Category: The World We’re In

Update: As many of you have already let me know, this blog post didn’t really communicate the point I was trying to make very well. Eric Friedman did a much better job writing a far more thorough and detailed view of the issue I was trying to get at – you’ll be better served by reading his words instead of mine. His post can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/ericjamesguyfriedman/posts/10100454907518647

I’ll leave my original blog entry I wrote below, for discussion and history’s sake.

Here in Harrisburg, we had a protest turn violent for a brief period around the middle of the afternoon.

By that point, the protest had been going on peacefully for a few hours. A gentleman by the name of Kevin Butts, attending the protest with his family, shared his experience on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/281283225639307/permalink/974314879669468/. From what he and others saw, the violence only started when a group of white adults in their 20’s and 30’s with backpacks showed up and started “plotting shit”. At this point he decided it was probably a good idea to pack up and take his wife and child home.

Shortly after he left, the protest took a brief turn for the violent, and protesters were pepper sprayed.

A good friend of mine recently shared an article, whose writer blames events like this on left-leaning Democrats. The writer states that weekends where protesters are pepper sprayed (and all the other mayhem that seem to go along with them) will keep happening when Democrats react violently to another lost election if Trump is re-elected in November. The article got me thinking – I do think these kinds of weekends will keep happening if Trump wins in November. However, I also think these kinds of weekends will keep happening if Trump does not win in November. Weekends where protesters are pepper sprayed are not a left vs. right issue – they are symptoms of a significantly larger issue we are continuously facing.

The symptom of the issue is this: Large demographics of our society have lost trust in a system that they no longer believes works for them and in their best interest. Colored people feel like they’re under constant scrutiny, and are pressured with having to fear for their safety because of a set of genetics they can’t do anything about. Rural uneducated adults feel like they’ve been stiffed by what the world has turned into. Poor people feel like they’re trapped with no real viable escape. Working adults feel like their efforts are being exploited to support an increasingly lazy population. Young people trying to succeed are saddled with debt; old people remember the past with rose-colored glasses and wonder Why Can’t Everything Be Like It Was Then.

To an extent, everybody blames it on the system. To a larger extent, each demographic blames the issues facing them on other demographics. Black people blame white people, rural uneducated blame young indebted people, young people blame old people, old people blame everybody, etc, etc. Despite there being much less separating the people in these demographics than is immediately apparent, and despite everybody losing trust in the system, individual demographics seem intent on lashing out against and blaming other demographics for the problems they’re experiencing. And this, this is why weekends where protesters are pepper sprayed will continue to happen.

The problem with “The System” (so to speak) is that it was built by a time, and it was built for a time, that is now past. Many attitudes that we have today stem from actions and events that occurred 50 years ago. Laws and rules that make no sense today made a lot of sense 50 years ago. The lack of laws and rules that we have in several key areas were laws and rules that nobody thought would be a problem back 50 years ago. “The System” having trouble with being built by the past for a time that is now past is nothing new – 50 years ago, many attitudes, laws, and rules were shaped by events that had happened 50 years prior to that. (Think eg. the flower power movement and protests against the military in the 60’s / 70’s, etc).

Weekends where protesters are pepper sprayed can only be mitigated by how adaptive and adept a system is to the current times it is facing. A system that is more adept and more adaptive will see fewer weekends like these, as less large-scale problems will fester that individual members can blame each other on. A system that is less adept and less adaptive will see itself coming apart bit by bit, until a breaking point is reach where either the system adapts, or falls apart. It’ll start with individual members blaming each other, but over time these groups will unite, find the common root(s) of their issues, and work together as a larger conglomerate to avenge each other’s injustices (at which point a new system is often formed). Either one could quite viably happen here.

I present to ya’ll two men.

The first man was born and raised in his country. His country was all he had ever known as a way of life; he liked it, sure, but every day he was busy with his life and with his duties in the private sector of that country, and often he didn’t think too much about it.

The second man was born and raised in a different country. For various reasons, he was not happy with his country; he saw the way the government in that country was oppressing people, looked at the amount of work that would have to be done to change, looked at what he was capable of contributing, and decided that either he was likely powerless to do anything about it, or his family was in too much danger while they stayed in the country he was born and raised in. They had heard of the country of the first man, and after much consideration and effort, the man and his family moved away from the country they were born and raised in to the country of the first man, as that one would not have the tyranny of the country they were from.

They did all this knowing that their native language would not be the primary language in the country of the first man, knowing that they would rarely if ever again see any of their family or friends in their native country, knowing that they would have to learn completely new customs and ways of life, and knowing that the immigration standards of this new country were rigorous enough that they may go to a lot of time and effort and end up getting stuck and not going anywhere in the end.

Now, which do you think will work harder, be more humble and gracious of his opportunity, and be a generally better citizen, striving to learn new things about their country and participate in building its government… the first man or the second?

Perhaps the second man and his family may even be from a “shithole” country. Does that mean that the country of the first man should not welcome them in with open arms? Shouldn’t this mean that the first country of the first man would see more people like the second man, as many brave and compassionate people in the second man’s country would want to do what’s right for them and their families and children and escape its tyranny and hopelessness? It seems to me that any country that’s as great as the second man thought of the country of the first man should be eager and excited to see such people join their ranks.

Deep down we are all people, and we are more the same than different regardless of where we happen to be from. Just because one happens to be from a “shithole” country does not mean they are a “shithole” person, just as being from the “land of the free and home of the brave” does not mean that you are not a slave to your fear and a coward.