Group protests really became the vogue during the Viet Nam conflict. Some former hippies might think these gatherings were the reason the U.S. left that country, but that isn’t the fact. The reason we left was because the war was prosecuted in an unwinnable way. Add to that the growing unpopularity of the “police action” at the ballot box. The protests were (as they always are) a form of communal  masturbation.

While I could cite countless other protests which did nothing, let me jump to the more recent Black Lives Matters protests. In the process of supposedly displaying anger at the number of officer involved shootings of African American males, the result has been a heightened defensive posture among the police…and for good reason. It is true officers in many jurisdictions are wearing body cameras now . That has had a positive effect as fewer logical people want to be recorded behaving poorly. Sadly, not all people are logical. Many are driven by the frenzy of a protest to be unconcerned about consequences. So, these protests are not only pointless, they are mostly counterproductive.

I’m really tired of all this protesting and was considering launching a social media call to like minded folks to protest all this protesting. I dropped the idea when I realized it, too, wouldn’t do a damned bit of good.