Civil Appeasement
Let’s be completely forthright here. There are two things going on right now. The are literally as different as night and day.
During the daytime there are peaceful demonstrations, memorials, protests, etc. None of us should have any beef with these people. I think they are misguided because 1) such things accomplish little or nothing and 2) many of them are born of the completely silly notion that they will somehow quell the other thing. This latter reason marks them as a form of appeasement, but I do not really care about appeasement from misguided citizens, they are free to do as they will within the bounds of the law, which to date they seem to be doing. But the beasts come out at night.
At night we find the violence, the looting, the vandalism, and worse. This is no longer a riot, this really is an insurrection. I base this assertion on the simple fact that it has gone on too long. The Rodney King riots were spent in a few days. The post-Ferguson actions came in fits and starts over a somewhat longer period of time, but waxed and waned with what was happening in the moment. Both were obviously responses to events. What is happening now is a different sort of thing. This has lasted for at least seven continuous days, has appeared to be crescendoing, and is national in scope. All indications are of the clear presence of an real and lethal enemy.
Andrew McCarthy has written a marvelous piece on the legal basis for the President’s use of the military. In it, he thinks we are dealing with an enemy within, “The violent radicals are Americans, and they are threading through crowds of Americans who are exercising their constitutionally protected rights to assemble and protest.” I am not so sure about that, but I must add I am dealing in pure speculation here. There is clearly much money and much organization behind these night time activities. Given the power of social media it is distinctly possible to agitate and organize from outside the country. So while the actors seem indeed to be “American radicals,” to paraphrase McCarthy, I cannot help but wonder if they are not created, organized and funded by foreign interests. This is why we have agencies like the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. I am sure they are working it.
But regardless of who the enemy is, there is clearly an enemy of malevolent intent present in the night. This is what makes the appeasement efforts in the daytime so misguided. Malevolence like this cannot be appeased. It is oh so tempting to invoke Chamberlain and Hitler here, but that is too easy and history is hard. Let’s consider a more homespun example. Suppose you are, as I once was, on offensive lineman on a football team. You line up on scrimmage, the play begins and a linebacker comes at you full tilt and flat out punches you as he tries to get past into the backfield. Sure its a foul, but the ref missed it. What do you do? Well, you can complain to the ref, but telling a guy he is doing a bad job generally does not get you the help you are looking for. You could get out of the guy’s way next time and avoid getting your bell rung, but you also sacrifice your backfield. That’s asking for the bench. That’s also appeasement, it is a form of simply quitting. Or you could kick the guy someplace where it hurts a lot next time he comes at you. Yeah, you’ll probably end up with the flag, but you can bet that guy, or any other guy, will never approach you that way again. It’s funny how coaches never seem too upset with fouls like that.
What McCarthy makes plain is that we cannot afford to quit in the face of this enemy. With that I agree entirely. I cannot tell if the weak response of many, if not most, local law enforcement agencies is due to a policy of appeasement or an inability to distinguish between the day and the night. Sometimes I wonder if the latter is used as cover for it actually being the former. But regardless the reason, the single most salient fact is there is clearly an enemy present and acting. That enemy is using our domestic strife as cover for their activities, but if you can look past your own position in that strife for just a moment, the presence of the enemy is completely apparent.
We used to say, “Politics ends at the shoreline.” It was meant to say we set aside our domestic squabbles when we were faced with an enemy. We don’t pay much attention to that anymore. That is a luxury our geographical isolation has permitted us. Even in the jet age, borders and boundaries were real and defensible. But this is the information age and with it borders and boundaries have become very difficult to defend. And so we find ourselves with an enemy within. Fortunately, if we focus on our enemy, not on our internal struggles, he remains fairly easy to identify. He is the guy looting the store or vandalizing the landmark. Appeasing him will not make him stop because he is getting what he wants. We have to prevent him from getting it and we have to do so forcefully.
Then and only then will order be restored.
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