A SUCCINCT GUIDE? TO UNDERSTANDING? THE CAMPUS PROTESTS

To stay sane (it’s a relative concept), I needed to write something. So I slipped on my sarcasm shirt (given me by a friend) and let loose.

To say that I am thoroughly depressed  — by the absence of civil debate, by the boisterous few (another relative description) spurred on, but only in part, by outsiders to college campuses who were trained in professional activism – is an understatement.

But no kvetching about a coddled generation ignorant of history and gleaning their thimble full of news from TikTok. Nothing about affluent young people wrought with anxiety about the economic system which brought them their unearned comfortability, their inbred sense of entitlement that shields them against any negative consequences from throwing into the air (without their names attached) words devoid of any serious thought.

Moving right along, here is the guide:

*It is always appropriate for those with less to be against those with more. This is true even if you actually have more; it’s the identification that counts.

*It is always acceptable for representative non-white leaders and their followers to be against whites. Cancel culture: chapter one, paragraph one, sentence one.

*For a couple thousand years, being against Jews has been common. Nothing new there. Those urging the destruction of all Jews are protected under the principles of free speech.

*As a slight digression, stimulated by that free speech comment, only bona fide African Americans can use the n-word with impunity. Anyone else muttering this word has committed a hate crime.

*Mob psychology has not changed: people act in a way they would not if solo.

*If “hostility is just its own waving flag of wanting to be seen,” mission accomplished. After much dithering, Biden finally spoke, tapping protestors on the wrist and, more or less simultaneously, cancelling another bunch of student debt and proving his bona fides as a friend of the young by endorsing marijuana. Jeez, in the old days, you simply bought votes with cash and jobs; now politicians have to make policy statements.

Speaking of Biden, It would be fascinating to hear him address the parents of young people for whom getting to college was not a given, where their education has been, shall we say, tampered with, whose graduation from a brand name school (in the past anyway) has been sullied.

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Reconstructionists of the left want to re-do American society along racial and economic redistribution lines. Campus protests come straight out of the playbook in this regard. The fact that certain ethnicities do not have standing in this re-do is of no consequence.

Reconstructionists of the right have no forward thought process, no cohesive plan, no practicality or substance to their policy proclamations. Basically they want to roll back the clock to their fantasy of yesteryear, when nobody questioned the superiority of white males. Guess they missed the memo about changing dynamics and demographics.

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Sooooooooooooooooo — how can there not be aggressive conflict and conduct.

Can it be comforting that on average, each of us owns a gun.

Will the civil war unfolding in the United States be fought with an AR-15 or will the combatants leave their weaponry at home and convene for strenuous debate, agreeing that violence in the political process (haven’t there already been multiple court cases emanating from the insurrection) is the nuclear threat, the third rail, not to be employed or touched.

What does this have to do with the protests? Everything I think.