311 what's next?



Ok, what's next?

We're looking at a sustained protest scene, likely from both the left and right. Remember, Occupy and Black Lives Matter both started under Obama. With a kinder administration in place, we're likely to see more Chaz's and Standing Rocks pop up this summer.

Perhaps in a vacant commercial high rise near you. Squatting is slowly moving from an idea, to fringe media. It won't appear in MSM until it's already happening.

Heather Cox Richardson is a historian and writer I've grown to admire over the course of the pandemic. But she's in pretty deep with the Democrats, which makes me wonder if it is skewing her vision of the moment.

I mean, how to do you equate bringing cookies to soldiers with aiding poverty protestors who had been bashed by cops? How, exactly? 

The other side was worse isn't a defense. It's a delusion. Nobody gets to be the better bad guy. Either you're a good guy, or not. (Ok, yes, I've gone down polarized rhetoric road...of course there are shades of grey. There always are. Especially if you have to look at history as an American with any shred of compassion.)

And then there's the question of what protestors on the right, or whatever they may be labeled, think up. (So far, 1 in 5 of the people arrested for storming the capitol is a vet, compared to 1 in 20 people in the average population.) This probably isn't the last we've heard of RVs loaded with shitheads, or worse.

So, if you'll remember back to 2011, protestors had set up encampments in many cities across the country. The goal was to protest wealth inequality, and the bailout of Wall Street instead of Main Street. Obama let it simmer for the summer, then when the crowds thinned because of winter, he had the DHS quietly organize local law enforcement to shut it all down in one big national sweep.

(Above, NYC, below, Oakland, both gone on the same night.)
The picture at top is from my step-brother, who like many of us, is relieved to be rid of the orange menace. So much so that he went around taking joyful  pictures of troops and security walls all over the capitol. 

This is really sending my head in a spin. 

Well, at least we don't have to worry about obvious dictator-wannabes. For now.

I liked them more when Sonya Westcott was in the band, but that's personal.



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