Protesting the Protesters

Donald Trump had barely been elected when so-called protesters showed up in front of Trump Tower in New York.  Likewise, he had not yet been administered the oath of office when another batch of demonstrators attempted to disrupt his inauguration.

These folks style themselves patriots.  They claim that their goal is to protect the nation and promote justice.  This is rank nonsense.  They are anarchists and/or totalitarians.  They want to tear down the United States and replace it with their screwball utopias.

The actual motives of these dissenters are revealed in their tactics.  How they operate is wholly negative.  They march and shout vulgarities.  They bang pots and break windows.  They throw rocks at the police and lie down to obstruct traffic.  Never do we hear a constructive idea from the lips of these erstwhile reformers.

Contemplate the more than one third of congressional Democrats who boycotted the inauguration.  They were not only disrespecting the in-coming president; they were disrespecting over two centuries of tradition.  These partisans thumbed their noses at the institutions that have preserved social stability.

Or ponder those rock throwers.  They remind me the brown and black shirts who roughed up Germans and Italians in order to impose Nazism or Fascism.  The common goal of these ruffians was to intimidate others.  How ironic it is that left-wing thugs now accuse law-abiding citizens of being fascists.  These hooligans apparently do not know the meaning of the word.

Nor do the demonstrators understand democracy or justice.  They may regard themselves as the good guys, but they are prepared to vitiate the will of voters and impose their own inanities.  If others disagree, they do not listen.  If their radical schemes are resisted, they enforce them anyway.

As for being intellectuals, this is a joke.  Not only do they not understand the beliefs of their opponents; they do not even try to comprehend them.  Trapped in an echo-chamber of their own making, they do not know history, or economics, or sociology.  They think they do, but this is because they don’t know what they don’t know. 

Left-wing malcontents of this sort have not had a new idea since Franklin Roosevelt.  In fact, their philosophy can be summed up in a few sentences.  To wit: The powerful are oppressing the weak.  These tyrants must be prevented from doing so by bureaucratic regulations.  At the same time, government programs need to strengthen the vulnerable.

That’s it.  That’s the sum total of their brilliant insights.  As for the anarchists, their collective acumen is even more dazzling.  They assume that if the government is destroyed, we will instantly revert to a gigantic loving family.  It never occurs to them that their own frenzied methods refute this theory.

On top of this, the protestors are vehemently and pugnaciously anti-American.  So far are they from being patriots that they despise our nation.  Although they insist that they are engaging in violence because they love us, they scorn what we have hitherto been in favor of their imaginary designs.  Indeed, they want us to become altogether different from what anyone has ever been. 

In other words, the protesters are entirely oppositional.  They are defined by what they impugn, rather than what they would accomplish.  Despite all of their moralistic posturing, they are far worse human beings than those they criticize.  If there were any doubts, the valedictory deeds of their hero, president Barack Obama, lay bare their inner depravity.

Obama commuted the sentence of “Chelsea” Manning—an arrant traitor.  Against the pleas of military commanders, Barack elected to release an avowed enemy of our nation.  Of course, Obama has been doing this right along with the discharge of Gitmo detainees.

Our out-going commander-in-chief also decided to abandon Israel to the wolves.  It did not matter that it is a democracy and long-standing ally.  Where were the protesters when this occurred?  Where too were they when the Chicago police, rather than the Chicago gangs, came under withering fire?

If protestors are not constructive, they are no more than a rabble.  In their own deluded eyes they may be gallant superstars.  In reality, they are mean-spirited crackpots.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University