George Floyd was a pretext, not a cause. The cause was destruction of our civilization
Midway through Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, there occurs this exchange between two characters:
‘“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”’
The process of civilizational bankruptcy takes a similar course. Casual, seemingly isolated attacks on the fabric of civilization feel at first like so many harmless insect bites. A speaker is shouted down. A statue is vandalized or removed. A college course once deemed essential is rebaptized as offensive: first it is pilloried, then it is canceled.
People start quoting Tocqueville’s warning that in a democracy, as large inequalities dissolve, small inequalities are magnified, growing both rancid and rancorous. Political posturing is everywhere.
At first it seems effete and merely silly; then it grows muscles and claws. The posturing now comes with bricks, baseball bats and Molotov cocktails. Grievances blur and lose their specificity. Every slight becomes a pretext for boundless rage.
The ‘system’ — ordered liberty and the rule of law — is rudely shoved into the dustbin of history. Civility itself — the social compact that makes society possible — is tossed aside as an impediment to justice.
Roger Kimball – Spectator | USA – June 28, 2020.
