March 2016 played host to the Pathways to Status Bill. December 2016, only two days young, the poor lass, has delivered the airport redevelopment legislation. The common denominator? Neither political process was allowed to go forward because of unlawful protests that held up the democratic system that our forefathers fought so hard for us to have.

What was different nine months down the road between protests, and alarmingly so, was that Bermudian citizens suffered physical injury. And it was so utterly avoidable.

The Bermuda Police Service, who were ridiculed as toothless muppets when Chris Furbert, Jason Hayward and the Reverend Nicholas Tweed led their merry mob on to Cabinet grounds to successfully stop debate on the issue of permanent resident’s certificates and Bermudian status, have been on a hiding to nothing.

But with a view to ensuring that the dreadful precedent set earlier in the year was not repeated, they armed themselves with a resolve that the people’s business be allowed to be carried out, provided that the Speaker of the House signalled for Sessions House to be open for business — which he did.

Anything that prevents that, anything at all, is deemed unlawful.

We brought yesterday on ourselves and have descended rather predictably into a lawless abyss of incivility as a result.

Many have much to answer for, significantly among them David Burt, delivering his first big gambit as Leader of the Opposition, and the wide-eyed, foul-mouthed Jason Hayward, who resembled anything but the leader of a white-collar union; more raving lunatic.

Questions need to be asked of both men, including: if this indeed was a peaceful protest, why was access to the House of Assembly denied to the honourable members who were democratically elected to fulfil their duties?

The large majority of the crowd assembled on Parliament Street were indeed peaceful but those intent on stopping MPs from taking their places on the Hill were not.

The scenes displayed when the police attempted to clear a path to Parliament were shameful — on both sides.

Police will be reminded that senior citizens were subjected to pepper spray and the threat of Taser. That is what has made the rounds internationally, as Bermuda’s turquoise waters and pink sands have been exchanged for scenes out of a 1980s football hooligans’ dust-up.

Whose bright idea was it to have them on the front line?

Questions also need to asked of the officer who felt it necessary to spray an 87-year-old woman or those who manhandled another woman, resulting in her requiring hospital treatment.

But none of this would have happened if the peaceful protest stayed peaceful and the officers were allowed to forge a way to the gates of Parliament. The moment the crowd closed ranks around them and the moment those closest to the gates girded their loins, that is when “peaceful” became something quite different.

Burt, with his stated aim to stop the One Bermuda Alliance and the Bermuda Government from proceeding with the airport deal after Michael Dunkley refused to dance to his tune, made it so.

The protesters were given a pass in March, but this cannot be allowed to go on whenever the OBA and the Progressive Labour Party do not see eye to eye in the legislature.

What are we? Savages?

Near enough, it must be accepted, because it is hard to escape such a crude analogy on the evidence of yesterday.

And what’s worse, we wheel out the elderly, the vision-impaired and our young children for such occasions without taking full stock of worst-case scenarios.

With all strategic boxes ticked, the sympathy card is at the ready if it all goes belly up.

Moral high ground achieved. Politics.

But finally, finally, one or two social-media commenters have taken to exploring the airport deal and why it is causing so much angst. They planned on reading the 200 or so pages that were put into the public domain a fortnight ago so that they might make an informed decision.

They will be in a very small minority. We have been going at this for almost two years and the reality is that no more than one in ten of our “peaceful protesters” — and we are being pretty generous even with that assessment — has bothered to read any of the reams of literature that have been produced to articulate one side of the argument or the other.

That is what we have become. Well led rather than well read.

The result is a spinning of wheels in quicksand. And deeper and deeper we sink until we are no longer seen at all.

• For a related statement this afternoon from the Centre for Justice, click on the PDF link under “Related Media”