RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quillette.com/2020/06/16/seattles-summer-of-love/

The bluest skies you’ve ever seen in Seattle ,And the hills the greenest green in Seattle, Like a beautiful child growing up free and wild, Full of hopes and full of fears, Full of laughter full of tears,Full of dreams to last the years in Seattle, In Seattle

So Perry Como sang in the late ’60s. Now it seems the days of beautiful children growing up free and wild are returning to Seattle. Like other American cities over the last three weeks, Seattle saw protests rapidly become violent clashes with police. This ugliness waxed and waned for a fortnight until police withdrew from their East Precinct Building, effectively ceding the surrounding area to the protestors. Barriers were erected around it by activists who initially christened the new territory the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), and later renamed it the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP). As their quasi-manifesto of June 9th put it, they had “liberated Free Capitol Hill in the name of the people of Seattle.”

Now a tense and potentially dangerous stand-off has developed. What does the city administration intend to do? On June 11th, the Democratic mayor of the city, Jennifer Durkan, was interviewed on CNN by a sympathetic Chris Cuomo. Cuomo began by asking if Durkan had lost control of her own city’s streets.

Durkan: We’ve got four blocks in Seattle that you just saw pictures of that is more like a block party atmosphere. It’s not an armed takeover, it’s not a military junta. We will make sure that we can restore this. But we have block parties and the like in this part of Seattle all the time… There is no threat right now to the public and we’re looking, we’re taking that very seriously, we’re meeting with businesses and residents…

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/06/17/when-will-we-stand-up-to-the-tyrants-of-woke-conformity/

Not so long ago, someone told us “You. Can’t. Say. Anything.” This is America in 2020. Those who speak outside the narrative established by a hard-left mob that has marched through our institutions are blacklisted. If we fail to mount a forceful resistance, there’s a grim future awaiting us.

We’ve seen this coming. The casualty list has been growing for years. The purge is now white hot. What was a non-controversial statement last week is grounds for a death sentence tomorrow. It seems every day we see someone caving in with a groveling apology, declaring they suddenly have a lot to learn, swearing they’re looking forward to the moment they can meet with their hostage-takers and work toward a resolution that will appease them.

But it will never be enough. Apologies and appeasement only encourage the bullies. The Woke mob never sleeps. It lives to cancel the lives of others. We are warned: Conform or else.

No manifesto exists to guide the shock troops through their revolutionary occupation of our society. But on Monday, the day Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy was forced to ask forgiveness for the sin of wearing a One America News t-shirt, praising the network, and criticizing the mainstream media, a maniacal Twitter storm from a leftist blogger laid out the belief system that undergirds the movement:

Mike Gundy cannot remain the OK State head coach. Too influential of a position in society. Fire him, unless he agrees to get extensive psychological help.

It’s time we acknowledge that conservatism isn’t just some political view. It means you’re the very bottom rung of society, dangerous and deranged. Some conservatives are trying to become better people. Great. But people who flaunt their conservatism are psychotic.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/06/16/liberal-reporter-its-the-left-that-destroyed-legitimacy-of-coronavirus-containment-measures-n2570661

The coronavirus panic is over. It’s done. Finished. And the lockdowns are done too. You can’t keep us locked up. Not anymore. Stay inside unless there’s a Black Lives Matter thing going on is what we’ve been told for two weeks. The credibility of the experts is over. The era of the experts is over. There is no pause to a pandemic, and if there are spikes of COVID cases, it’ll be because of all these demonstrations and riots that ensued following the officer-involved fatality of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police on May 25.

We were told to stay inside and keep the hospitals from being overrun. It was meant to help out the medical workers, remember? Nope. Medical workers and experts were out there supporting these protests, while the media shamed those who dared to venture outside. The old line was, “you’re all selfish bastards for going outside or wanting to reopen your business.” It quickly became “why aren’t you protesting racism, you selfish bastard?” Silence is violence with this mob. Words are violence, too.

The quick switch just adds to the notion that this virus, while contagious, really wasn’t all that bad. How could it be for the media and the Democratic Party to turn on such a dime? In New York City, Comrade Bill de Blasio’s new contact tracing edict is bound for failure; you are not to ask new COVID patients if they had attended any George Floyd demonstrations. Now, how does that make any sense? It’s just glorious to watch. Now that the Floyd unrest is dying down, these same so-called experts have revamped the panic porn machine on coronavirus and just expect us to go back inside. I can’t laugh any harder. We’re not. And there will be no second lockdown. If people die, they die. Life isn’t fair, and you can blame the medical experts for blowing up their own spot on this. We don’t have to listen to you anymore, Democratic operatives. And yes, these so-called doctors are no better than MSNBC talking heads. The nation has moved on; we’re getting back to normal. Onward we go, so please shut up.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-has-a-silent-black-majority-11592348214?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

It’s too early to know what will come of the violent protests in response to the death of George Floyd. But we do know that recent history has not been especially kind to militant efforts to advance racial equality.

The methods championed most famously by Martin Luther King Jr. culminated with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, two of the most consequential laws in U.S. history. By contrast, the Black Power movement that followed eventually imploded, and its most prominent leaders wound up exiled, imprisoned or victims of murderous rivalries. Whatever white sympathy the civil-rights movement had gained was quickly depleted in the aftermath of rioting in Detroit, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and other major cities.

Moreover, the heightened group identity associated with black militants, as with the Black Lives Matter movement today, was followed by a white backlash in the 1970s and ’80s, which saw the rise of the skinhead and white-power movements in the U.S.

You don’t need to read an academic paper to understand that peaceful civil-rights demonstrations have had more success than violent protests, but a Princeton scholar just published one that is well worth your time. Writing last month in the American Political Science Review, Omar Wasow, a professor of politics, described the results of a 15-year research project on the political consequences of protests.