I first heard Mark Twain’s quote from friends who work with alcoholics. Denial followed by explosive anger when deranged fantasies are confronted by reality, are common but destructive and unattractive behavior. It’s now been six months since Hillary Clinton lost and, while the ranting among her more infantile supporters has subsided a bit, there remains a collection of psychotics stuck in denial that the nation rejects their prescriptions for a ‘just’ society, thought and speech control, and government-managed wealth distribution.
Their anger has, if anything, grown and some of the tantrums of three months ago have been replaced by criminal violence and rioting. We can, I fear, look forward to this violence escalating until responsible people and their elected officials lose patience.
Just for clarity, I’m talking about multiple riots in Berkeley; the cancelled Avenue of Roses parade in Portland, Oregon; the May 1 riots in New York and other cities; and the revolting costumes, rhetoric and behavior at the ‘Women’s March’ in DC January 21. Violence has long been the tool of extremists in other countries. It is a common characteristic of socialist regimes like Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, China, and Russia. It’s been embraced by both the left and right fringes here in America including some elected officials. It is, however, the fringe left that is now in denial that it was their ideas that disenfranchised them and engaging in the anger and violence characteristic of addicts and failing authoritarian regimes.
Radical leftists argue that ideas they don’t like are ‘hate speech’. Howard Dean tweeted that Hate Speech is not protected by the First Amendment. What he means by that is as big a puzzle to me as everything else he says, but it is reasonable to suspect he’s of the view that it’s acceptable to suppress speech and ideas that the gods of the left declare unacceptable.
But rioting is not protesting, it is patently illegitimate expression, and it’s surely not protected speech. Conversely, the speeches by Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter absolutely are protected and failing to provide that protection was malfeasance. The Berkeley rioters didn’t simply stay away or peacefully express their disagreement: They used violence to stop anyone from hearing the speakers without having the vaguest idea what would be said.
Sadly, at Berkeley and so many other so-called Universities, there is no marketplace of ideas. Instead there is an arrogant self-appointed ‘elite’ (effete!) that arrogate to themselves the ability to divine what is right and just and then suborn violent enforcement of conformity. Consider, for instance, the unspeakable arrogance revealed by Chuck Schumer saying Democrats would co-operate when Donald Trump came to Schumer to get a list of ‘acceptable’ Supreme Court nominees. Perhaps the leftist rage arises because, for half their lives, the Government has enabled their obsessions and now that has been rejected by us ignorant, selfish, bible-clinging, gun toting, racist deplorables who pay the bills. It’s not difficult to imagine the cognitive dissonance the last election must have created in these snowflakes.
Perhaps the DOJ is so busy ‘investigating’ a Trump-Russia connection they have no resources to investigate the funding and leadership of the Antifa anarchists. Promoting anarchy is infinitely more characteristic of Russian meddling than ‘hacking’ an election, but the legacy media seems anything but concerned enough to investigate and expose the leadership and funding of the Antifa. But, we don’t need to know who the leaders and financiers are to band together to deplore, denounce, and stop the violence. Many from across the political spectrum including responsible media organizations have, admirably, done so. But the organizations cited by Donald Trump as being the “enemy of the people” have been notably unconcerned, muted and even silent. This and their hair-on-fire reaction to his tweet should inform us just how valid his characterization was.
But, it’s our job, not the media’s, to end the violence. We need not confront radicals, rioters, or the mindless juveniles spewing obscenities. We aren’t required to change the minds of psychopaths. We are required to know the truth, reject the purveyors of ‘fake news’, ignore their absurd arguments supporting failed ideas, and chase from office the arrogant and effete who appoint themselves visionaries of utopia and enforcers of conformity. If we act together, with determination, to deny them political and financial support, the violent left will either change what they think or be relegated to scribbling manifestos on the padded walls of their safe space.
Ken Frederic of Bristol is a member of a group of concerned Midcoast citizens who meet to discuss issues of public interest. Their weekly column “Another View” has been awarded by the Maine Press Association.
