Charlottesville, Virginia

First Battle of Bull Run:  Spectators came from Washington D.C. with picnic lunches to enjoy the show.

My prayers are with the demonstrators, counter-demonstrators, the police and their families in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Let us hope that the picture shown above is not later referred to as being from "The First American Civil War".

Stay away from crowds
According to Mental Health by the Numbers, one person in every twenty-five: "...experiences (is diagnosed with) a serious mental illness in a given year that substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities."

Professionally, I estimated that one-in-twenty are more than a half bubble off plumb.  Bear in mind that these are people who function well enough (just barely) to hold a job.

The qualifiers, "diagnosed" and "function well enough to hold a job" suggest that the actual percentage is significantly north of 5%.

Also consider that events like "demonstrations" attract the adrenaline junkies.  Expecting "random" sampling at a "demonstration" is as naive as expecting bungee-jumpers to be a representative sample of the US population.

In a crowd of 200 demonstrators you are almost guaranteed to have 20 people who are unable, or totally unwilling to regulate their emotions.

In my humble estimation, going to a "demonstration" as a "counter-demonstrator" is a prudent as going into a honkie-tonk and calling the patrons a bunch of in-bred idiots.  It is not healthy in the long run.

Yes, I know I am perilously close to "blaming the victim."  But would you advise your child (or nephew or a student in the Sociology class you are teaching that they could earn extra credit) to go to a Black Lives Matter demonstration and suggest they call the demonstrators a bunch of n-ggers?  How about going to a La Raza demonstration and hurling slurs at them?

That would be IRRESPONSIBLE.

So why are some parties encouraging young people to counter-demonstrate against alt-Right demonstrations?