At about 11 AM Eastern Standard Time, in a relatively obscure city in Virginia, violence erupted as two factions of protesters on opposing sides of an issue clashed in a small park. A few hours later, onlookers were aghast as a car driven by a member of one faction plowed into a small crowd of members of the opposing faction, killing one. Shortly after this, a three car crash injured several more people. After scouring the media, I've found that this is all the information that everyone can agree on over a day that will live on in history, until the next Antifa demonstration.
I was on my way to the bank to get some cash this morning for utility payments when I heard the news. I had intended to catch up on some podcasts while I was making the drive, but forgot my iPod at home, so after grabbing some breakfast, I just put Fox News on to catch up on some headlines. All that I could make out initially was that the reporter sounded like he was in the middle of a war zone, and my first thought was that the DPRK had made landfall on Guam or Los Angeles. I did finally determine that there was a massive demonstration going on in Charlottesville with no inkling or idea of what had caused it. It was a full 20 minutes before I was informed that the riots had broken out over a statue of General Lee, and another 10 beyond that before I found out that there were two factions of protesters at war with each other.
As my trip went on, and my banking business was finished, I continued listening. Fox quickly devolved into the hardline right talking points of bussing in protestors and Antifa and Black Lives Matter. There were reports, as well, of the original faction being alt-right white nationalists shouting about "Unite the Right" (alone, in my truck, I literally said out loud, to nobody, "get the name of my political party the hell out of your mouth" to the sound of one of these racists calling himself "right-wing".).
After I got home, I had another project I had to finish, so my attention was drawn away from this for a while, but I did attempt to do some web searching to try and find something non biased. 30 minutes of searching netted me nothing except for a lot of professional news anchors crying that the evil white men wanted to preserve a statue from the Civil War, and how swift justice was served by the brave counterprotesters. After I closed the New York Times's webpage, I went on to find other editorials about how our sitting president orchestrated this from a golf resort and how his twitter silence meant that he was nodding in approval. When I was done with NBC, I realized that mainstream media was going to get me nowhere.
As bad as all the bias is, Social Media is even worse. While I have discontinued my use of Facebook for personal reasons, I couldn't help but try and get some answers from people's 140 character analyses on Twitter. I was very surprised to find that every person who has a Twitter account has a very confident Ph. D. level understanding of what happened in Charlottesville, and the 500 year history of what led up to it. The only problem I had was that none of the stories seemed to line up with each other in any sort of comprehensive fashion.
So here I am, with no real knowledge of what happened in Charlottesville, who took the first strike, and what it means for the country. All that I do know is that, after a petition to remove a statue of General Robert Lee, and an injunction to block it, there was a big fight to decide whether to keep it there or not. One side says that it's important to history, and the other side says that the history is evil. Personally, I think it's important to keep some knowledge about the Civil War. You remember that war, right? It's the one that Black Lives Matter and the Democrats desperately want you to remember happened, but don't want you to remember anything about.
I have a couple of takeaways from this event. The most obvious one is the one that I mentioned before. These White Nationalist/Supremacists need to stop calling themselves Republican, because they are absolutely not. They are the descendants of Southern Dixiecrats that got betrayed by the Democrat Party when they managed to get the scary black man out of the projects where they think he belongs and put him through the Primaries. Trust me, if Dr. Carson had made it through the primaries, all those ignorant Southern Neo-Nazis would be card carrying Democrats again, or would have broken off and found a third party to worship. Don't get me wrong, Republicans will gladly take their votes. It would be political suicide to stand behind a Neo Nazi in the voting booth and say "you better not vote for me." But these guys can't go around telling people that they espouse the same views as the rest of us when that's simply not the case. When David Duke goes around tweeting that Trump should do well to remember who got him into office, Duke must remember that it was centrist Americans taking a stand against extremism and socialism that got him elected.
Extremism leads me into my other big takeaway from all of today's mess. Our President, and many other members of our government took to Twitter today to either support BLM, or condemn both sides for their violence. As I was trying to get to the bottom of all of this mess, I had a very George Carlin-esque thought about it. The buzz about the violence being deplorable on Twitter really cements the idea that at the very, very least; 75% of US residents fall in between the ideologies of White Supremacy and Antifa/BLM. Only the most extreme on either side of this situation want the war, and had I been the Charlottesville Mayor, or the Virginia Governor, I can honestly say I'd have had a really hard time making the decision to stop them. As long all of the innocent bystanders were out of harm's way, and they took the fight out into a field somewhere to minimize property damage, I can hear old George's voice saying "what's the problem with letting the two groups beat the shit out of each other for a while." The only real reason I can come up with as to why to stop the battle is because press coverage would cause the fight to escalate all over the country, and the people in the middle would quickly get drawn to one extreme or the other. In short, it seems like a good idea to let the zealots take care of each other; but there's no way, in today's polarized society, that it doesn't become the spark that ignites the powder keg of Civil War II.
About five years ago, I wrote an article that chilled me to the bone about a looming Second Civil War. Two years of violent protests had made me think about the deadly repercussions of extremism fueled by echo chambers and social media as I watched the supporters of Romney and those of Obama hurl insults at each other and wish each other dead. I've considered reposting that article numerous times because as bad as things were in 2012, more Social Media and bigger protests chill me even more. And 4G internet assures everyone that the first thought gets posted in 140 characters more than ever now, while in 2012 that technology was just beginning to become accessible to everyone. The grade on the slippery slope is getting steeper, and more and more people every day whisper about how a Civil War wouldn't be a bad thing. Extremism has an enticing way of making you feel like you're always right, but it's time for the citizenry of this country to start working together and make sure that we don't destroy each other, and ourselves in the process.
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