We live in uncertain and unstable times.
The conveniences of the 21st Century, where nearly anything we want or need is at our fingertips, belie the fragility of our physical lives – and our social structures. Keep going; we’ll explain.
We can ask Alexa to order (and pay for) groceries or a pizza, or we can check from 1,000 miles away whether our garage door is open or whether our home is the temperature we want it to be. We can instantly access the exact kind of music we want, watch a newscast (and a multitude of other fare) on our smart phone, remotely unlock and start our vehicle as we approach it in a parking lot, etc., etc.
All of this can give us a false sense of wellbeing, of security, which may have been slightly tarnished by the coronavirus pandemic scare.
We forget that, even with all the conveniences and comforts of modern life, we are still essentially a few days away from dying of thirst.
All of those conveniences mentioned above are dependent on a complex chain of suppliers and services that could be cut off, by the outbreak of a virus in a company in the Philippines or in a trucking company in San Francisco, for instance. There are harsh realities that aren’t always evident until the electricity goes off.
And those are just the physical realities.
Socially, we’ve all been reminded of similar consequences when normal life is disrupted.
Educators around us worry about the mental and social health of our children and young people, who since March have been sequestered, banned from many normal social activities, many lacking any kind of regularly scheduled activities that lend themselves to healthy intellectual, physical and social development.
Politically, we’re really not very stable. We watch and read the news and we see protests, rioting, anger. We see politicians who seemingly are more at odds than ever, as they ramp up for the Nov. 3 election.
A lot of this we can blame on horrible miscarriages of justice, most recently in the form of killings of a number of black people by police, and we see masses reacting with fury, turning against the only entity that can provide them the safety and security spoken of in our Constitution.
Some begin to question authority. Some doubt the data that ostensibly is driving the decisions governing our lives, the news reports based on that data and those authorities.
Times are uncertain.
Emotion, as any baseball coach knows after being thrown out following an argument at home plate with the umpire, is often a poor foundation for rational decisions and arguments. Throughout history anger has provoked change, but it’s often been messy and destructive.
Yet, that’s exactly what is being employed in cities’ avowals to reduce their public safety funding.
Any of us who watched what happened in the “Autonomous Zone” in downtown Seatttle could see pretty clearly how a “free” society will function: The strong and aggressive will prey on the weak and passive and, without a government to provide security, anarchy reigns.
As Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat put it, “After the shootings in the past few days near the Capitol Hill anti-police protest zone, the call went out, paradoxically, for the help of the one thing the protest is most arguing against.”
He noted that city officials were speaking out of both sides of their mouths in advocating the defunding of police but calling for police protection to, at least allow medical personnel to access the scenes of chaos, and the protesters themselves realized why police are important.
Blaming law enforcement as a whole for horrible deeds perpetuated by a few of the personnel from the nearly 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States is as logical a move as closing down all schools because some 500 (in 2015, the most recent year for which statistics are available) out of the 3.7 million teachers in the United States were arrested for sexual abuse (note, that is “arrested,” not “convicted”).
Or banning sports because a few players are arrested or caught cheating.
Or rejecting religion because a few ministers or priests have turned out to be wolves in sheep’s clothing, or some practitioners in the pews are hypocrites.
It’s insanity. But that’s how people are thinking and it’s dangerous.
Anybody who’s had a basic logic class in school should recognize the fallacies at play in the unrest we’re seeing: attacking the speaker instead of addressing the message; mischaracterizing what an opponent is really saying in order to tear them down; ridiculous simplification of options (“you’re either for us or you’re against us”), etc. This kind of thinking is rampant in the public arena today.
Locally, we’ve experienced a series of protests, one a Freedom Rally espousing personal liberty and constitutional rights, and another billing itself as a Black Lives Matter protest. We see these as reactions to the times we live in, including what’s been described above.
Thankfully, outside of a few airhorn blasts and shouting matches, the rallies have been relatively orderly and peaceful.
In the approximately two months they’ve stood on the corner of Main Street and 15th Avenue, waving American and Trump support flags, the Freedom Rally participants have advocated, by their own admission: free speech; the right to keep and bear arms; support for family and community; support for police; the right to engage in business without interference from the government; and peace.
The BLM participants’ focus has been more directly on condemning racism and emphasizing that African American citizens, in particular, deserve equal treatment.
In today’s ultra-divisive political climate, each side seems to take steps to distinguish and isolate itself from the “opposite” side.
Really, where do most of the participants in these rallies really disagree – at least those who have not been swept into the polarization that is gaining ground in our nation?
Outside of the anger, frustration and uncertainty that feeds the general irritation many of us feel, we really wonder how far apart these supposedly opposing groups really have been.
Black lives matter? We suspect that few, if any of those who have participated in all of the Freedom Rallies would exclude African Americans from their response that “all lives matter.” They do. All lives do matter, to God and to our Constitution, though the rules of both are violated frequently by imperfect mortals.
Free speech? Check. Check. – unless participants have been swept away by the self-righteous “Woke” social justice mentality that “if you’re not with us, you’re a heretic/the enemy/dangerous to society” thinking that is rapidly gaining ground in our world.
Support for families? The community? Depends on definitions, obviously, but at face value what the demonstrators on the opposite street corners want for their families may not be that different, as long as abortion isn’t in the mix.
Of course there may be differences on, say, guns or views of healthy government, but really, how much common ground do these rallies really have?
And that’s the point.
Our society is divided, but outside of the anger and frustration, should we really be this far apart?
As Rodney King was quoted as saying after five days of rioting – that left 63 people dead, 2,383 injured, more than 12,000 arrested and more than $1 billion in property in Los Angeles following the acquittal of police officers accused of beating him: “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all JUST get along? Can we get along?”