opportunity to loot. To riot. To break things, because breaking things is fun. To fight the cops, because they're my enemy. (And make no mistakes - Cops are the enemies of Criminals.)And if I were an anarchist, or a Cop Blocker, or just someone who likes a good riot - same deal, fuck the po-po, let's burn this fucker down. Why not take the chance to tear down a system I've already rejected (and maybe steal some stuff too).THE BOTTOM LINE IS, Our system is imperfect, and so are our police. Some of our laws are outdated, and some of them effect the poor more than others. Our path to racial healing has taken us a long way, but not far enough. We don't have enough jobs, and we certainly don't have enough good ones, and the ones we do have certainly aren't in urban areas. We have politicians who don't speak out about our day to day problems, but capitalize on tragedies that catch the national eye. Our media cares more about a good story than it does the truth. And Michael Brown was the right story, told the wrong way, at the right time, to unite a movement.

There are 28 Cognitive Strategies ( will paste below) we employ ---Input, Output and Elaboration. I explain it to my students initially as 28 buckets that learning fills.Say an adult student complains of headaches while reading. He's telling the truth.One if he's behind his own age scoring ----TABE testing---adult basic education levels correlate to school year. So if he's say 25 he should score from a 12.0-12.9, 12th grade , first to ninth month. He scores a 4.2-----yes, I regularly see this, you'd be surprised at how many people can't read at an adult level and rely on a spouse /family member, I forgot my glasses, children to compensate.At a 4.2, he would have started the mastery phase of picture to text translation.When you and I read the above post we're at a form of superspeed accessing pictures and correlate definitions for words. We're just doing it so fast that once you move through mastery to automaticity, it's hard to stop and explain or demonstrate.A retarded or mis-paced learner literally must visualize the word, look it up, figure it out because the brain is looking for association and /or forming a new neural path to strengthen with myelin. The embedding we're experiencing is myelin both connecting the connection and making the connection easy to "find".The headache is real due to the effort to formulate, connect and embed.Now if you don't use it, you lose it. Think of the brain like a highway system that covers the U.S.. Everytime a road is accessed (reading, thinking, etc.) it sends reinforcement to ancillary roads, keeping them clean and alert.TV is designed at an 8Th grade education level to school, the TABE. It is not designed to improve your highways. It moves at 28 frames per second or higher. Think of that as 28 pages per seconds directly into your cerebral cortex.The brain is storage, processing but not so good at filtering. It takes everything in. What learning essentially is, is filtering. What is that picture, that concept, that object. The brain is a big matching processor. Thinking is a higher function that builds in discernment, critical thinking, extrapolation.Reading, progressive increase in complexity in structure and content exercises those higher functions.Remaining at say at high school 12.0 without additional input learning means there will be a slide backwards.Our 12.9, 25 year old was an A student so there's capabilities retention but then doesn't go to college or the equivalent in effort. 26, its an 11.9. 30, an 11.0. 35.0, a 9.0. A steady diet of tv and movies has dumbed them down----their highways and byways are in ill repair. Which is why school can be so hard to return to. You've defaulted to image, color, 28 frame glossed info. Green train, one of three choices here in NYC, 4,5,6 and lite green is the G. B, D,F are orange. Look at that structure, basic colors and numbers and letters, below 4th grade mastery.Abbreviations ---DMV, NYPD, EMT, Ave, St.. Info is simplified or symbolic.Reading is the difference between electricity the a country and candlelight. It keeps challenging the brain, this post threw out some words that maybe you don't use every hour, or day but are on your byways.Reading not only drives those highways and reinforces byways as linkage but it also encourages Output in the form of Extrapolation.Then what happened...?What could've happened was....What if....?Does that make sense against itself or to what I know already?This creates a playful cognitive dissonance.Could the cow jump over the moon?It also creates metacognition.Why would I suspend my beliefs and knowledge to entertain this idea? Was the story that good?Reading is seemingly passive but it's really a superfuel for formulating the brain biologically and then in ability.What about internet reading?Rarely does it increase in complexity. I send you a text, you probably answer at my level. I read a gossip site, rarely do I then pursue the NY Times Book List afterwards. I stay in my pond/mental neighborhood.Reading a book doesn't insure stasis. Harry Potter, which I haven't read, is still in ever increasing complexity within its world. The reader must envision more and more and more---more highways used and built.Stephen King is much the same at an adult level.But you can hit a static level. King and Herman Melville are two different worlds. Toni Morrison and Terry McMillan are contemporaries but vastly different in first style and then complexity.So many of my less educationally regressed, retarded , slowed, impacted adult students read King and Zane and trash novels but fail reading tests.Complex writing and nonfiction teach the reader unconsciously all the grammar rules and structures. It's like passively learning the geographical location of the states, you can then fill in blanks better which is the holistic theory of evolution in complexity through high school to college.People believe this has no significant effect on Americans.However the Financial Meltdown was partially predicated on home mortgages that buyers did not understand the ramifications of.I read 5 books a week, if you hand me a contract that says a house is $500 a month for 5 years, $2000 a month after that predicated on selling beforehand for a profit, I can reason out my ability to sell, refinance or pay. Because I know the words of finance. If I have no clear mental picture of cause and effect then I'm swayed by potential value increase. Obama announced that in 2015, it would take the equivalent of an associates degree to earn $15 an hour-----which is one argument against a state/federal mandated wage increase. Second, is it an increase? If you pay 9.7% FICA, 28% Federal and 14% Local/City tax and then a sales tax of 8.875% , lets round that off, include some deductions ---$7.50 an hour. $300 a 40 hour work week after taxes. But you'd have to be able to critically think to see that equations and realize unless you have an advanced tax strategy, your minimum raise is really a tax increase---give you more to take away even more. One of the reasons that businesses are offered tax incentives so it's employee money not employers money. Critical thinking. Readers can critically think.But the jobs will go to the more or reasonably educated.How will they know?I teach and proctor a certification at Columbia and other places, NWRC. National Work Readiness Certification created by the request from businesses to federal government for a test of Math, Situational judgment and Reading skills for adults over 18. It's integrated into online applications and I've seen direct request for the certification card at temp agencies in Charlotte. It's quietly spreading as an evaluation tool. That $15 an hour minimum wage will start going to readers, college educated doing part time jobs.In the next 25 years adults will be measured constantly on cognitive ability and strategy mastery.Cognitive StrategiesInput(Quantity and quality of data gathered.)Use planning behaviors.Focus perception on specific stimulus.Control impulsivity.Explore data systematically.Use appropriate and accurate labels.Organize space using stable systems of reference.Orient data in time.Identify constancies across variations.Gather precise and accurate data.Consider two sources of information at once.Organize data (parts of a whole.)Visually transport data.Elaboration(Efficient Use of Data)Identify and define the problem.Select relevant cues.Compare data.Select appropriate categories of time.Summarize data.Project relationship of data.Use logical data.Test hypothesis.Build inferences.Make a plan using the data.Use appropriate labels.Use data systematically.Output(Communication of elaboration and input)Communicate clearly the labels and processes.Visually transport data correctly.Use precise and accurate language.Control impulsive behaviorAdapted from work of Reuven Feuerstein

A lot of the jobs you see everyday around you are done by people who don’t have particularly high IQs or who more appropriately have IQs lower than the average. 100–120 being the general population average then there are those who spike higher and higher and those who valley lower.Internal Edit/Addendum:I brought this up in class today and the class went at it, asking and answering and positing and such.The first point was defining IQ clearly as a parameter of measurement, most importantly the misnomer of IQ being related to intelligence/smarts/application and then what Intelligence is and is not and what Smarts (or gradation of Intelligence) looks like.Ok Intelligence is consciousness.A roach is intelligent—-it avoids fire. Humans are Intelligent at birth unless brain impaired physiologically. Therefore IQ—-Intelligence Outient —-is composed of Consciousness Measurement. But a roach and a human are not the same gradations of consciousness due to brain size and species. But if we were to super-narrow that down to a roach’s intellectual perception and capacity to analyze (brain size) we see gradation, bluntly.Human to human, we’re all intelligent. But then who is smart and who is not and what does smart comprise of?With our Consciousness measurement illustrated further in this answer as the United States—-let’s literalize that. Think of a large white piece of paper now project the US onto it, a rough outline of the 48 states, adding the other 2 if you feel special.Now hold that paper and outlined image. That's our baseline intelligence—-you pretty much just used spatial, outlining, parameters, some degree of measurement, logic to pull that together. After having seen the US outline a few times you should be able to mentally reproduce this by at least the age of 10–12 years old. With an approximation of states and capitals.Smarts then are investment, application, capability, innovation—-filling in the outline. State by state, spelling the names correctly, cities, major roadways, waterways, lakes, rivers, mountain ranges, coloring them.Intelligence, like the piece of paper, is horizontal; Smarts is vertical.Job Vs. CareerThen we got into a defining debate about a job vs. a career. A job is a function for base pay and a career requiring education and a commitment of 5 to 7 years, including constant professional development to maintain and earn more than a nominal inflation pay increase.When I worked at Wendy’s, in the forthcoming comparisons and observations, I was at a job. It was less than $5 an hour, which I remember I broke the ceiling of a few years later as a cashier and then again in college working for Public Safety and Work-Study, by 21. None of those positions though were in any way a career, nor honestly, have any of them lent to the building of the careers I’ve had so far—-Financial Analyst, Securities Litigation, Teacher/Instructor, School Developer or my entrepreneurial pursuits and business ownership.They may have helped experientially and maturity-wise but none of those jobs tasks have come up again in my careers. Each one of my careers though has been 5+ years and the skills, education, and abilities amassed in one were transferable to the next as an enhancement, generally to a higher and higher salary and level of responsibilities.Average about 30–150% pay increase including benefits and stock.So then “lower IQ” means less expansive and detailed consciousness (experiences, skills, education) and job means working at something that generally doesn’t increase in complexity (because then it’s no longer lower IQ) and if it does, it’s excluded. But it would include things that are repetitive, A to B tasks, less management of people responsibilities, very little computer interaction, budgeting, paperwork, innovation, extrapolation, expansive problem-solving.Example That Incorporates, Contradicts but Bears OutAn example of someone who produces building passes came up, that being a constant interaction with a computer. But the person simply enters a name, find a registered name, confirms ID, assigns name to location and clicks to print out a pass. Those same tasks happen hundreds of times a day. But they never increase in complexity—-like say reprogramming the system. So there’s computer skilled work but it can be both low complexity and therefore able to be done by a low IQ.Cashiers using a computerized cash register, toll booth clerks, vehicle drivers—-there is a level of technical/computer usage and skill but it is incredibly low.Measuring Intelligence to Low-HighThen my clever students asked how I measured them and others consciously and unconsciously. That a teacher's fundamental work is measurement of others.Then I had to pull apart my Blink (Malcolm Gladwell theory) intelligence estimation and codify how I really hone it down. I use assessments. About 10 in total that I rotate through depending upon age and educational level:The Big 5,Temperament,Gallups Strengths,VARK,Gardner Multiple IntelligencesFeuerstein’s Mediation WorkCognitive Strategies (28) Input, Elaboration, Output categories of developmentMBTIAstrology (for some students whoa re coming back to school, it’s a system that they are aware of and I’m able to get them to self identify personality traits; it’s a very interesting way to use a social science known the Earth over at so many levels to get some of what the Gallups Strengths assessment pulls out in a 180+ question online assessment.What people generally understand as an IQ test, really tests, if we were using a 50 story skyscraper as a further visual example, how well-constructed the building is, not how intelligent it is. IQ tests are like a skeletal examination—-columns, sturdiness, floors, ceilings, elevators—-check—-but it doesn’t check for interior design, usage, creativity, applicability.However, and perhaps this is where people confuse IQ tests with IQ—-the more one is creative, knows how to apply critical thinking, innovative thinking and experiential awareness, the higher one’s IQ is.Being smart raises one’s IQ, having a high IQ doesn’t necessarily mean you’re smart. But having a lower IQ means you have a lower IQ and you’re therefore not going to be as smart (creative, knows how to apply critical thinking, innovative thinking, and experiential awareness).Yes, we sat around for 3 hours and tore at this! lol But it was a wonderful exercise for me and the students in mediation, measurement and most importantly, metacognition—thinking about our thinking/using critical thinking. Most importantly it gave us insights into our teaching and learning methods to teach ourselves and others.Manufacturing/Industrialized, Technological Age to Knowledge Age Illuminates IQ Differences in PeopleLower IQ jobs would be more repetitive in task to operation and productivity. This is why the factory, assembly line worked so well for so many years/decades when a high school education was the mass pinnacle (less than 10% of the population being college-educated.) Bob was to stand there, hold a riveter and when the piece of machinery came by, rivet 4 times and then pass it to John.Neither Bob nor John needed to know calculus or understand Socrates to do that.Today that would generally be someone working at McDonald's, a factory, an assembly line, some mechanical work—-perhaps not simply younger people but someone older—-over 30-40—in a non-managerial position. If say, Bob is the designated french fries guy.A lot of this work is computerized though and gives directions to lower IQ people when to perform tasks but the lower IQ people don’t know how to program the equipment nor repair it.In the below examples—20 years ago at Wendy’s—the fry machine was computerized to signal frozen fries in, press timer button and then it would beep when it was time to remove them;the grill had a similar function—like lanes of timers above the grill to demark medium, well done, etc.;the back kitchen ovens and deep fryers all had timers and big bold lettered laminated sheets of instructions not in only words but pictograms of what to do/cook;the ingredients bags were all color coded and labeled and measurement specific—1 bag to 1 pot of chili, etc.;the salad bar containers had a line inside of the container so that you never overfilled them;the trays for the expediters had a diagram of where to place burgers, drinks, fries for optimal balance-weight right behind the counter where you pulled the trays fromand the cash register had both pictures and words of the menu items (the cashiers though often had to innovate how to do/request/charge for special requests—-which is probably why I gravitated to it).While we might account for these things as standardizers to form, function, recipe, etc they are also passive directives to those of lower IQ so that they don’t have to figure anything out or act upon their whims and assumptions. A higher IQ person might be able to improvise, as the cashiers and grill person did, but the company, aware of the general intellect level, wouldn’t want that.(As a wild aside, the standard USA police officer test which is followed by several other tests, weed out higher IQ people. The logic is that too high of an overall IQ doesn’t make for a good police officer, where less ambiguity is preferred. Generally, the higher IQ applicants are pressed into other ends of the police department if the city is big enough, command and aptly named, intelligence. Yes, I took the NYPD test when I was 20 and based upon a near perfect score they called me in to have discussion about joining police intelligence or IT but not general beat cop stuff. I’d scored too high.)Having been back to Wendy’s as a customer, what I notice from the customer side, having been on the other, is fewer people, more machinery. There were 6–10 of us behind the counter previously. Now there are 3–5. The machines are more complex but more automated so that fries are dumped, sometimes by the cashier, who then walks away. There’s a screen with names—I always give Bob—-that outlines the order and the person then relays to the computer what part of the order they’ve completed.Wendy’sWhen I was 16 working at Wendy’s in Brooklyn, there were like 8 designated positions/duties—I revolved through them all—-I desperately wanted to be a cashier but they only allowed girls to do it—-and were regularly robbed blind. (I LOVE cashiering. If I could make my salary now/business income cashiering I’d be your friendly neighborhood cashier—-there’s something, and this speaks to a higher IQ, about the calculation, the multiple tasks, the items, the computer—-I once proved a computer wrong at D’Agostinos that said I was short $50. That’s another feature of high IQ people we’re constantly fixing things, pointing out errors, coming up with solutions—-we tend to quickly understand the reality paradigm and see the missteps/mistakes.)The positions were:Fry guy,grill person,cashier,salad bar person,dining room cleaner,the expediter (soda, trays, food placer on trays.) Assistant managers (who interestingly were often expediters maybe because it took a bit “more” to keep track of correct orders, trays, placement and customer service smiling.maintenance of bathrooms/countersthere was also the back kitchen person where the pots of chili are prepared, large baskets of potatoes and chicken—-a heavy-duty kitchen.I did every position well but wasn’t satisfied at 16 so I kept moving around. Also because of rigid designations, if someone was out—-as the Grill person—-if you’d been trained in the task, you could fill in for that shift. (Similar to Wal-Mart though they have the best Basic-Covering All IQ Levels/Computer Based Training System I’ve ever been through.)Fry guy is repetitively boring.The cashier was sex closed.Salad Bar I remember was tedious because you set it up and then waited for it to mess up—-so it was a lot of look busy refilling things like corn. At a certain point, everything was filled and you got dragged into something else.Dining room cleaner. My grandmother was a neat freak. I’m big on organization but not a neat freak. My grandmother also had a maid attendant throughout my teens and my mother and I would later joke about Carlotta—-who we did horrible things to—-in front of people. It wasn’t true. I say all of that to say I was and am not built for certain kinds of manual labor and I wholly detest cleaning up after people. I’d rather work harder and pay someone to do it. This is why I tip well, generally 20%—-because not only am I not one of the people to get involved in continuous cleaning but I think people who do it have a special chip in their head and deserve more.But, lower IQ people tend to be in maintenance and cleaning because it’s very action to outcome specific and direct. Wipe counter until it’s just the steel, clean surface. There’s very little ambiguity there.IQ Bon Mont(Recently a supervisor and I were discussing something and they brought up how someone on the maintenance staff was doing untoward things, perhaps stealing by staying behind in the building. With a little thought—-actually it dawned on me a week later—-that yes, the maintenance guy was and we had a whole supervisory meeting as supervisors about him and then the situation got resolved.The question though came up why would he go through so much for candy, toilet tissue, discarded food and be so obvious about it?I then turned to experienced, seasoned, educated managers and suggested—-you do understand he’s over 50 and a maintenance man, that’s not necessarily a brain trust popping off there?(I give this bon mont to show how higher IQ people assume everyone is their IQ level, which then tumbles into that perhaps everyone who isn’t on the high spiking 130+, thinks they’re all the same. Even the low IQ people. Trust me, I’m a teacher, many a low IQ people think they’re smart?)Expediter was the Asst. Managers—who wore different color shirts and were very proud of that and territorial. But I remember the two women were over 40–50. It was the best they could accomplish at their IQ levels, though they did get to pinch in as Cashier. But as managers they were excluded from the store manager doing paperwork, budgets, scheduling (Poverty/Working Class, Lower IQ generally don’t understand it’s math, budgets, financial calculations that are the benchmark for Middle Class/Management, unless it’s some super specialized skill that one can non-book learn—-like coal mining, construction, labor.Asst. Manager/Supervisor positions are created to be “head’ person, a notch above worker drone. The people who generally get them are either not ready/capable of being a full Manager or are being trained to be one. It’s a social class/work IQ placeholder position.Maintenance/Bathroom Cleaner—-ahahahahahhahahahahah. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. Yeah, okay. But it’s not that I can’t do things—-I’ve changed my mother’s diapers—I find it therapeutic to clean my house sometimes. It’s that I have done very intensively, expensive things educationally to have options that don’t include this, so that cleaning up behind people is not something I have to do. It was called and is still called college. It’s like buying a car, a really nice one and filling it with gas, and having all the proper licenses. And then leaving it in the driveway and walking miles to work. The effort to make/get one negates the doing of the other for an objective.But this kind of work again offers to people very specific directions and tasks to complete. Really, no seriously deep thinking—-the philosophical effects of bleach—-are necessary because there’s someone else tasked with telling you what to do.Grill Person and Back Kitchen. I eventually bounced between the two, spending most of my time on the Grill because I enjoy cooking. I opted out of the back kitchen when the lady, Sandra showed me her arm scars from scalding grease. Her point wasn’t do this and this won’t happen, it was this will eventually happen to your arms. Get ready.AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHALOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOh, hell to the no.I bought long protective over gloves—-we were after all at the mall. And I was safe on the grill. I minimized back kitchen work because at 16 I knew work shouldn’t scar you.I saw Sandra years later in the audience of the Geraldo Riviera talk show on TV.(That’s all the extra dip I have on her but it’s one of those little pieces of flotsam you know/remember about someone that you weren't close to but you know it. It was twenty years ago. Sandra and the ladies who ferociously guarded being Expediters are probably dead now. Just a High IQ observation.)IQ at best through multiple assessments is a measurement of how well someone can think through multiple domains—language, science, math, spatial reasoning, calculation, extrapolation. It’s not like a Jenga model of A at Base, L halfway through and building a building.IQ is more like the United States (no, I’m not going to point out the low IQ states.) IQ is instead like the swath of state from east to the west coast. 130–220 IQ means that you have something going on in all of those 48 states—-let’s call them cities to deepen the example.100–120 means that you have a picture of the states, you might even have highways through all of the states, you have major cities in some, not all of those states. Not all of those states though have cities, they have towns, yes. But not cities.Under 100? The US is a country. And you have states in your country. How many states you have is subjective and your awareness of other states is peripheral. You have some cities, generally glommed in very distinct ways. Like all on the east coast through some states but very few cities or towns away from the east coast. Think original colonies as states.Now here’s an interesting thing I’ve asked lower IQ students or low producing students—-there is a difference. Low IQ is like being overweight—-you will have to make substantial effort to change and it might not happen depending upon your age.Low producing students might be of average normal weight but don’t regularly exercise so though smaller, they aren’t necessarily healthier than an obese person.It takes time to discern between the two as a teacher. Generally through multiple assessments and observation. Which is why I use the Mediation work to observe and Calculate Cognitive Strategies being enacted—-Input, Out, Elaboration of the individual. I teach it is like buckets, 28 that we’re trying to fill to have what we would call a high school graduate of A grade potential/associates college level.But I have directly asked a mix of students how their cognitive outlook (how they see their United States) feels.Do they know there are more states possible across the swath?That they could have more towns, highways, cities?What about when they see things on billboards, subways, buses, the TV that suggest things in another state?From an even planed mental experience, without deficiencies, people tend to exclude information that is too complex to decode.So for example. I watched Mr. Robot, the TV show and I’ve taught software, done coding, since I was a child (I was buying tech with all that Wendy’s cash!), taken system administrator classes so I understood what the hackers and such were talking about. In the system administrator classes that I took with one of my superstar students as a final gradation increase from my classes—-he, a Mr. Robot, loved it and “got it”. I understood it, liked it well enough but my intellectual bent is more towards the architecture of systems rather than very specific actions/coding.But when I watch that rather dour, mental illness techie show, I completely understand all the jargon they’re spewing out. I worked in IT and taught it for a long time.If one of my lower IQ students/under producing/under-educated students engaged it—-here’s how it would appear to them about Machine Learning.Machine learning (ML) is the scientific study of and that computer systems use to perform a specific task , relying on and instead. It is seen as a of .Machine learning build a model based on , known as , in order to make predictions or decisions without being to perform the task.Machine learning are used in a wide variety of , such as and , where it is difficult or to develop a for effectively performing the task.The actual blurb from Wikipedia is as follows:Machine learning (ML) is the scientific study of algorithms and statistical models that computer systems use to perform a specific task without using explicit instructions, relying on patterns and inference instead. It is seen as a subset of artificial intelligence. Machine learning algorithms build a mathematical model based on sample data, known as "training data", in order to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to perform the task.Machine learning algorithms are used in a wide variety of applications, such as email filtering and computer vision, where it is difficult or infeasible to develop a conventional algorithm for effectively performing the task.The challenge in education is to understand if the person understands or can change to understand with help—-mediation is the cognitive enhancing term. But when I asked my students this question, there was pretty much confirmation to some of the writings I was working from of others—-that they didn’t “see” or allow for that which they didn’t understand or have a basis to discern.To our United States example.If they were west coast—-NY as a state did not exist for them and it was as if the Earth were flat beyond their west coast states.If they did see or were pressed to see it, it would not “make sense”, be confusing or they would label it as crazy/insane.Three Interesting Extrapolation Points to ConsiderInterestingly enough, culturally, in discerning potential high IQs—-Blacks and Latinos describe those they can’t understand, who have no mental illness impairments, as “crazy”. It’s not an actual mental disturbance, it’s higher, foreign cognitive work being done. Again, remember, everyone thinks their personal IQ level is the level of reality.This means that Blacks and Latinos undermine, eschew, negate higher IQ development because they treat it reductively through the lens of race, sometimes, that intellect is White. But that’s a whole other discussion but an interesting side piece to IQ envisioning.Back to Wendy’s. The manager a nice lady in her 20s at the general meeting made an announcement about me. There were like 30 of us there. She said that I was different, special, very smart and everyone should be patient with me. I was perplexed but they all knew——at their IQ level—-what she meant, what discord she was speaking to and to amend themselves.She was talking about how my IQ level, apparent then must have made them feel. To assuage that I wasn’t judging them as inferior to me, I was simply capable of a variety of things (all the positions.)Over the years, working through various offices/places sometimes while teaching and in school, I’ve noticed the different mental United States throughout people and had “crazy” projected upon me because I was sitting there, tasked with one thing and doing, thinking, capable of vastly different things.Yes, I’m implying that if you think someone is “out there” you probably have a lower IQ because you can’t fathom, literally, the state they might be thinking in. If you can fathom it, even if it’s not your cup of tea, if you can normalize it and discuss it, then you probably have a higher IQ.Higher IQ is also a demarcation of expansive, diverse capacity to think and absorb, juggle new and disparate information.In many ways, one’s center, sense of self, gets stronger as your IQ increases. Madness, or cognitive disintegration paralleling with high IQ, again another discussion.Lastly, why does this all matter? Why does it matter if we’ve got some of the slow kids as adults working throughout the system/world at jobs those of us who’ve educated don’t want to?The 2008/2009 Meltdown was not about simply banks. It was a hot fudge chocolate sundae.All of the hot fudge and the brownies are Low IQ people.Low IQ people who in their jobs, might make a good to very good salary but like our Machine Learning paragraphs read a mortgage contract the same way. They took out loans they could not understand would change within several years, what financial repackaging might mean—-even how a mortgage works—-not just for you as an individual but as millions of people.So Low IQ are not financially literate but they do have credit scores.The banks are ice cream.The Federal Reserve is the whip cream.The President is the cherry.2008–2009 wasn’t just a financial shift/meltdown, it was the Knowledge Age’s readjustment of the world.What did the cherry—-the President do when the meltdown occurred for the individual?—-he created stimulus packages, extended healthcare, extended unemployment.The stimulus packages included re-training people in 21st-century skills—-the Department of Labor paid $3500 each for me and my superstar student to go to a private IT Systems Administrator class. When I was laid off, I got 99 weeks of unemployment and two years of healthcare. To tide me over, if I needed it—-to change for the 21st century. I used all of the resources but had High IQ skills so I didn't “need” it as other Americans did—-because of 140 million US Adults:Only about 25–30% are college-educated (High IQ people)We produce on average 40,000 engineers as college graduates, India is producing 600,000; China moreWe, therefore, have more low IQ people than High IQ people, as other countries increase in population and technological access, that’s a problem.Have you seen Saudi Arabia?(That’s the MIDDLE of the desert.)As a teacher here’s what I can tell you about cognitive advancement—-It is easier to teach and advance low producing people with 100–120 average IQs then it is a population accustomed to operating at the low end of that.Low IQs, here in the United States, our group lack of understanding of coding (only 1% of Americans knowing how) means that the offset war of the Knowledge Age will be Intellectual Wars—Who Can Think Wars.#KylePhoenix#TheKylePhoenixShow