The good people of Charlotte are far more tolerant and understanding than I have a tendency to be. If you and your friends step out onto the interstate in order to “protest,” I don’t feel bad at all if one of you finds yourself under the bus. I understand people stopping for the assembled crowd in front of them, but the first time a rock slammed into my windshield or I felt my life was otherwise endangered, I don’t believe I’d have any moral compunction about using 4-wheel drive and 381 horsepower to cleave through that crowd like a hot knife. I don’t ever seek violence, but don’t think for a minute that I’m shy about using every weapon I have at hand to preserve my own life. I value it far more than I do that of someone who decides wading out into the middle of I-85 is a good way to make their point.

I’m beginning to feel like a broken record when I say things like this, but then again I’ve never had much a warm fuzzy for organized “protestors.” In my experience the only thing they’re much good for was lunchtime entertainment back in the olden days when I worked in DC. Those Million Whatever marches, though, were mostly harmless for the average tourist or office worker. If your idea of a protest involves endangering life and destroying property, you’ve really ceased to be sympathetic in my estimation.

Wake up. Go to work. Come home. Make dinner. Have a few hours of entertainment. Go to bed. Repeat. There’s no great secret to the good life, but you kind of have to work for it… and no, looting the local Walmart and throwing rocks at commuters does not count as work.