Two Things At Once

If I had to wager on it, I would have bet a lot on something related to the COVID-19 pandemic as the top story on non-conspiracy news outlets for many more weeks / months.  Only some huge natural disaster or mass killing event could possibly keep that from happening.

It's a bet I would have quickly lost.

All it took was a video of a bad Minneapolis cop slowly killing an already-detained black man by choking off his airway.  Now we have protests and quasi-riots across America, bringing attention to both overt and covert criminal racial discrimination that still exists after 250 years.  (This is made even worse by having a mentally-ill U.S. president stirring the pot with his own versions of racism and divisive rhetoric.  Apparently, calling a pandemic a hoax for weeks hasn't killed enough people already.)

As has been the norm over the past few years, people are turning this into a combative, binary decision.  That is, you either support the Black Lives Matter movement, or you support the police.  This is incredibly stupid, because both things are possible!

Human beings can support two things (even more!) at the same time, even when those things seem to be opposites.  Here, we have to support persons or color in their quest to be treated equally under the law, while at the same time supporting appropriate enforcement of those laws.

We're doing it now in an even larger way, as we battle a once in a lifetime pandemic with differing views on how that should be done.  For example, it's OK to support wearing a mask and still support opening the economy.

But again, some want to frame all national decisions as a binary, political win/lose.  It's dumb and counterproductive to look at everything through such a political lens.  Unfortunately, that's what our current, leadership-less executive branch has been perpetuating,

Since we have a leadership void at the federal level, the only way to peacefully accomplish any of our collective goals is from the bottom-up.  People must ignore the extremists, be responsible for taking care of others, and remember to vote out the unqualified, arrogant, complicit, idiots who've been in charge for the past few years.