There’s been a lot of existential talk about this country over the past year. You know what I mean: Will our democracy survive? I’m not at all against asking such a question, especially during the year that we experienced the first assault on our Capitol since before the Civil War. But waving a Confederate battle flag before statues of distinguished Americans in the building that houses our Congress does not a revolution make. Nor does the incompetent occupation of the Senate chamber or the theft of documents from the desks of lawmakers.
We’ve had battles between cops and protesters and rioters before. Remember Chicago in 1968? The Watts riot, the Newark riot, the riots in cities around the country after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered? The riots in Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict? The Stonewall riot? These protests and riots have all come to be…
