Smashing the State

There won’t be any surprises in this one for anyone who knows me at all well, but I’ll try to at least make it entertaining.

My very first lasting memory of a news event with political content took place on the afternoon of Sunday 21 January 1968. A B-52 with four hydrogen bombs aboard took off from Thule AFB and crashed somewhere in the Arctic, location unknown.
Ten days later, the Tet Offensive began.
Nine weeks and one day after that, Dr King was assassinated.
Nine weeks less one day after that, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated.
Twelve weeks to the day after that, I first saw real human blood shed live on television via cameras above the intersection of Michigan and Balbo as the Chicago police attacked demonstrators during the Democratic National Convention.

I was eight years old.

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What happened Wednesday?

Roy Says:
January 7th, 2021 at 10:23 pm
Mike, does there exist a way to prove your observation about Antifa cadre and about cops helping them specifically up the stairs? I know that we’re not supposed to trust our instincts nor our lying eyes, but…

We will probably never get proof as the evidence will be swept away as quickly as evidence of vote fraud has been swept away. This operation was designed to harm Trump’s ability to influence policy in the next four years and to discredit him with the gullible who have not already become Democrats.

Here is one account from eyewitnesses.

According to the website “wildprotest.com,” the original plan was to gather at the Whitehouse Ellipse from 9am to 12pm, then gather at the North lawn of the Capitol building at 1 pm. As you may well know, not only did it not happen this way, but the aforementioned website went blank. Did they take it down to make it harder for Trump supporters to show that storming the building was never part of the initial plan?

This account is from an attendee who witnessed some of the events but not inside the capitol.

My group boarded a D.C. Metro train at 10:30am. Upon arrival to the next station, I saw three young white men board the train with dark clothes and skeleton face masks. My immediate concern was that these were Antifa thugs who would give us trouble as soon as they saw us get off the train with our signs. As I watched them from the corner of my eye, I noticed that one of them wore a cape with the American Revolution snake “Join or die.” Were these Trump supporters? Something did not seem quite right. As the train approached our destination, other rally participants started to fill our coach and we arrived at the Ellipse with no incident.

It seemed a typical Trump rally.

The main difference that struck me as unusual during this rally (apart from the three young men who boarded the train) was the frequent smell of marijuana.

We were present during much of the President’s speech, but since we could not hear it clearly, we walked to the National Mall in search of a bathroom. We found a public restroom on the mall with two lines of over 50 people. We then proceeded to walk down the Mall towards the Capitol building in search of porta-potties and found one with a line of about 20-30 people. Our wait was only 20 minutes, but it was overflowing, and I felt very bad for the women in our group. During the previous rally there had been many portable toilets on the Mall. This lack of facilities was anticipated because we were advised in one list serve to wear diapers. I had the impression the D.C. mayor wanted to make it less comfortable for us.

There is more, a lot more. You will have to search for it, though.

Here is another account from the NY Post.

At least two known Antifa members were spotted among the throngs of pro-Trump protesters at the Capitol on Wednesday, a law enforcement source told The Post.

The Antifa members disguised themselves with pro-Trump clothing to join in the DC rioting, said the sources, who spotted the infiltrators while monitoring video coverage from the Capitol.

The infiltrators were recognized due to their participation in New York City demonstrations, and were believed to have joined in the rioting so that Trump would get blamed, the source said.

Here is another known Antifa/BLM terrorist.

I expect there was a cadre of up to 100 Antifa terrorists and they used the same tactics we have seen since Minneapolis in June. They do the window breaking and encourage others, black looters in Minneapolis, Trump overenthusiastic supporters in DC, to follow their lead.

It was a successful op. Someone should have anticipated this but Trump staffers are too busy abandoning ship. I have read of “hundreds” of arrests coming. Who wants to bet that they will all be the Trump people and Antifa will get clean away?

Where They Burn…

“Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.” wrote the 19th century German poet and essayist Heinrich Heine. Or in English, “Where they burn books, in the end they will also burn men.” I’d update the line to say “Where they burn cities, they’ll burn the countryside, too.”

And since Antifa and Black Lives Matter demonstrators have been busily setting fires in urban protests, attempting to set fire to police stations, throwing Molotov cocktails and fireworks, and incinerating whole city blocks, businesses, pawnshops and bookstores alike, can one really blame residents of rural and small-town Oregon for assuming the worst and suspecting that the catastrophic fires scorching the west coast have a man-made origin? It’s a logical assumption to make, after six months of threats, violence, and deliberate urban arson.

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A Moment to Decide

Once to ev’ry man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision,
Off’ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
‘Twixt that darkness and that light.

– James Russell Lowell

So the first shots in the shooting war have been fired, to the surprise of practically no one who has been following civic matters over the last six months. Admittedly, that the first would be fired in Kenosha, of all places that’s a bit of a surprise. Although it isn’t at all startling that a Trump supporter would be gunned down on the streets of Portland by an Antifa thug shortly thereafter, to resounding cheers of approval.

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So, we drive on the right and our homes are our castles – or not

Freedom is greatest within restraints and boundaries. Sure, on some slippery slope with no constraining adverbs, this seems contradictory, but we recognize daily that minimal, enforceable and enforced, laws provide predictability, enable true freedom. Would my freedom be enlarged without the first limit society imposes as I leave my house: driving on the right? Seinfeld’s Kramer attempted to “free” the lanes but caused chaos. I cheerfully accept it because it simplifies more than limits; I go over my grocery list or laugh with Limbaugh; someone more productive might create a poem or solve a physics problem. Without limits, we would be on guard, slow to a crawl, choose a tank, hoping, as my brothers put it, to be the shearer and not the shearee in an inevitable collision. I remember a homesick Iranian engineer telling us still he didn’t want to return here drivers stop at red lights, even alone at night; there, every intersection was a free for all. Too much order suffocates but with too little concentration is difficult.

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