Sometimes I think they actually are....

Civility is for wimps, cowards, and those that remain in denial about political reality. Merely asking nicely and appealing to conscience quit being effective long ago. Power only responds to a fight and the threat of what may happen with violence. That is why the protests in the 60s were effective, because the powers that be were afraid of how the movements would tear and burn it all down or at least cause so much disruption that the rich and corporations could no longer do business as usual.

The ruling class made concessions to MLK and the civil rights movement only because they preferred that rather than deal with folks like Malcom X or The Black Panthers, tho they later eliminated them both after making concessions. As for the anti-war radical groups, the war ended less because of them than because the rulers saw that they could no longer get enough cooperation and support for the draft from the young men to keep up the troop levels, so they began pulling back from Vietnam. The radical, violent anti-war groups were not that effective in stopping the war. The rulers were afraid of being humiliated with massive resistance to the draft.

@TomMcGiverin Had I not been a young child in NJ, I'm fairly certain that I would have wanted to be a member of the Weather underground.

I clearly remember hearing about them on the news, and reading about them in the papers
I thought what they were doing made a lot of sense. Especially since most of the adults around me never had anything nice to say about them.
That was usually always a clear sign that someone was "rocking the boat".
Most of the time, the boat rockers were fighting against things that were wrong and needed changing.

Even as a child, I was able to discern bullshit when I came across it. I was always unable to stop questioning all authority.
Definitely helped get my ass beat quite a few times, too.

My mother always said that I was born defiant, and that is one of the very few things that she was ever right about.