A Matter of Perspective
The world has become a stranger and even more unusual place...
We all thought things couldn’t get stranger or more surreal than the life we’ve been living since COVID-19 totally turned us on our heads. That is, until last week.
Last week another black man was killed by a white cop. Last week we saw rioting, vandalism and looting in our Minneapolis and St. Paul areas. Last week we saw this violence and protesting over the murder of George Floyd spill into other cities. We saw President Trump evacuated to a bunker for his protection as the violence and mayhem washed into Washington D.C.
What will we see this week?
One thing that was brought up repeatedly is how our focus was so easily shifted by the media from the pandemic to the murder of George Floyd. Have you heard much about COVID-19 this past week? I’ve seen very little about it unless I watch the little news ticker at the bottom of the screen. The majority of the news has been about the rioting, the National Guard being fully mobilized and other things related to the senseless death of George Floyd.
And it was senseless. Many other tactics could have been employed to retain Floyd.
Conspiracy theorists have gone crazy over all of this. They have put out all kinds of imagining over this from it being a plot for the United Nations to take over the world to being a set up for other gangs from other states to come and pillage Minnesota.
My personal theory is that COVID-19 has had a lot to do with the immense reaction to Floyd’s death. We have all been sheltering at home from the disease. Tempers have risen with no outlet. Now this senseless killing comes along and people who have been in their homes except for the essentials are taking to the street to protest this act of violence against not only a black man, but a human man.
A fragile human life was taken. A human life.
I am not black. I cannot understand the thinking of a black person who was raised in a different way than I was. I cannot fathom the oppression that many black people face on a daily basis.
The thing that I can understand is human life.
All humans lives matter and that includes black and white lives. That includes Asian lives and Muslim lives and the lives of each and every human on earth.
It includes the life of the Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin who killed George Floyd.
It includes you and it includes me.
It includes that precious little baby that was just born and the 100-year-old who is facing their eternal rest. It includes the terrorist bombers and the doctors and nurses and aides and scientists who struggle to save lives and find a cure.
It includes ALL of us.
Life is precious people. Let us find a way to quit taking matters into our own hands and stop snuffing out lives all of whom matter!
