300% Done

I'll just let the Fave represent my current mood.

As I mentioned in my last post, virtually every American agrees that what happened to George Floyd was profoundly unjust. Indeed, on my TL, I've seen conservative after conservative propose a number of systemic fixes - including mandatory body cams and the end of qualified immunity - to address the problem of police brutality. Because even though such incidents are statistically uncommon, they are - for everyone - completely unacceptable.

That doesn't mean, though, that we must accept every. last. response to Floyd's murder. That doesn't mean we must accept the terroristic violence now engulfing many of our cities.

"But RG, can't you see that people have a right to be upset?"

Of course they do. We all have a right to our feelings. And yes: what happened to Floyd was hideous and should inspire outrage and a desire for reform. But I don't want to live in a society in which the left's apparent standard for a "justifiable reaction" is the universal. Please, for God's sake, imagine the chaos that would actually wreak. Imagine what would happen if we let every aggrieved individual take his anger out on anyone who happened to be in the way. No one - whether black, white, or polka-dotted - would feel safe!

Target didn't kill George Floyd. AutoZone didn't kill George Floyd. Uncle Hugo's didn't kill George Floyd. That black business owner who lost his bar didn't kill George Floyd. The people who might've moved into that block of affordable housing didn't kill George Floyd. St. John's Episcopal Church didn't kill George Floyd. If you approve of these riots, you're endorsing the targeting of innocent entities who weren't there and had nothing to do with said murder. Is that really what you mean to do? Think. THINK.

"RG, why are you valuing property over lives?"

Flag on the field! False dichotomy! You can in fact protect both simultaneously.

If the choice is between rescuing a baby from certain imminent death and preserving a wall, then sure, you knock down the wall for the sake of the life in danger. But I would like anyone who's throwing the above bull excrement at me to please - please - explain how trashing a neighborhood is going to result in any real change in how our police departments are run (and therefore save lives). Give me the citations and show your work. Because from where I sit, destroying a bunch of downtown businesses will change no minds and will only ruin lives. What, do you think those stores - and the jobs they represent - are just going to magically come back and everything will proceed as it did before? If so, you are unbelievably stupid.

No: I can already see where this is going to go because I live in the real world where actions have consequences. Some of those businesses simply won't return. Others will increase their prices to pay for their insurance premiums and loss prevention costs. And ultimately, the poor "marginalized" people you say you care about will see their standard of living decline as they struggle to find work and/or basic staples -- which, of course, will get you all howling about how racist and unfair it is that things cost more in inner city areas than they do out in the 'burbs because second and third order effects are things you just can't wrap your substandard brains around.

When you attack the economic lifeblood of an area, you are endangering lives, not saving them. Human beings are not meant to suckle forever at the government teat. Where there is little work, there is deep despair, drug addiction, high suicide rates, and other signs of social disorder. Why? Because we all get genuine, lasting meaning from our labor. So spare me this nonsense that I'm somehow callous for being concerned that businesses are getting looted.

Besides, the rioters are hardly limiting themselves to property damage. They have also been caught on camera beating business owners bloody. Don't those lives count?

"How else are we going to get people to listen?"

We were all ready to listen before the fires were lit. We all agreed that something needed to be done. But now? Now people are rapidly losing sympathy for your cause. It's the same thing that happened in 1968: the disorder at the Democratic Convention ultimately helped to elect Richard Nixon. When you stomp around threatening and injuring people who aren't guilty of the crimes you wish to see punished, the victims of your indiscriminate fury will start pining for your abject defeat and humiliation. And yes, I'm seeing that very longing already in the polls and on social media. The "Rooftop Koreans" are being lionized again. A lot of people want Trump to send in the military to restore order. And at the gun shops, business is brisk.  You had a whole nation behind you for about two seconds -- until you squandered it by LARPing as revolutionaries. Good job. Slow clap.

So how do you get people to listen? Drop all that critical race theory BS that has zero connection with reality, stop demanding that we white people bend the knee for crap we didn't actually do, and focus on the actual facts on the ground. Because to be perfectly blunt, "white people" are not the only ones at fault for the problems currently bedeviling the black community. The sooner "anti-racist" activists accept that - the sooner blacks are encouraged to own their own crap instead of foisting it all on outsiders - the sooner we can all have a real conversation.