I wrote this for FB after reading tons of stuff dissecting the shootings there. It’s not about the shootings per se, but rather how violent demonstrations/riots work.
I’d like to make a couple, maybe a few, observations without violating the “72 hour we don’t actually know anything” rule. I would like to remind you guys that I have been in multiple mass demonstrations/riots in my younger and dumber days when I carried a “Press Pass.” I have been beaten, jailed, hidden under cars during the Weathermen attack on the South Viet embassy in D.C., dodged ‘bangers with rifles in the Overtown riots in Miami, even as a kid I broke curfew and watched neighborhoods in Memphis burn after Dr. King’s assassination.
I have been there, done that and, oddly enough, even gotten a couple of t-shirts.
1) All riots are pure chaos systems…that is, there are so many KNOWN, UNKNOWN and UNKNOWABLE factors acting on the system that it is beyond prediction. You, I.C.E. or the riot “controllers may THINK you all know what’s going on or what’s going to happen, but you’re wrong.
2) In a chaos system like a riot or violent process, there are no “observers,” including me, who with the exception of Memphis, was always being paid to be there. All “observers” are on one side or the other, and all observers affect the system, sometime disproportionally (such as media, known social media, “fake” media introduced to specifically alter the system, etc.).
3) A riot/violent protest is a “closed system,” that is, the system is driven by what is going on in the system. Training (and experience) .helps you keep your head when you’re in the soup. Battle-hardened veterans and law enforcement, Tier 1 guys, the elite Feds are trained to exist in chaos, but they are the exceptions (and I stand in awe).
4) This took me a while to learn — when you step into soup, you’re in the soup and the soup is your whole world. There is nothing but action and reaction. The faster the system spins, the harder it gets to keep your head. And if you’re “playing” — and I met a lot of “committed revolutionaries” on trust funds back in the day — there is a dangerous “ledge” where play stumbles into reality. Reality always wins.
5) In terms of advice, I can do no better than my dear friend John Farnam’s “Rule of Stupids:”
Don’t go to stupid places; don’t associate with stupid people; don’t do stupid things.
