Letter: Unacceptable duplicitous behavior

My pragmatic mind looks at the recent George Floyd riots in our cities, and as usual, I am astounded with the contrast of how our society and press view the participants, the two sides, in rioting demonstrations recently in our cities.

Peaceful demonstrations as stated by the constitution I have no problem with, even if I disagree with the position of the demonstrators. However, there are two sides to the action in these riots.

On one side we have the so called keepers of the peace. Usually they have gone through some academy, possibly taken some training in what I'll call demonstration control. But here is where I find the insanity in what is expected of these persons in comparison to the rioters. They are expected to have sky high moral character and never lose their emotional control! No matter what happens they are expected to stay the course. They must be self disciplined to obey every nuance of the law, or risk law suites or job termination.

On the other side are those who exhibit no training in conjuction with civility and don't appear to care about civility. They seemingly have rights to spit, with impunity and uncontrolled rage in the faces of those with the job of peace keeping or anybody who does not agree with their agenda. Verbal abuse appears to be protected speech as they scream obsenities or speak the most vile words at the peace keepers and others. They verbally bait the peace keepers in what appears to be a scheme to create some type of legitimacy to riot. It appears to be legitimate to threaten peace keepers with bodily harm and use terror tactics in threatening their family members. And somehow these individuals claim they are for a more just and civil society! They claim to be people who are moral, upright and are the architects of fairness and righting historical wrongs!

Martin Luther King Junior longed for the day when all men would be judged by their moral character. I don't think he had foul language used on one's adversary in mind when he spoke of peaceful decent!

There is no justification to make claims for equality and then demonstrate hate and legitimize assault on anybody regardless of race or what uniform one wears. This seeming accepted duplicity, as illustrated by this unacceptable contrast will lead to much harm and destruction.

- Leonard Carter, South Lake Tahoe