Ferguson foolery

I hate to admit that I feel little sympathy for the kid who got shot in Ferguson nor for the police officer.  Who knows what the true story is and a grand jury should sort it out.  But surely the businessmen of the city got a raw deal.

            You pour your heart and soul into a business and it is hard enough to make it work in the market.  4 out of 5 small businesses fail in the first two years.  Those guys in Ferguson probably had their houses mortgaged, no pension, and worked hundred hour weeks like I used to.  In the end, a bunch of hooligans destroyed their American Dream.  And what did they do to deserve this? Listen to the pundit theoreticians on TV who say, “Well, there’s no excuse for looting…”  No excuse?  It is criminal.  It is despicable, as in the root word ‘despise’.  And in the end, what do those idiots who looted have to show for it?  Their town will be a disaster zone for years to come.  Some say that Newark and Detroit never recovered from the riots there in the 60’s—fifty years ago!  Not one in ten thousand people you would ask could remember what righteous cause started those riots.

            Meanwhile the pious screwballs who run government and civic leaders who are a joke, are saying that they must rebuild.  Hunh?  That’s like telling a raped woman that at least she didn’t get pregnant and here’s a new dress to wear.  They may rebuild but if I were in business there, I would be haunted by serious considerations about leaving and going somewhere else.  “Well, I appreciate the efforts you make to rebuild my business, but from now on our main store will be in St. Charles.  Even if I were an unaffected plumber with only tools in the back of my truck, I would think, “Gosh, I have to travel ten miles in city traffic to find the plumbing supply house now.  I could just as well work out of the suburbs and still come into town to do some work.”  The few businesses who stay behind and fix things up will be able to charge more and will need to charge more to offset their sky-high insurance rates.  The ultimate bozos are the citizens of Ferguson. 

            So what should the folks in Ferguson have done?  This too will sound weird but in the days of militias who protected their community things would have looked different.  They would  have rushed to their closets and grabbed shotguns and rifles, headed to the nearest merchant under duress and volunteered for night watch duty.  Looters tend to think twice when a business has 4 armed men in the doorway who are more than willing to shoot if they try to loot.  Just throw that darned rock at my window; toss that Molotov cocktail and see what you get in return. 

            I heard the arrest count a couple of nights.  78 arrested and 3 were from Ferguson.  120 arrested and 4 from Ferguson.  That means that the community organizers and outside agitators were the culprits.  So who are the protesters  after midnight?  Walter Williams wrote about how it is the tragedy of fatherless youth.  Typical Williams, he has facts and statistics to prove this as the cause. I have easier proof that it was out of town agitators.  During the riots, some rioters threw rocks at the St. Louis Cardinal gift shop at the stadium.  Police quickly arrested the perps.  Salient fact: the Redbirds are unequivocally the town heroes.  No person from St. Louis would dream of bashing the beloved Cardinals.  Unless the perps were from, say, Philly or Chicago.

            So what should Ferguson do?  I suggest, not entirely tongue in cheek, that we preserve the business district as-is and don’t rebuild it.  Just make it a National Monument to human foolery where for generations unborn we can remind ourselves of the results of shooting in the foot and destroying the American Dream out of spite and an entitlement mentality.  Meanwhile the residents can start a new shopping center somewhere else and bring in new businessmen and repent.  Which should give the media something to chew on.