Protesting Trump

Right From the Start

by Larry Huss

When I was a sophomore in college one of my roommates was upset because the school administration would not allow the student newspaper to print an article that was critical of some policy of the school. One evening he suggested to me that we should burn the school newspaper. I had no idea what the article was about nor did I care, but the idea of burning the school newspaper sounded like a lot of fun – I was nineteen going on twenty and though like a nineteen year old. Several nights later we made our way into the Administration building and scooped up all of the recently printed newspapers (probably less than 1,000 papers consisting of eight pages) that were set for distribution the following day. We hauled them out onto the quad between two of the men’s dorms and lit them on fire.

In short order what had been less than half a dozen of us grew to a couple of hundred. And that number grew larger when the police and the fire department showed up. Almost everyone attending and participating (including me) were clueless as to the reason for the burning but it was great fun and the attendees were laughing, joking, chanting and singing. When the police and the fire department showed up no one shouted “pigs”, no one threw anything, no one shoved anybody, they just laughed and cheered until they were told to go home, whereupon some went back to studying, some went to bed and some, like me, went to one of the campus bars that didn’t check ID’s. We were there for the party, not the “purpose.”

The President of the school, Fr. O’Leary, was notably quoted that evening as saying: “It is spring time and in the spring the sap begins to flow – and I do mean saps.” Pitch perfect.

It was so much fun that we decided to do it again the following year but we didn’t have a newspaper to burn because it was now under lock and key so we gathered rolls of toilet paper and basically TP’d the same quad where we had burned the newspaper the year before. It was great fun again and a couple of hundred people showed up again to laugh, cheer and chant. Two of my friends thought it would be the perfect time to conduct a “panty raid” and so they pulled ski masks over their faces and invaded one of the girls dorms. They were greeted by cheers, jeers, and laughter and, despite their disguises, many of the women greeted them by name – it was a small school and we all knew each other well. No one was hurt, nothing was damaged and everyone had a good time. Again, we were there for the party, not the purpose.

But, by our senior year the cold hard reality of the real world settled in. Many were facing deployment to Viet Nam, others to getting a job, and still others to getting married with all of the attendant responsibilities. Bigger things had pushed our juvenile behavior to the least important aspects of our lives.

I relate all of this because when I view the recent demonstrations arising out of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency I recognize that the overwhelming majority of the young people attending are there for the party and not for the purpose.

But two new elements have been injected into these “spontaneous” demonstrations and both have contributed to a coarsening of the protests. The first is social media. Everybody has a “smart phone” with a camera and internet access to upload and download all that occurs. The “fifteen minutes of fame” first noted by Andy Warhol have gone viral and the antics of people trying to gain attention seem to know no bounds. They range from the once silly to the sublime to now the dangerous and disgusting. That element of “see me now” has caused crowd reaction to accelerate much like gasoline on a barbecue.

The second is the increasing presence of professional agitators. They range from the anarchists to paid political operatives like the Foval Group funded by the Clinton campaign machine through the Democrat Party. Their purpose is to provoke confrontation and violence. The known but unfortunate reality is that crowd or mob mentality dominates these “demonstrations.” So when the agitators provoke violence the crowd acts instinctively to coalesce with them allowing a small professional group to stampede the larger group. This is the core of the violence that erupted at World Trade Organization meetings, racial protests, and now anti-Trump demonstrations.

Woven into all of this are the Political Losers – the Hillary Clinton supporters. The people that just cannot believe that the “most qualified person to ever run for the presidency” was beaten soundly by a novice with absolutely no political experience. Who continue to search for any rationale other than they chose to support the most corrupt politician to ever be nominated by a major political party.

Okay, they can salve their bitterness by noting that Ms. Clinton won the popular vote. But that isn’t how you win the presidency – you win it by following the rules of the electoral college established in the Constitution. Brandishing the popular vote as a repudiation of Mr. Trump is akin to claiming that the Carolina Panthers are the 2016 Super Bowl champions because they gained more yards (315 to 194) than the Denver Broncos. The Panthers, like Ms. Clinton, lost on the only score that counts.

One of the most interesting things about all of these Losers is the ubiquitous use of catchwords – fear, fearful, afraid, terrified. And when these Losers are lost for words when queried by the mainstream media, the media supplies the same phrases in their questions and follows that up by using these same words in their reporting and commentary – demonstrating once again how biased, corrupt and dishonest the mainstream media continues to be.

Obviously these Losers were still reading from the “talking points” of the Clinton campaign and their concerns sounded just as rehearsed and just as disingenuous as most of Ms. Clinton’s speeches.

So, what is to be done about these demonstrators? Well there is a different solution for each of these three groups:

One – For those who are there for the party rather than the purpose, let them have at it. Let them march, chant, cheer and jeer to their hearts’ content. Soon enough they will get bored and move on to something more important. But in doing so the police should follow the policies of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani – give them the sidewalks but not the streets, the streets need to be preserved for emergency traffic. Advise them early and often that if they injure others or property that they will be arrested and charged.

Two – For professional agitators. Most police departments have access, through facial recognition capabilities, to data basis that can identify many of the professional agitators. They should be identified early, watched incessantly and arrested immediately when they act or incite violence or property destruction. Get the criminal element off the street and maintenance of order increases dramatically. But more importantly, once arrested those parties responsible for deploying them should be held liable for the injuries and damages they cause – even including the Clinton campaign and the individual members of that campaign.

Three – For the Losers. They should be reminded that when conservatives suffered the election of President Barack Obama (twice) and felt isolated and feared for the future of the country, they recognized that this is the “big boy” world and you don’t always get what you want. You are not entitled to a world where people will not disagree with you, where you have to be able to defend what you think and what you say and where work trumps whining. When conservatives lost they re-gathered their forces, worked harder and won subsequent elections at both the state and national levels. They took control of an overwhelming majority of governorships and state legislatures. They took back the House of Representatives and then the Senate. Liberals would be well advised to do the same. Or in the words favored by my daughter, “Pull up your big girl panties and do it whether you want to or not.”

But if in the end you just can’t take it anymore and feel like Rosie O”Donnell and Chelsea Handler that you have to leave the country and never return, give me a call and I’ll see if I can help you with your ticket.