Where are all the protester protesters?
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| Black Lives Matter protest of the George Floyd murder. Note the distances between people and the percentage of people not wearing masks. // photo by Kelly Lacy |
Remember how a few short weeks ago, many were all up in arms about people protesting those that are protesting the lockdowns? It seems like a whole generation ago, doesn't it?
What happened to those people? They were calling those protesters murderers and grandma killers. There was a lot of coverage on those protests calling them scientifically illiterate and idiot conspiracy theorists. The coverage painted them in the worst light possible. The worst of those protesters were spotlighted as the broad sentiment of the movement as a whole.
With the George Floyd protests, they seem to have completely vanished. What, protesting when it's against one's ideology is murdering people, but suddenly when it aligns with your ideology, it's okay?
Yes, the two situations are not symmetrical. But it's not like one side is the only one with legitimate grievances. Many lockdown protesters had families to feed and without being able to work, they genuinely felt threatened.
Protesting the murder of George Floyd is also important, but it doesn't appear that many of the protesters are even aware of the basic causes of police aggression nor do most of them seem particularly interested in it outside of stoking the flames of the race narrative.
The politicians have been no different. They have praised the George Floyd protests while at the same time, handed out steep fines to those protesting other causes, including a gathering to mourn the death of a prominent Hasidic rabbi. Likewise, the police department threatened the Lemp family from protesting Duncan Lemp's murder at the hands of the police with fines. I also find it unlikely that people now advocating for Floyd protests would be so accommodating with Lemp protests.
Groups of healthcare workers were also very critical of the lockdown protesters. But now they inexplicably support protests. In the Politico article, an epidemiologist, Jennifer Nuzzo, was quoted saying "We should always evaluate the risks and benefits of efforts to control the virus. In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus."
Yes, maybe she should have followed her own advice in the first sentence two months ago when the protesters were talking about mental health declines, suicides, domestic violence, and drug abuse increases with lockdowns. Okay, she thinks the health risk is worth fighting "systemic racism", which I think is a gross misreading of the situation, which is actually "systemic statism", which is also worth protesting. But if that's the way she feels, that's fine. It's totally up to her to make that trade-off decision for herself. But it's also up to another individual to think that the health risk is worth fighting the state not allowing that person to provide for his or her own family, or to fight for the right to bury a deceased loved one.
What this sudden role reversal really does is make people look and think, "Oh, okay. So the pandemic wasn't really that bad after all? You just went ahead and pushed the narrative that made me lose my livelihood, and that's just fine with you? But now that your pet social justice cause is on the line, you flip your narrative?" Way to go out and lose public trust.
The only principled stand is that all of these protests (riots aside) are legitimate. The value and risk analysis obviously vary from person to person and it is not up to anyone to disallow others to come to their own conclusions regarding it. People that would claim one should be allowed and the another not are, quite simply, hypocrites.
With the George Floyd protests, they seem to have completely vanished. What, protesting when it's against one's ideology is murdering people, but suddenly when it aligns with your ideology, it's okay?
Yes, the two situations are not symmetrical. But it's not like one side is the only one with legitimate grievances. Many lockdown protesters had families to feed and without being able to work, they genuinely felt threatened.
Protesting the murder of George Floyd is also important, but it doesn't appear that many of the protesters are even aware of the basic causes of police aggression nor do most of them seem particularly interested in it outside of stoking the flames of the race narrative.
The politicians have been no different. They have praised the George Floyd protests while at the same time, handed out steep fines to those protesting other causes, including a gathering to mourn the death of a prominent Hasidic rabbi. Likewise, the police department threatened the Lemp family from protesting Duncan Lemp's murder at the hands of the police with fines. I also find it unlikely that people now advocating for Floyd protests would be so accommodating with Lemp protests.
Groups of healthcare workers were also very critical of the lockdown protesters. But now they inexplicably support protests. In the Politico article, an epidemiologist, Jennifer Nuzzo, was quoted saying "We should always evaluate the risks and benefits of efforts to control the virus. In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus."
Yes, maybe she should have followed her own advice in the first sentence two months ago when the protesters were talking about mental health declines, suicides, domestic violence, and drug abuse increases with lockdowns. Okay, she thinks the health risk is worth fighting "systemic racism", which I think is a gross misreading of the situation, which is actually "systemic statism", which is also worth protesting. But if that's the way she feels, that's fine. It's totally up to her to make that trade-off decision for herself. But it's also up to another individual to think that the health risk is worth fighting the state not allowing that person to provide for his or her own family, or to fight for the right to bury a deceased loved one.
What this sudden role reversal really does is make people look and think, "Oh, okay. So the pandemic wasn't really that bad after all? You just went ahead and pushed the narrative that made me lose my livelihood, and that's just fine with you? But now that your pet social justice cause is on the line, you flip your narrative?" Way to go out and lose public trust.
The only principled stand is that all of these protests (riots aside) are legitimate. The value and risk analysis obviously vary from person to person and it is not up to anyone to disallow others to come to their own conclusions regarding it. People that would claim one should be allowed and the another not are, quite simply, hypocrites.
