By Ken Robinson

Managing Editor

More or less stuck at home, we rarely utter the word ‘pandemic’. But the restrictions on movement in the community have become a bitter reality.

Now, we think twice about dashing off to the hardware store for a home project. When we have gone recently, it is to marvel at the grim masked faces of shoppers there. The scene has changed a little bit since the governor told us all that we have to wear a mask in every business establishment.

It is now more difficult to tell who is a republican and who is democrat unless one is also sporting a MAGA cap. The Democrats have no symbol of affiliation that we know of.

King County has long been a bastion of politeness when it comes to declarations of political choice. There now seems to be some cracks in the “why can’t we all just get along” ethic.

The recent an ongoing ‘protests’ by what ostensibly began as support for Black Lives Matter morphed into a carnival atmosphere that includ throwing the towing of rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails and some property destruction.

But the characterize the cities of Seattle and Portland as ‘on fire” and under siege by protesters is way wrong.

The view from 10,000 feet reveals a very small part of the towns where ‘activists’ are holding forth. To tar the whole town with the same brush is not fair. The people who are on the street could all fit into a school gymnasium.

We have some (a very small ’some’) empathy for the rioters, looters and wilding people who have moved the protests from support for Black Lives Matter to ‘Defunding the Police”, to a level of stupidity that develops when people throw a civic tantrum and don’t get immediate support for this unreasoned views.

This is to say some change in policing policy is not warranted. That is clear.

The empathy we mentioned is from understanding that the frustration in our communities stems from not having job, not having money and with not sense of when things might get better while we live in anxious times because of Covid-19 ravaging our world.

We have not lived through a depression like the one that is marked by 1929. But we can imagine our forebears knew this same sense of dread. Today, our means of communication can stoke the fires of unrest that can legitimatize rioting and property destruction.

I think most of us want to foster hope that something good will happen.