Anti-Trump protesters display only contempt
This is nothing we haven’t seen before, nothing we haven’t felt before, as we watch marauding throngs of obnoxious anarchists seize control of our streets, in effect demanding the rest of us stop whatever we’re doing and pay sole attention to them.
A generation ago, ostensibly drawing their justification from an unpopular war and an unpopular president, forebears of these hell-raisers also tried bringing America to its knees with similar tactics, paralyzing the everyday lives of others with wanton disregard for any views other than their own.
Jim Murray, the late, great Los Angeles columnist, lividly and vividly described them as “insolent guests at the table of democracy, overturning it on their dismayed hosts.”
There were times Murray didn’t write as much as he seethed.
He came to mind again when bedraggled squatters from Occupy Wall Street set up a tent city in Dewey Square.
“Love,” Murray once angrily suggested, “is handing a flower to a naked young man with vermin in his hair while your mother sits home with a broken heart.”
Isn’t that how a lot of Americans are feeling this morning, enraged and contemptuous as we watch punks and hooligans cavorting on the streets of our cities, masquerading as thoughtful critics when everyone knows that what we’re seeing is simply a detestable display of selfindulgence.
It begs a question: Why are we so accepting of unacceptable behavior?
Flagrant, in-your-face rottenness has become a cottage industry.
Remember the reprobates who once hurled condoms at newly ordained priests outside the Cathedral?
Remember the insurrectionists from Black Lives Matter who shut down I-93 by chaining themselves to barrels filled with concrete?
We’ve become a society that’s reluctant to confront these lowlifes, an increasingly timid society in which cops now secondguess every move they make, lest they find themselves in the crosshairs of cultural arsonists camouflaged as community leaders.
We’ve come to an unthinkable point where funerals of assassinated officers no longer shock us.
Murray, obviously a favorite here, had penetrating insight that comes to mind this morning: “A country that refuses to punish its criminals is like a lamb defending a lion’s right to eat it.” Is that who we’re becoming? Forget Donald Trump. This has nothing to do with him.
This has been going on for a long time now, much too long.
It’s true we don’t have to go to every fight we’re invited to, but no problem gets solved by ignoring it, and we’ll ignore this one at our peril.
It’s time to clear the streets of these bums.