Tuesday Talk*: Keep To The Left

In Portland, a march and vigil was held for Patrick Kimmons, who was shot and killed by police after he allegedly shot two people and pointed a gun at the police.

The group, which included members of Kimmons’ family, gathered near a memorial supporters have set up near Southwest 4th Avenue and Harvey Milk Street, at the parking lot where the shooting occurred.

“We’re not here to riot. We’re here for justice,” said Charles Kimmons, a family member. “We need to fight this all the way to the end. These cops need to be locked up.”

Whether this was an instance of police needlessly murdering a black man or a righteous shoot isn’t at all clear. Ascertaining facts seems to be archaic in such matters, now that sides are drawn by nothing more than the color of the deceased. While the death should never be taken lightly, and this killing must be subject to scrutiny, the propriety is determined by the facts rather than blind faith, whether for or against Kimmons.

But this march along city streets, the same ones used by other people to get wherever they were going, created a conflict. What to do with all those people who would drive their cars on the streets that the marches needed? Antifa to the rescue.

Many simplistically call the cops a gang. So would order imposed by the woke prove more enlightened?

Much as there is good reason to question, to challenge, the conduct of police whenever anyone dies at their hand, would the black-shirted mob of social justice serve us better?

“Just go that way,” a female protester told a driver who had rolled down his window to talk. When he purportedly asked why, she responded, “Because I told you to.”

“Yeah brother, yeah you little white little f*er,” a man, who appeared to be white himself, yelled while approaching the vehicle. “The First Amendment. Get the f* down the road.”

There is a curiosity here, as the battle lines are clearly drawn by denigrating a driver for being white, which has become an epithet in itself to the woke. Is this the better world?

*Tuesday Talk rules apply.

33 thoughts on “Tuesday Talk*: Keep To The Left

  1. Scott Jacobs

    Yeah, funny how these things never seem to happen in states like Texas. It’s almost like antifa understands the power of evolutionary self-selection.

      1. Scott Jacobs

        No…

        Just saying that Antifa types seem to avoid places where folks might be willing and able to stand up to their mod assholery.

      2. Hunting Guy

        Yes.

        Robert Heinlein.

        “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.”

        1. Morgan Sheridan

          That was fiction and had no foundation in reality. It has been coopted and taken for ‘gospel’ by the NRA and the gun community. See Florida and Missouri after the reducing the restrictions on gun ownership and carry laws.

      3. Kurt

        Yes, it would be better if all adults were both armed and trained.

        Training should begin in (roughly) the 5th grade.

        At school.

        Kurt

    1. Quinn Martindale

      It absolutely happens in Texas. Protestors blocked a bridge in Austin last saturday, and several different protests in Dallas blocked traffic last month. I’ve seen antifascist groups in Texas open carry both handguns and rifles.

      1. j a higginbotham

        And California hasn’t banned straws (even plastic ones). But there are images to be maintained.

  2. GreenTriumph1

    Many (most?) of my students are not interested in history because they believe that we are in the post-history phase of the human condition. We have found the best way to organize society, to distribute resources, and we are all morally superior to past generations. Finding fault with past generations helps to reinforce this thinking.
    Balanced assessments seem to be a thing of the past.

    1. SHG Post author

      It’s rather amazing that all of human history, its most brilliant minds, its deepest thinkers, its greatest inventors, pale in comparison to both the brilliance and moral superiority of today’s average college sophomore.

      1. B. McLeod

        Rather amazing that the people who actually subscribe to this can’t grasp either the colossal scale of their arrogance or the Lilliputian probability of this actually being correct.

        1. SHG Post author

          If one presumes they’re shallow, entitled dolts, it seems less amazing that they believe themselves superior to everyone who came before them.

          1. B. McLeod

            To presume that would mean to take it as true without evidence. I don’t think we will need to presume it.

  3. Mark Brooks

    Mr. Greenfield, it might surprise you to learn that in Jamaica, there are 2 laws on the books that come before Petty Sessions Court. These are “Indecent Language” and “Abusive and Calumnious Language”. I have always wondered if those who drafted your Bill Rights meant for the 1st Amendment to be an excuse for the use of such language. I say this, as the laws (whether statute or common law) in use in the USA at that time, were very much what was used in Britain. As for “Rights”, why is there never any mention of “Responsibilities” ?

    As a chuckle, whenever such cases came up in Petty Sessions Court, the Clerk of Court (most times a woman) would want to skip reading the phrases used, as they found them embarrassing . I would then instruct the Clerk to read the phrases, saying that the accused could not correctly enter a plea, unless the actually phrases that constitute the charges were read to them. I always managed to keep a straight face with the ensuing embarrassment.

    Cheers
    Mark Brooks

    1. SHG Post author

      I suspect the right is the protection against the government. The responsibility is the reaction of people to whom you just proved your ugly nature.

  4. PseudonymousKid

    This is an embarrassment. You’d think they’d cogently try to form a vanguard party by now and introduce some organization and hierarchy into their ranks to get something done. They won’t or can’t. This “Antifa” crap is blown out of proportion. They’re just a bunch of violent dolts who can’t direct traffic. They aren’t a real risk just like stupid torch-carrying kiddos aren’t a real risk. There’s no mountains anywhere, just molehills.

    1. SHG Post author

      The fellow trying to prevent the car from going forward by pushing against its grill might have posed a real risk but for physics. But holding a club as you scream at people who want to do nothing more controversial than drive their car on a public road could seem rather threatening. Bear in mind, these aren’t Naxos and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, but regular folks driving to the Supermarket that they’re threatening.

      1. Jake

        Unimpeded travel on a public road is not guarunteed by custom or law. Ya’ll wouldn’t be cheering if drivers decided to intimidate or threaten construction workers with their vehicles. You don’t get to threaten people with deadly force because you don’t like their reasons for diverting traffic.

            1. SHG Post author

              I keep forgetting that SJ exists so you can spew whatever nonsense pops into your head, thereby requiring me to teach you the law so you can decide whether it satisfies your personal feelings. And I failed you.

            2. Jake

              OK then. The world is free to assume you believe it is perfectly acceptable to threaten someone’s life with a car because you don’t like them.

  5. ppnl

    It is interesting and disturbing that the people directing traffic sound just like the cops that they so despise. It is scary how much they have in common with them. They would be Trump supporters except for an accident of history.

    Our loyalties will hang us all.

    1. Charles

      “Keep to the Left”? The protestors were demanding that everyone who didn’t join them turn to the right.

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