Sunday, May 31, 2020

This might be controversial

They are calling these the George Floyd riots.  Well, they aren't anymore.  They aren't about Floyd anymore.   That's the controversial bit.  Let me explain my thinking.

Oh, his murder was the spark, and HUGE spark it was, but the conflagration is beyond that now.  The Floyd protests have been co-opted.  It's grown beyond the righteous Floyd protesters.

You can still see glimpses of the Floyd protests.  Floyd protesters guarding stores, guarding cops from a mob that got separated from their platoon, thing like that, but that greater mob outnumbers Floyd protesters.

Factions of the greater mob has exploited the spark for their own ends. Sure.

What got us here?  Gov't overreach.  Tyranny.  Yes, racial injustice is part of it, but tyranny is still at the base.  Floyd was killed by a cop, and instrument of government.  The folks that tell us what to do and when to do it.  That lady, Breonna Taylor, in Louisville that was gunned down in a no-knock that went to the wrong house and she tried to defend herself from home invaders?  Government sent those people.  The Ahmaud Aubrey case in Georgia, where an ex-cop and his buddies were righteous taking the law into their own hands about a suspected burglar?  They were cloaking themselves in the garments of government law enforcement when they confronted a man.  All the localities determining what you can and can't do during WuFlu lockdown?  Government telling folks what to do in the minutest and most annoying detail, disrupting lives and livings and a lifetime of work for millions.  All the Karen scolds ordering strangers about when they don't wear a mask right or are five and a half feet away instead of 6?  And calling the cops about the same, or acting like the rules apply to others and not themselves, or threaten a black man that she'll tell the cops "a black man is threatening me!"?  Another form of tyranny.

Lots of these have HUGE racial elements, yes, but the Telling Others What To Do and wielding government like a clumsy cudgel has been causing the pressure to build, in ALL communities.  And without that pressure, by letting people live their lives as best they can with the best information that can be provided them, well, that pressure doesn't get tamped down til it reaches a burst point.  It did get tamped down.  It did burst.

People, especially Americans, don't like tyranny.  They like the security and safety of order, yes, but go too far and you get this.  Especially when you mix in true injustice and arbitrary enforcement, and rule by man instead of rule of hopefully-impartial but at least plainly-stated law.   

1 comment:

ProudHillbilly said...

I actually thought we'd have another month before this happened - thought the temps needed to be higher. I think this would have been bad enough without 2 months of lockdown. But the lockdown definately caused the explosion to be many magnitudes higher than it would otherwise have been.