I finally watched the video and looked into the police shooting of Walter Wallace which has sparked rioting and looting in Philadelphia.
When asking people to stop, think, and ask before shooting people (and people have been shot by other looters) and lighting stuff on fire becomes a controversial request, we know that we've gone off the deep end.
The shooting of Walter Wallace could have only been more justified if he were an active shooter. The guy was a known violent criminal who was brandishing a knife. The cops gave Wallace every opportunity to comply before he charged them and they finally fired their weapons.
In cases like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, I'm still damned opposed to responding the way people have been. It just gets more people hurt. Nobody has ever been brought back to life because you stole a washing machine.
In the case of Wallace, either people will just hear the skin color of the the guy shot by cops and immediately assume that it was another George Floyd, which seems to be much of the case in Philly; or, people have become so blind that they can't watch a video of a violent, dangerous, armed person being killed by cops to defend themselves and others and ever admit that the cops did what they needed to do. I really think that both of these are true of the looters and their supporters.
On top of all this, again, if you're actually somebody who thinks that we need government, and all of these looters do, police are going to be a part of that. What kind of cops are we going to have with this kind of reaction to an entirely justifiable shooting?
I never in my life, even when I was a gung-ho conservative, thought about being a cop. What person with options is going to take a $50,000 per year job that requires you to be in constant danger? I mean, pulling a person over for a busted tail light could get cops killed if the driver happens to be carrying meth and figures he'll just shoot the cop to avoid a search. Add on to that that you could behave entirely within parameters of your job and behave as any reasonable person would behave and you'd still be so hated as to spur riots and character assassination.
We're going to come out of this with far fewer cops, which you may like. Technically, I do too. But, you'll be seeing a police force comprised completely of the worst bile available in society.
Nobody is winning here.