Office Alex compares and contrasts current and past violent uprisings
At the time of this writing there are still people in jail and there is still blood on the ground in Portland, Oregon after another stunning street battle played out in the news.
People using the forcible suppression of opposition in order to fight…the forcible suppression of opposition (Antifa), and a right-wing group that attracts white nationalists getting pelted by rocks and bottles, thus allowing them to also forcibly oppress the people opposed to them.
I mean that makes for a hell of a weekend right there.
Let me tell you something about civil unrest: what a heart thumper. People running around screaming, smoke and mace in the air, glass breaking, dogs barking, traffic grinding to a halt as our thin veil of civilization disappears into thin air much like the C.S. gas being ejected into it by handheld launchers and grenades…wow. Just “wow.”
And nobody does it better than our brothers and sisters in the Pacific Northwest. (Do I support civil unrest? God no. But when it happens it’s like seeing a wildfire from space: You can’t do much about it so you might as well appreciate the beauty despite the damage it’s doing.)
Events like this go way back with me. You see, much like the Columbine High School tragedy affected my generation of po-po, so did the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization (WTO) protests—or as we prefer to call it, “The Battle of Seattle” (BOS).
This past weekend’s buffoonery in Portland involved roughly 100 marchers being attacked by “a little more than a hundred” protesters of said march. But the BOS? There were an estimated 40,000 protesters there without even the convenience of supporters of what they opposed to attack. This just found the first Starbucks they could find and commenced to smashing the bejesus of anything they felt like.
These were a combination of labor unions, student-groups and environmentalists rioting on behalf of “labor standards, fair trade, and a massive mobilization of globalization” who felt violence and anarchy was the path towards “equality, justice, and enlarging the choices of all.”
Which, yes, is kind of weird.
In short? Students and environmentalist types have always been prone to violence and in 1999, they didn’t even have “Bush Lied” or “Because, Trump” as an excuse. Bill Clinton was still in office and they were still pissed.
The scenes of lawlessness and pillaging were captured in sepia-toned pictures used for propaganda “against the police state” when they showed a cop in riot gear putting hands (or a stick) on what the news called an “activist” and what we call a “rioter,” without the convenience of also showing that those officers hands (and sticks) were being used in response to the bottle of piss or rock that was used on him/her seconds before. That’s how propaganda works.
1999 Seattle of 2018 Portland though, with the exception of the fracas in Charlottesville in 2017, it seems they have cornered the market on rioting.Is it because folks have more sense in the other corners of the country? Is it because most Southerners are armed and therefore a less desirable target to pelt with rocks in the name of “equality”?
I honestly don’t know, but I wouldn’t rule out a lack of commitment that I seem to be seeing displayed with great regularity (if not alacrity) in the damp confines of our Northwestern U.S.
We can get along. We need to get along. Stop insulting survivors of the Holocaust and post-WWII Europe with “fascism, Nazi, and concentration camp” rhetoric. Don’t throw rocks at racist assholes using a permit to exercise free speech; they need flowers, not masonry.
Organize yourself politically. Get your message out to get the vote out. Or maybe pop a Xanax?
Because I’m telling you, you and your less-sane friends are one tossed bottle of piss away from being a propaganda poster yourselves, and then no one wins.
Peace, my brothers and sisters. (Literally.)
When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.