Who would have thought that “across state lines” would have replaced “Donald Trump” as the Left’s favorite epithet? But whatever fans the flames, right? Anything to get the latest rounds of arson, looting and violence up and running. There’s a country to be destroyed, you know.
If you watched Ken Burns’ The Civil War, which originally aired what seems like a hundred years ago, you may recognize the name Shelby Foote. He was a Civil War historian who made frequent appearances during the series. He was very knowledgeable and his books are enjoyable to read. Like C.S. Lewis, Foote has a way of crafting a sentence that keeps you hooked and somehow is pleasing to the eye. Of course, given Foote’s southern origin, many critics automatically label him a Confederate apologist, without taking the time to see the nuance in Foote’s books. Foote tried to tell both sides of a story. And history can be messy and does not always favor the side in which we are interested. But then again, nuance is all but lost in the 21st century.
In the book Confederates in the Attic, author Tony Horowitz sat down with Foote for an interview and the subject of the Confederate flag came up. Foote commented:
“Freedom Riders were a pretty weird-looking group to Southerners,” Foote said. “The men had odd haircuts and strange baggy clothes and seemed to associate with people with an intimacy that we didn’t allow. So the so-called right-thinking people of the South said, ‘They’re sending their riffraff down here. Let our riffraff take care of them.’ Then they sat back while the good ol’ boys in the pickup trucks took care of it, under the Confederate banner. That’s when right-thinking people should have stepped in and said, ‘Don’t use that banner, that’s not what it stands for.’ But they didn’t. So now it’s a symbol of evil to a great many people, and I understand that.”
And so it goes. The “right-thinking” people of the Left would never sully their hands in dealing with their enemies directly. Even if they do not explicitly encourage burning car dealerships, looting stores, attacking police stations or beating up unsuspecting people on the street, they know that their rhetoric inspires and encourages it. They know that they have an army of angry, under-educated or willfully uneducated group of people, highly vulnerable to the power of suggestion — people who will burn down a city while Leftist leaders and media mavens gather at the Kennedy Center or the Met Gala to sip champagne as their colleagues and errand-runners try to convince us that a building engulfed in flames is a sign of a peaceful protest.
Related: Portland Police Hamstrung (Again). Sit Back and Watch the Riot.
People who they hate are being attacked by people they care nothing about. Just like their enemies, their foot soldiers are inconsequential and expendable. And if a neighborhood has to lose small businesses or a supermarket, drug store, or for that matter lives, so be it. After all, the goal is just, right? The rioters have never figured it out. They are a means to an end. They can put up all the signs they want and others can burn, loot and hand out beatings. They are still owned. They will never reap any of the dubious alleged benefits from their “revolution.” This time around, the plantation owners are the media and the politicos. And further, these people are also nothing more than an interesting outing for rich, spoiled white brats who want a fun night of looting and burning, as they enjoy a good ego-stroke in the process. Quite the racket if you can make it work. And the Left has.
Those causing chaos in the streets have never stopped to consider why their Leftist leaders are in the tonier areas of the country, enjoying a nice sauvignon blanc. Not one person in the legacy media has to go home to any of those areas and they would never be seen in one of the riots. To paraphrase Foote, the Leftist elite have said, “Let our riff-raff take care of that riff-raff.” Which is the one thing the Left hopes that the protestors and rioters never grasp. And to be honest, they probably never will.
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