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| -Great Cultural Revolution | |
| On the Violent Left, Eternal Recurrence | |
| 2024-05-04 | |
Have we learned nothing from the past? It’s not as though we need to explore antiquity for lessons in how to confront today’s issues. While such an exploration would no doubt be helpful, any effort in that direction is beyond – far, far beyond – the stunted intellectual capacities of our current crop of ruling elites, certainly to include our degreed betters running our so-called institutions of higher learning. … Still, one prays for more wisdom in those we’ve entrusted with authority. For the most part, we pray in vain. Witness the chaos this week on display on college campuses across the country, where we find that the protesters who brought so much death and disorder in 2020 have swapped their BLM T-shirts for kaffiyehs and adopted the Gazans as their Cause of the Season. Same clowns, different circus. In the small hours of yesterday morning, police officers at last routed the motley rabble of such people who had been occupying the main quad on the campus at UCLA, arresting more than 200 of them and scattering the rest. Left behind were tons of assorted garbage and graffiti covering some of the school’s most iconic buildings. UCLA administrators had taken a hands-off approach to the encampment for days, this despite the fact that some of the occupiers had taken it upon themselves to limit access to one of the school’s main libraries as final exams were drawing near. A request sent out days earlier to other University of California campuses for additional police officers was withdrawn, leaving the 65-man UCLA P.D. to cope with what was clearly an escalating problem. Late on Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, counter-protesters arrived on campus, apparently compelled to action in the absence of legitimate authority. They brawled with the occupiers for hours until a sufficient number of officers from the LAPD, the L.A. Sheriff’s Department, and the California Highway Patrol could be assembled and restore order. It need not have come to this. UCLA officials didn’t even have to recall the events of 2020 for instruction. All they had to do was look at how other schools had responded to similar protests over the previous month. On April 5 at Pomona College, about 40 miles east of UCLA, pro-Hamas protesters invaded and occupied the office of the school’s president, who promptly announced that any who failed to leave the building would be arrested and suspended from school. Police from several agencies were called in and made 19 arrests. We’ve heard nary a peep from Pomona College since. Officials at the University of Florida issued a statement welcoming peaceful expressions of dissent, but warning that the school “is not a daycare, and we do not treat protesters like children.” Last Monday, nine protesters were arrested at the school’s Gainesville campus, which has since been calm. But UCLA Chancellor Gene Block chose the cowardly path of least resistance, allowing the placement of tents and barricades on the quad and watching idly as lowlifes from across Southern California and beyond descended on the campus and began dictating the movements of anyone not sympathetic the plight of the Palestinians. What was it that prevented him from adopting the Florida approach? Why not announce that protesters were free to espouse all the vitriol they liked as long as they didn’t interfere with others’ pursuit of an education? Praise Hamas until you’re blue in the face, but don’t put up any tents and don’t block access to classrooms and libraries. Simple enough, it would seem, but too lacking in nuance for Mr. Block. He has now reaped what he sowed, with a portion of his campus a shambles that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair, to say nothing of the coming bill for police overtime from the departments he had to enlist in his rescue. The UCLA endowment is about to take a hit. Jack Dunphy is the pseudonym of a police officer in Southern California. He served with the Los Angeles Police Department for more than 30 years. Now retired from the LAPD, he works for a police department in a neighboring city. Twitter: @OfficerDunphy Related: Jack Dunphy 06/27/2021 Who Killed Ashli Babbitt? Jack Dunphy 01/01/2021 Beware of the Mask Police Jack Dunphy 07/28/2020 Will We See Another Kent State Incident? | |
| Posted by:Frank G |
| #2 |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2024-05-04 12:57 |