Yeah I don’t recall Ferguson being anywhere near this level, and I paid close attention. I don’t recall people trying to attack/kill protesters until Charlottesville, and now we’re seeing it in numerous cities at once across the country, and we’re seeing actually destructive left-wing protests in numerous cities at once across the country.
I think that’s part of it, and I think you had a lot of accumulated anger over the years, but I think it goes beyond that… In just the last couple of months:
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We’ve been radically polarized over the response to a pandemic, which is disproportionately affecting the black and brown and poor communities. The right wing is calling it a hoax and decrying any efforts at safety/mitigation, while the GOP led by McConnell and Trump refuses to help blue states with extended benefits. This is an act of political violence.
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The economic fallout has led to unemployment in the neighborhood of 25% right now. This means a lot of people are sitting at home, they have time on their hands, they’re stressed, they’re angry, and this piled on.
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Millennials have been getting shitted on for 10-15 years now. Graduated into a once in a lifetime economic crisis, now staring down another one, meanwhile because we mostly live in cities, we are stripped of political power by gerrymandering… Many of us value a multi-cultural society with diversity. We have black and brown friends who we love, and this outrages us to a degree other generations of white folks are not outraged.
Put all that together at once… Put the George Floyd murder on top with the video… And this is what you get.