Scenes from St. Louis and Downtown Gustine

Published 07-02-2020

Whether my focus was on social media and back home or with a more local eye in mind, my news options for a peaceful week were quickly erased by Monday morning... before I had even finished my first cup of coffee.

For those not familiar, St. Louis has become a hot spot of protest, it’s epicenter a statue of King Louis IX, for which the city is named. The King was later canonized for his lifetime of charity by the Catholic Church.

Of course the Crusades are quite problematic in the current era, and calls for the proverbial guillotine for not just the statue, but demands to rename the city are part of the current petition to the city government.

Joining BLM are other left leaning activist Muslim and Jewish groups like CAIR and the ADL. And after so-called peaceful protests turned to vandalism and more, Catholic groups organized a clean-up and counter protest at the statue. The vandalism ranged from vile to ridiculous. Some was more than definitely Anti-Catholic.

It isn’t about slavery, police brutality or any of the other catchy slogans uttered for news clips and bumper stickers.

No, it was just another day in American cities where Western Civilization is most assuredly as on the chopping block as any piece of public art older than post modernism.

I’m wary of calling a group of religious people praying the rosary around a statue a protest, but here we are. Of course framing the narrative around the counter protestors as alt-right and Nazis was completely predictable, and par for the course.

I must say 2020 has been quite a wild ride thus far.

If I told you five years ago that for praying the Rosary in public people would be threatened, beaten and chased by mobs with sticks... in Missouri, well, even I don’t know that I would have believed it.

But as I said, here we are.

That debacle was followed by a group of marching protestors breaking through a historic gate in a private neighborhood and onto a private property on their way to the Mayor’s house. The first house they came upon was the Budweiser Home, a grand city mansion to be honest, built by Lilly Busch, daughter of the iconic brew maker. Well, the current occupants of the home, who have spent thirty years renovating it to it’s original opulence, at an expense to correspond to the home’s grandiosity, did not take to kindly to this trespassing, and made it known by defending their house using the 2nd Amendment, courtesy of Colt Firearms.

To be honest, peaceful marching past the house probably wouldn’t have caused much of a fuss. The owners are personal injury lawyers that are currently arguing a case of police brutality against the St. Louis Police Department. But when hundreds of people show up on your front lawn and many start threatening burning your house down, killing your pets and spouse, and all sorts of other vitriol, well there aren’t a lot of options available. Especially when the police can’t, or won’t, respond.

No one was injured by the homeowners, nor were the homeowners. Pretty good case for responsible gun ownership.

We are seeing escalating violence within these mobs... breaking out car windows on freeways with babies in the backseats, firing weapons into vehicles trying to drive past human roadblocks on city streets, and the shooting death of a photographer out documenting the protests in Louisville.

Folks, these kinds of tales never turn out well, and escalation that isn’t swiftly dealt with will only continue to escalate.

Real world consequences start to rear their ugly heads in all sorts of unlikely places.

••••••

Which brings me to what happened this weekend in Gustine. And bear with me while I try not to work too far out on a ledge before we have all the information confirmable from an editorial perspective. (I think I cause Dean enough gray hair without pushing those buttons on a regular basis.)

Time and again I have seen protests, counter protests, rallies and gatherings. I went to school at U.C. Berkeley. I’m more than versed on street action, it’s roots and and origins pertaining to American politics.

I’ve attended political speeches by avowed Marxists and celebrated left wing politicians. I’ve attended marches as well as protests against some of those very types of politicians who came on to campus to film campaign commercials 25 years ago.

And only in one of those instances was I physically threatened and intimidated, with my right to peacefully protest and assemble attacked.

After watching years of this nonsense, where only one path of prevailing wisdom is allowed, and anyone who deviates from it attacked and vilified, pushed and prodded, well the only real thought that comes to mind is… what did you expect?

Real world consequences can mean getting punched when you come up on someone in a threatening or abusive manner, hurling invectives and spittle when you can’t handle opposing opinion.

I get that these kids see all manner of Marxist fan fiction being played out over social media. Usually in cities where police have been told to stand down and politicians fan flames already out of control. #Resistance is now #DefundPolice and the media celebrates these mob zones as cool, hip music festivals. Their school curriculums are filled with victimology and identity politics. College is even worse.

It’s time for that particular bubble to burst.

Many of these protestors think that rural America has the same tolerance for criminal mayhem that cities do.

That would be a mistake.