Tuesday, June 2, 2020

One Man’s Very Brief Opinions about the Current Rioting ©

I am angry!  That doesn’t happen often.  Even less frequently do I express it publicly.  But I am angry, and I found something to help me express what I’m feeling.

I’m angry about the senseless rioting going on in America.  It started several days ago in 30 cities as an organized protest of the death of a black man at the hands of white police in one of America’s cities.  I’ve been through this inanity before–Watts, Rodney King, Trayvon Martin and others.  But, my anger is not about the "Black Lives Matter” movement or racism, although I deplore both it and mindless police brutality.  What gets my goat is the senseless rioting, the destruction of property, the theft of property, the injury inflicted on others–all allegedly an expression of anger of the black community and their sympathizers over this injustice.  Their anger and their frustration, I may not totally understand as a white man, but I try to understand and I try to sympathize.

What I really do not understand and TOTALLY abhor is the lawless violence they are inflicting on the entire nation, let alone individual communities that had nothing to do with the injustice they are resisting.  From my safe perch here in a secluded mountain valley, it appears to me that much of what we are witnessing is using that injustice as an excuse for hate, riot, theft, and violence.  The very lawlessness and injustice they claim to protest is met with fomented lawlessness and injustice nationwide.  It is not meeting like with like, in kind or in scale. 

If it is justified as like meeting like, the result is not the reformation of society, the elevation of society, the reclamation of society, or ennobling or bettering society in any manner.  It is, in fact,  pure descent to the lowest common denominator of barbarism.  It is declension not progress.  It brings to mind the amazing and evocative statement of Terryl Givens as he describes what he calls the “ancient mafia” of The Book of Mormon–the Gadianton Robbers.  Here is Givens:
The ancient mafia erupts on the scene ... a few decades before Christ.  The many layered story Mormon relates is striking not for its depiction of physical violence and destruction, seen so often in Book of Mormon warfare.  This is rather a portrait of the psychological dimensions of evil, and takes us from hypocrisy and self-justification through willful blindness and stupidity to what may be the most chilling stage of all-blithe indifference to ones own complicity in the moral decay of a society.(1)
I believe what we are witnessing these horrible days is an expression of the psychological dimension of evil, laced with, nay, surfeited with hypocrisy, self-justification, willful blindness, and stupidity.  Most importantly those who engage in these activities are complicit–deeply complicit and deeply indifferent–to the moral decay with which they both wittingly and unwittingly infect the society they pretend to reform.

The last time unbridled barbarism got control of things the world was temporarily paralyzed by the challenge, which eventually ended in a catastrophic global conflict. 

Let’s think together again, soon.

Notes:

1.  Terryl L. Givens, The Book of Mormon: A Very Short Introduction, New York: Oxford University, 2009, 58, emphasis added.

3 comments:

  1. Too bad we aren't all as angry at the way our black brothers and sisters continue to be treated.

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    1. You apparently feel like my anger is misdirected. Do you suggest that I join the people around the nation in their mindless anger to riot, vandalize, loot, and inflict violence. If so, anonymity is a safe place from which to encourage such a position. If you only think I have my priorities mixed up, I prefer to think for myself and look at BOTH sides. In this case I see the continuation of a dangerous indifference to the negative effects this anger and violence is having and will continue to have on our society. They seem to forget, or just don’t care, that man is in custody and faces trial for the crime. In either case it demonstrates my point about the indifference to the effects of rioting and violence these people have. They would argue that they want the “rule of law” to be exercised fairly in behalf of blacks and other minorities, but they do not give a second thought about the effects (either short or long term) of their own abandonment of the rule of law. Where is the fairness and justice to the many innocent people this nonsense is inflicted upon? You do not correct a wrong with another wrong. An eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth on this scale, doesn’t just leave the perpetrator blind and toothless, but demands that others in the society, regardless of how innocent, also lose their sight and teeth. Between us, I believe resisting this devolution to pagan barbarism is equally as important as fighting for justice and good treatment of all regardless of race, creed, color, or sexual orientation. I'm sorry if this agenda offends you, but there seems to me to be plenty of rioters expressing the anger you wish for, I thought it worthy to express mine on another side of the issue.

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