After the June 12 shooting of Rayshard Brooks by Atlanta Police Officer Garrett Rolfe, Rolfe was fired and charged with murder. If after Rolfe’s trial he is found innocent, as there is a good case and a good chance he will be, expect Atlanta to burn again in street violence and mayhem.

That is because the kind of riots that have plagued cities all across the nation as of late have become predictable. These faux insurrections have done to Atlanta what Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, who burned down part of the city, never dared. The process brings to mind another Civil War analogy.

When Union cavalry General John Buford, played by actor Sam Elliott in the film “Gettysburg,” is talking to a subordinate commander about an upcoming battle, he says, “I’ve led a soldier’s life, and I’ve never seen anything as brutally clear as this. It’s as if I can actually see the blue troops in one long, bloody moment, goin’ up the long slope to the stony top. As if it were already done…already a memory. An odd…set…stony quality to it. As if tomorrow has already happened and there’s nothin’ you can do about it.”

Like Buford and his prediction, if experience is any guide, if Rolfe is found not guilty Atlanta will (not perhaps will, but will) go up in flames again and there is nothing we can do about it. Though the vital difference in any analogy regarding the recent street unrest in America and the Civil War is that Union troops under Buford, and later under Sherman, were fighting to liberate African-Americans from slavery. Those who riot in the streets are fighting to keep many blacks in political chains on a leftist Democrat economic and electoral plantation.

Since 1992 and the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, even earlier since the Liberty City and Overtown riots in Miami in 1980, the script has hardly varied a whit. A white police officer is found to have followed proper procedure in an incident that resulted in the beating or death of a black citizen. Whether the officer is truly guilty or innocent does not seem to matter to the rioters, as they incinerate their own homes, shops, and neighborhoods. Though since those early riots they have moved far afield, on to downtown business districts. However, the essential song remains the same.

Will Rolfe beat the charges? There is a very good argument that, as Brooks was in possession of what the Atlanta area D.A., who is prosecuting the case, has publicly termed a “deadly weapon,” Officer Rolfe was following proper procedure in using deadly force against Brooks to prevent harm or death to himself or members of the public. Even if you do not find that argument convincing it only takes one member of the jury to buy into it for Rolfe to get a hung jury and possibly walk out of the courtroom a free man. Thus the D.A. is likely do to all he can to stack the jury with those who have a vicious antipathy to police officers.

But if the D.A. is not successful in his prosecution, then sadly, the odds are, the odds long since confirmed as smart money since 1980 and 1992, that Atlanta will burn. It doesn’t actually have to happen, as there is no direct corollary relationship between senseless destruction and justice. However, there’s also no telling that to the rioters, looters, and arsonists. The continuous loop in their heads drowns out everything else.

This piece was written by David Kamioner on June 18, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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