The good, the bad, and the nice
0 comment Saturday, September 27, 2014 |
At Stuff Black People Don't Like, there is a piece contrasting the Vancouver riot with the inner-city riots and assorted violence that has been increasing around our country.
''Civilization can only exist when those who commit crime are shunned � violently if they must be � and castigated to the fullest extent the law can provide. When police and government can no longer guarantee the safety of civilians, people must shame the laws inadequacies to ensure peace and stability.
Black people refuse to snitch; Vancouver citizens have utilized social media to find those responsible for the violence in their city
[...]
Whereas whites use social media in the aftermath of the Vancouver riot to identity those who would bring shame to their city, Black people use social media to organize Mahogany Mobs, Smash and Grab attack, Polar Bear Hunts, and Knockout King games. Not an ounce of shame is lost in the process.''
Good points. I've been following the riot aftermath stories in the media, and it is impressive, too, how the law-abiding people of Vancouver have volunteered to help, not only with identifying the rioters,
but with the massive cleanup effort. That, too, is a point of difference.
On a less positive note, once most of the rioters are identified (and many of them apparently have been) the talk is that sentences will probably be light. Given the strong matriarchal/feminist orientation of the 'system', it would seem harsh sentences would not be in the cards.
One commenter at SBPDL praises the courage and the 'willingness to break rules' of the rioters, implying that it is this kind of 'disobedient' person who would defend us and our families, should law and order break down in our country.
I can't agree with that. The kind of 'willingness to break rules' that is needed for someone to go up against a powerful but corrupt system in the cause of right, or in defense of one's own, is not the same kind of 'courage' that rioters display.
In fact I would not call the rioters' brazenness 'courage' in any sense. As many of the reports pointed out, there are instigators in these kinds of events, and there are the sheep-like followers who will join in only when sufficient numbers of 'instigators' have started the trouble and violence. It takes little courage to join in with a mob that is running amok.
Those who follow the mob, or 'follow the multitude to do evil', as the Bible puts it, are simply getting swept up, almost passively, in the 'mob mind', or in the blind violence-for-the-sake-of-violence.
These young men are not the sort that would ever risk their own safety to help or defend you or me, or our families. They are the sort, that should trouble break out, will be out taking advantage of the situation to gratify their thirst for thrills or violence or gain.
The anonymous commenter at SBPDL was somewhat on the right trail, though, in that justice has to have force acting on its behalf, or it is ineffectual and useless. Might and right have to go together. The first one is simply blind force, without the second quality to direct and to give it impetus. Right justifies might, giving it purpose.
This also ties in with a theme that I've returned to more than once: goodness needs strength, and yes, the willingness to act forcefully and decisively at times to be real goodness. The kind of bloodless, saccharine-sweet 'goodness' that we see so often in our emasculated societies is not goodness at all; it is just niceness, and as such it is ineffectual, weak, and without energy. In a contest in which the bad guys are willing and ready to use force, and the ''good'' guys have right on their side, but no might, who will win? The answer is obvious.
And that's the situation we are in now; 'the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity', as Yeats wrote.
Genuine goodness must have a large measure of conviction and courage to back up the truth it embodies. That's the way of this world. There are too many 'nice' people who want to 'get along' with evil and appease evil, and worst of all, to pretty it up and call it good. Those nice people are not good people.
Edmund Burke is supposed to have said (though it may be an apocryphal quote) that 'the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.' I've heard that quote many times, but after having heard it often, it finally dawned on me: it is not possible for good men to do nothing while evil is running rampant. Good men cannnot stand by passively in the face of evil. Nice men can, certainly, but good men? Never. That's how we will sort out the 'nice' from the 'good': the good people will be those with the courage of their convictions, and they will be the ones actively standing up against evil.

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