Before the infamous 1968 movement made violence in general, and that against police and authorities in general in particular, socially acceptable in the West, riots like those we have recently seen in the United States and in the United Kingdom would have been unthinkable.
Unfortunately, nowadays they have become almost routine every time a certain leftist group doesn’t like somebody or something. Progressives obviously think that they are entitled to promote their incoherent ideas in any possible legal or illegal way.
What makes this worrisome development even worse is that senseless destruction will be excused by a large number of people that isn’t actively involved in it, but sympathizes with its supposedly very noble, often unquestionable motives. The scary Black Lives Matter cult is a very good example of that.
Regardless of what has happened over the last year in Hong Kong and how it has finally backfired in detriment of all residents, a big difference between East Asia and the West remains the respect (and not necessarily fear) that the average citizen has of the police and probably all persons in uniform.
Just like it used to be in Western countries 50 years ago, in general they aren’t considered enemies, but friends and helpers. That was exactly the slogan they used in Germany when I was a kid. Now, even my relatives refer to officers as “pigs” who are stupid and biased.
In June, one of those immigrants nobody really needs, and who would end up in jail or worse in her country of origin, wrote in a red newspaper that the final destination for (German) cops could only be a garbage dump. As usual, critics of that newspaper column were called racists.
A couple of weeks ago, somebody on the Taipei Metro system filmed a young lady who was refusing to wear a surgical mask and running away from and yelling at the personnel trying to enforce that mandatory policy without using force.
I found the reaction of the other passengers very interesting, as they all supported the guards and the police that had to be called to try to get the absurd situation under control. Nobody started defending that crazy lady’s weird behavior, or asked them to leave her alone, or pretended that for being female she deserved special treatment.
In Europe, especially in madhouses like Berlin, there would have been at least one scumbag aggressively justifying an attitude not worth discussing and calling those representing law and order all kinds of names.
These diametrically opposed points of view about how to deal with those who represent the State, that for too many in the West has become a symbol of evil, not the necessary frame that regulates our coexistence in modern societies, are one of the many reasons why I hope to be back in Taiwan as soon as the current pandemic allows it. Not for nothing it’s one of the safest countries in the world!