By Tommy
Sedona, AZ — It’s somewhat baffling how people can look at the same thing and see something totally different than what the other person sees.
Such is the case with me and a good friend. Both of us are independent voters, however. She leans a bit more to the right, while I do to the left. The recent killings of protesters in Cincinnati are a case in point, where the killing is seen by my friend as justified, while I feel the opposite.
She says it was clear to her that Renee Good was using her car as a weapon to kill the agent and that he was simply defending himself.
What I saw was Good trying to turn away from him, moving to the right, and being shot.
The same goes for the Alex Pretti killing.
She saw him brandishing a gun and trying to kill the agents, while I saw him holding a phone and being killed while struggling to get away. We must have watched different angles and versions of the shooting a dozen times, yet neither of us conceded to the other that they were right or wrong.
We still see two different things when watching the killings on our screens.
I guess it’s a matter of perspective and where we stand. A house could be painted white on one side and blue on the other. The people standing in front of the white side will say the house is painted white, while the people standing in front of the blue side will say it’s painted blue — both right, and both wrong.
So what we perceive can be affected by where we stand, and in the case of these killings, where we stand politically. Those on the left see the killings as wrong, while those on the right see them as right.
Then there are those who tell us what to think and believe, and they know the house is painted differently on both sides.
But my friend and I do agree on a few points. Pretti should never have brought a gun into a situation where he could physically be confronted by agents who would go into panic mode realizing he was armed and might take lethal action — which they did. We can argue whether it was wrong or justified, but it would not have happened if he had left the gun at home.
And for Good, she thought it was a joke, but when she moved forward — even though she apparently was trying to get away — the agent who shot her perceived a different reality and blew her face off.
For the record, my good friend and I remain good friends and would never let a misperception get in our way.
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