First, let me thank you for writing this difficult piece. By difficult I mean, "You put a lot of work into it," but also, "It was a difficult read" - oh, it's well-written like all your material, the issue was that the content is so distressing.
I wanted to comment on the quote above. Why would anyone disbelieve this? It's like people have gotten much worse at modeling how others think over time.
You live in a neighborhood, it gets smashed up. You got a store, it gets smashed up. What's your response? "Fuck the people who did this." So what if they said Black Lives Matter?
Let me hasten to say that I'm not against violence or property damage as a means to an end, as a focused tool. And even this sort of unfocused flailing around has had some positive consequences. Some. But.
Second, and you should really contemplate this - it is a matter of near-certainty that some of the destruction is being caused by agents provocateurs, criminal, undercover agents, or hostile infiltrators of one sort or another.
We in the progressive movement have seen these bad actors appear for the last 50 years and more.
Of course, it's a matter of near-certainly that sort of the destruction is being caused by honest-to-goodness leftists as well.
Is some of it being done by asshole Trustafarian jerk-ass white kids with no connection to the neighborhood? Yes.
What about nihilistic young working class people driven by despair? Yes.
What about individuals with scores to settle? Absolutely.
I suppose this is one of the times you need to throw in a lot of the allegeds and supposeds just to make it clear that it isn't certain who is doing these things.
The whole thing is bad all around. Everyone is being fucked. Everyone sees ruin staring them in their face. Cops hate everyone and everyone hates cops because cops kill them, gleefully, slowly and deliberately at times!, and the people are without recourse.
For a decade, I've compared the situation to a kettle which you fill with water, seal with duct tape, and put on the stove.
The people lose their tempers which they have held for years, for their whole lives. A bunch of educated white people start smashing shit up in other people's neighborhoods because they not-unreasonably believe that the last days are at hand and find no community to band together with. Paid instigators and other criminals seize the opportunity to spread havoc.
