What right action isn't.

Musings on the George Floyd situation at present: riots occurring nationwide, just as the American people were starting to transcend their differences and unify in the face of COVID-19 lockdowns.  Very interesting timing.  I think these reactions speak of atomisation and conditioning; We saw it in Watts; We saw it after Rodney King; Ferguson; Baltimore and on it goes.  The political dialectic and those who speculate on it profit, while everyone else loses.  Be that as it may, I do wonder how many of the armchair activists on social media, lamenting the tragic death of this man, ever hired a black person?  

How many, pre-pandemic, championed the dogma of social-justice to their mostly white-liberal / progressive friends on social media while sipping soy lattes at their trendy coffeeshop; biked from their mostly white-liberal / progressive apartment buildings to their Tech or Creative job at their mostly white-liberal / progressive office?  I never knew George Floyd.  I’m sure he was a shade-of-grey just like the rest of us, but I can tell you that he was a human being; not a mere prop to be used in the virtue signaling gamesmanship of narcissistic protocol.  We should not flatter ourselves by pretending that we suddenly care about the fate of this man whose name was unknown before the events and circumstances that ended his life.  We should not presume to stand on the bodies of the dead, shouting our yawp of faux virtue across the rooftops of the world; expecting to be regarded as virtuous while doing nothing, sacrificing nothing in the everyday space between outrages.  We should not delude ourselves that virtue is to be gained merely by thinking the “correct” thoughts;  action and sacrifice have always been the minimum price to be paid for virtue. We should be able to distinguish vanity from virtue.  I think opportunity and entrepreneurship is what’s needed, not riots and protests; not puerile reactivity, or the wanton, thoughtless destruction of our own communities and futures. We should not be the dogs fighting for scraps under the master’s table.