-Kanrabat- wrote:I'm not arguing if violence is "justified" or not. My point is, it doesn't make it right.
Because if violence and unrest is right to ensure change, then ISIS, HAMAS, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and so on, did nothing wrong.
I'm not arguing that it's right either. I have never argued that violence is a good method for ensuring change. What I'm arguing is that simply pointing at the problem and wanting it to go away does nothing to stop it. You have to introspect, figure out what led to this, and take corrective measures to make sure it never happens again. Violence such as we're seeing right now is a product of civil unrest and civil unrest among a population of people is a product of societal and environmental factors. As Dr. King said, "riots do not develop out of thin air.". Just saying "Violence bad" (a value which I hold to, let me reiterate that) and stopping the violence means nothing if you don't actually address the issues that led to that violence. And that doesn't mean you capitulate to the demands of the aggressors. I'm not arguing "oh well one of the bigger reasons the Nazis gained power was because they capitalized on the fact that Germany was left in severe poverty when the Treaty of Versailles put the entirety of the blame for World War 1 on them and made them foot the entirety of the bill. So therefore we should have given Hitler as much land as he wanted and let him kill any ethnic group he so pleased.". No. You reflect on what led to this and address the societal issues that caused it to happen. If we had just bombed the Nazis to hell and then left Germany in ruins (with no corrective action) there probably would've been another comparable dictator in a couple decades or so. Instead we punished those responsible, reduced Germany's ability to wage war, and then we supervised their reconstruction (not giving enough for them to gain power but making sure they had enough so that they didn't starve like they did post WW1). Bringing this back to Black Lives Matter, the violent protesters are wrong in their methods but they are right in their message. The police need serious reform and we need to do more for people in impoverished and poor communities than tell them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps when the vast majority of them don't have boots (speaking metaphorically, of course). Do what you can to limit the inevitable violence, but don't maintain a laser focus on only that and let that be the end all be all of the conversation.