Saturday, June 13, 2020

Scripted

So we went into town for a meal and to walk around the "entertainment" district on Friday night.

Planning a small meal and maybe some ice cream on a beautiful Friday evening. Temps were in the 70's with a  mild breeze. A perfect evening to be out, especially since the restaurants are still dealing with the (poorly thought out) restrictions due to the supposed Covid-19 "crisis".

Anyway, the wait time  was about 50 minutes for the pizzas we had ordered, so we walked a few blocks to the ice cream parlor...we are adults, so we can eat our dessert first...and we did. As we walked, we observed a whole passel of "Black Lives Matter" folks staging a protest on the town square. Maybe 50 people. Peaceful, but still.

"Staging". I said. And "Staging" I meant....I use that word deliberately, as it was quite obvious that there was a set play being executed. The chants were all in unison, and they changed regularly and on cue....The protesters....or actors, if one were to be truthful, did their chants, and then did their "I Can't Breathe" pantomime (and then the chant that followed)...... then the whole bit where they lay on their stomachs and clasped their hands behind their backs for 8 minutes.....

It was theater, and not terribly good theater at that. It impressed no one but the participants. Most of the passers-by were amused, and not swayed by the theater. Police were present, but stayed away and were watchful and not looming nor intimidating. (the cops here are pretty decent in the main). There was more support for the police than support for the (mostly white and young) protesters.

Strangely, for a "Protest", once the script was over, the participants peacefully left the area. It just ended. Like it was staged. A performance where the participants cast left after their part was finished. Weird.

The question I have is...who wrote the playbook? The entire protest was, as I said, obviously scripted. Few people could miss that. The only people that were impressed were the protesters. But it was obviously a set piece...performance art, as it were. Someone wrote the script that the protesters were following. Someone saw to it that the script was distributed to at least a few people in the crowd. Who wrote the script? Who set the others in the crowd to lead the rest? Almost as if the entire cast had practiced beforehand...

This was not a spontaneous thing. It was a set piece. Well executed (if not particularly well written) theater.

I wanna know.....who wrote the script?

By the way, the pizza, cooked in a  wood fired stone oven, was frikkin' delicious, as was the evening and the setting in which we dined.

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