Peace

And now for the editorial portion of the show.  I'll be an "opinionist" for a minute.  It's just an opinion, though, and I reserve the right to change my mind.  As I've said preciously, that's what makes us human, hobgoblins and all.  

Bringing the police in to break up a demonstration is a big mistake when people are peacefully protesting.  It will always escalate the thing they are trying to quell.  Photos of helmeted, bullet proof cops with their knee in the back of a young man or woman, handcuffs being applied, club and pepper spray at the ready, will make anyone mean.  Fascists get hard looking at this kind of cop porn and want more.  Liberals get angry and want to join the fray.  

So that happened.  

There are always and will always be professional agitators.  They will infiltrate any movement.  What they want is attention, and a free press will always provide it.  What to do?  Not what Mayor Adams is doing in New York.  He banned the free press from watching what happened when he sent the police in to clear the building that had been taken over by some students (and a lot of non-students) at Columbia University.  Un-American.  Why in the world would you not want transparency in such a case?  

My idea is to let the protestors have the building.  Take them shitty food and water so they don't have health issues.  When their phones lose all their juice, most of the student protestors will leave anyway.  Without attention, with nothing and no one to fight. . . well, you can't have a fight.  By pushing back, you just raise awareness of the thing you want to avoid.  

In this case, however, you are pretty much forced to take a side.  For me, it is easy.  Do I choose to support the side that crashes jet airliners into buildings, who close down educational institutions and teach only the Koran, who practice female mutilations and subject them to a life of inferiority, and who do not allow free elections, or do I support the side that had the first and only female head of government in the Middle East (Golda Meir), that supports gender equality, that drafts and trains both men and women in the military, that has a tremendous educational system, and that has free elections?

Your kids are playing soccer with the neighbors when a group of kids from another neighborhood come with guns and rape and kill them shouting "Death to (Your Neighborhood's Name Here)."  They did it because your neighborhood is wealthier and is beginning to cause gentrification along the border with theirs.  They don't like that, don't like it at all.  

I'm just saying.  

But when people are protesting, I'm not so much in favor of violence.  The sharia fashionistas will find another cause soon enough.  As I've opined earlier, many if not more of the kids at the protest are there for non-Ideological reasons or are supporting an Ideology with which they are not fully cognizant.  

End of sermon.  This was not meant to be exhaustive.  Feel free to find fault with the logic.  Just don't capture me, lock me up, rape me, and cut off my head.  You don't have to torture me.  As Lenny Bruce said, I'll say anything.  I'll spill secrets.  Just don't use the funnel (link).  

Just a side note.  I still greet people with a smile and a peace sign.  It is a habit I have never lost.  Sometimes it is a forward facing "V" peace sign, but sometimes it is a backward facing "V" for victory.  

I've recently been told, though, that the V for Victory sign is also a "fuck you" sign in the northeast.  That's how things go, I guess.  But old habits die hard.  Like Churchill, maybe I'm just giving the fingers to Nazis.  Peace through Victory.  

Whatever.  The Cafe is a desolate place today.  I feel bad about not giving credit to whomever made the photo at the top of the page.  It is a lith print.  I remember that.  But I didn't record the photographer's name.  Well, it's a fine picture and my hat is off to the person who made it.  I am envious.  

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(addendum)