If unsanctioned violence is the product of intolerable pressure, does sanctioned violence deserve to even share a name with it? There is no identifiable pressure behind nor any clear prohibition in the way of the sanctioned violence that constitutes the vast majority of the world’s political violence and which is itself the very cause of grinding pressure in individual lives. Anarchists burn limos because limo owners burn the planet. The miners strike because the company robs and breaks them. The streets of Ferguson explode because the city of Ferguson loots and kills the streets.

What is so terribly difficult to understand about the clutched pearls of our present day is how readily those most eager to condemn the incivility of burning cars and punches overlook the most basic fact about their home. This is America. We do not resolve our disagreements with debate here; we do not respect all views, settle differences at the ballot box, and live calm and dutiful in civil peace except when we are interrupted by callous and unjustifiable outbursts of violence. The continent was cleared by guns and smallpox, the nation built up by the whip. A police baton and a jail cell prop up our civil life, and this is not simply a matter of who struck first. Political violence is a violation of our status quo, even one indulged by “both sides” of some political struggle. It is the essential mechanism. We have been examining what we took to be a feature of the landscape but instead discovered a foundation, deep and essential to the stone.

"The goal isn’t how can we get the best media, it’s how can we stop getting killed," he said. "We’re not trying to get fame, we’re trying to get to free."

"I’d remind the NFL and their players that it is not the violent thugs burning down buildings that buy their advertiser's products," he said. "It’s cops and the good people of St Louis and other NFL towns that do."