Tuesday, June 02, 2020

Did closing the churches contribute to the chaos?

Still thinking about two of the videos I saw on Tucker last night. One was a young white man who was standing alone beaten senseless by a group of young black men, and from the position of his body, I'd guess both arms and legs and maybe his neck were broken. Bystanders did nothing to protect him or stop his assailants. (Sound familiar?) They used ladders, pieces of lumber to bash him. It looked like he was just in the wrong place, perhaps separated from his friends, or maybe he lived in the area. There were many white people in these protest groups who had gone along to get along, thinking they'd show solidarity. All he had done was pull out his phone and supposedly was trying to call the police.

The other was an Asian woman, standing her ground, maybe Korean American, in front of her small grocery. I think she was trying to salvage some produce--her livelihood. Maybe it was paying the tuition for her son who was in medical school. The men beating her were twice her size and half her age. Her husband, or some other man, rushed out and they beat him too.

After the shock of seeing such inhumanity and lust for killing, I began to wonder if declaring churches, libraries, and museums as "non-essential services" had encouraged the greed, hate and thirst for revenge and blood. None of those young men knew George Floyd, and the main threat to their lives up to yesterday has been other black men, not the police, despite what grandma told them, unless they are part of a criminal element like a gang. If it weren't for the schools and TV reminding them daily they are victims of racism, they probably were leading fairly normal lives, until the last two months.

Was it smart for mayors and governors to close sports and entertainment venues? While maybe not essential for spiritual health, they do bind certain groups in society together. Competition and aggression are played out on teams, and aside from the occasional broken bone or brain injury, most just watch the aggression. Men could always talk about sports if they had nothing else in common.

I did see some young women bashing in car windows and harassing the helpless drivers, and maybe they were looting those high end stores in Santa Monica. But for the most part, the blood thirst was 16-30 year old men. Testosterone and youth, not race. Antifa, which is white, both genders and privileged had probably been a little more cagey--placed the bricks and lumber around. They arrived with a plan--anarchy.

And I know that's not an original thought, because I believe I first learned it in a "Sociology of Education" class when I was a sophomore in college. All societies have glue and shared interests, which schools need to encourage, we were told then in the 1950s, which educators promote in the form of athletics, clubs and special interest groups.

Perhaps our political leaders educated in the last 40 years never learned that there is more to creating a function society than race and gender. Unfortunately for us, our enemies knew.

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