OPINION:
People say they’re fed up, frustrated and angry, and they’re demanding that everybody “get on the bus.”
Most buses have a destination — destinations sometimes learned before you board and destinations sometimes learned only afterward — and then there are bus riders who hop on merely for the sake of escapism.
That’s probably the case with the current movement, which is urging every issue under the sun be addressed and addressed right now.
States and localities are considering defunding police departments and removing police officers from schools.
Think either scenario will play well in Chicago, where Black lives are being snuffed out but not at the hands of police? The relatives and loved ones of the dead are seeking justice, too, as they should.
And what about our schools? Do you really and think there’s a No School Violence Movement afoot?
The push to tear down, deface and hide monuments and memorials is telling. Ignorance is not bliss, and nobody is returning those dead presidents that show up as stimulus and unemployment money.
They’re taking the money and running, running to the nearest protest and hiding in plain sight by chanting whatever the leader of the band suggests.
They don’t know who’s driving the bus, and they don’t know where the bus is destined, and some of them do not care — and there’s the rub.
How will they know when they’ve arrived?
There’s no list of demands, and there’s no drum major.
There’s a choir but no director.
There’s no order.
No one’s in charge and there are no perimeters — even the police are told to stand down.
Washington, D.C., is going to be a hot spot, for certain.
Fourth of July. Independence Day parades. Fireworks. Youthful anxiety separating itself from patriotic togetherness. A rally celebrating the August 1963 anniversary of the March for Jobs and Freedom, if planners get a permit.
D.C. and federal officials are making plans, which means neither side has made up their minds how “open” the city will be — and it’s a conundrum since the Fourth falls on a Saturday.
What’s more concerning is that the chief monuments and memorials to the dead presidents and generals targeted by the fed-up, frustrated and angry protesters and mobs are right here in the nation’s capital.
Not to be a Deborah Downer, but this could be a long, hot summer.
• Deborah Simmons can be contacted at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.
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