Dear liberals who are trying to dismiss the Clinton riots as an understandable expression of universal human nature: No, it’s not universal. It’s just you. There is no equivalent urge to large-scale political violence on the Right.
Let’s get the nomenclature out of the way right up front: they’re not “Trump riots.” They’re Clinton/Obama riots. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could shut a great deal of the violence down by speaking out against it, with passion and without qualifications. Neither of them has done so, as of Friday.
The media could help by demanding Clinton and Obama speak up, but aren’t. They could punish both of them for indulging the rioters by staging Special Reports with dramatic music – America Under Siege, Day 3 – and hounding every Democrat official who passes before their cameras. You know damn well they would do both of those things, if these were Trump supporters misbehaving – or even peaceably demonstrating – after a Clinton victory.
You also know there would be no significant effort to understand the rioters and their “grievances” if they were people of the Right. Celebrities would not be playing along by sharing their own feelings of frustrated rage. Major media outlets would not be pretending the riots were merely “protests” or “demonstrations” until the local police pointed at the burning wreckage and told them to knock it off.
No, in that mirror universe where Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election, there would be absolutely zero tolerance for anyone who refused to instantly and completely accept the legitimacy of her election. Everything Donald Trump ever said about “rigged elections” and voter fraud would be playing on an endless loop. Those injured or vandalized by violent street theater would become national celebrities.
But we know none of that would actually happen in the mirror universe, because the American Right doesn’t hold violent demonstrations, much less outright riots. We know what right-wing demonstrations look like in modern America: Tea Party rallies that clean up their own garbage, haunted by a few creepy Democrat activists trying to stage false-flag incidents of violence or racism. The media has been resolutely ignoring titanic March for Life rallies in Washington D.C. for decades. They get away with it because the pro-lifers are resolutely well-behaved.
Left-wingers own political violence for a number of reasons. One of the big ones is that left-wing media excuses it, and indulges Democratic political leaders who excuse it. The odious Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), for example, is currently trying to pin the riots on Trump, “a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate,” while arguing that the fears of hyperventilating liberals is “entirely rational, because Donald Trump has talked openly about doing terrible things to them.”
This would not be tolerated for one single second by the media class if a Republican said it to excuse riots against the election of President Hillary Clinton. Reid would be chased off the national stage by a horde of shrieking reporters. And since he’s the retiring former Majority Leader of the Senate, his entire party would be forced to renounce him in a series of Sunday-show Inquisitions.
Another reason is that liberals seek total personal and spiritual fulfillment in politics. It is, for all intents and purposes, their religion. They think political positions are the only meaningful measure of personal character. Who cares if you drowned a girl in your car, and spent your life perpetrating one documented instance of degrading lechery after another, if you were good on “women’s issues?” So what if you abused an intern for sex and assaulted a few women, if you did your bit to keep the abortion mills churning? No big deal if you cruise out of office with Americans shedding blood on battlefields across the Middle East, as long as you came into office really hating that unilateralist warmongering cowboy Bush!
The unseemly emotional meltdowns so many liberals are proudly posting online after the election – may of them using their own children as props – testify to how deeply liberals confuse personal identity with political posturing. They also believe in passion as a political force, which is one reason they work so hard to strip their political opponents of passionate arguments. Everything people who aren’t liberals get excited about is pre-emptively nuked as racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, nationalism, populism… you know the devil words.
The Left is lashing out today because it just can’t understand how Trump could win when they hate him SO much. They think the intensity of their opposition should give them some kind of election do-over.
The Left has taken steps to render its followers childlike, and children only have two modes of expression: begging and screaming. Once upon a time, we thought universities were supposed to produce adults, but now they produce children – weaponized children accustomed to getting their way with campus protests. Tom Knighton at PJ Mediachronicled some of the worst idiocies of the week: A Yale professor allowed students to skip their midterm exams to deal with election grief. The University of Kansas trotted out therapy dogs. Cornell held a cry-in. The University of Michigan gave the students Play-Doh and coloring books to work out their Trump grief.
These children emerge into the adult world thinking speech codes, trigger words, and safe spaces still count for something. In other words, they think collectivist power is what matters, not individual achievement and responsibility.
These aren’t spontaneous riots. The Left has machinery in place to produce street theater. Money changed hands to organize these post-election freak-outs. Teachers are indulging, sanctioning, or even leading protests, complete with profane chants. Only the Left can abuse public education this way, because they’ve owned it for decades. The Right has no equivalent system for churning out instant protest marches, especially involving other people’s children. The violent rioters are emboldened by the narrative of coast-to-coast unrest; they see themselves as the tip of the spear.
One last thing to remember about left-wing political violence: the audience for such theater is primarily left-wing too. The people who finance and organize these ugly demonstrations don’t necessarily think they can intimidate normal Americans into satisfying their desires. The most horrendous demonstrations are held in cities ruled by Democrats for generations, after all. Those watching from afar are mostly grinding their teeth and thinking their decision to vote for the law-and-order guy in 2016 looks pretty good right now.
No, the intended audience is the Left and its organs: the mainstream media and the administrative state. These demonstrations are meant to build liberal unity, and give the organizers leverage with Democrat-dominated civic institutions. The targets of intimidation are center-left people wavering in their devotion to the Democrat Party. The masterminds behind the riots of the last few days are keenly aware that Donald Trump flipped blue states, and did very well with solidly Democratic constituencies. A little fire and broken glass might help those folks remember who they’re supposed to vote for next time.
Sure, there would have been some very upset people out there if Clinton had won, particularly if they thought vote fraud was involved. Some of them would have said very harsh things. But cities paralyzed by violent demonstrations, and mobs confronting riot police? For a good long while now, “liberals,” that’s all been you. In fairly rapid succession, we had Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and now this. Maybe it’s time for you to think about why your ideology is so prone to violence.
