The recent string of highly publicized deaths, and perhaps future convicted murders, have pushed an already stressed population over the brink in locations across the nation. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery’s deaths have reignited the narratives that the police are not held accountable for deaths at their hands. That a badge gives one free license for murder. That LE connections will protect you from questionable actions that lead to someone’s death.
The justifiable anger for mistakes, mismanagement, perhaps even coverup and possible racism has spilled over from protest (like we saw recently here in Michigan with raised voices, blaring horns, and yes open carriers too) into a riot. Arson, mass looting, destruction, uncontrolled assaults, and probably more deaths.
In Minneapolis nearly 200 buildings have been wrecked, looted, or put to the torch, including abandoned police precincts. Injuries accounts are unknown as a tally, but the video of a disabled woman being attacked, struck, and blasted with a fire extinguisher while the someone in the crowd watches and someone shouts, “She got a knife.” seems indicative that injuries are certainly occuring.
This has spilled forth. In St. Paul, where 50 or so structures are damaged, anger is swelling. Several people have been shot in the various locations although it appears no more have been at the hands of police so far. A few incidents have been property owners defending themselves but many remain unknown. In Louisville Kentucky, where Breonna Taylor was killed during a wrong address no-knock raid, seven people have been reported shot among the other damage.
Rioting and looting are out of control in Minneapolis, where the mayor just seems to be okay with it. ‘The anger is not only understandable, but right.’ He has no plan to control the destruction. Way to swing for that fences on the minority vote, Mayor Frey. I’m sure your business owners appreciate the support since they’re livelihoods are being sacrificed to opportunists who are “angry”. I’m certain your ivory tower of safety, where you aren’t at risk, makes it very convenient to prosthelytize to the Minneapolis citizenry about just how racist they are in their hearts and how all this can be a good thing in the end if we end up loving each other. That this is retribution for 400 years of evil deeds that not a single living soul alive participated in or was hurt by.
Mayor Jacob Frey said that the riotous destruction “is a reflection of the truth that our black community has lived.”
What in the actual fuck… Sheer fucking hubris. Does Frey really believe that all the population needed to become harmonious was a good riot!? That if he just declares “no hard feelings” that will take care of all the loses!? Sheer. Fucking. Hubris. Oh, and he admitted that they don’t have an extra dime to pay for any of this allowed and encouraged devastation so the tab will have to be picked up by the State and the Fed. Because Rona.
Let’s compare
Armed protesters show up at various locations to show their displeasure for governmental policies or laws related to the 2A or lockdowns, and do so while breaking nothing, looting nothing, and harming no one, and this is some sort of terrifying symbol of how out of control the ‘right wing’ extremists are (because no one who leans politically left could possibly be angered by the loss of their business, or harm to their employees, or the removal and curtailment of their rights.. way to paint with broad strokes) … I saw the effigy of the lynched governor, it was a horrible gesture and did nothing to advance the protest but in the grand scale of things it’s just vile graffiti. The “extremists” are so dangerous with their gathering, a constitutionally protected right of petitioning grievances as people suffer and doing so carrying… guns (but not using them on people). Just horrible, really. Two constitutional rights exercised simultaneously. Unthinkably despicable.
But in contrast a protest about the death, perhaps murder, almost certainly manslaughter, of George Floyd, a man that accounts call one of common sense and decency, turns into a full blown riot and that’s just… fine? The city is out of control with wanton escalating destruction and its okay because its a “reflection of the truth that our black community has lived?” The fact that hundreds, perhaps thousands have turned this from the protest it needed to be into a gutting of their city through arson and theft is just okay, because riots and protests are the same now!?
Anyway, here is the point.
They are right to be angry. But anger is an emotion, not an action.
The people who demand the officers involved in Floyd’s death be held accountable are angry. The people who pursued and pressured for the investigation of Arbery’s death at the hands of the McMichaels and subsequent handling by the police there are angry. The people calling and demanding accountability for Taylor’s death and the imprisonment of her boyfriend who justly and understandably thought their home was being broken into and defended himself and attempted to defend her are angry.
They have the right to that anger and to put it to righteous purpose.
What is righteous about firebombing a housing complex and looting Target and Autozone? How is this “righteous” anger worth tolerating and encouraging. How does the horror of these deaths and the pursuit of a just conclusion morph into ‘burn it ALL down indiscriminately?’ and that’s just okay.This is the city leadership equivalent of a parent saying, “they’re just expressing themselves” when your kids just burned down your house, stole and wrecked your car, and beat up the elderly neighbor.
Nobody is coming to save you…
When a protest, no matter how noble or just the initial cause, becomes a riot you are now on your own. The police in Minneapolis have abandoned precincts and pulled back to protect themselves. That means convenient geography will make or break whether or not you, your home, your business, and your community are safe from the Rage Mob. It doesn’t matter who is in the riot, it doesn’t matter how righteous their individual anger or ideas were, it doesn’t matter anymore because they aren’t individuals right now… they are the Rage Mob.
This has essentially turned into a SERE problem. Survive any contact, Evade when at all possible, Resist if evasion is impossible, and Escape at the earliest opportunity. Realize that when your town becomes a riot ground zero, life has altered drastically. The politics don’t matter to the Rage Mob, not anymore. The politics, the cause, those things are the excuse, the justification during and after the fact. They don’t really matter to the Rage Mob. The Rage Mob is a force of the moment.
Mayor Frey already said it. He gave the city to the mob already. He’ll justify it with some more pseudo intellectual bullshit platitude but that doesn’t matter to anyone in the path of the Rage Mob.
And that is why you need a fighting gun. That is why you need an AR-15. Because if evasion doesn’t work you are now on resist and escape.
Remember, nobody is thinking rationally in the Rage Mob. Normal societal parlance and courtesy are gone. Even if every single one of those folks were a reasonably respectable person the day prior, they aren’t now. And this is now a problem you have to navigate and solve. It is a problem the may require force against them because they are now essentially a roving, chaotic, opportunistic, and destructive force and not individuals. You may have to run them over or off with your car…
You may have to shoot them.
The norms of society do not exist in a riot, they are pushed to the fringe and will only be recalled haphazardly as the anger of the Rage Mob dissipates. You are on your own. Your allies will be those closest to you in the community, if anyone. Like the title image above it may take a raw display of naked force to turn the tide elsewhere by folks with their heads on straight still. This is counter to the Rage Mob and in the only language the Rage Mob is likely to recognize. The Rage Mob is instinctual, animalistic, it judges risk like a pack of hyenas might. Avoiding is your safest option, but if that no longer is an option you need others.
Remember, it does not matter the righteousness of the anger, there is always a segment of opportunistically violent people waiting for the right conditions. They might not even recognize it in themselves during normal life, they will likely justify it to themselves and others based on the anger source’s original perceived righteousness regardless of the severity and mistargeting of their own actions.
Protests and Riots
Anger is your right. A protest is your right. To express yourself, to express displeasure at injustice, incompetence, and mistakes is your right. It is your duty even as a citizen of this nation.
A riot is none of those things. A riot is a force of nature. A tornado or typhoon made of incensed human flesh made into ravenous opportunists.
A riot is destruction.
Reports of firearms confiscation have been coming out of Minneapolis, confiscation from licensed legal owners… depending upon how long this goes we could see events and abuses by power like we haven’t since Katrina… this is just manmade storm.
