So Friday night in Charlottesville, Virginia a group calling itself Unite the Right marched on the Robert E. Lee statue with torches, signifying their support for keeping the statue in place. It was largely a peaceful march, but it would be the precursor for what was to become on Saturday. On that day, the same group was scheduled to hold a legal protest, one which was temporarily and illegally blocked by the city's Vice Mayor, but ultimately approved by a local judge.
The Saturday protest was scheduled to begin at twelve noon but it never started. One half hour earlier, the Mayor of Charlottesville declared it cancelled and called out the police to disperse the crowd. It was not a huge crowd and prior to its start there was no violence occurring but that changed when both Antifa and BLM showed up, called counter-demonstrators by the press. And that's when things got out of hand, with water bottles flying, some filled with urine, yet none of the action by the counter-demonstrators, including throwing of bricks and fists, were ignored in all press reports. Of course, one person was killed and many injured by the driver of a car who ran into the crowd. The driver was recognized as a neo-Nazi type but he was not part of the organizing body for the original protest.
Other than the loss of death, what really bothers me is the fact that the Mayor apparently told his police to stand down, even though the dispersal forced the Unite the Right crowd to pass right through the Antifa and BLM crowd. Governor McAuliffe used a similar approach with the State Police, thereby creating some serious fighting, including the use of baseball bats.
And the other issue is the piling on against Trump. It seems that most of the Left and even some on the Right are not happy since Trump in his call for no violence didn't single out white supremacy groups. And why should he? After all white supremacists such as the KKK and neo-Nazis were joined in the mayhem by both Antifa and BLM troublemakers who came to Charlottesville singularly for that very purpose. Trump mentioning all in general who took such action was the right thing to do. He didn't want to make a statement that would be proven wrong, unlike his predecessor who always judged first and made excuses later. Anybody remember the Cambridge police incident, the Trayvon shooting or Ferguson? Snap judgment without facts is a dangerous trait for a major leader to display.
And what this entire story does is highlight the need for the rhetoric to calm down and the fists to be lowered, for until America faces our problems head on and truthfully, we'll never solve them. So how about the politicians for once keeping their mouths shut, let justice pursue its course and then sit down reasonably to discuss what took place and how to stop it. We can't do it by using groupthink and political correctness, but only by facing the honest truth directly. Are we big enough as a nation to do that? I hope so but sadly the jury is still out.
The Saturday protest was scheduled to begin at twelve noon but it never started. One half hour earlier, the Mayor of Charlottesville declared it cancelled and called out the police to disperse the crowd. It was not a huge crowd and prior to its start there was no violence occurring but that changed when both Antifa and BLM showed up, called counter-demonstrators by the press. And that's when things got out of hand, with water bottles flying, some filled with urine, yet none of the action by the counter-demonstrators, including throwing of bricks and fists, were ignored in all press reports. Of course, one person was killed and many injured by the driver of a car who ran into the crowd. The driver was recognized as a neo-Nazi type but he was not part of the organizing body for the original protest.
Other than the loss of death, what really bothers me is the fact that the Mayor apparently told his police to stand down, even though the dispersal forced the Unite the Right crowd to pass right through the Antifa and BLM crowd. Governor McAuliffe used a similar approach with the State Police, thereby creating some serious fighting, including the use of baseball bats.
And the other issue is the piling on against Trump. It seems that most of the Left and even some on the Right are not happy since Trump in his call for no violence didn't single out white supremacy groups. And why should he? After all white supremacists such as the KKK and neo-Nazis were joined in the mayhem by both Antifa and BLM troublemakers who came to Charlottesville singularly for that very purpose. Trump mentioning all in general who took such action was the right thing to do. He didn't want to make a statement that would be proven wrong, unlike his predecessor who always judged first and made excuses later. Anybody remember the Cambridge police incident, the Trayvon shooting or Ferguson? Snap judgment without facts is a dangerous trait for a major leader to display.
And what this entire story does is highlight the need for the rhetoric to calm down and the fists to be lowered, for until America faces our problems head on and truthfully, we'll never solve them. So how about the politicians for once keeping their mouths shut, let justice pursue its course and then sit down reasonably to discuss what took place and how to stop it. We can't do it by using groupthink and political correctness, but only by facing the honest truth directly. Are we big enough as a nation to do that? I hope so but sadly the jury is still out.
RSS Feed