Whatever happened to Portland, Oregon?
Describing two “anarchists” in that riot-torn city, Nancy Rommelmann paints quite a picture in the May 2021 issue of Reason: “They are outfitted in the black bloc uniform of head-to-toe black; the boy carries a steel baton and wants me to know it. There is nonetheless something patrician about them, as if under different circumstances one might encounter them at cotillion. The uniform conceals their identities, but it can’t hide the sense of entitlement that allows them a cheap laugh at the cop, at the fan.”
The mocked cop? Sitting inside a federal building next to an industrial fan airing out the place after being attacked . . . with a thrown bucket of diarrhea.
Ms. Rommelmann wonders why these miscreants think it acceptable to throw excrement around.
“‘Do you believe that property is worth more than human lives?’ asks the boy.
“‘Do you believe the police should be allowed to murder people?’ asks the girl.”
Rhetorically.
For there had been, that year, only “one deadly police shooting in Portland.”
Thirteen years ago, Portland’s anarchist craze was still latte liberal, when 75,000 showed up to cheer on candidate Barack Obama. That was when it was “a little bit goofy, a little bit twee,” as Rommelmann puts it.
What went wrong?
Well, both city and state are solidly Democratic, and the Democrats’ leftist pieties disabled them from ever standing up to the violence of ideologues.
Utopians with every instinct to turn common sense on its head can only take each failure to establish their ideals as an excuse to turn up the volume. And violence.
Our civilization has seen this before. The utopians bring only dystopia.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)