Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Vietnam War Playbook Repeats Itself In American Cities...

Sometimes it’s difficult to recognize that history is being written while you are in the middle of it actually taking place. Such is I think the situation we are in the middle of today with the riots associated with the murder of George Floyd.

Probably no sentient person in the country would have condoned what we saw on that video as the breath was literally pressed out of Mr. Floyd. On the contrary, almost every single person who responded, black, white, police, civilian, politician or guy on the street expressed revulsion for the officer’s conduct. Thankfully, from the moment that video was shared, the wheels of justice were indeed turning, with all four officers being fired immediately and culminating in the primary officer being arrested within days.

Despite this, protests began, followed by looting and then riots. None of those things are surprising given the media’s glee at any opportunity to use anecdotal evidence to try and convince blacks that they are victims and that the police are out to get them.  It's all in furtherance of media / Democrat’s default narrative that America is a racist nation. Mix Black Lives Matter with the Bernie Bros of Antifa and you have a rather predictable combustible setting. Anytime you have large groups of young people who feel the government is their enemy, it's difficult to keep the Molotov Cocktails in their bottles.

None of that is new… but what is new is police chiefs and officers and mayors kneeling with and embracing protesters, as if the idea of “If we just understand their pain” will turn everything down to simmer and will bring about peaceful coexistence. I doubt it. This is a moment in time not unlike the watershed event of the capitulation of the administration of Columbia Univ. in 1968 which ushered in students taking over universities and turning American colleges into progressive propaganda factories.

If the chiefs et al think that embracing the protesters is going to bring about harmony, they will soon be disabused of such notions. While the media continues to proffer the fiction that the protests have been mostly peaceful, the reality is obviously different. For an entire week Americans have been watching blue cities across the country go up in flames, seen bottles and bricks thrown, police cars set ablaze and businesses big and small get looted and destroyed. Just last night, exactly one week since Mr. Floyd’s death, a police officer is shot in the head in Las Vegas, four officers were shot in St Louis, a car rammed into officers in Buffalo in the Bronx a cop was beaten while onlookers videotaped and egged the assailants on.

The people causing this mayhem have no interest in being heard or understood. Their goal is not a better neighborhood, city or America. They want to loot, they want to destroy, they want to cause chaos, and fundamentally, they want to start a revolution because they have no vested interest in things like private property, rule of law, capitalism and freedom.

Given the decades long endless undermining of such ideas from the media, from Democrats, and the education machinery at all levels, it’s no surprise that millions of young Americans, both black and white are happy to not only stand by and watch as their cities and the country burn, but more, they want to participate in it. This all reminds me of something I read 25 years ago in a biography by Peter G. MacDonald of North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap. In reference to the Vietnam War in general and the Tet Offensive in particular Giap said something to the effect that “We didn’t have to win the war on the ground, we only had to win over the American media and they would do the rest.” Probably not an exact quote - it's been a quarter century after all! - but the truth of his sentiments can be seen in the widespread notion at the time that the United States was defeated in the Tet Offensive. Completely wrong. After the initial surprise the North Vietnamese were not only repelled, but their army was so badly destroyed that Giap considered surrendering. But he didn’t because he didn’t have to... The American media did their job and the tide eventually turned against the war.

Today on a much different playing field the leftist media and their Democrat partners are playing the same role and but it’s not on some far off field where Americans are dying, it’s here in the United States and the enemy of freedom the media and Democrats are supporting is not some foreign army, but rather the looters and anarchists who seek to burn the place to the ground and start a real revolution. By lying about the peaceful nature of the protests, by lying about the prevalence of police brutality, by lying about America being a racist and fundamentally unjust society, they are tearing at the frayed threads that already keep young people connected to the nation and its values.  In doing so they are encouraging the destruction you see across the country today.

As Rudy Giuliani demonstrated when he saved literally thousands of black lives by simply enforcing the law, the only way to stop this chaos is to actually enforce the law and arrest or shoot if necessary the rioters who are destroying American cities and threatening the lives of police and civilians alike. Unless governors and mayors step up and decide to win this war for America's soul rather than hold hands with and tolerate the terrorists, 2020 looks like it might just be another long hot summer.

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