Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

This portion of this discussion points to a larger point for me, why is the temperature of these things going up? I know that some people think the liberals are causing it. 

I think social media has a significant role here, coupled with a clear diversion in "news outlets".  I check various news sites on line daily.  It's two different universes, basically.  And that split has increased among the cable purveyors as they chase audience.

The CBS/ABC/NBC news sites are are generally "OK", if they were all we had there would not be such a divide.  I had no idea back in the day whether my neighbor was liberal or conservative unless we got to know each other a good bit.  Now I see their rants on FB, and at times some craziness, QAnon and beyond, how cops are killing hundreds of thousands of black men each year for no reason, etc.

I also really think the two political parties work on this divide as it gets folks anxious and angry, and then the donate money/time.  An electorate that is sort of blaise about whatever does neither.  

I also think "we" tend to confuse NOISE with NUMBERS.  Some "news" site will publish some event intended to anger us, when in fact it's a rare event, regretable yes, but rare.  Some BLACK man shot some WHITE WOMEN in SC.  Or some WHITE cop shot some BLACK woman in KY.

So, are liberals causing it?  Some are, and so are some conservatives.  We have met the enemy ...

Fortunately, MOST of US are pretty sensible and more moderate than Leftist or Rightist.  You can be a liberal and not a leftist and a conservative and not a racist.

That Fox News link would be a good place to start on a class about how to interpret media. There is some factual information in there: a few cities outside of Wisconsin where people who were arrested came from (at least had on their drivers license). I wasn't arrested at any protests while I was a college student, but if I had been, the arrest record would have said I was from Palo Alto, not Madison. But I wouldn't have been an agitator from out of state in the sense this article is talking about.

But as for establishing out-of-state agitators coming to cause trouble, the article is honest about that: the data it mentions, "has fueled speculation..." And that's all we're really left with.

The article mentions that the Minneapolis mayor's comments about out-of-state people and alt-right people were false, but following the link saying so, it actually only says the out-of-state people comment was false. Which is an interesting contrast with the point of the first article, which is that it's out-of-state agitators causing the problems. The other difference subtly mentioned in the article is whether people are coming from out of state to protest (unquestionably true, particularly in a place like D.C., which is literally ground zero for out-of-state protesters), versus coming from out of state to create chaos and rioting. Those are very different things. 

A similar article from a more newsy news source (but certainly one still subject to claims of bias):
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-protests-white-supremacists-antifa.html

Note how the tone of the article is different, while the topic is very similar.

...
'course, America makes it easy because we have big AND shitty government. So both sides can get their hate on.

If America is at least going to do some "socialism" [which in the case of America, like most of Europe, will be democratic socialism, not hardcore Marxism], I wish we could at least do it well.

We're really not very good at it.

The bigger it is, the more bureaucracy, the more potential for fraud, waste, and abuse. Oh, and the bigger the problems.

One of our problems is just how big we are. It makes solving problems through any kind of large concerted action harder, but that doesn't mean that the programs don't work. Our military is the envy of the world, though it still has plenty of problems. Our Social Security system is a third-rail of politics because of how popular it is. Are there problems with it (starting with its long term funding)? Absolutely, but it actually works quite well. Same for Medicare, which for all the abuse in it--particularly by private companies that are built on scamming it--it delivers quality health care at lower costs than the private system most of us rely on (FWIW, it's not as big a savings as the Bernie Sanders people would have you believe--probably not close). Our SNAP program gets food to the needy, as does the school lunch program. Do those problems solve poverty? No, but they do deliver the food they are supposed to.

1. We are in a pandemic and people are bored
2. Unemployment is high
3. The president is an idiot and is easy to protest
4. There's a cause that is righteous and has been in the news for years
5. It's pretty easy and cheap to get from one place to another

All in all you get some ripe conditions for malfeasance

This is quite accurate Sam. Sadly I think people being locked up because of the pandemic helps create somewhat of a perfect storm.

The original cause, the murder of George Floyd, was totally just and I understand completely the protesting that begin there. But it turned into something else.  

this is where I feel the views get divergent. This is where I think the Liberals did not cause this Egged it on in every way you can egg it on.

and I don’t feel they did it because there’s a cause they believe in but they did it because any party trying to unseat an incumbent wants to portray the status quo as as much chaos and bad as possible.  This is where I feel the left has put their politics way before the good of the country both in the cases of violence and also handling of the pandemic.  This does not mean I condone trumps behavior on either of those things.

That's the biggest bunch of baloney since chaste and fidelity were added to their marriage vows"

Key My Fair Lady Line: "The French don't care what they do actually as long as they pronounce it properly"

Exactly. Humanity was a mistake that has outlived its usefulness.