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June 20, 2020
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Before I start, I want to point out that the long-coming updates have begun. The Faith page has been completely redone to reflect changes in the last nine years, and I'm working on the About Me page. Now . . . It's 2020, it's the 20th day of the month, and they say hindsight is 20/20. But in order to have hindsight, you have to have two things: A reference, and a reminder. BLM is destroying our reminders. Don't get me wrong, I support racial equality. I think we should all be fighting for it. But I cannot support their methodology. History books, alone, are not enough, but they keep claiming it is. We need reminders of our history, which is what statues are for. Of course, the problem is that not all statues name everything a person did. In fact, some flat out lie. The Daughters of the Confederacy, for example, are always establishing markers across the country that are pro-Confederacy and lie about events they may not have even happened. They can be found in all 50 States, and some have been removed, or even blocked, by authorities. But that doesn't mean the wording on a plaque can't be changed. What has happened in recent years is something that the George Floyd protests have brought to light: People are not leaving anything to a single idea any more. George Floyd was about one man who died because of a hold police are untrained in, while his lung capacity was restricted by being placed in a position police are not supposed to use. But protestors have extended it to . . . well, everything blacks complain about. Let's take another example. Colin Kapernic's protest was about a single incident in the neighborhood he grew up in, but NFL players made it about a broader issue. The incident CK addressed would have otherwise gone unnoticed--and, because of the NFLPA, practically did go unnoticed. Protesting is little more than a (more extreme) form of communication. It states that there's a big problem and that there has to be a solution. But the subject has to be singular. When you tie other factors in with the reason for the protest, then the reason gets watered down--just like the reason for CK's protest. Now, while I understand the reasoning behind certain protests, I never participate in them. In fact, I've only protested on two occasions. One was a disqualification I received in a chess tournament (I was guilty). The other was when I took Business Ethics in college. We were given an assignment to debate a certain topic online, and we were all assigned which side of the issue to debate. I have never agreed with this, and I told my instructor. Since the assignment had already begun, she made an offer to debate the validity of the assignment, but because she was not changing what I protested, I told her I would take the failing grade. I retook the course and received an A. The purpose of protests is to draw attention to a single issue, not to force the change to happen. The Civil Rights Act of 1963 took years to enact, and only because the right people got into office. But when he signed it, President Johnson said, "We [Democrats] just lost the South for a generation." He was right. Except for Bill Clinton (4 states in '92, 3 in '96), no Democratic Presidential nominee has carried a former Confederate state in the general election since 1976 when Jimmy Carter swept the South. So, what's causing this outbreak of forcefulness? Fear, frustration, and impatience are the key factors. Fear of losing freedom (possibly by death), frustration over the opposition, and impatience for the change to happen. A dangerous combination. Next week, I'll put up a post on listening I put on FaceBook that's getting a lot of compliments. It's pertinent to this blog. Until then . . . |
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