My Run In With Peaceful Protesters. [dri]

Reading genghis' interesting post below brought back memories of a situation I was involved in with a similar group of "peaceful" protesters.

A few years ago in LA, I was driving home from work when a group of gay pride protesters were marching down one of the main roads just south of Sunset Blvd. The group attempted to block an intersection just as I was entering it. They ran in front of my car when they saw that I was almost past them. When I stopped, a couple of them ducked down behind my car out of my view. They were hoping that I would put my car in reverse so they would get bumped and become "justified" in focusing their rage against me and my vehicle.

They were the aggressors but they had a well choreographed plan to spin the situation around where they could claim that I (or any other driver) had recklessly driven into them thus triggering a violent confrontation. Such a manufactured hate crime would have justified the protest group's claim that hateful people aggressively target them with violence for no reason at all.

One of the protesters in the front of my car had a brick in his hand and slammed it against the hood. He slammed it down again as he walked towards my open driver's side window. At that point I opened my jacket and placed my hand on my holstered sidearm. Upon seeing this, the guy with the brick said "What are you going to do? Kill me? Go ahead!” The possibility of dying did not faze the guy at all and in fact it seemed to motivate him to escalate the situation even more.

I told him that I would not kill him but I would shoot him in the spine and he would be in a wheelchair and shit in a bag for the rest of his life. That caused him to pause and back away. The group moved through the intersection and I was able to drive away with no injuries to anyone.

Upon reflection, the event showed me how filled with rage these "peaceful" organized protesters can be. The protesters are not angry because of some perceived institutional or culturally based injustice or grievance. They are a collection of individuals, each filled with a personal rage and are looking for an "acceptable" way to unleash violence on someone who "deserves" it. Such a mentality struck me as being the equivalent of Klansmen who are motivated to terrorize and kill black people based on a need to vent personal rage rather than their claimed perception of some larger, more “significant” racial conflict.

An overabundance of unresolved personal grievances, self doubts, and anger too often creates a person who when faced with the need to identify the underlying causes for their rage, rejects the possibility that it comes from conflict from within and instead embraces the delusion that it comes from evil external institutional or cultural forces. Rage based from within is difficult and painful to address, rage based upon perceived external forces on the other hand, gives one license to live a life of continual outrage and avoid any self introspection.

posted by xgenghisx at 10:53 AM

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