This has been gnawing at me: I wholeheartedly support peaceful speech and demonstrations, whether I agree with them or not, but the people who jumped the gun and hit the streets to protest George Floyd without knowing all the facts were wrong, and they made things worse.
There's a difference between reasoned criticism, and even energetic activism, and out-of-control protests. It's not surprising that the latter has a tendency to boil over into vandalism, theft, and violence. We all have a responsibility to avoid creating those conditions.
These explosive protests always go nuclear long before the facts are in - or they're egged on by media coverage that deliberately downplays inconvenient facts to keep the outrage white-hot. People act like "the system" failed before it has a chance to do anything.
Just as we're learning mobs and vigilantes aren't as good at maintaining public order as the cops on their worst day, so we should understand that angry protest crowds are not conducive to reasonable problem-solving or positive reform, and they badly damage the fabric of society.
Even before violence and looting start, too many people are being given the message that the should have absolutely zero trust in any aspect of society. Don't wait for the facts and to hell with the law - just get out there and start screaming! That's not healthy.
Every tragedy is a chain of events, and everything depends on which link in the chain people identify as an atrocity. The gist of even the non-violent protests is that certain people have a special right to resist arrest, disobey police commands, and even attack the cops.
That's an INCREDIBLY dangerous message to send. It's no surprise that the people hit hardest with that message have a tendency to proceed to violence and destruction. It's a logical progression, in fact. They're LITERALLY being told the rules are unjust and don't apply to them.
It doesn't mean everything the police do in response is excusable or justified. The chain of tragedy has many links. There can be blame to go around. But this whole Black Lives Matter protest movement is willfully ignoring far too many links in that chain.
The BLM movement is effectively sanctifying gross irresponsibility. Go ahead and pump yourself full of drugs, violently resist arrest, go for a weapon, maybe grab a taser from the cops - none of that is your responsibility. All that matters is what the cops do in response.
And I'm not exaggerating when I say "sanctifying irresponsibility." George Floyd has been canonized as thoroughly as any saint. So were the previous flashpoint figures like Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown. Criticizing them is treated like blasphemy. They're secular religious icons.
So yes, the genuine "mostly peaceful protesters" have a right to march, organize, etc. and it must not be infringed - but they also have a RESPONSIBILITY to think about what they're doing and consider the consequences. "Rights" without responsibility are killing us. /end
