Something Happening Here
Stephen Stills, member of the rock group Buffalo Springfield wrote the song “For What It's Worth" in 1966. It quickly became a well-known protest song. However, contrary to popular belief, the song was not motivated by the Vietnam War, but rather a confrontation Stills had in a Los Angeles Sunset Strip protest riot. The opening lyrics follow….
“There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
A-telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop
Children, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Are getting so much resistance from behind.”
The line "nobody's right if everybody's wrong" highlights the extreme polarization of that time, and applies to the current political environment. It suggests that both authorities and protesters are engaging in destructive, unproductive conflict. Nothing could be more clear with respect to what is going on now, with those who suffer terminal Trump Derangement Syndrome as they play out their hate in the streets and the media.
The White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday night was interrupted by a sufferer of TDS intent on killing members of the Trump Cabinet and the President. The crazed wannabe assassin had released a manifesto that stated as much. In it he referred to himself as a “Friendly Federal Assassin.” That’s a completely unhinged description without a doubt.
Clearly, something snapped in a man who was extremely well educated to make him operate as a “savior” for those he perceived to have been harmed by this Administration’s policies. Quite possibly, the daily dose of hate for Trump found in media, social and traditional, fueled his bizarre behavior and subsequent criminal act.
A generation of young people are turning to violence because of the poisonous dialog that too often passes for political discourse. Calling the President “an existential threat to democracy”, putting their futures in serious jeopardy, creates instability that drives them to take aggressive action for their own perceived salvation. The loon Luigi Mangione, who murdered a health insurance CEO by shooting him in the back on a Manhattan street, is a prime example. His righteous cause was that health insurance was denied to some but should be available to all. That executive’s death solved nothing.
This is the third assassination attempt against President Trump. As he pointed out in his late Saturday night news conference, he is a target because he is changing much of Washington, draining the swamp, as he is fond of saying. The entrenched swamp dwellers are losing their minds as he gives them a dose of their own nasty, bombastic baloney. It further causes them to lose what little judgment and proportion they ever had.
On the Sunday talks shows Democrats were advocating for yet another commission to examine political violence. Nonsense. The Nation doesn’t need a study group to tell them the evils of political violence. What is needed more now than ever is for the politicians and the media to stop blathering and reporting in dramatic terms about the end of the republic because Trump is President. The progressive left’s continual lying does considerable harm.
The Nation needs to embrace and restore reason to political discourse. We need restoration of traditional moral values that condemn violence as a solution to society’s ills. That won’t stop the really wacked from committing criminal acts, but it might stop the Cole Allen’s and Luigi Mangione’s of the world from thinking that resorting to violence is morally justified.
The Democrats are fond of saying that President Trump is an “existential threat to democracy”. That phrase is repeated endlessly, it’s tiresome, really tiresome. The fact is that they are, with their hateful rhetoric aided and abated by the pundits and news readers of the progressive legacy media. Their nonstop rancor powers the writers who feed venomous monologs to the likes of late night “comedy” hosts Kimmel and Corbert. Kimmel has been especially nasty referring to the First Lady Melania Trump as an “expectant widow”. Disgusting.
As Stills wrote, “It's time we stop. Hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down.”