Update on the strategic wargame in St. Louis

A few weeks ago I decided to treat the events around the death of Michael Brown like a strategic wargame used by executives to predict actor behavior and potential outcomes in a complex system. I broke the game into Team Ferguson (the Justice movement) The Police (including, most obviously, their allies in the prosecutor’s office), St Louis Elites (the quiet people who make this city America’s fourth wealthiest while it’s only the 28th largest), and Federal Government (mostly the Dept of Justice, but any other agency with an interest, plus the President.)

Here’s what I predicted as of November 1st:

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Police (will) announce that the Grand Jury refuses to charge Darren Wilson.

Who moves next, with what? Elites would probably call this game over, as their goal of status quo is reached. And Federal Government is no longer motivated to resolve the situation as long as procedures are followed appropriately, since they have no civil rights case. Which leaves us with Ferguson – does it pour into the streets and disrupt even more?

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Since then, events have developed with some extra complexity. Team Ferguson‘s major move was to jump ahead and have Mike Brown’s parents testify at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, kicking the game up to a global level. If you think this is a toothless move, remember that the Federal Government includes the U.S. State Department, which is embarrassed by police behavior in St Louis since we lecture other countries on the abuses of their policy.

Police completed their preferred move, to prevent a proper judicial review at all costs. Their ally Bob McCullough turned in a virtuoso performance of legal kabuki, a fake grand jury executed precisely to give the impression that Darren Wilson had been exonerated through “evidence” while simultaneously dumping 3000 pages of evidence-y material on the public to taint every potential future jury from here to Alpha Centauri. The coup de grâce was clearly the press conference at night blaming Twitter for everything.

The Elites have been quiet, but I’m going to call this morning’s editorial in the local St Louis Post-Dispatch as their statement through a media proxy. This execrable piece of writing tells St Louis (and the world) that everything which just went down was totally legit and it’s all a matter of opinion anyway, so everyone should get back to normal, stat. Besides, a commission has been appointed, so hush up and get back to fantasy football.

This leaves Federal Government with the next major move. I’m throwing down a prediction here – it will be a potent one. My sources in DC (salsa percussionists, embittered hack writers, crank futurists, etc.) tell me that the DOJ was not amused when Jay Nixon and Bob McCullough told them to go pound sand, that they would be handling things locally. Now that the grand jury has been revealed as such a procedural farce, the Feds of several flavors will be motivated and liberated – much more than before – to pursue a remedy to this global embarrassment on the Mississippi. For just starters, I’ll bet that there are attorneys and judges around America not happy about sharing a professional affiliation with Mr. McCullough, or Mr. Nixon, the former attorney general of Missouri.

Who does that leave? Team Ferguson and their allies, a group that has mobility, flexibility, and motivation. There are so many ways to achieve their desired outcome – recognition of injustice, and the end of business as usual. Showing up peacefully at the malls here was just the beginning, I suspect. They have every move on the board remaining, especially since everyone else wants to stop playing ASAP. But when these events are about where your kids sleep, you literally can never stop playing.

Because for some people, it ain’t a game at all.