Background is by Hobobo. Everything else is V2, M2 and the children from that generation in textures from my freestuff. The Police shootings of the last week are not caused by racism or by a police vendetta against young black men or by the media creating the fiction of such a vendetta. Though the media did do that. They are caused by the 'War on Drugs'. Freedom of Religion means more than simple symbols like the Star of David, the Cross, or whatever. Freedom of religion means freedom in your personal life to make your own choices about how to live your life. Freedom of religion means freedom to make your own moral choices in your life. If you want people to do things for their own good, convert them, don't put a gun to their heads. Humans are genetically programmed with a sense of reciprocity. Do not do unto others what you do not want them to do unto you is genetically programmed. It resonates as a fundamental law of behavior because of this. Pecking order behavior says that people higher on the pecking order do not have to obey 'the golden rule' with regards to people lower on the pecking order. Laws that enforce 'the golden rule', do not steal, do not murder, etc. are instinctively accepted as legitimate. Laws which go beyond this to say "do this for your own good" are not instinctively accepted as legitimate. They violate the same genetic coding which forced conversion to a religion violates. The war on drugs is, scienticially, IMO, a violation of freedom of religion. It is a violation of separation of church and state. It seems secular so people don't identify it as religious. Secular moral values are just as much religious values as theist based moral values. Many of the major religions of the world are agnostic and teach ethical behavior not who or what god is. In addition, it is quite likely that there is no real Constitutional authority for the War on Drugs. It took a Constitutional amendment to enact prohibition. They got the war on drugs through a treaty. If the treaty is no longer in force, there is no legal authority for the war on drugs. Of course, the Supreme Court being a political not a legal body, would just expand the commerce clause to justify it. It is instinctive to not respect or accept this kind of moral authority unless you do so voluntarily. The war on drugs create a class of crimes which people feel, instinctively, are not real crimes. This means that you can break the drug laws and not really do anything which feels wrong. It is a chance for young men to rebel against 'the man' while not actually doing anything wrong. Enforcing these laws which are instinctively felt to be an abuse of power and authority, creates an adversarial relationship between the police and the populace. It also seduces oung men into criminal acts which commit them to a life of crime. To average people 'Narcs are not your friends', just as the officials of the Spanish Inquisition were not the friends of Jews and Muslims. So, the war on drugs creates an adversarial relationship with the police. It also creates a highly armed and violent criminal class making the police job much more dangerous and increasing the probability of police over-reacting and killing people unjustly. This is a deadly combination. Then the media, eager to prove their liberal bonafides, take a few isolated incidents and create a fiction of a war by police on young black men. It is this combination which has produced the adversarial relationship between police and the community, and this which has produced the police shootings. Everything else is superficial, rationalizations and symptoms not causes. Of course, we have had the war on drugs since the 1920 when racial purity and chemical purity were equated and drug laws were passed as adjunct to Jim Crow laws to keep white society pure. Police shootings seem new. Well, so does domestic terrorism. The crazies are out. The particular symptom varies with the times, the cause though is as I have stated it.