I want to start with this video of Gov. Newsom being interviewed on Pod Save America this past Monday. Newsom’s part starts at 1:04:05, so you can skip right to it.
What struck me (and it was no surprise) was the vehemence of Newsom’s denunciation of the Black Bloc, which I wrote about yesterday. He perceives the same thing I do: that these vandals are actively playing into Donald Trump’s hands, by “forcing” him to “save” Los Angeles from their arson and hostility.
As I explained yesterday, we have a lot of these Black Bloc types in Oakland. They haven’t been active lately, but make no mistake, they’re out there, brooding and biding their time. Their black bandanas are ready to mask them at a moment’s notice. They have their gas masks and crowbars at hand, anxious to wreak havoc. They are, to use an historical analogy, Oakland’s Brownshirts, the storm troopers Hitler used to smash his enemies’ skulls during the 1920s, when he was rising to power. I don’t think the morons who trash downtown during protests are a serious threat to our stability, nor do they follow a Fuehrer. But it’s important to note their existence, and to wonder who is funding them.
What will be fascinating, the next time they revolt (and it’s a certainty they will), will be how Barbara Lee reacts, as well as the City Council. In the past, during violent riots, the city’s government (including the corrupt Police Commission) has put severe limits on how the police are able to respond to them. This, of course, merely enabled the thugs and encouraged them to believe they could get away with anything. Will it be any different next time? Will “moderates” such as Janani Ramachandran, Kevin Jenkins and Charlene Wang actually enforce the law, or will they knuckle under to the anti-police radicals in their districts, as Oakland politicians have always done? They might want to watch the Gavin Newsom video and learn that it’s possible to be both progressive and intolerant of violent crime.
This is the current crisis the Democratic Party finds itself in. It wants to be progressive (pro-woman, pro-gay, multi-racial, pro-science) but it doesn’t want to be associated with the vandals and looters. The Republican Party is firmly against the Black Bloc, which is admirable, but their anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ, anti-science and pro-billionaire stances make it impossible, IMHO, to be a Republican. I think the Democrats have a way out of this conundrum, by embracing moderation. The Republicans do not. They have sold out to the evangelicals—as insane a bunch of Americans as we’ve ever seen in our history—and they must now remain entangled in their danse macabre with this cult of superstition and death.
Barbara Lee has been saying all the right things lately about unity, but she has yet to be put to the test: Will she adhere to her Black Panther-inspired ideology of wokeness and racial divisiveness, or will she truly govern from the center? We’ll find out as soon as the Black Bloc re-emerges, which may be soon.
Steve Heimoff