What It Is Ain't Exactly Clear

Linking a BassHook post on the violence in Seattle. View at your own risk.

:-/



(I figured out that I could embed the original post, so I'm embedding that instead of my response post.)

(Irony included. If you can't see the pictures through either the link or the embedded frame above, I'll spoil it for you. Street art. Lots of crowds, including children. Not the kind of violence you may have been hearing about, no apparent violence at all. Stores open and in operation. No weapons in sight. Just for the record, my nephew, who lives there, confirms the lack of violence and weaponry.)

I'm going to post my additional comments from my FB post on it here, as well, unpacked just a little:

Woodstock was not a Sunday picnic for flower children, but the people who attended generally took care of themselves and each other at a certain level of consideration and morality, in spite of the fact that many were high.


(Image by Derek Redmond and Paul Campbell, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, courtesy Wikimedia.)

(It is true that the standards of morality observed at Woodstock are not the standards that I hope everyone will someday understand and choose. There is something about people that induces many of us to choose a lesser happiness that we can see now over a greater one that we can't yet see. But there were a lot of people there, and there was very little violence. Look it up if you don't believe me.)

Altamont was intended by the promoters to be Woodstock West or something, but the results were significantly more violent. I leave it to the reader to discern the reasons.


(Image by Flickr user Paille on Flickr, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license, via Wikimedia.)

(Well, my own take on the difference between Altamont and Woodstock, Woodstock was organic. Altamont was a deliberate attempt to recreate the organic, and that generally results in something artificial. Artificial tends to be unsatisfying.)

As a non-tangential tangent, I'll mention Kent State:




FWIW, we've been through this before.



There are people who need to say something, and they are trying to say it. Instead of trying to keep them from saying it, the least we can do is let them have their voice. And it might not hurt to try to listen to what they are saying, to try to understand.