I have to admit that the
reporting by media outlets like Fox News, which acts as Donald Trump’s de facto
“advisor,” usually borders on the inane, especially in regard to things that it
and its primary viewership only understand through the prism of their own
fears, paranoias and prejudices. Greg Gutfield, who is frankly an idiot,
proclaimed on his Fox News show that the so-called “autonomous occupation zone”
in Seattle’s Capitol Hill district (or now called the “Capitol Hill Organized
Protest”) is an exercise in “infantile behavior” and "setting up their
own law and order” that is “actually kind of hyperviolent” before
suggesting a “Lord of the Flies” scenario, which isn’t precisely an accurate
analogy, since the William Golding novel suggested that a community stripped of
enforcement mechanisms for “civilized”
behavior would degenerate into a world of “survival of the fittest,” not
anarchy and chaos. Gutfield also accused the protesters here of being
“fascist,” which is “odd” because most people outside the Fox News orbit think
that “fascist” is the kind of state that it is endorsing with its support of
the anti-democratic leanings of the Trump administration.
Not surprisingly it is this kind
of talk that is behind Trump’s proclamation that he will send in reinforcements
to clear out the Capitol Hill protesters and return “law and order” to the
neighborhood, which I think is an overblown estimation of the situation here,
good only as a propaganda tool to satisfy the fantasies of right-wing
paranoids. I have said many times that I don’t think that Seattle is a
particularly “progressive” city, but rather full of superstars-in-their-own-minds
narcissists whose “liberalism” is often undercut by petty prejudices and
discrimination against certain groups or “ethnicities” who are not protected by
their “guilt” or fear that their prejudices will inspire street-level
reprisals. Such phonies.
It is all for show in any case,
since most of these people don’t have anything better to do since the city is
mostly still in lockdown mode; the office building I work in, like all the rest
in downtown Seattle, has been mostly
empty for the past three months with most of the employees “working”
remotely. When the city returns to its
normal workaday habits, this show will be as forgotten as yesterday’s breakfast;
that’s not a criticism, just plain reality. How many mass shootings occur in
this country where people wring their hands for a few days, forget about it and
go through the same motions when the next incident occurs? Fox News, meanwhile,
is right now engaging in the usual right-wing “whataboutisms,” obfuscating
the spate of killings by police by exploiting
the fears and stereotypes of those who see the issue of race through the prism
of such.
It isn’t that communities that
have problems with crime shouldn’t also confront the reality of their own rogue
elements and who they expect to “fix” those problems—and it doesn’t help what
some of these “kids” are learning from their “elders.” But Fox News’
motivations are open to question—especially when what it is doing is promoting
a vicious cycle where “lawful” violence only begets more violence. The Washington Post is reporting on a
story concerning the village of Bethel, Ohio—population 2,800—which was the
scene of a small BLM crowd of 80 organized by a local teacher, Alicia Gee. Bethel
is apparently an almost all-white community, and Gee wanted the village to make
a “statement” on the matter this past Sunday. Instead, the village was
virtually taken over by 700 “counterprotesters—motorcycle gangs, ‘back the blue’
groups and proponents of the Second Amendment,” with many carrying guns,
baseball bats and clubs.
While the initial protest group
were all locals, most of “counterprotesters” were not; in fact many of their
bikes and vehicles had out-of-state license plates. The Post quoted a protester who observed this group “walking down
on the other side of the street from up town, yelling obscenities and
threatening us…ripping signs out of our hands, ripping the hats and masks off
of our faces, ripping things out of our pockets.” In a video of the event, one
“counterprotester” proclaims “This ain’t Seattle!” We’re not in a Democratic
state here!”
You know, I’d rather be in Seattle; it’s “safer.”
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