By Steve Huntley | April 28, 2024
This and that. Random thoughts and observations about current events. Trigger alert! What follows might “harm” the psyche of the woke. Perhaps those sensitive souls should retreat to a safe space, which I suspect will be Judenfrei.
Peaceful protest is a hallowed right and tradition in America. These days, however, that right, which achieved so much good in the civil rights era, is being hijacked to disrupt everyday life in big cities and on university campuses.
The protests are said to be about the suffering of Palestinians in Israel’s war against Hamas. But they’re not.
They’re the ravings of antisemitic bigots and far left wing fanatics celebrating the terrorist savagery of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre and rapes, which set off the righteous war by Israel against genocidal terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
You never hear in these anti-Israel demonstrations a hope for a two-state solution. No, only chants calling for Oct. 7 again and again.
The demonstrators’ stated target might be Israel but make no mistake, their hatred is also aimed at America and Western civilization. The U.S. flag has been burned. Chants of “Death to America” punctuate protests.
These poisonous demonstrations are deliberate attacks aimed at disrupting life and commerce in cities, interrupting public accommodations like highways and airports, shutting down education at campuses — and intimidating Jews in all walks of life.
Jews are told by authorities they’re unsafe on college campuses, and some flee. Think about that. We are witnessing organized mass bigotry on a scale not seen in this country since the days of Jim Crow.
These demonstrations are coordinated by radical organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine and funded by far-left groups such as the Open Society Foundations, according to an examination of financial records by the New York Post. Open Society was founded by George Soros, the billionaire whose pocketbook has helped elect anti-police and coddle-the-criminal prosecutors in major cities.
How would you describe the anarchy, hate and organized assault on society, fomented and financed for years by radicals? Someone could be forgiven for mentioning the i-word — insurrection.
Whatever you call it, a strong hand is required.
Of course, that didn’t come from our wishy-washy president. Joe Biden equivocated, saying yes he condemns antisemitism but that he also condemns people who don’t understand the Palestinians.
Actual national leadership came from House Speaker Mike Johnson. He went into the belly of the beast — Columbia University, the epicenter of the protests that by one account have reached 200 campuses — and powerfully denounced antisemitism.
He declared, “This madness has to stop.”
Columbia had police make a few arrests but then allowed the fanatics to resume their reign of intimidation.
Others have been more forceful. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas sent mounted police to break up a disruptive demonstration at the University of Texas at Austin. Google fired more than two dozen employees who disrupted its workplace with sit-ins.
But much more is necessary, including firing professors who indoctrinate and foment hate rather than teach.
Here’s a fundamental question: Why aren’t the authorities cracking down on these fanatics, these enemies of civilization and democracy, with the hammer used against the protestors of Jan. 6?
Are the radical, disruptive and intimidating demonstrations we see today a preview of things to come?
Should Donald Trump win re-election in November, you can count on these same people and more to take to the streets.
And what’s happening today may seem like child’s play in comparison. Think of the 2020 George Floyd/Black Lives Matter riots that inflicted arson, looting and assaults in cities across the country. Or maybe even worse than that.
Should anyone doubt that radicals and fanatics are this very day planning demonstrations for the possibility of a Trump victory?
And the outrageous fanaticism we’re seeing today may in the end help persuade voters to put Trump back in the White House.
Americans are growing ever more tired of chaos — be it in the streets, on college campuses, at the southern border or in their own inflation-wracked finances.
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The so-called hush money trial now underway against former President Donald Trump accuses him of alleged crimes during the 2016 election campaign. That’s eight years ago.
The recent civil court judgment against Trump for allegedly inflating the value of his properties to get bank loans included allegations about his business dealings between 2012 and 2016. That’s 12 years ago.
The Georgia and federal indictments by special prosecutor Jack Smith alleged crimes in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. That’s more than three years ago.
The indictment accusing Trump of unlawfully possessing classified government documents stems from a raid on his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida in August of 2022. That’s more than a year and a half ago.
Allegations of wrongdoing range from a dozen years ago to a year and a half ago.
Yet a New York City prosecutor, a New York state attorney general, a district attorney in Atlanta and a federal special prosecutor have all these prosecutions coming to a head around the same time — in the 2024 presidential campaign season.
That’s just a coincidence, right?
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By all accounts Luis Huesca was an admirable Chicago police officer, just the type of person we want working to keep America’s cities and towns safe.
But he’s not doing that anymore. On a recent night he became the 11th law enforcement officer shot to death in the line of duty this year in America.
According to the National Fraternal Order of Police, the total of 378 officers shot in the line of duty last year, 46 of them fatally, was a record. The 98 shot so far this year has the country on track to exceed last year’s count, it says.
Given the crime waves blighting American cities from coast to coast, we need dedicated lawmen like Huesca. What this country doesn’t need is more police shot and killed.
What it needs is more support for cops when they’re forced to open fire on dangerous criminals committing life-threatening crimes.
That’s not a call for trigger happy cops. It’s simply a recognition that taming the violence in our streets will at times inevitably come down to confrontations where police have to open fire on criminals.
To those who find that an outrageous idea, it’s hardly an original thought. It reflects a common and recurring theme in American culture. Think of the great movies ranging from director John Ford’s My Darling Clementine to Gary Cooper’s High Noon to Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry to The Untouchables of “the Chicago way” fame.
At some point criminals become so out of control and so depraved and crime becomes so widespread that lawmen as agents of civilized society have no choice but to resort to violence.
We will know when this country and especially the citizens of Chicago are tired of the crime wave playing havoc with urban life when they come to the same conclusion.
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If the liberal outrage over the death of Dexter Reed is any indication, Chicago is not ready for the tough policing required to bring safe streets and safe neighborhoods to the city.
As John Kass pointed out recently, the left wing media are trying to make Reed into some kind of martyr gunned down by racist cops, but that narrative doesn’t hold water. Reed had a history of mental illness and had previously threatened to kill an uncle with a knife; the uncle shot and wounded him.
During a traffic stop, Reed pulled out a gun and fired it 11 times at police, wounding one officer. Under attack, police responded and fired their guns — and this is what has progressives wringing their hands — 96 times.
As anyone short of an idiot knows, you shoot at police, then you’re asking for — and likely will get — an overwhelming response in bullets.
Just to note one historic example: the car carrying Bonnie and Clyde to their rendezvous with eternity had 112 bullet holes in it from guns fired by law enforcement officers. Clyde was shot 17 times and Bonnie 26. And they weren’t even shooting at the cops. Lawmen had ambushed those criminals.
It bears repeating, if you open fire on law enforcement officers, you’re asking for massive trouble and you’re going to get it.
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Officer Huesca was killed in a carjacking. The depraved, soulless killer that took that good man’s life is Exhibit A for the need of the death penalty.
But capital punishment in Illinois was abolished in 2011 by bleeding heart liberals in the legislature who chose to side with murderers over victims.
Abolition of the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment for the families of murder victims and for law-abiding citizens revolted by the worst kind of criminals — such as the low life who killed Huesca.
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The passionate loyalty his followers show Donald Trump perplexes and befuddles Hillary Clinton.
Her response has been to damn the Trumpsters as a “cult.”
One way to understand her is to see that as just the latest manifestation of Clinton’s contempt for voters who would never cast a ballot for her. Recall that back when she was running for president, she contemptuously labeled Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables.”
Yet, there is another way to look at it. In a word: envy. Clinton can only wish that she could inspire the kind of heartfelt following that Trump does.
Watching a Trump rally and knowing that she could never stir that kind of affection in masses of people must gnaw away at her soul. Day after day. Night after night. For the rest of her life.
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Steve Huntley, a retired Chicago journalist now living in Austin, Texas, has contributed other pieces to johnkassnews, from an examination of the secret jail for Christopher Columnbus and other politically problematic public art to an essay on Americans suffering from Joe Biden gas pain.
For almost three decades Huntley spent most of his career in Chicago journalism at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he was a feature writer, metro reporter, night city editor, metropolitan editor, editorial page editor and a columnist for the opinion pages.
Before that he was a reporter and editor with United Press International (UPI) in the South and Chicago, and Chicago bureau chief and a senior editor in Washington with U.S. News & World Report. Northwestern University Press has issued soft cover and eBook editions of Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for Black America by Truman K. Gibson Jr. with Steve Huntley, a memoir of a Chicagoan who was a member of President Roosevelt’s World War II Black Cabinet working to desegregate the military.
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