Last night saw the latest round of riots brought forth by a reactionary segment of the populace, led by a group headed by pseudo-activists and race baiting imbeciles, backed by the money of one George Soros. The demonstrations which by all reports started peacefully eventually devolved into a chaotic situation where the familiar aspects of the BLM movement reared their heads. Namely; looting, violence, highway blockage etc. To say that Americans are sick of this sort of nonsense would be redundant on a cosmic level. But what to do about it?

1. The well-intentioned must put on the righteous armor of battle. It is always heartwarming and uplifting when after these sorts of incidents we see people giving out, “free hugs” to police, videos of people offering them bottles of water and those lovely still shots of people praying together. It is the little things that count and sometimes they can make a huge impact. However the time for hugging has passed. Putting on the righteous armor of battle means having honest dialogue within the communities that find themselves at the heart of these conflagrations of reactionary garbage. The well-intentioned are doing officers no good, whatsoever, by hugging them one minute and then going home the next to live next to the people who were looting a store, with no intention of calling them out for their crimes. Ask a cop; would you prefer that the well-intentioned focus their efforts on calling out those within their own communities who would bring harm upon themselves and their neighbors … or a hug? The fact of the matter is simply this; America, where since the trauma of 9/11 and our subsequent horror stemming from the fact that tragedies are by and large unavoidable, has become a place where we simply accept the tragic as a regrettable yet acceptable aspect of our culture. Which is infuriating. I don’t pretend to know the exact answers to our social problems but I am absolutely certain that in order to put the Charlottes behind us, normal, everyday folks need to step in. Yes, hugs and bottles of water can make an impact but working towards a situation where hugs are no longer needed is a far nobler pursuit.
2. The right needs to stop giving police a pass simply for being police. If you are a conservative, you need to understand that a uniform and a badge does not equal a crown of thorns and the Five Wounds. Police officers are human beings which means that they are prone to make mistakes. The career which one chooses has nothing to do with their formation of character or inherent character. If it were true that each career spoke to the virtues of the people who naturally were inclined to those positions,  then … ahem… priests wouldn’t have brought the Catholic Church under such scrutiny, teachers wouldn’t be on the news every other week for inappropriate relationships with their students, lawyers wouldn’t go to prison for defrauding their clients, doctors wouldn’t need malpractice insurance and no one would have to hear about Anthony Weiner’s wiener. The fact is; some cops are fantastic. They all have a dangerous job. Some cops have no business being cops. Naturally they don’t belong less than a mile around anything dangerous. This immediate rush to judgement on the part of the right which usually condemns the victim as a ‘thug’ or ‘gangster’ is the converse yet identically misguided reaction the left will throw out which casts all police in a villainous light. For a group of people who say they stand against intrusion into their lives by government agencies, some on the right sure don’t mind when the intrusion allows them to take up verbal and ideological arms against anyone who attempts to introduce the idea that law enforcement has an accountability to the citizenry. The advice, condescendingly thrown at blacks in this country by conservative social media, is this; if you didn’t do anything, comply and then sue. Solid advice. So if the police are to be held to the same standards as the ordinary citizen is, perhaps rushing to judgement is a bit hypocritical?
3. The liberal left and BLM needs to be honest. The time has come. It is painfully obvious to anyone who simply observes the current social climate in this country that the left wants segregation. When segregation is forced upon society, it is a fascist concept with deep-seated racial bias as the prime motivator. When it is voluntary however, it is simply the last course of action of a marginalized people yearning to exercise their right for safety. We can see this with safe spaces on college campuses, segregated housing on college campuses, the lambasting of that HORRIFIC scourge of ‘gentrification’ and the most hilarious example; cultural misappropriation. BLM and the fringe elements of the left don’t want to peacefully coexist with their neighbors of all races and creeds. At all. Ever. That would put an end to their reason to exist in the first place. The more upheaval and vitriolic rhetoric, the better for the left. It is the same with the alt-right. Pepe the frog isn’t going to want to share his lily pad with frogs that are browner or have a different tone, regardless of how Americanized the new frogs wish to become. The left has become a parody of itself in recent times. What it has shown however, is that the parody is in essence a by-product of the left’s own acknowledgment, be it denied, of the lunacy of its fringe. Eventually, when a movement has gone too far, the only option is to continue the trajectory out of an almost mischievous school-child sense of wonder. How far can we push this until someone pushes back? This became painfully obvious when the politics couldn’t match the momentum of the social aspect. Enter the perfect example: Bernie Sanders. What Sanders did, was offer a glimpse of the politics that perfectly matched the Utopian projection that the perennially misguided and chronically boring white liberal preached of. And why did Bernie lose to Hillary? Because he didn’t get enough votes. There simply weren’t enough people who bought into the fantasy. The train is off the tracks. The truck has jack-knifed and the fallout is a loose confederation of badly organized, fragmented social justice movements which do more harm than good to all parties concerned. The overall narrative of BLM and the American left is no longer even partly coherent. It is about segregation as a means to illustrate the horrors of American society. The irony could burst the Liberty Bell.

In the end; this is a question of culture. More important, it is a question of the denial of culture and the collapse of decorum as a prerequisite for meaningful discussion. I do not see the tide rolling back anytime soon. That being said, Americans tend to do their best work when all seems hopeless and lost. It just takes some guts. Wearing a ski mask and throwing a bottle at a cop isn’t gutsy. Nor is calling a dead black kid a thug from the safety of your laptop. We are capable of overcoming anything. If that truth is to be realized, then we are either on the verge of a social peace which would rival the Pax Romana or we have gone too far to rely on our inherent American abilities and character. And that is a reality I am not willing to entertain.

Yet.