All lives actually do matter. A sports announcer last week lost his job for using the phrase “all lives matter” instead of “black lives matter.” Our cultural superiors insist on certain phraseology these days or else. It is just another effort in the culture war to make you care and think in particular ways.
The phrase “all lives matter” came about in pushback to aggressive efforts a few years ago by Black Lives Matters activists. This statement of fact is now presumed to be a calling card of white supremacists.
Last Tuesday, people rushed to social media to add black squares. Major corporations shut down their websites. People protested in the streets. I saw more than one person shamed for innocently using the phrase “all lives matter” or, as a worse offense, putting up a picture other than a black square on Instagram.
We have replaced virtue with virtue signaling. Activists would have us believe the governments that brought us slavery, Jim Crow, anti-interracial marriage laws, affirmative action, and police brutality are the governments that will solve the problem. The government that started a war on poverty to bring us a great society actually managed to keep people in poverty and destroy families. But this time, just you wait, the government is going to fix it.
Our social betters who demand we use certain phrases as a secular religious rite and display certain empty squares as a sacrament also demand we vote for Joe Biden. The man who served as a Vice President for eight years and served in government for forty years and who authored the very crime legislation many argue made things worse is now the solution. The man who helped destroy a generation of young black men through aggressive crime legislation can preside over the government that presides over increasingly brutal police and he will solve the problem.
Or not.
Progressives who insisted Americans continue to stay home even after the COVID-19 curve flattened would now have us believe mass protests are fine. Livelihoods and businesses are destroyed. Gather to riot and get a pass, but gather for church and go to jail. Ironically, these same people think healthcare insurance is awful, but your property and casualty insurance will be just fine to make you whole after the riots.
This is not to excuse the other side. Some can watch the George Floyd video and not see a problem. There are those who thought the optics of the park service clearing out a crowd of protestors with pepper pellets and smoke canisters so the President could hold up a Bible he does not read in front of a church he does not attend was a brilliant political move. It was not. There are those who think the President’s tweets do not stir the pot. They are wrong.
We increasingly, as a society, do not allow thinking outside tribal comfort zones. Much of the press leans left and so is more sympathetic to that tribal thinking. Concurrently, politicians from both sides feed off grievances for power. Neither side has any incentive to find a solution when both profit by keeping the discord going.
Americans would be better off abandoning the quaint and repeatedly proven false notion that Washington has the solution for what ails us. Washington, inevitably, makes most things worse outside the core functions of government. Americans are too obsessed with Washington. They are too obsessed with Trump. They are too obsessed with Biden.
People think Washington will provide the solutions if you just put up enough black squares on Instagram. But Washington will not provide the solution and most likely your state capitol will not either. You will provide the solution. Seek the welfare of your city and there, not Washington, will you find your welfare. If you can give sweat equity, work. If you can’t, give money. If you can’t, give prayer and support. Give it to the local food bank, the local soup kitchen, the local homeless shelter, the local battered women’s clinic, the local public school — give, work, pray, and invest in your city. You, not politicians and political parties, will fix this.
I can't imagine a more complete articulation of the situation. You've said exactly what so manty of us feel but can't find the words to express in these emotionally wrought times. Thank you, Erick!
In a 'nutshell':
"Concurrently, politicians from both sides feed off grievances for power. Neither side has any incentive to find a solution when both profit by keeping the discord going."
Erick, I saw your video on the Arbery pre-trial on video and I totally agree with your view. In the case of both Arbery and Floyd, their killing was unjustified. However, I think you misunderstand why conservatives like Ted Cruz (and many others) support what happened before/after Trump's June 1 Press Conference. It isn't the photo-op that conservatives are supporting. It is the concept that protests have to be lawfully conducted. Everybody at that protest had a legal obligation to be sheltered for the night or out of DC by 7 pm (25 minutes after the Park Police started moving forward). But numerous videos show protesters making no effort to honor the curfew with mobs being out on the streets well after dark.
The Park Police made three loudspeaker announcements that the crowd was supposed to evacuate the area. The Washington Post reported that protesters heard the announcements, but that they were garbled (presumably because of background noise). Numerous media sources were on site and yet none of them sought to find out what the loudspeaker announcements were saying so that they could inform the public. The violence that is going on after curfew hours benefits nobody. Trump's walk to Saint John Church wasn't about the photo-op. Rather it was a symbol to indicate that violence that set the DC church on fire the previous night had to stop. It was a visible symbol of the speech Trump just finished.
It is a shame that many of the protesters choose to battle the Park Police instead of heading to their place of shelter. Perhaps the Park Police acted too aggressively to evacuate the area, although that depends on how willing the protesters were to honor the evacuation. Perhaps the evacuation could have waiting until after curfew. But the DC curfew stated that "no person shall walk, bike, run, loiter, stand, or motor by car or other mode of transport upon any street, alley, park, or other public place within the District" after 7 pm. Consequently, the protesters should have been in transit to their place of shelter when the Park Police started to evacuate the area.