Violence, looting and arson engulfed Minneapolis, Los Angeles,
and other cities this week, played out in endlessly recycled video clips of mob
madness on our screens.
And we wonder, "Why?"
The myopic, yet narrowly
accurate answer is that -- in scenes echoing such civil breakdowns in past years and
decades -- a handful of criminal opportunists can quickly turn peaceful protests into
riots, steering the desperate masses into acts they will later individually regret . . .
while the thugs sparking it all could not care less.
But history teaches us that
wherever trust, justice, hope, and mutual respect are absent, anger and madness
waits to fill the vacuum. And this has been true for all ethnicities, racial
strife, political rage, religious hatred sadly being universally human (https://www.brainz.org/riots/).
Now, we see black faces,
twisted in rage over the death of another African-American man fatally injured
during an arrest exhibiting excessive force. But look beyond the sensational,
incendiary in themselves clips on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, et al, and you also will see
faces of our brothers and sisters sobbing amid those truly mean streets; others
scream in impotent angst; some pray, and most deplore their legitimate
grievances being hijacked by violence and destruction . . . mayhem that
undercuts the message we should hear.
This is not a new pattern in
America. In the late 1960s, riots scourged Chicago, Washington, D.C.,
Baltimore, Kansas City. Louisville and many other cities. At their roots were
racial oppression, segregation, and economic hopelessness in the slums, ignited
by grief and anger after Martin Luther King Jr. -- the prophet of non-violent
protest -- was gunned down.
Mixed into this cauldron, too,
were anti-Vietnam War protests. And again, given human nature, non-violent
protests morphed into darkness as mobs picked up rocks, sticks, Molotov
cocktails, and firearms to battle police, and to "burn baby, burn,"
as the cry went at the time.
And here we are, half a century
later. Trillions of dollars spent on education, jobs, urban development, welfare,
anti-gang programs, wars on drugs, etc., etc. Technological advances and social
engineering unheralded in modern history. So much has changed.
And yet, so much has not
changed at all. For
this truth remains, as it has from the beginning of humanity: our hearts are
broken. That "image of God" we bear is tainted too often by our
choices of pride over humility, materialism over charity, offense over
forgiveness, hatred over understanding.
When no one listens, the
desperate scream louder. Unaddressed pain and injustice eventually will bring
anarchy and the Abyss, that dark chasm Nietzsche warned stares back at those who gaze into it for too long.
True for individuals. True for
communities, for nations, and for civilizations.
Lord have mercy, we repeatedly pray in services at my Orthodox Christian
parish church.
We all need that mercy. And we
all must somehow learn to give it to our fellow flawed humans, as well.
