I just finished watching a video posted by a friend of mine that was over eight minutes long of protesters getting run over by vehicles. No, that wasn't a typo, EIGHT MINUTES LONG. I couldn't even fathom that this event has become so common that you could string together eight solid minutes of footage of protesters blocking streets and getting run over. To say that I was shocked would be an understatement.
So, I did what I often do, and that's hit up google for some news articles to see just how common this phenomena is. It turns out, it's happening all the time, and all over the place. And here I was, thinking that people were smart enough to know that a multi-ton car with a multi-hundred horse power engine would win the battle against them. I guess they aren't.
No, what they are counting on is the human decency of the driver. That is, the are counting on the driver to value the life of the protester over their own. It's easy to be judgmental if you've never been there, but like many veterans will tell you, the fact that you're in a car (or HWMMV) doesn't make crowds of people surround you, punching, pushing, kicking, and hitting your car any less scary. And that's without considering that some of them are armed. When people get scared, they do things that they normally wouldn't. So counting on their decency during a situation like this? Probably not the smartest thing to do. They could be heading to the hospital to a dying family member or any number of other places that they have to get to, and that desperation doesn't exactly make them the most decent people at that moment either. So again, placing your life in the hands of a scared, angry, and possibly desperate person who's behind the wheel of a multi-ton vehicle with a multi-hundred horsepower engine is really, well, sorry, it's just really dumb.
This push to create a hostage situation in which others MUST listen to your protest only engenders more anger on top of all of that. So why would there be any surprise to the reaction? Well, because people like me still think that decency will win. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear so. So we go back to the same admonition given by your parents from the moment you could walk, "Don't play in the street." If you're not in the street, you can't get run over as a general rule. It sure seems like the safer bet to me.
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