We keep hearing that the core of these "protests" are decent people with a legitimate grievance. Okay, then STAY HOME, decent people. Your actions are clearly providing cover for opportunistic thugs, looters, and a domestic terrorist organization. Stop being useful to them.
The legit protesters will no doubt have noticed that the thugs and terrorists enabled by their demonstrations are destroying THEIR neighborhoods, their homes and businesses, their lives. Clearly they're hurting themselves far more than anyone they claim to be protesting against.
And they're not just hurting themselves. Countless people who don't want to be involved in any political demonstrations are getting hurt, physically and economically. They'll suffer for years to come. The protesters are violating their civil rights by enabling this nightmare.
These cities are filled with people who didn't want any street theater at all. Real, lawful, peaceful protests are no threat to their civil rights - they can just nod or shake their heads and get on with their lives. Riots and destruction are tyrannical force used against them.
The people on the streets are only a fraction of the total population of these cities, including Minneapolis. Funny how our poll-crazed media isn't running around asking residents if they supported the early protests, never mind the violent chaos that ensued.
If the heart of every riot in these cities is a group of people with sincere grievances about Floyd's death, it's past time for them to demonstrate their sincerity by refusing to serve as human shields for Antifa and local hoodlums. They can make themselves heard from home.
Things are happening on the Floyd case, so a modicum of good citizenship would suggest allowing a few weeks for things to play out, and for law enforcement to roll up Antifa and its allies in politics and media. Then it will be safer to peacefully demonstrate again, if necessary.
These riots are also creating a huge risk of another coronavirus outbreak, and that would inflict tremendous harm on city residents who wanted no part of the protests. What about their right to be safe? Are we supposed to just tolerate Antifa using biological warfare, too?
In the longer term, people who sincerely want not only "justice for Floyd" but also changes that will keep it from happening again must realize that further street theater is profoundly counterproductive. You've already lost a huge amount of the public sympathy you had last week.
By enabling riots and terrorism, you're making it far less likely that serious institutional reforms will be implemented. Terrorists are whispering in your ear that you can dominate the larger public through intimidation and violence. It doesn't work that way in America.
Representative democracy is a fortress against compulsion and tyranny - and yes, if you think street theater will force people to adopt your political agenda, YOU ARE A TYRANT. It doesn't matter one little bit that you feel righteous or justified. All tyrants do.
If you want to make positive changes, you have to work on PERSUADING people, building support for meaningful reforms. It's long, hard, frustrating work, not a huge adrenaline rush like burning a neighborhood while listening to agitators tell you how powerful you are.
You're not going to persuade anybody while your fellow citizens are watching cities burn and innocent people are getting beaten to a pulp in the street. You can't persuade people who are unified only in seeing YOU, and what you've enabled, as a deadly threat.
I hate to break it to them, but legit protesters have a LOT of organizing and outreach work ahead of them, because if they want to seriously reform the public employee laws that keep bad cops on the beat, they'll have to persuade the inner cities to stop voting Democrat.
There will be absolutely no meaningful reform of public employee laws or public unions as long as Democrats have any power. If you want reforms that will stop the next Floyd from happening, you should be burning the Democrat Party down, not your own neighborhood.
Bottom line: it's painfully obvious that further street protests are only enabling anarchy and terrorism. You'll have to forgive the rest of us for doubting the good intentions of anyone who continues to enable the terrorism and anarchy we saw over the weekend. /end
