The usual ironically detached backwards-ballcap smirkers are saying this is an endorsement of rioting and violence. /1 https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1299162899227705345?s=20

/2 It's not, of course. But there's no point in attempting clarifying points to bad faith people who deliberately misrepresent.

For anyone else, this is the point.

/3 Decisions about how to protest should be made based on values like decency, morality, and justice. I don't think rioting or looting or burning satisfy that test. But I am also, in general, not as horrified by them as I am by sanctioned state injustice.

/4 However, it's pointless to make decisions about protest based on the sensibilities -- or purported sensibilities -- of the people who pearl-clutch over kneeling. They'll never be satisfied and it's a fool's game to try. They want submissiveness, for freedom.

/5 It's also, I think, a mistake to buy 100% into "but the voters" narrative. Can riots and looting influence voters? Yes. But what these people of bad faith want is for everyone to spend all their time talking about riots and not about what led to them, to link those ideas.

/6 Further, you will never condemn riots to the satisfaction of people of bad faith. There will always be one bad actor, one ugly comment, one edgy t-shirt that they will use to represent the whole.

/7 In short, make decisions about protest based on what's just and right and decent, not based on people of bad faith. The time for the polite pretense that they are sincere is past.

/end