It remains nearly impossible to find any meaningful reasons for the rioting and destruction all across the nation outside of entitlement, puerility, and boredom.
Since the initial outcry over the murder of George Floyd months ago, the motivations for most of these supposed protests have mutated into cynical tantrums masquerading as some grand nebulous cause. This has become all too apparent when the rioting here in America is thrown in stark relief with the protests in Hong Kong.
Writing for the National Review, Dmitri Solzhenitsyn recently detailed the grim, ongoing struggles in Hong Kong:
Standing up for their beliefs against a superpower with no respect for individual rights and little regard for the essential preciousness of human lives, Hong Kong’s protesters are an example of bravery, creativity, and resourcefulness in the face of adversity. For Americans — long accustomed to having our freedoms safeguarded by our centuries-old Constitution — this is a bracing reminder of what’s at stake in the fight for liberty. Whatever actions the allies of freedom are willing or able to muster against Communist China, advocates for Hong Kong’s autonomy should hope that the activists continue to resist…
Unlike here in America, the protests in Hong Kong are an actual demand for civil rights against the marauding influence of China’s woefully oppressive Marxist regime – the very same rights taken for granted to nauseating extremes amid all the rioting and looting in Portland and elsewhere.
The hopeless cynicism that informs the current protests in our nation is now legion. Anything to do with America and the monumental principles our nation was founded upon is met with open and adolescent hostility. A nascent desire to simply destroy all vestiges of America informs many of these protesters.
“America was never great” is a common refrain among these protests. Even Newsweek seemed to express some dismay as protesters burned American flags in front of the White House on July 4th:
Far-left protesters burned U.S. flags while chanting “America was never great” outside the White House in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, just after President Donald Trump gave a July 4th speech.
The National Review reported on a recent speaker in Portland’s Pioneer Square “energizing” a crowd of protesters by saying “America was never great, but we can make it great.”
Just as federal law enforcement experienced a brief reprieve from all the chaos, protesters in Portland began burning Bibles as well as flags in a garish, nihilistic attempt at dissent according to The New York Post: “Protesters burned an American flag and a Bible in Portland, Oregon, sparking outrage just as weeks of violent demonstrations seemed to be coming to a close.”
Such open acts of defiance and hostility would immediately be quelled by force in countless countries around the world. The Los Angeles Times reports that protesters in Hong Kong are being arrested for simply holding up blank pieces of paper:
There were no slogans and no words, only blank white sheets of paper, quivering in the hands of a few dozen Hong Kong residents standing in a shopping mall, saying nothing at all.
The police arrived in full riot gear, waving a flag that read: “You are in breach of the law.” They arrested eight people, searched others and dispersed the rest.
Stranger still, many of the protesters here in America are getting paid unemployment for their grandstanding in the middle of the pandemic by the very same government they accuse of being so “oppressive” and “unjust.” The irony verges toward some kind of dire comedy.
Protests in America exist and are even encouraged because of the very principles of freedom and democracy our country was founded upon. Yet these protesters thumb their noses at the very ideals that permit all of us a dissenting voice in the first place by engaging in senseless acts of destruction.
It’s worth noting again that much of the media refuses to chronicle the mindless violence and mayhem occurring in our cities, often reporting with subterfuge and smokescreens. Reality offers a far different story.
City Journal published a concise summation of the media’s downplaying of the violence in Portland:
The media have downplayed the primary reason for federal agents being in Portland: a neutered police department has ceded a portion of the city to violent anarchists, who have staged an ongoing riot—firebombing the police station, physically assaulting officers, and causing tens of thousands of dollars of property damage. “Any form of resistance is a good way to push our goals forward,” a spokeswoman for the Portland Black Youth Movement told me.
These nationwide protests do not, at all, harken back to “the summer of love” that the likes of Seattle’s woefully inept mayor, Jenny Durkan, hoped for when her own city was hijacked by extremists. Instead, they point to a fatiguing brand of cynicism devoid of meaning and purpose outside the stamping of petulant feet.
When compared to the protests in Hong Kong against actual oppression at the hands of China, one can’t help but harbor a profound embarrassment for our nation by all the supposed outrage and meaningless chaos surrounding it.