Late Night Dining, Looting, and Pillaging (Part Two)

*This entry is the second part of a real time, first person excerpt, penned on the side of the 101 freeway on the outskirts of Los Angeles, by hand with an old Bic pen and a pad of yellow notebook paper, sometime between the hours of 9 PM and 2 AM. It is dated May 26, 2020, one day after George Floyd was killed and major American cities were rife with protest and riot.

So, a protest becomes a riot. In a riot, chaos reigns because emotions override belief. Base impulses and knee-jerk group think are triggered, bolstered by emulating fellow protestors/rioters. The most common sentiment expressed by those who are taking umbrage with protest fallout is the disdain toward looting, vandalism, property damage, and arson. It’s easy to see why eyes are drawn to it.

Thus, again with these simian brains of ours, our perceptions classify those actions as more dangerous than the abstract policies, or lack thereof, which likely set off the blaze that prompted said reactions in the first place. Criminal acts caught on real time helicopter camera feeds are sensational, they play colorfully on news footage, and those actions are what stick in our heads, even though that’s not the biggest problem in play.