10 Lessons We’ve Learned From The Recent Riots

I make it a habit to do an after-action review of every disaster I can find information about, not just those I experienced myself.

When we look at what happened and how people reacted to it, we can see what they did right and what they did wrong, learning lessons that can help us when we face something similar.

It has now been over 100 days since George Floyd died from the actions of a renegade police officer who used excessive force. The recently released bodycam footage and his criminal record show us that Floyd wasn’t a perfect angel.

But that’s immaterial. It is clear that excessive force was used in restraining him, which led to his untimely death. I haven’t seen a single commentator, on either side of the aisle, say, or even hint otherwise.

Floyd’s death was tragic, there’s no denying that. But so is what has happened since. The 100 plus nights have seen protests in 140 cities, with some cities, like Portland, Seattle, and Minneapolis. In many cases, those protests turned into riots, causing at least 29 deaths.

I don’t think there are many who still believe the protesting and rioting are about the death of George Floyd. Most realize that those protests have been hijacked by other forces, which are the ones behind the ongoing riots and violence. It is that which is the big concern, as a peaceful protest is an integral part of our constitutionally guaranteed rights. There is no way that attempts to bring about anarchy can be considered a reasonable reaction to the death of one man, no matter how he died.

Yet anarchy is exactly what we saw in Seattle’s CHOP, later renamed CHAZ. Protesters took over several blocks of downtown Seattle, calling it “autonomous” from not only the city but the country at large. The same was tried in other cities as well, although they were not successful.

But CHOP and CHAZ were actually much more peaceful than what’s been going on in other cities. While there have been those who have been using the term “mostly peaceful protests” in an effort to cover up the violence that has been happening, the reality is that there has been a considerable amount of violence. The issues being talked about basically have nothing to do with Floyd’s death, but rather about destroying our system and the American way of life.

Even though the name Black Lives Matter is still in use, that’s the organization, which actually has little in common with the movement. If you look at their “What we believe” page, you can find that it is a Marxist organization, which strongly supports the LGBT+ community and calls for the dissolution of the family unit. They have apparently partnered with ANTIFA, which is another Marxist group, bent on bringing about anarchy. That’s what we’re facing and those are the lessons to be learned.

Granted, some of these lessons are things we all knew before. But that doesn’t mean we should just brush them off. Rather, the current situation demonstrates how important knowledge is.

The Loudest Voices aren’t the Majority

According to a Gallup/USA Today poll, 42% of the people are conservatives, 35% are moderates and only 20% are liberals. The extreme left, which is the group that the rioters come out of, is an even smaller percentage than this. Yet they are the loudest voice in the country today, driving the Democrat Party farther and farther to the left.

Part of the reason why this group has the loudest voice is because of their support from both the mainstream media and Democrat politicians. But that’s merely amplifying their voice. The truth is, they are the ones making the most noise. This is dangerous, as it can make some people think that they speak for our country or for We the People, even though they don’t.

Nature Abhors a Vacuum

CHOP was supposedly created to be autonomous from any government. Yet it didn’t take long before a warlord took over the zone, establishing their own crude government. While that government wasn’t able to keep basic services running or even deal with a dumpster fire, they did make an attempt to keep order. That included checking IDs and not allowing anyone into their area unless they could demonstrate they belonged there.

Should a major disaster occur, chances are that we will see the same thing occurring. It doesn’t matter if you call it neighborhood defensive groups or warlords taking over. Someone is always going to step up to take control when the existing control disappears. It is most likely that those warlords will be either criminals who already have an organization or coming out of leftist groups like ANTIFA.

Just a thought for you to ponder over; wouldn’t it be better to be the one taking over an area, together with other survivalists, than to be a victim of those who do? Of course, that means taking responsibility for those living in that area, so you need to plan for it. But that might be better than open warfare against local warlords.

There is No Such thing as “Without Rule of Law”

With the high likelihood of warlords stepping in to take over in the event of anarchy, it’s doubtful that there will ever be a time where there is no rule of law, even in the wake of the worst disaster. Whatever law might exist could end up looking quite different than what we know today, but some law will exist, even if it is nothing more than the whim of the ruling warlord for that area.

This means that law during that time will be highly unpredictable. If you defend home and family from some of the warlord’s minions, you might receive a death sentence in reply. There’s just no way of knowing. But don’t think that you can just pretend its High Noon in the Old West. Make sure that your actions are justifiable as self-defense.

Violent People will be Violent, Especially when Restraints are Removed

Probably a large part there have been so many riots are that there are a lot of people with suppressed violent tendencies. Those tendencies have been increased by the stress of 2020, between the lockdowns and the loss of jobs. Looking for a release, at least some of those people turn to violence.

Mob situations provide a relatively safe place for these people’s violent nature to come out because they are hidden in the mob. This is part of mob psychology. The fact that they can’t be easily identified gives them what they recognize as the freedom to break the rules, in ways they normally never would.

There is No Safety

As long as there are people in the world who will turn to violence to get there way, there is no such thing as safety. Most of the people who have been killed or injured during the riots have been innocent bystanders. Why were they singled out for attack? Just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Truck drivers are being told now that they should drive through roadblocks. That’s not being said out of any sense of cruelty, but to protect the drivers. Should the mob blocking the road manage to stop a trucker, there’s a good chance that they’ll drag him out of his truck and beat him, perhaps even beat him to death.

We can’t assume that there are any limits with those who will break the law, especially in a time when they are being protected by politicians and the media. Until we see respect for the law reestablished in our government and the media, we can’t really expect it to show up anywhere else.

It is essential that we are always prepared to defend ourselves. At the same time, we need to use great restraint in how we defend ourselves. Becoming as bad as the lawbreakers, in an attempt to protect our own lives, is not the answer. We must also keep in mind that no matter how many rounds we carry, it will never be enough to take on a mob.

The Police Can’t Protect Us

Sadly, politicians in some of our nation’s cities are putting extreme restrictions on the actions of police, in the name of “police reform.” Recently, the police chiefs in a couple of those cities have put out statements to the public, telling them that they could no longer protect families and businesses, due to those restrictions and advising them to give criminals whatever they want.

Even in the best of times, the police were a reactive force, not a proactive one. The limitations they have operated under have made it impossible for them to stop crimes before they happen unless they just happen to be there at the time. It was always up to us to protect ourselves. They’ll come in later and make the chalk lines as part of their investigation.

Should the “defund the police” movement gain any traction like it seems to be doing in some cities, we can expect an increase in anarchy; or should I say an increase in warlords taking over some of our cities. When that happens, who knows what the end result will be.

Our Gun Rights are Fragile

While the Second Amendment guarantees our right to keep and bear arms, there are many today who don’t agree. These people are no longer satisfied with using political activism to try and take our rights away from us; some are now using their positions of authority to put us in jeopardy.

I’m concerned that the case of Mark and Patricia McCloskey in St. Louis is a harbinger of things to come. They live in a state which has codified the Castle Doctrine into law, allowing them to defend their property. Yet they are being charged with doing just that. The District Attorney has chosen to charge them for standing in front of their home defending it from a potential mob.

Fortunately for the McCloskeys, the governor of Missouri has already come out saying that he will pardon them if they are convicted. But what if that governor was anti-gun as well? Would there be any possibility of them defeating the charges against them?

This seems to be a case of political ideology trumping the law. As such, it is a scary example of how far some people will go to take our gun rights away from us. Just as with the gun confiscations that happened in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, it seems that there are those in politics, who will use whatever opportunity they can to trample our Second Amendment rights, regardless of what the law says.

Our Political Enemies Don’t Care About the Law

As part of the McCloskey case, the pistol that Patricia was holding was disassembled and reassembled, so that the DA would have a case against her. Apparently they had disabled it so that it could be used as a prop in a court case. But with it in that condition, she couldn’t be charged with breaking the law. So the DA ordered that the law be broken, making the gun usable again.

The political left seems to have no problem with breaking the law to serve a “higher good” or to redefining the law as they desire for that same “higher good.” The problem is, what they call good isn’t something that is beneficial to all, but rather their political ideology.

The Mob only Cares About Mob Rule

Perhaps the scariest thing to come out of these riots is the power that mob rule is displaying today. Politicians and corporate heads are bowing to the power of the mob and doing what they demand. Well-thought-out decisions are being replaced by a desire to keep from being a target.

This is democracy at its worst. The only ones who are voting are the mob and they are winning every battle, because of their willingness to use violence to achieve their goals. It doesn’t matter how many people those goals hurt in the process, they are determined to have things their way. Anything else is inconsequential.

Sadly, there are those who are bowing to the mob, reinforcing the idea that they have the power to impose whatever changes they want on society. While there have been those who have stood up to them successfully, they have clearly been in the minority.

If our laws become regularly suborned to the wishes of the mob, then it will be as if we no longer have laws or even lawmakers. The rest of our voices will be drowned out by the voices of the few; and that’s exactly what they want.

Black Lives Matter

It is clear that black lives matter movement is becoming a permanent part of our society. In and of itself, that’s not bad; we could consider it phase two of the civil rights movement. But to do that, we need to be able to separate it from the Black Lives Matter organization, as well as all the things that are being done in the name of black lives matter.

Once we get beyond all that, there is room to take an honest look at prejudice and inequality in our country. I can’t predict what that will reveal. But whatever it does, if we apply it honestly, it will bring us one step closer to the ideal of what this country was created to be.