God, I hate to repeat myself. But in view of the utter lunacy of last night’s nationwide riots, supposedly provoked by the death of George Floyd, there isn’t any choice. So here goes.
I’ll begin with a question: before George Floyd, an unarmed black man, died at the hands of the police, who was the last white man to die so? Does anyone know that name? Was it reported anywhere? Protested anywhere? How about the name of the first unarmed white man to die at the hands of the police after Eric Garner? Anyone?
“Black lives matter,” shout the protesters. But white lives apparently do not. Does this make them racist by definition, since they show affinity to one group of victims based solely on skin color? Anyone who still speaks common English and appreciates the shared meaning of words would say yes. Their resort to arguments of special circumstances and unique frames-of-reference to deny they are, only buries them deeper in that despicable hole.
Should one be incensed by the death of George Floyd? Absolutely. His was a brutal, absolutely unnecessary death wrought by a criminal in uniform and abetted by three of his fellow miscreants, who need also to face the full penalty of law. When society gives one a firearm, a badge, a uniform and a charge to protect the public from wrongdoing, that charge extends to the prevention of wrongs done by fellow officers, as was the case here; each of the other three Minneapolis policemen at that sordid scene had the duty to stop what Derek Chauvin was doing and their failure to do so makes them culpable as well.
That said, does anyone think that what is now occurring late at night in major cities across the county will have any positive impact, or will prevent even one such useless death? Anyone nodding vigorously and shouting yes is a charlatan, a fool or worse. It won’t. It will make things worse, which may be the aim of those pulling the strings behind the events. Consider:
The right to assemble and to petition for redress is a foundational right in this country, and those folks marching, carrying signs and shouting slogans – no matter how misguided or inappropriate – are perfectly within their right to do so. They have constitutional blessing for their demands for reforms, for committees of inquiry, for action by the political classes. But the instant the first window is smashed, the first fire is set, the first automobile is destroyed all legitimacy vanishes at a single stroke and peaceful protest is transmogrified into a mob.
A mob is a terrible thing. It responds only to the basest of instincts: fear and envy, greed and hatred. Its anonymity confers absolution on its members for any wrong they might do, so it is often prone to incomprehensibly bad acts, things no sane person would do alone. A mob is unreasoning, so it has no higher purpose or politics. But since time immemorial, unscrupulous and unprincipled people have known how to goad such a creature to madness and fill it not with a higher purpose, but with their own. In today’s case some of the actors who have summoned frenzy in our nation’s cities are known; others remain in the shadows. But be certain: their intention is to destroy our society by setting us against ourselves, and to cripple our nation out of a profound hatred for it. They will do both if we let them.
And in the collapse to follow George Floyd and the wrong done to him will be forgotten; melting away like fog on a summer morning.
