Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Preening While Rome Burns

The bit below from Brendan O'Neill is the perfect summary of what I thought yesterday after posting my bit about utter ignorance of Robert E. Lee permeating both sides of the current ragefest. It's not about Lee or even the Confederate history of the South. It's all about the demonstrators themselves and their bottomless need for attention.

I'm creeped out to the point of literal nausea by what's happening. I'm just now getting to the point where I can articulate the underlying rational thoughts behind my emotions. Here's a subset.
  • Once we start allowing violent mobs to "cleanse" our cities of things that offend them, where do we stop?
  • As far as I can tell, I don't dare disagree with the mob publicly regardless of what the law says. The law won't protect me from the mob. All I can do is watch.
  • Once we've removed all things Confederate and the world is still the way it was before, what do we remove / burn / re-educate then?
  • Since the rage is detached from reality, how can it stop? 
  • If the Left is driven by intersectionality where we classify ourselves into smaller and smaller groups, each oppressed by other groups, aren't we just seeing the first shots fired in a war that can only end in Somali-style clan fighting?
  • The children of Baltimore cannot read, write or do basic math. There's no question that they're not alone. None of the rioters on either side address that. The media doesn't address it. The politicians don't address it. All we're talking about is Russia and the Confederacy. Meanwhile, a chunk of the young generation are coming out of school unable to function in the 2017 labor market.
  • It all seems to be vapid, moral preening while Rome burns.

1 comment:

tim eisele said...

I think what it really boils down to, is that we have a certain segment of the population that just wants to fight. So, they look for an opportunity to choose a "side", so that they can goad the other "side" into a good, solid street brawl. Which side a given person ends up on is probably purely a matter of happenstance, based on where they live and who they have associate with.

I mean, the white supremacists clearly showed up with the intention of inviting the ANTIFA types for a brawl, and then the ANTIFAs equally clearly accepted the invitation.

While we are likely to get some more ugly riots, though, I really don't think it is going to lead to a civil war or a complete society breakdown, for one simple reason: the segment of the population who wants to fight is predominantly young men. And unlike the days of the US civil war, and unlike the situation in countries that currently have civil wars, these aggressive young men are not currently a majority in the US. There are enough of them to kick up the occasional ruckus, but not enough to sustain a civil war.

The bigger problem, is that this is yet another in a long string of distractions from the actual problem, that the government is paying out more than it is taking in. And the supposedly economically conservative Republicans are showing essentially zero indication that they intend to do anything about it, they just want to change who gets the money.