If you are among those who have taken to the streets to protest President Trump, you may want to stop reading this article.
From what I have seen from your fragile mental stability, it will only cause you additional distress. I fear your head may explode from the dose of reality you seem so bent on denying. Donald J. Trump is the 45th president of the United States. He won in accordance with our election system, in large part because the Democratic Party leadership promoted the worst candidate they could have run in our current political environment. My advice to Trump-averse slacktivists is to stop your infantile, temper tantrums and start acting like grown-ups.
This article is not intended to offend you, but to serve as a bucket of cold water to shock you back to reality. The first thing I want to be clear on is that I believe in the First Amendment and I believe in the right of redress for every U.S. citizen. It is our sacred right to petition our government and allow our grievances to be heard. However, it is our solemn responsibility to maintain decorum and present our grievances in a manner in which a reasonable person can understand and respond. But this lunacy we are witnessing now is downright deplorable (yep, I went there).
How do you respond to people wearing giant papier-mâché vaginas and “p***y” hats? Do you give them a hug, and say “there, there.” I’m not sure how that would happen, but I know it would look ridiculous. I was there, sadly stuck in the middle of one of these spectacles, speechless. Many of these same protesters were the people who mocked the participants of the Tea Party movement for daring to wear the tricorne, patriot hats. Trust me, a hundred years from now when historians look at pictures from these uniquely different protests, they will speak more favorably of the people wearing the tricorne hats than the vaginas.
What we are witnessing are Trump-averse slacktivists, who remained silent during the Obama years, but who have reemerged, at least while a Republican is in the White House. This is a freak show, led by a bunch of sore losers, and in some cases, anarchists. One only needs to look at the destructive behavior this past week on the campuses of Berkeley and New York University to know I’m right.
Crowds rioted at Berkeley to stop controversial libertarian Milo Yiannopoulos. Yiannopoulos is not one of my favorites, but free speech is not about who I want to speak, but that they are permitted to speak. The fascinating thing about the “coexist” crowd that stifles speakers like Yiannopoulos is that they seem to be missing the satire of their opposition. Yiannopoulos is a highly educated (elite institutions no less), gay millennial and visiting foreigner. His pedigree reads like the “Who’s, Who” wish list of the extreme-far left. Yet, it wasn’t Republicans, conservatives, Vice President Mike Pence or Trump who “banned” him from speaking. It was members of the “tolerant left,” who rioted, looted, burned cars and buildings and attacked the police. Berkeley is the birthplace of the modern, free speech movement. How rich is it that the birthplace of the modern free speech movement is now on the front lines of the anti-free speech movement? Irony doesn’t even begin to describe this paradox. The sacrifices of Weinberg, Savio, Goldberg and Aptheker were apparently in vain.
Some of the protesters claimed they were part of an “anti-fascist” movement. Here’s a little history lesson for you. If you are rioting and committing acts of violence to stop someone from exercising free speech, you might be the fascist. As bad as Berkeley was, leave it to an East Coast “institution of higher learning” to do one better.
Commentator Gavin McInnes was recently invited to speak at New York University. Once again, the self-proclaimed “anti-fascist” thugs attacked the Canadian, right-leaning humorist. McInnes’ appearance was canceled after he was attacked by “protesters” with pepper spray. I put the words protester and anti-fascist in quotes for a reason. That is how many in the media and the participants themselves described the riots. When you attack people and destroy property to prevent an individual from exercising an “endowed” right, you are on the wrong side of history, as are those who sugarcoat their reporting or turn a blind-eye to this disgusting behavior. You are not protesters, you are rioters. You are not “anti-fascist,” you are nothing more than “blackshirts” incarnate.
McInnes and Yiannopoulos didn’t suddenly wake up one morning and walk onto these alleged “bastions of intellectual thought” on their own. They were invited to speak by students and faculty. These rioters denied McInnes and Yiannopoulos their individual right to be heard and denied the rights of those students and faculty who wanted to listen. I guarantee you if Dartmouth or UNH invited me to speak, simply referring to me as “controversial and conservative,” followed by headlines of some of my stories, it would draw out the New Hampshire “blackshirts.” We are a better country than this.
Don’t get me wrong, I thrive on opposing views and I appreciate the artful dissenter. I long for the worthy adversary, intellectual, calm, dedicated to thoughtful conversation. However, we will not get as long as there are rioters in the street, people wearing papier-mâché vaginas and signs that read “Not My President.”
I realize some of you did not heed my warning and read on. I have no doubt some are dusting off your Royal Quiet DeLuxe manual typewriter to write a scathing retort to what you perceive to be a series of insults directed at you. This is far from that. I have sympathy for you, and I am only trying to guide you back from the abyss of absurdity you have plunged into. But frankly, some protesters may be too far gone to help, clearly overwhelmed by TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome). The roots of these most recent protests in Portsmouth, Washington, Berkeley, NYC and everywhere else are identical. It is the same old, tired screaming, only louder. A word of advice – screaming louder doesn’t make people listen more. It makes them tune you out.
