Looting is justified as reparations to the oppressed. Burning stores and buildings is justifed as imposing a cost on those who disagree, making their capitulation less costly than their disapproval. Neither withstands minimal rational scrutiny, and only the truest of believers buy the sophistic and fallacious arguments, not that they’re reluctant to spew them so others conclusively know they’re fools.

But blocking a highway?

BLACK LIVES MATTER illegally blocking traffic and protesting on NB-I5 Freeway.

Moments later they get arrested by @wastatepatrol and cry victim. #seattleriots #seattleprotests pic.twitter.com/iEz8QlP1iP

— Katie Daviscourt?? (@KatieDaviscourt) September 4, 2020

And when Washington State Patrol Troopers arrested protesters, they did not take the consequences of misguided civil disobedience well.

Oh my god. Washington State Patrol is violently assaulting people from the Morning March on I-5 right now. pic.twitter.com/DoJ2M5axyY

— Spek (@spekulation) September 4, 2020

He broke the law. He was arrested. He resisted arrest. He was forcibly taken into custody without being beaten, tased or shot. All in all, this is how it’s supposed to work, though there is neither a story of this protest nor an editorial praising the fine work of the troopers to be found in the Paper of Record.

When the sheer stupidity of this inanely counterproductive protest was raised, the woke rose to challenge those who failed to see how centuries of oppression, life-and-death existential issues, weren’t suficiently critical to do anything necessary to end racism.*

“I know they’re protesting issues that are matters of life and death, but they kept me from getting home in time for Jeopardy, so f em.”

Some demanded an explanation of why blocking a highway was so bad that it shouldn’t be done,** apparently lacking the capacity to grasp that there are a great many people on the road, some of whom have nowhere critical to go, but some of whom do. Whether to say good-bye to a dying parent or to get one’s child to the hospital, we don’t know, but neither do those entitled narcisissts who shut down the highway.

But even if someone had no place special to get to, no critical problem that would be exacerbated by sitting in traffic on a blocked highway for a few hours, so what? A bunch of kids who are putting on a third-grade performance aren’t entitled to control their lives, even if they only want to watch Jeopardy after a day’s work.

Yet, the facile diminution of other people’s right to live their lives, of little concern because they’re probably oppressers regardless of any variable that suggests otherwise in the minds of smug children, doesn’t compare to the lie that this protest, this blockage of a highway, is about “life and death.” Yes, the issue is of the utmost importance. But this protest, this specific act of closing a highway because it popped into the head of some passionate idiot, saves no one, except in the chaos theory fantasies of the woke.

And to what end? If someone is antagonistic to their cause, being stopped and held by a guy who sucks at trombone isn’t going to change their mind. If someone supports the cause, their chest will not swell with pride knowing that by sitting in a parking lot on a highway, they have saved the life of a black person. They’re just going to be pissed.

Most importantly, will anyone who isn’t antagonistic but hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid be swayed by this display of hubris and hatred to align themselves with these passionate advocates for justice? They didn’t kill anyone, but they might well feel the urge after being locked in traffic for a while. It’s unlikely this experience will endear to them whatever performative pleas their captors were selling.

The hyperbole of death and oppression justifies anything they do, via the irrational connections they spew in response to condemnation of their actions. Perhaps some mean what they say, even if it’s idiotic, but the sense is that many, perhaps most, are using dead black guys as an excuse to have some fun making random people’s lives miserable. Making up an excuse to justify their actions is easy if reason and logic never enter into their heads.

But they save no one. They convince no one. They win neither hearts nor minds. At best, they piss off their friends. At worst, they reinforce the anger of their opponents and maybe lose those they might have won over. Was that the point, to drive away as many people who might have supported their cause as possible? Do these genuises think of such things? Do they care, or do they just want to have a good time wreaking havoc to show that they can?

Blocking a highway filled wth people in cars who never did anything to George Floyd is one way to make your point. In Rochester, as had earlier occurred in D.C., they tried another route.

https://twitter.com/ScooterCasterNY/status/1302060108898357257

Are these your political thought leaders? Are these the people you want involved in solving intransigent social problems? Are these people going to stop unless they’re forced to stop? And how can they be forced to stop? They aren’t likely to leave you alone if you ask them nicely, so what’s the alternative? Or is this the way the it’s going to be, since no one wants the police, or worse, the National Guard, to engage in a massive use of force to end their attempt to force their will upon people eating dinner?

The argument remains that something must be done, and so they will do whatever is necessary to make that happen because their issue is life or death. Will we capitulate to the demands, whatever they are, of children*** who engage in really futile and stupid gestures?

*This twit was written by a young lawyer, who should have the capacity to think, to reason, to distinguish logical fallacies from rational thought, and to mount a modestly persuasive argument. He did not.

**This was asked by a young lawyer, for whom the closing of a highway raised no question of why it could present a problem to others. Andrew Fleischman was kind enough to explain, although I’m disinclined to explain something so fundamentally obvious to a lawyer.

***Children isn’t necessarily used here as a characterization of age, but rather maturity. To the extent it demeans 12-year-olds who know better, my apologies.