Take for instance, the 1960s. Music and culture started to change around 1965 and arguably some of the best music from that decade emerged in 1965 and 1966. Then 1967 hit. The Beatles gave us “Sergeant Pepper” and The Rolling Stones “Their Satanic Majesties Request”, in the process forever extracting roll from rock ‘n roll while advancing Flower Power.
In 1967 the left thought that turning on, tuning in, and dropping out was the way to end the Vietnam War while at the same time ushering in some folksy communal lifestyle that in turn would usher in eternal peace. Where did all that lead?
In 1969 The Rolling Stones headlined a concert at Altamont in California – entitled the Altamont Free Concert – during which a fan was murdered by concert security. This wasn’t an exclusive incident. All those hippie kids that flocked to San Francisco to find themselves found themselves victimized by pushers, pimps, and opportunists.
Perhaps the most famous opportunist was Charles Manson. Initially, Manson wanted to be a pop star. Frankly, some of his recordings aren’t half bad. The Beach Boys felt his music was good enough to cover which they did on television with slight modifications to some of his lyrics. The whole pop star thing didn’t work out obviously so Manson hitched his wagon to the Flower Power train. The result was that people died in gruesome home invasion murders – among them a name-brand actress who was eight months pregnant.
Jim Jones offers another example. Jones moved to California in the 1960s and by 1970 was proffering his peculiar blend of quasi-faith and Marxism into something disaffected hippies of that era dutifully latched on to. The result? By 1978 Jones and his commune killed a Congressman and themselves wholesale in one of history’s largest, most bizarre mass suicides.
To be precise, I am not asserting that Manson and Jones were leftists. I’m asserting that they were opportunists. Both had agendas. To realize their agendas, both used leftism as their vehicle to get from point A to point B. Because leftism is uniquely susceptible to opportunists with agendas.
Look at where we are today. A decade ago America was excited at the prospect of electing the first black President. The left was so enamoured at the prospect they checked any semblance of objectivity at the door and bought into Obama the way Squeaky Fromme bought into Manson. (It is worth noting that Fromme wasn’t prosecuted for the Manson killings. Instead she remained free and under Manson’s spell. She didn’t find her prison sentence until 1975 when she tried to assassinate President Ford).
Obama promised hope and change. A new era of transparency and civility. Fundamental transformation. Michelle Obama even promised that Barack wouldn’t allow his supporters to go back to life as usual.
Wait. Barack wouldn’t allow people to go back to life as usual? Sounds strange doesn’t it? Remember, there are agendas.
An agenda has produced the fundamental transformation that today pits American versus American in mindless debates over whether statues ought to stand in public places. Is it not utterly insane that, in 2017 with terror attacks occurring regularly across Europe and nuclear North Korea taking pot shots across the Pacific, we are debating the conclusion of a war that ended before even our great grandparents were born?
When you are a fundamentalist when it comes to transformation, a sense of crisis is a good thing. As Rahm Emmanuel once said, “you never let a crisis go to waste…it’s an opportunity to do things you could not do before”. Charles Manson needed the crisis of spooky murders committed by shadowy figures in order to do something he hadn’t been able to do before – create a race war. The current agenda needs a crisis to do the things it can’t do because Hillary Clinton lost the election.
As for a crisis, the whole Russia-hacked-the-election thing’s a dud. Periodic claims that Trump is mentally unfit for office pop up but never gain traction because they are more ridiculous than Russia-Trump collusion claims. What does the left always turn to when they’ve got nothing else?
Race. Race. Race. Race. Race. Race. Race. Race. Race. Race. Race. And race.
That’s where the opportunists come in. If it wasn’t enough that Antifa is dressing up like ISIS and assaulting people in the streets, and a UCLA professor recently published an Op-Ed denouncing free speech, Antifa has begat the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (RAM).
What is the RAM? Check them out online. They advocate violence against police, confiscation of private property, and they want to overthrow the US government. They advocate open rebellion in the name of “racial and economic justice” and their members have openly sided with North Korea over the United States. In other words, these opportunists believe that their shot at incrementally moving America toward a socialist regime via Obama, then Clinton, was derailed in 2016. So now they want open warfare in American cities like Charlottesville. And Austin in a few weeks.
The vast majority of leftists are too uninformed, unaware, and intellectually incompetent to realize that like the hippies of the late 1960s they are mere fodder for deeper forces. Those deeper forces are really good at saying the right things and preaching sunshine and butter to the masses. (Deeper forces need useful idiots to serve as expendables for the cause). And it all sounds great until you are a 22-year-old trying to get off the stuff in San Fran circa 1971, or you are a twenty-something booked for felonious assault because you heeded what Antifa told you so you beat someone to death in the name of revolution.
Leftism never ends up in a good place and that explains where we are today. We are a decade post-fundamental transformation. Had Hillary Clinton become President, that transformation would have continued unabated. She lost. Now, we’re dangerously near that moment we’re told to just drink the Kool-Aid. Erase entire centuries of history along with our founding fathers so the left can erect racially acceptable statues in their place. Because the opportunists need for this to happen.
Why President Trump hasn’t directed Attorney General Sessions to begin a RICO statute investigation into Antifa I can’t imagine.
photo credit: Thomas Hawk No to Marxism, Berkeley California, August 27, 2017 via photopin (license)
