Riots, race, law and order

Fred Reed has laid it on the line about the inevitable consequences if riots such as those in Charlotte a few days ago are allowed to continue.  Here's an excerpt.

When government will not or cannot enforce the laws, people prepare to go it alone. This merits attention. It won’t get it. Instead we will hear from the media about gun nuts and white racism, about slavery and discrimination and how we need to confiscate guns leaving black criminals as the only ones that have them. (It will not be expressed so candidly.) When part of the population arms to defend against attack by another part, it is time to think.

It is coming. One day rioting blacks will try to loot the wrong store, burn the wrong house, beat the wrong white man, and hell will cut loose. Talking about law-abiding blacks, law-abiding whites, will make no difference at all. There were law-abiding Protestants, law-abiding Catholics in Ireland. Did that stop the violence?

Three solutions, or ameliorations, offer themselves: Repression of rioting and enforcement of the law. Segregation. And having it go on forever or blow up hugely. Choose. Refusal to choose selects option three.

The problem is not racist police. It is racist blacks. Whites are not burning the businesses of blacks. White people are not sacking the stores of blacks. White people are not calling for the burning of black suburbs. White people do not play the Knockout game.
We are blaming the victims.

And we are encouraging disaster.

There's more at the link.  You really, really need to read the whole thing.  He lays it out logically, rationally . . . and mercilessly.  It really is that bad, right now.

Fred's right.  It is coming.  I know this.  I've worked with law enforcement for years, and I'm still in touch with many former colleagues.  I can assure you that right now, there are high-level meetings going on at federal, state and regional level, all over the country.  Law enforcement officers and administrators know that anger is growing, discontent is rising.  Ordinary, law-abiding citizens like you and I are asking, louder and louder, why rioters and extremists are permitted to get away with their actions while receiving nothing more than a legal slap on the wrist.  Business owners who are losing thousands, even millions of dollars to disruptions and destruction caused by rioters are asking - quite legitimately - why they should be forced to cover such costs when the state is allowing such destruction and such disruption to happen, instead of stopping it dead in its tracks.

People in neighborhoods all over the country are talking to one another, making plans about what to do if such disruptions come to their area, and discussing what they can do about it . . . legally or otherwise.  I know that for a fact, too.  I may be medically retired, but I'm still a chaplain and pastor, as well as a former military man, and I talk to people from those perspectives.  Some tell me what's on their minds and hearts, what's weighing on their souls.  I'm neither deaf nor blind to the realities of the situation.

The authorities know this is coming.  They also know they can't control it and they can't stop it.  Some to whom I've spoken have said bluntly that they have no intention of trying to control it.  In fact, I suspect those who actively resist the rioters will have an awful lot of sympathizers in the 'thin blue line' when the time comes.  Some may even have let their superiors know, informally, that any order to stop such organized resistance will be met with, if not outright mutiny, at best a very slow, lethargic response.  "By the time we got there, the trouble was over.  All we could do was clean up the mess.  We weren't able to locate any reliable witnesses - only a few radicals who were obviously making up everything they said.  The street cameras were 'shut down for maintenance' just before it happened, so there's no recording either.  Bottom line is, we've no idea who did it.  Pity about that."

I predict that one day in the not too distant future, one of the BLM-inspired riots is going to run headlong into an armed citizenry that's had enough of their s*** and won't take any more.  What happens then is going to make all the riots so far look like Sunday School picnics.

I hope and pray it doesn't get that far . . . but unless the authorities crack down on the rioters and their illegal behavior, it will, because people are going to crack down for themselves.  They've had enough.

Peter