It's the ultimate political Rorshach test.
What the hell is going on in Portland?
What we see may depend on our own biases and media filters.
The above shows a veteran who asks questions of the unidentified federal forces and winds up getting attacked, pepper-sprayed and has hand broken. He never makes any aggressive moves. He only questions their constitutional authority.
I don't know what my friends on the other side of the cultural divide see. Maybe they don't see this at all. Maybe it is presented to them in an entirely different context.
Some see the federal (?) agents as heroes, preventing a descent into chaos and rioting violence. They value monuments and buildings more than human lives.
They don't seem concerned that the federal agents are unidentified (some may actually be members of private security forces or militias). It doesn't bother them that protestors are swooped up in unidentified vehicles and taken to God knows where for God knows what.
Portland protests were centered into a two-block area. They might have been disturbing to some, but they were relatively controlled, and as much a celebration as a protest.
But that is not what my Trumpeteer friends are seeing. They see toppled statues and burned buildings. They see groups who are bent on the destruction of America, and who plan on marching out to the suburbs and doing...Ok, I lose it there. I don't know what they think is going to happen. That's too far down the irrational rabbit hole for me.
Their media is flooded with images, and it seems that they are the opposite of what I see. Notice in the one above that the question asked is heavily loaded. They assume the protests are violent enough to demand federal intervention.
Referring back to last Saturday's Political Soap Box, conservatives no longer believe in small government. They only believe in power. They have no qualms about bypassing local authorities and state government, The only parts of the government that matter are those controlled by Trumpeteers.
Unlike the 50s and 60s, the federal government is not coming to defend the civil rights of citizens within a state or community. They are not trying to get anyone into a school where they have been barred because of the color of their skin. They are not investigating the murders of civil rights advocated.
They are coming in, against the wishes of the local and state authorities, WITHOUT IDENTIFICATION, and sowing chaos and violence in one of our great American cities. A fresh, vibrant, friendly city that my family visited just a few years ago. A city that my son, Benjamin, is in love with and may want to move to someday.
And I don't care what Rorschach test you go through. I don't care how your news is filtered.
This is never right.
NEVER
Thank you. I have a number of friends who live in Oregon and their view of is radically opposed to some in Ware and Pierce counties.
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