Of Rioters, Protesters and Patriots

A large proportion of the small number of writers who have genuinely conservative views are very old. Pat Buchanan, for example, was born in 1938 and is four years older than Joe Biden. When they die the landscape will be very different.

He writes pithily and he sees things others miss. He makes what should be obvious points, which to most are not.

As in this article from February.

To the media, the long hot summer of rioting, looting and arson that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis was driven by "racial justice" protests against a "systemic racism" that permeates society.

The rioters were calling attention to injustices we Americans have failed to address, like police brutality. And almost all of these "peaceful protesters" were calling us to be a better people.

And did not the riots produce beneficial results?

Joe Biden and his party have responded by setting as a goal the replacement of "equality of rights" with "equity," an equality of results, where gaps in test scores, incarcerations, incomes and wealth between white and black are to be closed by government action.

However, as for the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6 by Trumpists, to protest and perhaps change the outcome of the election, that was an act of insurrection, a treasonous attempt to overturn a democratic election and overthrow a democratic government.

Protests by ordinary people against elites are viewed well by the Western media, unless they are against the US elite of which the US media is a part, or the transnational socially liberal international elite that rules the West. 

The swamp, to coin a phrase. 

The British police went out of their way the other day to treat environmental protestors who brought chaos to the street recently with the softest of touches. Anti-lockdown protesters get very different treatment from the police, as do people who protest about infringements on free speech. 

The media have the same attitude and so do large companies, which once existed blamelessly to make a profit and not to engage in changing society beyond selling their goods or services.

More than anything else I dislike inconsistency and bad logic. 

When young thugs who had been converted to Islam while in prison beheaded Drummer Rigby in the streets of Woolwich, London SE1, I saw Facebook friends asking for the murders to be seen in context. Drummer Rigby was killed to protest against what the British army was doing in Iraq.

When the English Defence League were permitted by the police to protest for fifteen minutes about the murder this caused outrage on my Facebook feed and my Facebook feed is not very left-wing.

No-one said the EDL should be seen in context.

I didn't quite say so, but I said on Facebook what I just said above. People seemed on the point of swooning, like in a Bateman cartoon.

Although they were not conscious of it, the EDL horrified them more than the murder, so it seemed to me - and these were not just people on the left.

Another example of inconsistency. The revelation that the generals, what President Trump's supporters called the deep state, were conspiring against him leaves the American Democrats and the Republican establishment (it is still very powerful) completely nonchalant, including the left which used to fear the generals, before the left captured the armed forces.