I am trying to keep my blog entries to at most one a day. The pressing need to correct misperceptions has triaged this essay, which I wrote shortly after the story came out, to the back of the cue. It remains relevant, so I am publishing it now, with some updates thanks to the unfolding of insanity. The blog has first to do with this NPR headline: Trump Says He’ll Deploy Military To States If They Don’t Stop Violent Protests. That wasn’t the original headline. Here was the original one, curated on my Facebook page: “Trump Calls Protests Against Police Killings ‘Acts of Domestic Terror’.” That headline is a bald-faced lie. It’s that headline I take up here. Trump said nothing of the sort.
(The New York Post had a useful editorial on this on June 2 by Eddie Scarry, “The lying about Donald Trump is now completely out of control.” Frankly, I have never seen anything like this in my life. The lying is so extreme it’s almost comical. At times it is. What’s tragic, though, are all the people on my Facebook newsfeed who are perpetually suckered by it. I want to think my progressive friends are smart. I truly do. But they seem determined to prove me wrong. Confirmation bias is at its worst when it comes to the bad orange man in the White House.)
I watched Trump’s speech twice. The president said clearly and deliberately that he was “an ally of all peaceful protesters.” He continued, “we cannot allow the righteous cries and peaceful protestors to be drown out by an angry mob. The biggest victims of the rioting are peace loving citizens in our poorest communities and as their president, I will fight to keep them safe.” What Trump said next was that criminal violence is not legitimate protest. And he’s right, it’s not. Criminal violence for political purposes is domestic terrorism, he said. Right again. That’s exactly what it is. All this comes straight from my lectures in my upper-division criminology course. Textbook stuff. Those committing violence are not rebelling against an unjust order. They’re molesting the order of a democratic republic.
Right before your eyes, NPR assumes, and wants you to assume with them, that crimes against persons and property is a form of protest, that criminal violence is a First Amendment activity. Reread the headline. NPR is trying to change your brain. NPR has become the propaganda arm of the insurgency. But I hesitate here a little. Collective violence may feel like a revolt or uprising, but calling the riots an insurgency is perhaps a bit much (to be clear Trump didn’t use the term). If it is an insurgency, the goal isn’t exactly isn’t clear. It’s members are not a monolithic bunch.
The mobs of black people smashing white businesses and beating white people in the streets are collective acts of vicious hate crimes. It is shocking, given the history of lynching in the United States, to see members of the race targeted by mobs in the period following Reconstruction target people in the same way and for the same reason—racial hatred fueled by myths about a group of people. There is no justification for what we are seeing.
Antifa, overwhelmingly white in character, is an international terrorist organization shamelessly using the protest to pursue its own agenda of destabilizing democracy and civil liberties (Antifa reserves the right to determine what speech is acceptable and what speech warrants kicking in somebody’s face or burning down their house). Legitimate protests across the planet are being tarnished and undermined by Antifa’s actions. Using black lives on the streets of America is an easy tactic for a group of narcissists who feel strong by sowing chaos. Antifa thrives on disorder and violence for the sake of selfish needs of dysfunctional people. The group means to draw police action with criminality in order to manufacture the perception that the government is repressive in order to amplify the anarchy that feeds their egos. Antifa is a pathological manifestation of extreme egoism. The police aren’t neonazi street thugs.
The black mobs and the white anarchists say they pursue a political cause, so we have to operate with their subjectivity in mind. Take them at their word. They’re terrorists. As for the peaceful protestors, they believe they have a political reason, too, but as I have shown with facts in recent blogs and will show again on Freedom and Reason tomorrow, they don’t. This is not to say that the protests should be stifled. I am with Trump, “an ally of all peaceful protesters.” I don’t police the content of protests. But while I support the First Amendment to the hilt, I cannot ally with the substance of protests as they are based on false premises. The United States does not suffer persist systemic racism. Whites are not a privileged class that oppresses blacks. Blacks are not disproportionately victims of lethal police force. Blacks are not disproportionately arrested or imprisoned independent of the amount of criminal activity in which they are involved. The United States eliminated institutional racism more than half a century ago and, moreover, instituted in the decade following and going forwards an expansive reparations program for blacks. I confess, I fell for these myths too. But several years of checking my own beliefs showed me that I had fallen prey to an orchestrated campaign of disinformation by the globalist wing of the capitalist class.
NPR lied about something else, too. Riot police pushed back rioters near the White House not because President Trump was visiting St. John’s Episcopal Church, which had been set on ablaze by vandals the night before, but because rioters were attacking police officers. “Park Police Tear Gas Peaceful Protesters To Clear Way For Trump Church Photo-Op,” read a NPR headline. “Protesters Dispersed With Tear Gas So Trump Could Pose at Church,” the New York Times reported. But tear gas was not used. Had they coordinated with the White House and had they used tear gas, the president could not have walked to the church. Can people do logic anymore? This is a symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Progressives are such funny people. They get so mad they can’t see straight when citizens with the wrong politics protest the quarantining of health individuals, even calling for the police to enforce arbitrary “shelter-in-place” orders, but when criminals are burning down churches and assaulting their fellow citizens and the president calls on governors to protect and defend the rule of law against violent criminals, progressives lose their shit. They think defending a democratic republic from street thugs is fascism. (By the way, where is that panic over COVID-19 now that people are out in the streets delegitimizing the government that progressives previously demanded lock up people in their homes? COVID-19 is so yesterday for trend mongers on the hunt for new virtue signaling memes. Well, at least new and improved.)
What about the president’s authority to use the military to suppress insurrection? (See my “The Riotous Left is on the Wrong Side of Democracy and Justice”). Remember Little Rock in 1957, when Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to stop African Americans from attending Little Rock Central High School as part of federally ordered racial desegregation? He essentially dared President Eisenhower to make him integrate his schools. Well, on September 5, 1957, Eisenhower sent Faubus a telegram that went like this: “The only assurance I can give you is that the Federal Constitution will be upheld by me by every legal means at my command.” Then he federalized the Guard and used them to protect African Americans in Little Rock Central High School.
Comrades, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. The president is well within his legal authority to deploy the militia of this country to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections, and repel Invasions. Indeed, the commander-in-chief is as much obligated to protect and defend the republic from insurrection as he is to defend the republic from invasion. These words I am using come straight from the Constitution of the United States. The founders of America invested in the office elected by all Americans the power to protect and defend the Constitution by military means if necessary. And presidents in the past have on numerous occasions done just this. But when Trump does it, he’s a fascist.
The first right of every man and woman in a democratic society is security in their persons and effects. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s right there in our Declaration of Independence. It’s why we overthrew a monarch and established a strong national government and a powerful executive elected by all the people. Do people really think we have sacrificed so much for democracy and liberty over these many centuries to give up now? Fuck them. Without security, freedom and development have no foundation. A state that fails to protect its people is a failed state. We know a failed state is what the globalists want. They are engineering them everywhere. The insurrection we have been experiencing slots in nicely with the Chinamerica project (see Gordon G. Chang, “China is Stoking Racial Tension in America,” Newsweek.) The Party of Davos is grinning ear-to-ear at the site of chaos by the puppets they animate. That Antifa presents with a Maoist character completes the circle. (I will have more to say about this in future blogs.)
It is one thing to protest under the First Amendment. Assemble, petition, write, raise your voices, bear your placards—these are your rights. I’m a huge First Amendment guy. I have assembled, petitioned, written, raised my voice, and bore placards many times in my life. It is another thing altogether to loot, rob, and assault. Every police chief, every mayor, every governor fails in their primary obligation if they fail to uphold the rule of law. Trump called them out. Good on him. Unlike Democrats and progressives, Trump is not failing to stand up for the republic.
Here is a terrifying example is why citizens are right to fear what is happening in their communities and to expect the government to intervene and project them. In a recent press conference, Richmond Police Chief Will Smith explained told a story about how rioters set fire to an occupied multi-family residence with a child inside, then repeatedly blocked firefighters’ access to the scene. “Protesters intercepted that fire apparatus several blocks away with vehicles and blocked that fire department’s access to the structure fire,” Smith said. “Inside that home was a child.” “Officers were able to –,” Smith attempted to continue, though he was overcome with emotion, “help those people out of the house.” “We were able to get the fire department there safely,” the emotional police chief said. This is horrifying. This is what I mean when I say this is out of control. (Rioters Set Fire To Home With Child Inside, Then Block Firefighters’ Access; Emotional Police Chief Details Incident.)
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde is representative of the rot of progressive ecumenicalism that embraced Islam but mocks conservative Christianity. “The President just used a Bible and one of the churches of my diocese as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our church stands for,” she writes in a tweet promoted by the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and the corporate media. “To do so, he sanctioned the use of tear gas by police officers in riot gear to clear the church yard,” she claimed. She said, “The President did not pray when he came to St. John’s; nor did he acknowledge the agony and sacred worth of people of color in our nation who rightfully demand an end to 400 years of systemic racism and white supremacy in our country.” There is no requirement to pray in a secular society, Bishop Budde. That’s a shameful remark. And we ended systemic racism half a century ago and implemented an expansive program of reparations. There are few white supremacist left in the entire world. Budde, like so many progressives, lives in a fantasy world. Budde continued, “In no way do we support the President’s incendiary response to a wounded, grieving nation. In faithfulness to our Savior who lived a life of non-violence and sacrificial love, we align ourselves with those seeking justice for the death of George Floyd and countless others through the sacred act of peaceful protest.” She presumes to speak for a lot of people. A “wounded, grieving nation”? Wounded by whom?
The “we” is an ever growing collection of characters. The worst of the worst. Waiting on publishing this blog has given me two more instances of the lunacy. First was Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis, former Secretary of Defense. CNN carried the headline, “Mattis tears into Trump: ‘We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership’.” My Facebook newsfeed was swamped with shares of the articles gleefully reported by the corporate media. Progressives fawn over Mad Dog as if he’s a great moral figure. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Mattis support the Saudi military campaign against Yemen? He asked Trump to lift restrictions on US military aid to Saudi Arabia, right? Never forget, Mattis resigned his post because Trump pulled America out of Syria mess Obama got us into. Trump fast tracked Mattis’ resignation by moving it up to New Years Day, essentially firing him. Savage. By the way, Mattis doesn’t like the nickname “Mad Dog.” He prefers “Chaos.” I’m not being sarcastic.
And speaking of Obama, the former president has reappeared to egg on the protesters (NPR, “Obama Urges Young People To Keep Up Their Protests To Bring Change”). Like he cares about justice. Remember the Harvard Square incident (“What Motivated Sergeant Crowley?”)? Or when he bombed an prosperous African country into the Slave Trade? How about the way he disowned Wright and Trinity Unity (“Disloyal Obama’s Duplicity”)? The dude even threw his grandmother under the bus. His hypocrisy is feel almost tactical it’s so deliberate. After running as an antiwar populist, Obama was at the forefront of indefinite detention, summary execution, and the widespread deployment of aerial drones in warfare. Against the people, he worked hand-in-hand with local law enforcements to suppress legitimate political dissent. Remember, in Obama’s America, Occupy Wall Street protesters are cleared out in multiple cities overnight by armed government thugs. The man only wants to get a globalist back in office so the team can continue the managed decline of the American republic. I lay this mess at the feet of progressives and the Democratic Party who have for decades been teaching our young people a story of America’s history designed to breed fear and loathing of Western order and values. They prepared the ground for the uprising.
Those who rationalize riots are lying, as well. The claim that nonviolent action and peaceful protest have not advanced the cause of social change and justice is dishonest. When folks say that, they’re erasing the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. They erasing more than King. Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruling that ended segregation in public schools, was not won through violence. It was won by argument and persuasion. Sitting at segregated lunch counters, in segregated bus seats, these actions may have been met with violence, but their impact was not obtained by those seeking justice acting violently. The violence came from those who opposed justice. You cannot justify your violent actions or your call for others to act violently on the obvious lie that nonviolence doesn’t work. To be sure, violence has its place, but it is out of place in today’s America except to defend our way of life. We were finally getting things back on track. For progressives, that was the problem.
In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the foremost advocates for the interests of the proletariat, characterize those prone to criminality as “social scum,” pursuing “primitive rebellion,” victimizing the working class, activities that prepared them more for serving as the “bribed tools” of “reactionary intrigue” than any purposes suitable to forward-leaning social transformation. That’s what real socialism looks like in the face of thugs and anarchists. #maketheleftgreatagain
freedom and reason 