A protestor does not equal a looter.

A looter is not the same as an instigator/fire starter.

An instigator does not equate a hanger-on.

There are many parts to the body of people that we’ll call a riot or a mob or a protest.

That we like to tie them all together as one is the main reason that we’re in the position we’re in as a society. Those who wish to tie all members of the protests and insurrection and damage are just wrong.

And your own failure to think critically and discern is solely on you.

The peaceful protestors have a First Amendment right to assemble and protest not just police brutality but the officer killing of a black man merely under suspicion – and not even something serious but the suspected attempt to pass a fake $20 bill. A video shows George Floyd telling the officer he can’t breathe and this continues on until you see Floyd’s head some to rest on the asphalt as he’s passed out.

And then dead.

The looter has no right to do what they’re going but they tend to show up as opportunists, regardless of whether is a racial protest or white folks protesting a Final Four loss. They are not protestors and should not be regarded as such.

The instigators must be broken up into even smaller subsets. Some are just pretend anarchists who have little grasp of history or morality or the body politic. They are going to burn out of a sociopathic need to damage under the pretense of political action.

As we know from the FBI, one of the subsets are white supremacists who will do damage in order to bring heat on black protestors.

Finally, the instigators include those who are righteously pissed and who believe decades of deaths of innocent black men and women have done unanswered and the only thing that will wake up a complacent society is damage. Someone must pay before people care.

Those who suggest they were on the side of black folks before the looting and damage began are utterly full of shit.

Because the death of innocent black people has merely moved from lynching to so-called accidents by police and vigilantes. And the courts have agreed.

I talked to my genius kid last night, the one with the big brain and the bigger heart. We both call ourselves writers but we didn’t know what to say.

This is what I decided to say, what to write.

For tomorrow, I down into the rabbit hole of the Reichstag Fire and violate my longstanding fight against Godwin’s law.