Changes after the Riots?

 

One can read a lot of guesses about what things which were common last year will be gone or far less frequent when things return to normal  after the epidemic, because of the epidemic. It is an interesting topic, and so is a similar one about what might change because of the Black Lives Matter craze, the Black Lives Matter and antifa riots, and the responses by governments and organizations to them.

I have made a few minor changes on that account. My wife and I had shopped at Eddie Bauer for years. After the CEO of Eddie Bauer sent an email to customers asserting that we non-BIPOCs were a bunch of racists, and that he was going to have the company discriminate against us in hiring, we decided we did not care to give money to someone who was spitting on us. We haven’t bought anything since and won’t until he and his policies are gone.

I have not followed the NBA since the days of the first dream team, but I occasionally would look in on a game or two in the finals, particularly if San Antonio was playing.  Now I am done. I do not care  to be lectured by Chairman Xi’s special friends about how evil a person I am and how horrible this country is. I feel about the same way about the NFL. Listening to a bunch of rich spoiled brats who have been pampered since high school whining about how oppressed they are, slandering their country, and siding with an anti-American communist agitprop gang against the fans who made their wealth possible is a little hard to take. Besides there are lots of nice things one can do on a pleasant Sunday afternoon in the fall.

Those things are minor and insignificant except perhaps to Eddie Bauer, the NBA, and the NFL if enough other people make the same decisions I have. There are others that are more important.   According to statistics gathered  from dealers, among the several million Americans purchasing guns this year, there were  around five million new gun owners, people who had not owned a firearm before. While  some may have decided it was time to try their hands at hunting or target shooting, it seems likely that most of them were arming themselves for self defense. That would be a good thing both for them as individuals and for the country politically. People should  accept the responsibility and be prepared to defend themselves, and the more armed citizens there are, the harder it will be for the leftists to disarm the population.  The decision to take responsibility for one’s safety and  no longer completely trust or rely on governments to provide protection is one that can influence changes in attitude on other things.

There have been stories in the news about people moving away from big cities to suburbs or rural areas in response to the riots. I have not seen statistics on how much this is happening or from where, but there is evidence some people are leaving. There does seem to be some change in people’s mood. For years in media, entertainment, and even advertising big city life has been depicted as hip, exciting, and even glamorous while suburbs and rural areas often have been ignored or disparaged as dull and boring Cleaver-ville or backward domiciles of hicks and rednecks. We may never see people in the media and advertising singing Green Acres is the place to be, but general attitudes toward urban living may change some as people consider costs, benefits, and incentives.  If so, it likely will be mainly the more productive, self supporting people who leave the cities, making the political and other situations worse for those who stay behind.  If leftist city governments respond to losing taxpayers by  raising taxes on the ones remaining, incentives for leaving would only increase.