It’s difficult to predict exactly what World War III might look like, but this weekend, we got a preview of how a lot of people will react if and when it does break out. And what we saw wasn’t very encouraging.
It was sort of like a scene out of “Dr. Strangelove,” crossed with the depressing parts of “Dumb and Dumber” playing out all over the country. This was a spectacle that, unless you were glued to cable news or social media over the weekend, you might have missed. If so, consider yourself lucky.
As you’ve probably seen by now, Iran launched a swarm of drones and missiles towards Israel on Saturday. For several hours, as the attack unfolded, there was absolute pandemonium online. There were reports of huge explosions in Tehran, suggesting Israel had already launched a massive counterattack. That wasn’t true. There were Austin Powers steamroller memes mocking the extraordinarily slow travel time of the Iranian drones, which apparently take several hours to make the trip to Israel.
There were even dramatic photos of flight tracking radar data of a so-called “doomsday plane” leaving Israel, supposedly carrying Israel’s cabinet away from a potentially catastrophic attack. It was all a very strange mixture of false information and hysteria.
Not to be outdone, evidently there was also pandemonium in the White House. First, reporters said that Joe Biden would interrupt his vacation on the beach to address the nation. It’s a big deal when Joe Biden does something like that; normally it takes the release of a special counsel report proving he’s completely demented. Then the White House announced that actually, Joe Biden’s not going to say anything. They called a lid. So we really had no guidance whatsoever from our supposed commander-in-chief as any of this was going on. And that was a deliberate choice. It turns out that, as this attack on Israel was unfolding, the White House had a pretty good idea of what was coming.
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That’s because, for about two weeks, Iran had been promising to retaliate against Israel for its military strike in Damascus on April 1st, which killed several Iranian military commanders. Iran says the commanders were inside an embassy, but they also concede, according to the New York Times, that they were talking about military strategy for the war in Gaza:
A member of the Revolutionary Guards, which oversees the Quds Force, told the Times that the strike … had targeted a meeting in which Iranian intelligence officials and Palestinian militants were discussing the war in Gaza. Among them were leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group armed and funded by Iran.
Embassies aren’t generally the place for strategic conversations like that. You kind of forfeit diplomatic protections when you use the building for military purposes. But in any event, Iran maintained that the Israeli strike was unlawful, and they vowed a response. But here’s the thing. They apparently cleared that military response with the West. As the Jerusalem Post reports:
Iran informed Turkey in advance of its planned operation against Israel, a Turkish diplomatic source told Reuters on Sunday, adding that the US conveyed to Iran via Ankara that its operation must be ‘within certain limits.’
That means that the White House green-lit some sort of Iranian military response. And that seems like a pretty big story. But as of now, we don’t know what exactly those “limits” might have been, or whether Iran complied. But let’s assume the story is accurate. The upshot is that, for now, Iran’s response (rubber-stamped by the White House) doesn’t appear to have done a significant amount of damage. Right now, Israel says that — with help from the United States, Britain and apparently several Middle Eastern countries (including Jordan) — it intercepted 99% of the drone and missile launches from Iran.
That’s not entirely surprising, since the drones were traveling at slow speeds. At the same time, some ballistic missiles did land in Israel, particularly around a military base, causing some damage. There were reports of several injuries, including a 7-year-old girl who was seriously hurt by missile fragments.
That’s where things stand now, but of course further escalation is possible. It’s difficult to say what will happen next.
What we do know is that the response in this country has been pretty revealing. It tells us a lot about the priorities of our leaders and the level of insanity that normal, level-headed people are up against. For example, the Seattle Police Department announced yesterday afternoon on social media that, “SPD is Closely Monitoring Conflict Between Israel and Iran.”
SPD is Closely Monitoring Conflict Between Israel and Iranhttps://t.co/UBZc2q5cUq
— Seattle Police Department (@SeattlePD) April 14, 2024
This is a city where everyone’s high out of their minds, and people are afraid to walk alone after dark. But don’t worry, residents and vagrants of Seattle. Your police department is “closely monitoring” a conflict 7,000 miles away from your city.
This announcement came with a link to the Seattle police blotter. The slightly longer explanation raises more questions than it answers:
The Seattle Police Department is closely monitoring the conflict between Israel and Iran and are working with local and federal agencies to ensure the safety of Seattle community members. As a precaution, we will proactively increase patrols around infrastructures and sensitive areas. SPD’s Community liaisons are working with community leaders as a prevention measure. Currently there are no specific or credible threats. As always SPD is committed to the safety of Seattle community members.
What? Are they concerned that Iran might attack Seattle next? Given how long it took Iran to get drones to Israel, I guess we can expect the attack on Seattle to happen sometime in the year 2027. Or not at all, because there is of course absolutely no reason why any government official in Seattle — much less law enforcement — should be concerning themselves with a war halfway across the world.
Elsewhere on social media, immediately after this attack commenced, activists and the pundit class divided themselves up into teams. It was disconcerting to watch. On one side, you had the “nothing ever happens crowd,” who dismissed this attack as yet another non-event. On another side, there were the sober, serious commentators. They were a distinct minority. And on the much larger third side, you had people treating this situation like a sporting event. And as usual, when you’re dealing with a sporting event, some people inevitably take it far too personally. They turn these events into their identity and they lose all perspective. They become determined to make the events in the Middle East about themselves, and they become very confused — even threatening — when other people don’t agree with them.
For most people in this camp, they kept their frustrations on social media. But this phenomenon is not remotely limited to social media. There are now an increasing number of activists who are willing to appear in public and act on this insanity. Of course, a few weeks ago, an active duty member of the U.S. Air Force set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington. He was screaming “Free Palestine” as he killed himself. And then on Friday, there was a slightly less dramatic act of protest that took place at a city council meeting in Bakersfield, California.
A woman named Riddhi Patel, who was born and raised in Bakersfield according to one of her online biographies, stood up to urge the city council to endorse a ceasefire in Gaza. Now, as you may know, Gaza is many thousands of miles away from Bakersfield. And the city council in Bakersfield has precisely no ability to influence the government of Israel, or any other country. Their authority is mostly about fixing potholes and things like that. But that didn’t stop Patel — who has a degree in neuroscience, somehow — from stepping up to the podium and saying this:
So far, in that clip, she stops short of saying that she’s going to kill the mayor of Bakersfield, or the city attorney, or any of the other political figures seated in front of her. She just says that Jesus would have killed them, and that other people should kill them. So she’s walking right up to the line, but isn’t crossing it, at least not clearly.
But that’s not the most interesting thing she says in that clip. It’s crazy, but not as interesting as how she ties the number of evictions in Bakersfield to what’s happening in Gaza. This would have been a great moment for Riddhi Patel to go into detail about the homeless problem in California and what solutions she might have. That’s a topic that would actually have direct ramifications for the lives of Americans in her community.
Instead, here’s what she says next:
You can kind of tell from the total lack of reaction right after the death threat that no one really pays attention in these city council meetings. You’d expect at least one person who’s paying attention to gasp, but it doesn’t seem like anyone was watching. It takes them a few seconds to react.
Fortunately, the Internet got a hold of the clip and everyone was able to see the humor in this moment, as unsettling as it was. Really, it’s kind of incredible how she threatens to murder the entire city council in such a casual, “Oh, by the way…” kind of tone. As she notices her time running out, she drops the line, “We’ll see you at your house. We’ll murder you.”
And of course, the irony is that, in that second clip, she’s speaking in protest of metal detectors at city council meetings. She says they totally aren’t necessary. And she’s going to prove the metal detectors aren’t necessary by murdering the people who requested them, apparently. It’s airtight logic.
A couple of years ago, you’d expect someone like Riddhi Patel to get away with this. After all, Leftists activists have torched small businesses and churches with impunity in the past few years, and the only response by Democrats has been to cheer them on. And that’s probably what Patel expected to happen here. But in this case, as you saw, Patel was arrested. She seemed legitimately shocked to discover that openly threatening to commit first-degree homicide against government officials is a crime. Her profile was also deleted from the website of the activist group where she worked on environmental issues, so she has apparently also lost her job.
Patel now faces several counts of making terroristic threats. And when she appeared in court shortly afterwards, her demeanor suddenly changed. Quite dramatically. Watch:
It’s not hard to watch that footage and wonder what would happen if we decided to enforce the law against all of these unhinged Left-wing activists who think they can commit crimes with impunity. Would all of them buckle as easily as this deranged Indian-American woman? Probably.
The disturbing part, obviously, is that we’re importing a lot of people into this country who openly despise us, to the point of using violent threats to get what they want. Instead of discouraging conduct like Patel’s, we’re doing everything we can to get more of it.
Last week I spoke at length about the “death to America” chants that broke out at a rally in Dearborn, Michigan. As a reminder, here’s what it looked like:
These are people who voluntarily live in the country they say is the “rottenest” on the planet. They’re agitating for the murder of Americans and Jews. To the extent any of these people are non-citizens, which quite likely describes most of them, they should be removed from this country immediately.
But that won’t happen because Michigan’s top Democrats endorse all of this. They’ve refused to condemn those chants. In fact, Rashida Tlaib just snapped at a Fox News reporter who dared to ask her whether she condemned those chants. Watch:
So it’s using a “racist trope” to air footage of a large crowd in Dearborn saying “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” at the “International Al-Quds Day” rally. That’s according to Rashida Tlaib and apparently the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, who has refused to take questions about the incident. Airing footage of what the “diverse” residents of Dearborn are doing is Islamophobia, apparently — which, if you read between the lines, is quite an admission by Rashida Tlaib. She’s saying that “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” are core teachings of Islam. If you criticize the chants, then you’re criticizing Islam. Maybe that’s not what she meant to say, but it’s exactly what she did say.
What’s become clear, even as Democrats like Rashida Tlaib want to pretend otherwise, is that the rally in Dearborn is just one part of a much larger picture. Here, for example, is footage from a Teamster’s conference in Chicago on Saturday, which was obtained by The Free Press. This is the largest private-sector union in the country. Hundreds of activists attended, and they were quickly told how to chant “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” in Farsi. Watch:
There are a lot of stock anti-union arguments you hear a lot, and they’re pretty much all valid. Yes, unions reward inefficiency. They protect incompetent employees while also siphoning money from them. They result in higher prices and worse products, worse teachers, and worse infrastructure. These arguments are all familiar because they’re true. What’s less well-known is how many unions — including the largest one in the country — are now openly preaching genocidal rhetoric against the United States and Israel. I’m not talking about “genocidal” rhetoric in the abstract Leftist sense. You just heard it. I’m talking about “Let’s kill people” rhetoric.
This is a threat that, unlike whatever’s happening in the Middle East right now, is already here. And instead of recognizing it, both parties seem completely uninterested in doing anything about it. The Teamsters just donated $45,000 to the Republican National Committee, as well as the Democrats. Why did Republicans accept that donation? Why haven’t they returned it? Why is the GOP courting the support of organized labor? Why aren’t any Republicans calling out what the Teamsters just did in Chicago?
Unless we want a lot more Riddhi Patels showing up at council meetings, that’s not a rhetorical question.
The next Riddhi Patel might actually follow through on her threats. If so, she’ll have a lot of accomplices. In 2020, we saw how easily it was for a mob to torch entire city blocks in the name of “racial justice” and BLM. It’s not particularly difficult to imagine what mobs motivated by outright genocide could be capable of. As drones get shot down over Jordan, this is the threat that’s barreling towards America. The choice is simple: We can either get people like this out of this country, or we can allow them to destroy us from within.