The last time that the summer and winter Olympic Games were held in the same year was 1992 (Albertville, France and Barcelona, Spain respectively). Eight years prior, they had been hosted by Sarajevo and Los Angeles.
That cities in the former Yugoslavia and the soon-to-be former USA were both in flames less than a decade later seems lost upon historians. And now Los Angeles, the city of my birth, burns just as it did in 1965, then again in 1992 and 2020.
Thirty-four people died during The Watts Riots, 63 perished in the six days of the L.A. Riots, and there were zero deaths reported five years ago. It’s doubtful there will be any deaths throughout the current emotionally misguided insurrection: protestors are too busy recording the scenes with their phones to consider sacrificing themselves for the/a/any cause.
Thich Quang Duc. June 11, 1963. Saigon, Vietnam.
“A Buddhist priest burns himself to death. A Buddhist priest becomes a martyr.”
Radical leftists seem to forget that Barack Obama set a world-record for deportations from the USA (3M+ non-citizens over the course of two terms). Not to be upstaged by his former boss, Joe Biden deported 4.4M illegal immigrants in half the time to achieve a new standard.
One might consider adding Obama’s other world record, the one for targeted drone strike assassinations, to the argument, but why pile on?
Donald Trump had 3.3M people deported during his first term to narrowly finish second to date amongst the three, but he’s still trying to improve his total and should pass Biden this year.
Let’s do some math, shall we? If we add up the figures (thus far) for Obama, Trump, and Biden—obviously not including Trump’s second term as of yet—we get about 10.7M human beings expelled from the land of opportunity over the course of sixteen years.
Oddly, that figure is almost identical to the number of abortions performed in the USA since 2006. To quote US Army veteran John Winger, “Is this a great country or what?”
People have really fallen in love with wearing masks in America! Many thought it was just a fad five years ago, or a means to virtue signal about one’s belief in a self-proclaimed political pseudoscience that has now been thoroughly proven to be rather untrustworthy, but as it turns out wearing masks outdoors in fresh air actually has some legs (and the same measures of effectiveness as before).
Look at the concerned agitator in the left foreground of the photo above. His ill-fitting mask has dropped perilously below his nostrils. His black Air Jordan performance top ($50) was, like his iPhone, manufactured by Far East laborers whose professional occupations would be unlikely swap destinations for any of the illegal immigrants in Los Angeles for whom he is so vehemently supporting.
Is he charging the buttressed lines of police officers with shields? Is he taking on a platoon of the National Guard to inspire further disruptive actions by his fellow comrades? Is he challenging (and this is not a good idea, mind you) a Marine to a fight in the streets? Nope. He’s not even looking at the burning car.
But he is checking out whatever he’s recorded on his phone, soon to be posted on social media, as though the reporting of his attendance and quasi-involvement will inspire viewers to take up this call to arms!
Here’s some breaking news, bud: the people who agree with you are already there.
The mindset diversity at these current protests is equivalent to the diversity of an all-inclusive yoga retreat in Bali. Look at the exultations of inner peace from these wealthy white women who have paid $15,000 for four days of reassurance! If only they had opened their homes to an illegal immigrant or refugee instead; self-realization struggles to achieve world harmony, though, should not be that inconvenient.
We should all be grateful that their breathing exercises, sans masks, are truly saving the planet.
Narcissism and hypocrisy are not a pleasant combination, yet the proliferation of this coupling for delusional do-gooders on the far left and far right in the USA (and elsewhere) leaves little room for any reactions but laughter.
Pardon me, scoffing laughter.
On the left we have hordes of water-bottle chucking miscreants who wish to keep America’s borders open yet do not wish to invite any refugees into their homes.
On the right we have rabid nimby-ists who appear as unthankful for their birth location’s lottery win as they are dispassionate for the suffering of less-fortunate human beings in search of better lives.
And we have presidential administrations of both ideologies trying to outdo one another with deportations.
Quite fond am I of a legendary story involving Bill Walton and his coach at UCLA, John Wooden, when the former was involved with off-campus protests in the early 1970s.
Wooden praised Walton’s passion for his beliefs, but asked that he consider the following in terms of blocking traffic on Wilshire Boulevard: how would you feel if your grandmother was in an ambulance trying to get to a local hospital for a medical emergency and her path was blocked?
Henceforth, Walton organized protests that were held on campus.
This lesson should be applied today. The self-absorbed blocking of freeways to disrupt the activities of other citizens, whether they are in perilous life-and-death situations or not, is a selfishness that will never endear itself to parlaying massive support from those who previously had little to no inclination for or against a particular cause.
Similarly, the action will only greater repulse those opposed to your movement. What is to be gained as a result? Nothing. And certainly nothing greater than the faux harmony achieved at the aforementioned yoga orgies held at exclusive resorts beyond the vacation price points for illegal immigrants and refugees.
And if you think for a moment that the past three administrations have been solely repugnant in their treatment of undocumented people, well, there’s always the story of how Elián González was treated by the rakish Bill Clinton and that handsome fella Janet Reno in 2000.
Some people, like Thich Quang Duc, self-immolate as the ultimate form of protest against repression.
And many governments repress their own people by immolation.
What will you choose to do for what you believe in during your life?
If you post and repost shows of support on social media (quite a distance from the action on the ground, of course), and all of your followers are like-minded friends and family members, please explain your impact, hero.
Hopefully, your choices will extend far beyond the current nature of delusional, infantile mobs in Los Angeles who consider themselves social justice warriors only when government forces are not responding or fighting back.
Mahatma Gandhi never threw a water bottle at a cop.
