BLUE STATES: What Do Anti-Police Losers Have in Common?
by Andrew Allen
Clash Daily Contributor
Businesses in Ferguson, Missouri were burned to the ground. Rioters gathered in New York City streets to chant “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now” along with comparisons of the New York Police Department (NYPD) to the Klu Klux Klan. The Seattle Police Department headquarters was ransacked by rioters there. Oakland and Berkeley, California remain hotbeds of anti-police “activism”. In Los Angeles and San Francisco unknown persons have fired on police officers. Boston, Massachusetts police officers serving a search warrant were beaten by an angry mob that sided with the fugitive – and against law enforcement – living in their building.
To follow the logic — if it may be called that — of the anti-police movement, the police exist as a repressive force acting contrary to the will of the people. Police officers assume their duties each day and endeavor to harass and denigrate the poor and people of color. The police have become the living embodiment of all the sins the left has accussed conservatives of for years now.
Thing is, Ferguson isn’t a right-wing hideout. It’s part of blue America. In 2004 Ferguson went for Kerry over Bush, and in both 2008 and 2012 they chose Obama over McCain and Romney. How about New York City? In 2000, New Yorkers voted 58% for Gore, 39% for Bush (with a remaining 4% going for “other”). 2000, by New York standards could be considered a close election. In 2004 82% voted for Kerry and in 2008 86% for Obama. Seattle has consistently gone overwhelmingly for Democrats since at least the 1990s. Los Angeles is little different. And of course Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco trend deeply blue. Just like Boston.
In not a single instance are these anti-police riots taking place in cities that could even remotely be called conservative. These aren’t places where the Second Amendment is celebrated, where pro-lifers constitute a sizeable presence in local politics, or where a nativity scene would be tolerated in a public space.
Take Seattle for example. It’s the city that recently — and radically — increased the minimum wage to $15. It was a move that self-proclaimed socialist city council member Kshama Sawant said would influence other cities to elect more independents and socialists to office. Sawant also noted “Seattle may be a hippie city. We may wear socks with our sandals but it’s also a city where different progressive groups can work together to bring about change”. As with all things “Left”, this “change” doesn’t stop at the minimum wage. In true revisionist mode, Seattle replaced Columbus Day with “Indigenous People’s Day” in October 2014.
The more you think about it over, it’s pretty evident where repressive municipal regimes wield an authoratative presence over local populations.
Nanny-state intrusiveness and cultural redefinition aren’t unique to Seattle. The size of a soda has been a prime discussion in New York for quite some time. San Franciscans are proud of their needle exchange programs. A robust labor movement in Oakland as of late has shut down US shipping ports as unions have blocked access to those facilities. Berkeley residents went all out to ensure Starbuck’s didn’t open a store in their downtown. The Boston area is home to Brandeis University where student Khadijah Lynch recently tweeted that she had “no sympathy” for the two New York poice officers killed in an ambush attack.
Khadijah Lynch said she posted her comments because of the “raw anger and frustration” she felt in the wake of Ferguson and Cleveland. (In Cleveland, a 12 year old brandishing a pellet gun was recently shot by police. Cleveland is another one of those deep blue places. Dennis Kucinich was mayor there, if that’s any indication of just how blue “The Forest City” is). Lynch, unwittingly, may be expressing the natural human reaction to life in a repressive place although she’s misguided in where she places the blame.
All these places in which “raw anger and frustration” run wild have one essentialy quality in common. Each and every one of them without exception is heavily Democratic. Each is a living breathing example of what results when progressives are given the keys to power and free reign to implement their left-of-center agenda without conservative interference. In all of these places, every civic institution to include the police department, is run by the left and should result in a near heaven on earth utopia. Instead, “raw anger and frustration” is what people in these cities feel.
They feel they aren’t represented by those that call the shots in city hall. They feel that the institutions they are supposed to be able to count on, discount their worth as human beings. There is an uncomfortable disquiet in these cities even as they increase the minimum wage, shut out name brand retail outlets from downtown locations, and discussion how much salt you might legally be allowed to sprinkle on your french fries – for however long french fries remain legal.
The wave of anti-police “activism” shouldn’t surprise anyone. This is where the progressives take us every time they are entrusted with power. Their promises of a free to be you and me hug a tree utopia always go down in flames. On a micro level it’s what happened in Jonestown – Jim Jones was as much a community organizing progressive as he was a spiritual leader. On a larger scale it’s what history has shown time and time again as left of center countries from Greece to Argentina have gone belly up thanks to progressive agendas. Not to mention the demise of the Eastern Bloc.
Conservatives don’t own what’s happening in places like Ferguson, New York, Seattle, Boston, Oakland, Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The left created the problems they are now in the streets protesting. No doubt the rank and file actually doing the street protesting don’t yet see the connection. They haven’t yet caught on to the connection between the stifling nanny-state repression they feel and the goodie two shoes progressives that “Occupy” seats in city hall.
Those in power probably do though. Whether they will do anything about it before the rank and file catches on and turns on them remains to be seen. If that’s how all this turns out, they brought it on themselves.
Image: http://www.blacklistednews.com/%E2%80%98Millions_March%E2%80%99_against_police
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Andrew Allen grew up in the American southeast and for more than two decades has worked as an information technologies professional in Washington DC, southern California, and abroad variously in Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia. A former far-left activist, Allen became a conservative in the late 1990s, once emboldened to begin questioning his own leftist points of view. When not working IT issues or traveling Andrew Allen spends his free time with family, exercising, and writing.
