If you listen to fools, the mob rules.
Rock lyrics can be silly, insipid, and in the spirit of a modern day minstrel, insightful. The great rock singer Ronnie James Dio penned these lyrics for Black Sabbath. Sure, it’s daft and the kind of thing you’d get from a high school newspaper; quoting rock-n-roll lyrics. Albeit, from 1981, old rock lyrics. I’m not sure I’ve thought of anything better though, so I’ll roll with it.
In 1989, occurring at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, 10’s of thousands of students gathered from spring in to early summer. For what reason did they gather? Well on the heals of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution, students from Beijing’s universities were gathered to protest conditions in their home China. Up to that point, China had been turned in to a hard communist regime bent on expunging western values found in capitalist cultures. As recently reported, a near 10,000 protesters were killed for their efforts. Why? Students simply wanted democracy, freedom, a free press and the ability to assemble.
Sound familiar? Chinese students wanted the First Amendment from the U.S. Bill of Rights. Blood ran in the streets of Beijing for these things we in the States take for granted.
The reflexive nature of the now too-long-in-the-tooth #Resistance movement is that they’re now a parody of protests past. The difference being their wont is to protest both silly things and in silly ways.
In a recent segment, CNN host Brook Baldwin took to the Daily Beast writer Matt Lewis simply because he referred to the leftist protest culture as a ‘mob’ (in this case, referencing a Ted Cruz restaurant incident). Lewis was not so much as done saying the word when Ms. Baldwin pedantically broke in, “Oh, you’re not going to use the ‘mob‘ word here.” Though Lewis tried to continue, the host preferred to patronize and shut him down, interjecting, “MMMatt…MMMatt..(insert eye roll)..MMMaatt…”.
You see, in the near two years since Donald Trump’s election, the left has been devolving in to a childish morass. If only the childishness were in the form of gender specific anatomical hats, this would at least be a peaceful protest. Albeit, of questionable seriousness.
What we now see is the excusing of bad behavior. Historically, the media has done an exceptional job of revising the true history of the protest-laden 1960’s. The greater the protest wreckage, the harder the media works as the public relations wing of the leftist protesters.
The media thinks the leftist protesters objective is noble and worthy of protection.
From the self-same CNN, host Don Lemon has suggested more than once that protesters are asserting their First Amendment rights. What Lemon fails to realize is that not all protest behavior is protected by the First Amendment. A rally at the steps of the capital? Absolutely protected and a model of proper assembly. Shouting Ted Cruz or Kirstjen Nielsen out of a restaurant is not. You do not have the right to peaceably assemble, or loudly shout, at a private establishment. Period.
This is a significant point; elitist talking heads not only do not condemn such behavior, but seek to spin mob intent as somehow benevolent. And the horde happily continues their siege knowing that consequences are nil.
Kids look for limits. Ask any teacher. How do you think a first grade teacher keeps a class in order? Heck, even in Kindergarten Cop, Arnold’s character learns this lesson the hard way. Limits. The answer is limits.
We’ve eschewed limits in order to make the kiddos feel good. If only this were the end of the story. No one gets out torches and hoists a pitchfork without a reason. Even if the reason is stupid.
From the pantheon of scholastic lunacy, one of these stupid ideas is ‘words as violence’. Easily the dumbest idea this side of buying a Pet Rock.
Campuses have become breeding grounds for terrible ideas. Unmoored to reality, humanities professors write ever more insipid theories on the crises of humanity. Solving problems that didn’t really need to be solved.
One of these being the so-called ‘violence of words’. Though sticks and stones can break my bones, names can also sometimes hurt. Herein lies the issue; these professors have blurred the lines between hurt feelings and physical violence.
I grew up in the 70’s. It was the era of Evel Knievel. Like every other boy in my neighborhood, my bike was made to jump things. Anything. Find a flat piece of wood and something to lean that wood against and you were airborne. Ride fast, hit the ramp, get as much air as possible and have that moment of exhilarating danger. No helmet, no kneepads or elbow pads. Today, you look down any residential street and some kid is padded up like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man…just to ride a flat sidewalk.
What the helmet and elbow pads are to bike riding, the concept of ‘word violence’ is to defining down what real violence actually means.
Ultimately this downward definition justifies a protestor’s perception that so-called word violence justifies a right to self defense. It’s like this; let’s say you believed the world was flat and told me so. I call you a fool. Word violence! Instead of simply trying to convince me that I was wrong and attempting to cite evidence of a flat earth (erroneously, of course), you feel justified via a word violence definition that I have perpetrated some harm on you. I called you a fool, so you punch me. You were just exercising self defense…or something like that.
We’ve weakened our youth. We’ve determined that they cannot be weighed down with the responsibility of adulthood. So much so that we’ve not equipped them to handle the daily rigors of real life. According to the CDC, suicides are up amongst young adults. The cause is not fully determined but suggested was the increase in social media and it’s impact on our personal perception of perfect and the platform’s tendencies for bullying.
Nonetheless, kids are in a weakened state. Which makes, I’d suggest, the predatory nature of academia even more pernicious. Yes, predatory.
Endemic to the collegiate humanities studies is the role of a victim. The list of victims is evermore a growing index of intersectional casualties. It’s worth noting that the United States had a rather jaded history with minority treatment. This should not be discarded.
Intersectional studies, though identifying a victim, serves to pinpoint the perpetrator. That being the bane of the liberal academic’s existence; conservatives. Ultimately, this is the goal of a words-as-violence hypothesis. Conservatives use ideas. If you simply state a conservative idea, you’re perpetrating violence.
A vulnerable youth, plus a victim, plus a perpetrator. All the makings of a mob.
Insert here, Godwin’s Law. Don’t know Godwin’s Law? A fella named Michael Godwin posited in 1990 that any internet (then unsenet) debate will ultimately devolve to a Hitler reference.
To the left, Donald Trump (and any Republican) is Hitler. Hitler was the ultimate authoritarian. ‘These conservative evil-doers are going to take away your rights‘. Granted, what those lost rights are have not been clearly defined but, because Trump, you may not get the new iPhone or something.
American national politics has deteriorated to the point of Godwin’s Law. Tax cuts? Nazi! Less regulations? Nazi! Though I’m not sure how that last one counts, it doesn’t matter, you’re still a Nazi.
We’re now in the political phase of ‘ultimates’. It’s not enough to disagree but that if you differ from my politics, you must be evil. So said By Charles Krauthammer, “Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.”
Enter the mob. If you’re a conservative, or even nominally independent thinking, you have no place on a college campus. I mean, you’re evil, right? In the best of circumstances, you’re relegated to ‘free speech zones’. In the worst, a riots break out because a non-threatening Jewish chap comes to campus.
Leftists have lost the debate on facts. Losing is frustrating. Angering even. If you have no facts, your last tool in the box is to charge the gates and destroy everything you dislike.
Whereas those massacred in Tiananmen Square were representing true hope for change, is that where we are in the United States? I have no doubt that protestors in America believe they’re on the cutting edge of social change but truly, they are not. Understand that Tiananmen protestors were willing to die simply for the ability to speak.
This is not today’s America. In China 1989, protests meant your death. Today, in the United States, Donald Trump might make fun of you. Big difference. Nonetheless, a Trump tweet will prompt the end times.
None of this would be possible were it not for the guidance of the professional fools. Really, it’s a derivation of elitist academics and their progeny, the main stream media. Each are a continuum of the same posse. Some are just prettier than the others. Still, fools all of them.
If you’ve noticed that the left no longer respects the working class. No longer values jobs that don’t require a bachelors degree. Why? No indoctrination. No leftist control.
This is the crux of the matter; America at large is awakening to the tomfoolery of the left. This is why the street level common sense of the blue collar is shifting to the right. There’s now panic on the left. Panic is by definition a sudden overwhelming fear that produces hysterical or irrational behavior.
This panic is begat by leftist theoretical social justice tripe running headlong in to the buzzsaw of life’s realities. Cloistered within the collegiate monastery of bad ideas, professors indoctrinate the vulnerable young. Giving emotionally wayward and weakened youth a purpose. Having a purpose is not a bad thing. When the ideas propagated have no affiliation to the observable world, the result is tragic and dangerous.
If you want to know the source of the newest trend on mob mentality, it’s because the mob has listened to the fools. The elitist patrons of the largely white and affluent protester have misdiagnosed society. Not accounting for Americans, working Americans, thinking for themselves.
And if you don’t like what the average Joe is thinking, do as Brooke Baldwin did and tell Joe Average to stuff it. Just don’t forget to roll your eyes. The eye roll sells it.
