What is the actual reward of a riot? Does it come in blood and treasure? Or, does the real prize cash out in rhetorical value? What kind of person is taken in when public figures spill tears over mob mayhem? Their glee at blood spattering theoretical opponents can’t be contained behind the maudlin outrage. You don’t need ESP to sense their disappointment when there are few, or no, victims to be found. It’s exactly like the letdown when a hate-crime hoax gets exposed.
So it’s time we set up some ground rules for torching the avenue as the ideological competition it is. The regulations might be a challenge to compose. We could always settle them with a brawl in the public square. Should the loser win? Should the phoniest camp get a handicap? The PR scoring disparities of the 2020 season would suggest that. This is what makes mainstream manias so trying—hypocrisy loses its edge when everybody is on to you.
When you come across activists whose activities are potentially hyperactive their beliefs are immediately secondary—if that high on the list of priorities. What comes first is enmity. It is an ultra-necessity while spreading the love. Mass movements thrive on martyrdom—without oppressors they don’t stand a chance. Soldiers in from the field will tell you how close they become to fellow combatants. That level of fraternity doesn’t materialize without somebody shooting at them. Does it cut the mustard as a reason to go to war though? In any case—the enemy invention industry is booming in America today—and the commodity of “hate” is vital to its existence. A dedicated staff is always on hate’s trail like muzzled pigs rooting truffles.
The Concept of the Pol...
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To traders in the commerce of ideas—and fake emotions–gluts and shortages are only obstacles to the imagination. If you can’t find giants there are windmills. That’s why a malleable word like “fascist” is so dear to the perpetrators of love crimes. When you’re keen on swinging the hammer what doesn’t look like a nail? This is where the ideological hooligans—of any stripe–owe a debt to the Nazis. It was a party member and scholar, Carl Schmitt, that gave thugs with a cause their catechism, The Concept of the Political. It’s where they learn:
“The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.”
When people, supposedly on our “side,” tear up the town an older saying comes to cooler minds: “With friends like these who needs enemies?” Considering all relevant things—a “side” exists making an airtight case against any necessity for political violence in present circumstances—we’ve been here all along. That’s why some of us have taken to tossing all the dead weight in defining our isms. People who can justify swinging on you over perceived ideological differences belong in one Hillaryite basket together. All the babble about nationalism, ancestry, economics, gender and religion is entirely irrelevant. The concept of the physical is what counts and indelibly marks a fascist.
“The distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theoretically and practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other distinctions.”
Why is it no one I know spends much time going on about “enemies”? The vast majority of us, who’d take round-the-clock robo-calls over spending free time in a mob, don’t have any strict rules about enemies. They occur naturally enough without finding new ways to make them. But, that said, they are few and far between. If everyone we sat at a table with saw eye to eye things would be duller than the Covidian depths. When a difference of opinion generates hostility there’s usually pathology going on.
In any case, the people practicing most of the public demonstrations these days are constantly labeling people. Once tagged don’t be deceived—you’re the enemy. But our media, fully embracing Schmitt’s lines in the sand, is the model for this whole approach. Staking out any specific tightly fact-based ground in public forums is the fast-track to an undeserved epithet. Only the broadest, hastily contrived, error laden views get media sanction.
In Defense of Looting:...
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The ones doing actual harm, from either supposed “side,” comprise tiny percentages of the population. Nonparticipants, who don’t get caught up in public acts of dissatisfaction, might still approve of them. Their numbers should be polled. If enemies are a necessity of modern politics, as Schmitt insists, I’m with the camp that fears the thugs and wants them fully prosecuted—whether they believe in Nazis drooling under the bed, vote fraud or alien lizard-people at the UN. We’ll not be counted among any of them.
The moral equivalence of all hooligans is displayed in feeble attempts to shirk blame—like Nazis faking Sender Gleiwitz—both major media and the websites they despise stoop to the same level. The NYT and CNN told us, in complete sincerity, that the “alt-right” had infiltrated violent flare ups over George Floyd and Jacob Blake and were behind the dirty deeds. Apologists for the January 6th assault on the Capitol found an antifan at every point of mischief there. Facts like these have zero impact on the psyche of fanatics. They know destruction is necessary and are willing to aim it at those who differ or just happen to be on hand.
So let’s dispense with all the faux-umbrage, holier-than-thouness, cries for beloved country and babe in the woods innocence. What plays in Chicago—as well as major cities without abattoirs—is blood on the wall. The new competition known as Peaceful Protest is spoiling for release by ESPN, Fox, MTV, TLC and other carriers of American high-culture. With luck Lidio Porto—the reporter on Rehabilitation in the film Idiocracy—will do the play by play.
