The Democrat Party Riots

by Matthew J. Peterson

The American Mind  August 27, 2020

They’re getting what they asked for—good and hard.

CNN anchors Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon have the collective brain capacity of rising third graders. OK, fair point—there’s no reason for me to insult our children like that. But the one upside of the tumbleweeds blowing through their minds is that sometimes what the Left is really thinking accidentally rolls out of their mouths.

Don Lemon recently called on Joe Biden to make a speech addressing the riots and explaining how when it comes to reforming the police, he and Kamala Harris “will take care of this problem” after being elected. “But guess what: the rioting has to stop.” Lemon then revealed the problem: “Chris, as you know, and I know, it’s showing up in the polling, it’s showing up in focus groups. It is the only thing—it is the only thing right now that is sticking.”

Think about what he’s really saying here. “Rioting is fine—but only if it helps us win.” There are plenty of signals that establishment Democrats realize they need to pivot toward the pretense of responsible citizenship and denounce the violent. Now that the events in Kenosha and the mob violence surrounding them are becoming the final straw for potential swing voters, suddenly it’s all “gone too far” and we must consider “muh municipal law and order.”

These usefully idiotic clowns and the elites they serve still slap “mostly peaceful” chyrons on their coverage of American neighborhoods going up in flames. Some still think the mob will help them win. But the riots can’t just be put back in the bottle—not because you morons finally blink. Democrats helped open Pandora’s Box this summer. Deep-rooted fear and anger have flown out. There is now no telling where they will roost politically.

BLM and friends are run by very angry, very dangerous extremists who aren’t playing around. They now have hundreds of millions of dollars (at least) at their command. They will not be easily controlled by the brain-dead and/or evil Dems who summoned them. You play with fire, you get burned—as our cities, tragically and needlessly, will continue to do.

The Bill Comes Due

The Left is now very upset that someone showed up with a gun and shot rioters in Kenosha, Wisconsin because they are against…violence and lawlessness and civic unrest? Since when?

I have some big news for every glib apologist and coiffed tankie on the miserably compliant Left: You built thisYou refused to condemn and stop itYou asked for this. You don’t get to take the high ground now. You own this. Quite literally: you paid for it. Leftist foundations and politicians have nurtured and grown BLM for many years now. We’re still not sure why more Republican leaders have not pointed out that convicted terrorist Susan Rosenberg is on the Board of Directors for the fundraising arm of BLM, for instance—but they should.

True, we’ve all paid for it. We’ve paid with our tax dollars to put generations of kids through a public school gulag that teaches them to justify exactly this sort of violence based on a toxic combination of identity politics and “America is evil.” We’ve paid the businesses we buy from even as we’ve watched them spend millions teaching and enforcing the same hateful ideology, turning Big Corporate into a giant re-education camp that scares workers into political submission. We’ve paid with our time using social media and the data we’ve given our tech companies as they slyly shape the public square with their speech codes.

But the American people will never forget what you did. What you started. Because we will have to put this evil genie back in the bottle. And it will take time and force—violence—in order to do so.

Among political parties, only the Democrats allowed and tacitly encouraged the destruction of our cities. Of our businesses. Of our way of life. They’ve consistently tried to hide and downplay what has actually occurred. But most people aren’t that far removed from the reality around us—especially with the most important election of their lifetimes coming around the bend like a freight train. Now, after ceaseless riots in the wake of the unnecessary total shutdown of our economy, the Democrats’ panicked ploys to elect Joe Biden are causing millions of people across America to consider moving from their homes.

You have abetted the destruction of our cities so you could win an election. You—you corporate stooges, you glib and sinister Nurse Ratcheds, you elegant child abusers and mob apologists—have become a new party all your own. You are now the BLM-Antifa Party. You are too scared or too complicit to denounce either group.

Yet you now heap fearful denunciations on those who, however ill-advisedly, try to defend the life, liberty, and property that their complicit and incompetent governments will not. We will not mindlessly accept your kneejerk narrative about Kyle Rittenhouse being some kind of crazed Nazi who gunned down innocent protestors in cold blood. Your convenient narrative does not comport with the facts that even the New York Times recently set forth. We will wait for more facts. We will watch all the video. We will not throw him under the bus, and neither should any American who believes in equality under the law.

Of course we don’t want citizens roaming the streets with guns drawn. Of course this tempts fate—and risks more tragic, needless violence. But that’s the point for the BLM-Antifa Party. That’s exactly what they want. That’s exactly what you asked for when you unleashed them.

The “moral” outrage of the twitterati right now is, in truth, shameless cowardice. Do you really think people are supposed to sit back and let “mostly peaceful” militias and mobs destroy their cities because you say so? Kenosha is supposed to welcome out-of-town extremists trained in terror tactics and shelter in place while their city is smashed to bits and burned to the ground?

No.

Every drop of blood that is being spilled, every assault, every cent of the untold billions in property damage perpetrated this summer—all is on you. Every person threatened while at dinner with their family, every kid awoken by the profane screams of organized agitators, every person of every race and class out of work because of a burned-out, boarded-up business. CongratulationsYou earned this.

These are now Joe Biden’s riots. These are Nancy Pelosi’s riots. These are Kamala Harris’s riots.

So keep pushing your precious narrative. You can’t stop what you have started. You can’t control or channel it. Today or tomorrow, eventually it will swallow you up and eat you. If every Republican was put on the firing line tomorrow, the next step for the Marxist racialists would be to attack the smiling liberals of our elderly institutional leadership. Big Corporate would be burned to the ground. Companies like Amazon would be gutted and cannibalized. They won’t care that your ligaments creaked as you knelt before them in Kente cloth.

Even so, the out-of-touch wealthy enablers of the elite Left still think they can hold onto power over and against their brownshirts in the streets. For now.

But as the flames get higher, the truth is getting harder and harder to hide. With every passing day between now and November, more and more everyday Americans can see it. Did you hear that? We see you.

 is Vice President of Education at the Claremont Institute and Editor of The American Mind. He directs Claremont’s annual fellowships and heads our initiative for a new center to support graduate level scholarship.