What else do you call them?
How else do you describe looters? Arsonists burning cars and businesses for
fun? Those who shoot out the front of a
jewelry store to grab merchandise? Those who burn a police station – after they
attack police in cars by breaking out their windows with rocks and claw hammers?
How about those who then mug for the cameras with the car
they burned or the stuff they stole? Or proudly in front of a cart loaded with
flat-screen TVs they looted? Or standing
with arms held high in front of some business they just torched?
What do you think is the right word to describe them? Protestors?
Activists? People expressing their righteous rage against injustice? Or
discrimination against people of color?
Really? How does
expressing your rage involve stealing TVs and cellphones? Or burning down businesses? What about – in the case of the Minneapolis
riots – burning down a low-income housing project under construction?
How is any of that that sending a message about racial
injustice? About discrimination? Or police brutality toward people of color? Or
the death of George Floyd by the police?
The riots aren’t about any of that. Not even the senseless death of George Floyd apparently
by some nutjob cops while he was already handcuffed and subdued. His death, however awful and clearly the
result of misconduct by two or more Minneapolis cops, was just a spark to those
who wanted an excuse to run wild anyway.
They mixed with otherwise peaceful, if angry, protestors. Most
protestors generally, I suspect, didn’t want a riot; they probably wanted to
have the media see that blacks and whites in Minneapolis wanted justice for
George Floyd.
They wanted those cops arrested and charged with murder. Which, if you look at the video of his arrest and actions of
the police, seems appropriate.
But the others? The ones who started breaking windows and looting
and burning cars and businesses; the ones attacking police with rocks, bottles
and Molotov cocktails – they never intended to do anything else but riot and
loot. They came to the protest with only
that in mind.
So what would you call them?
I think thugs is the right word.
Spare me the PC interpretation of thugs as a racist term. Thugs is only a racist term if you believe thugs
are always black. Thugs come in all colors and ethnicities.
Just like gangs and
gang members.
Are there white thugs? Of course. If you doubt that I invite you to take a
stroll through predominantly white and Italian South Philly – or just go to an
Eagles game – and see the “tough guys” there.
Especially the wannabe wise guys or neighborhood punks with an “atty-tude.”
Are they thugs? Why yes some of them are. They use the threat of violence to intimidate.
They aren’t afraid to use actual violence to get their way. Some are also small-time criminals for now,
dabbling in burglary, shakedowns, and whatever they can get away with.
Some are always spoiling for a fight. Some think being a thug now is training to
become a real wise guy down the road.
A thug is by definition “a violent person, especially a
criminal.” That’s race neutral.
When Trump calls the rioters and looters in Minneapolis
thugs, he’s dead on accurate.
Only a complete nut case like Nancy Pelosi and the ignorant
buffoon Maxine Waters – both of whom see racism everywhere except among their
own kind – think he’s sending a dog whistle to white supremacists that it's
okay to kill blacks by calling the rioters thugs. Honestly, I don’t even know how either of
them, or the brain-dead media, sees that.
I guess none of them bothered to look at the footage from
the riots which showed blacks, whites, Hispanics and who knows who else of all
ages looting the stores in Minneapolis … or maybe they just conveniently
ignored that it wasn’t just blacks.
It was an equal-opportunity looting. By thugs.
Because a thug is a thug.
Regardless of race or ethnicity. Period.
Maybe they are talking about his promise to bring in the military
to stop the out-of-control violence. Maybe
it’s when he said when the looting starts, the shooting starts – an idea I
think would find a lot of support among perhaps a majority of Americans.
Or maybe it’s because calling someone a looter is also
racist. Just like calling them
thugs.
How about we just settle on the race-neutral term criminals?
Because that’s what the rioters really are.
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