Acting Out

Guest Post by Jim Kunstler

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler trimmed for speed, with security back-up.

When Portland, OR, Mayor, Ted Wheeler, dropped in to check out the “peaceful protest” action down at the Federal courthouse Wednesday night in his spiffy REI riot casuals and dual purpose Covid-19 / riot mask with matching riot goggles, he seemed a little surprised to find himself in the midst of… a riot. Perhaps he had not been following all the Twitter videos of what looked like a Road Warrior free-for-all, what with the Antifa soldiers ripping down fences, banging wrecking bars through the ground-floor protective barriers, shooting roman candles and laser-beams at the pitifully small crew of federal officers, and hurling rocks, bottles, human waste, and anything else at hand at them in their determination to bum-rush the entrance and burn the place down.

Mayor Wheeler also serves as the city’s police commissioner, but he apparently forgot to notify the department that something might require their attention down there on SW Third Ave. The Feds were on their own. Mayor Ted made his way to the front of the mob, pulled on his chin while surveying the colorful scene and then — surprise — the mob discovered he was among them and turned its ire on him, crying, in Antifa vernacular, “Fuck you, Ted” and “Resign, asshole!” As a few bottles and gobs of suspicious liquid flew his way he began to comprehend that his grandstanding wasn’t appreciated, and he withdrew to the safety of his nearby mayoral aeire with his security detail.

Afterward, in a press release, he observed: “What I saw last night was powerful in many ways. I listened, heard, and stood with protesters. And I saw what it means when the federal government unleashes paramilitary forces against its own people.”

Yes, it was a “teachable moment” for Mayor Ted, as so many acts of violent idiocy are supposed to be in this summer of social justice, a national struggle session a la Mao Zedong to re-educate the obtusely privileged multitudes to the insidious menace of “systemic racism.” How’s it working? Well, those multitudes are taking it all in, for sure, and perhaps concluding on their own that a teachable moment is not exactly the same as a leadership moment, and that this phantom of systemic racism may not be all that it’s cracked up as.

Anyway, Mayor (and Police Commish) Ted soon hurled his own thunderbolt at the Feds —a citation for obstructing a city bike path by placing protective fences on it. There’s leadership for you!  Take that, Donald Trump, you big Hitlerscheiss! Perhaps Mayor Ted is thinking his exemplary valor may put him in a position to replace the mentally-disabled Democratic Party front-runner, Joe Biden, as the nauseating task of actually daring to nominate him approaches in just a few weeks (and if She-Whose-Turn-Was-Cancelled stands aside).

As for the Antifas, a tiny corner of one’s moral sensibility must be reserved to pity their plight. Nobody can say for sure how many are drawn from the student body of nearby Portland State University, a few blocks from Riot Central — a hothouse of Wokesterism — but I bet a lot of them. There, they have been rigorously trained in critical race theory, intersectionality, gender studies, and all the other preparations for a fruitful adulthood in Wokesterdom, and now, alas, the diversity departments all over the land are not hiring! What to do?

The global economy is in a tailspin from corona virus, actually close to auguring clean into ground-zero and their services may not be required… for anything! I’d be demoralized, too, were I twenty years old. To make matters worse, the cafes, craft beer joints, and twee little vegan lunch bars are shut down, along with the music halls and every other arts venue, and who has any money? Their intersectional bodies are roiling with youthful hormones, with an assist from weed and other stimulants. What better way to work off all that energy on a warm summer night than to riot in the streets against a society that has actually prepared them for nothing except protesting the unfairness of life.

Back in what’s left of the real world of adults ‘n’ stuff, though, there is the age-old question of public order. Evidently, the Democratic-brand mayors and governors think they see a political advantage in chaos, the destruction of property, and bodily injury to citizens, including murder. What exactly was Mayor Ted Wheeler doing at the riot down at Portland’s Federal Building on Wednesday night? Was he showing support for the action? Sure, looked like it. And is it possible that Governor Kate Brown approves and encourages it, too. She has not used the Oregon State Police to restore order. Maybe it’s time to just bypass the game-playing before any more people get hurt and charge these politicians with assisting insurrection under federal law (18 U.S. Code §?2383). And put them on trial in the same building that their Antifa mob is trying to burn down.

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