About this Donnybrook in Chicago... (Part II)
I posted this yesterday and it was locked down because it wasn't about the primaries... ok. But I think it needs more debate.
Responses to the original post mostly boiled down to 'they started it'. Yes and no. When you descend in mass on a opposition rally, that's a provocation. You may have to right to freely expression of your ideas but if you walk to a fight you can't be surprised when you get one.
We know who these people are and where they get their information, or disinformation more accurately. If you poke them, they're going to react.
Already Trump has blamed Sanders for inciting this incident. And Trump has threatened to send his people to Bernie's rallies. Are we going to see that as an expression of free speech or a provocation when they do it to us?
I admire the willingness of the protesters to march into that rally and make themselves known, and heard. But if we keep doing that this thing is going to spin out of control very quickly. There will be serious injuries, and very possibly deaths. That's where this is heading.
I'm not saying back down. This is the fight of our lives. But that sort of direct engagement with a genned up mob is a bad idea. We should try to avoid violence whenever possible.
Here is the previous post:
For the record, I'm 57. I like you millennials. I think you're heads and hearts are in the right place. And, as a group, you admire intelligence. You have all of these wonderful new digital toys and it takes intelligence to make them behave as you would like. Not every recent generation has admired their brain trust the way you have.
I was completely in awe of the Occupy movement. The systems of communication, the succinct, practical and non-inflammatory documents that came out of that movement. They were things of beauty.
So I'm saying this with respect. We need to direct that awesome brain power in a nonviolent direction. Yesterday was a bad scene. Direct head to head confrontations like that need to be avoided. I rarely write posts but I'm casting a seed I hope will take root somewhere useful. We need to use our brain power to bring about this change in a creative, humorous, instructive, non-violent way, to the greatest extent possible. When those folks start to anticipate that sort of confrontation it's going to get really ugly. People are going to get hurt. Let's just think about that going forward.
But I'm with you, let's make the change.
