untethered

Portland has to contort its progressive self to rationalize the violence of “anti fascist” demonstrators, but can’t ignore it, due to the Patriot Prayer group’s serial trolling of the city. The social justice community here is like Charlie Brown with the football. They know what’s coming, they just can’t help themselves.

One ignored demonstration might be all it took to get rid of Joey Gibson’s provocations. But then, many or most on the left don’t want that; they want the opportunity to mix it up with “fascists”, to demonstrate, to raise money.

But in the media the farther you get away from the local reality on the ground the more obscure coverage gets.
Steve Sailer on the New York Times’ coverage of Eric Clanton, the Bike Lock Bandit:

The story of Eric Clanton, the anti-free speech demonstrator / adjunct philosophy instructor who put on an Antifa mask and slammed seven pro-Trump individuals on the head with his bike lock in Berkeley last year (luckily, nobody died), is pretty interesting. Especially the part about how the “weaponized autism” of 4chan /pol/ participants crowdsourced the job law enforcement couldn’t or wouldn’t do — identifying the masked malefactor from subtle clues. But, the tale contradicted The Narrative about how pro-Trump violence is sweeping the nation, so the New York Times never ever mentioned Clanton’s name. Until yesterday, when it ran the following Associated Press story. I reproduce the NYT’s account in full:

A former community college teacher and anti-fascist activist has accepted a plea deal and pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor assault for allegedly attacking attendees of a Northern California political rally. 

Eric Clanton’s attorney Daniel Siegel said the 29-year-old agreed to the plea deal Wednesday in Alameda County Superior Court. He was sentenced to three years of probation. 

The Alameda County district attorney’s office initially charged Clanton with felonies for hitting several pro-Trump demonstrators on the head with a bicycle lock during a 2017 demonstration in Berkeley. Police seized flags, pamphlets and other paraphernalia associated with anti-fascist movements from his apartment. Siegel said medical records showed only one alleged victim sought medical treatment, for a bruise smaller than a dime.

“Smaller than a dime,” so kwitcher bellyaching, fascists! 

Bullet and knife wounds are smaller than a dime too. In fact, getting hit with the smaller-than-a-dime corner of a bike lock sounds worse than taking it broadside. I’m supposing the “no contest” plea enables the NYT to write Clanton “allegedly” committed the assault for which he accepted a deal.

Steve offers a reasonable surmise:

Did Clanton agree to snitch? Or is this normal sentencing in Current Year California? Will AG Sessions start an inquiry that could lead to federal civil rights charges against the anti-First Amendment thug? What exactly are the laws in California about smashing people on the head while masked and why aren’t they terribly applicable in this situation? This country needs rule of law, and part of rule of law is the press holding the justice system’s feet to the fire until obvious questions get answered.

It’s hard not to sound hyperbolic, but the media, in acquiescing to the violence with silence and misrepresentation, is complicit in it.

Abolish ICE PDX calls the protest a continuation of the blockade of Portland’s ICE office, recently disbanded. After Saturday’s near-riot in reaction to a right-wing demonstration and the ensuing campaign accusing Portland cops of excessive force applied with bias against lefty counter demonstrators, the goals of this siege are expanded to: abolish ICE, condemn the police and fire Ted Wheeler, our progressive mayor.

Protesters have a couple of hammocks strung up and are sleeping on the sidewalk–mingled among them the few homeless who always sleep on the sidewalk outside of City Hall. As a siege it isn’t much, but their anger exceeds their size. Here they are trying to block the doors (two arrests were made):

I don’t know how much harassment they give people during the business day, but at night they sometimes clash with random passersby, as one protester has since been arrested for striking a man with a pole after he complained about the blocked sidewalk.

One night this week I watched as a fat, middle-aged man with a “film the cops” t-shirt harassed a pizza delivery driver with his camera. A woman shrieked at him from the street. A few protesters lurked nearby as if to storm the locked building if someone should come to the door. The hapless fellow dodged a giant puddle of puke in his escape–he was in the wrong place.

Last Saturday’s action has prompted the most recent anti-police narrative here. A protester has claimed some sort of projectile shot by police lodged in his bicycle helmet, but he apparently hasn’t come forward.

A friend writes:

Was at court all day today, spent the time listening to the cops gossip. The antifa helmet with the flash bang lodged in it is total bullshit. It’s just the shell that’s in there, not the projectile. The guy won’t come forward to allow the helmet to be examined. They all know who he is, his name is “Lee”. Cops were somewhat pleased with Chief Outlaw seeming to have their back after Saturday, they’re used to getting no support whatsoever from any chief, she ain’t great but ain’t the worst.

Chief Outlaw’s press conference was something of a pleasant surprise. She’s at least a good spokesman and ably defended her cops–of course, this being Portland, she promised an investigation–by pointing out the hostility of the counter-demonstrators.

Indeed, my friend above appended this to his email:

Something funny one of the cops said was, during one of the more tense moments on Saturday, he heard someone tell him “look behind you!”, and he did. Standing behind him was Chief Outlaw, wearing an angry face, looking ready to clobber the next antifa that came her way, and she made eye contact with this cop, and did the angry black lady triangle finger snap, before she said: “Oh! It’s on!”. All the cops in the hallway busted up laughing.

Maybe she’s an outlaw, of a sort, after all.

Another friend, recently alienated from the left by the anti-white indoctrination he experienced in college, was on the ground when Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson made a foray into the counter-demonstration. He was, of course, assaulted by antifa once the cops pulled Gibson out of there.

This is Pozland.

The blackberry thicket over the back fence erupts every summer with the sun after spending winter playing dead in thinned out, desiccated dormancy. Its tendrils make straight for the sun, spiked with thorns and up to a couple of inches thick; the larger ones bow under the height they achieve and dive back into the confusion.

A small evergreen is battling to overcome them as they wrap themselves around its branches as if to deliberately pull it back down to earth. Eventually it will grow large enough that its shade will kill off the thicket. Blackberry vines entangle its branches, pulling them downward. The picture of this creeping fight for life is suitably dramatic; two insensate, inexorable living things striving for the sun.

Another fence meets ours at a right angle. From here I can watch squirrels climbing through and down the trees at the other end of it, then hopping down and skittering the fifty feet or so to our fence where, after a quick check for the cat, they make a left turn and, coming to the end, leap onto a low hanging branch to continue their tree-hopping

In this way they manage to traverse long distances through city and suburb safe from predators. They must have countless regular routes such as this. I maintain our section of this critters’ Ho Chi Minh Trail by trimming away the blackberry vines that bend around the top of the fence as if to take it down too in their mindless profusion.

Larger blackberry vines will attach themselves to the lower branches of mature trees and grow alongside, twinning them, as if adopting a strategy of concealment. I cut away a vine wrapped about the squirrels’ branch, thinking to make it easier for them to climb on, and the branch, now released, sprung upward a foot or so. Now I’m not sure they can make the jump.

One of my cats–I’m always quick to point out I ended up a single man with two cats by accident when my daughter, their nominal owner, left home–has been holed up in there for two weeks, refusing to come out. If he’s gone there to die he’s going about it all wrong: when I come to the opening in the fence where I removed a board and call he answers back, from the impenetrable mass of thorny vines. I leave food and leave; he comes along and eats it once I’m gone. I spy him from inside the house. If he’s not around I take the food away. If I don’t the raccoons will eat it; I can tell because they leave behind a muddy mess wherever they go. Once I stuck my head in the opening to find two of them. They melted back into the brush. Throwing the muddied water in the direction of one of them I heard a splash; he’d fallen or jumped into the creek, the cliff-edge of which is hidden in the growth.

The circumstance became normalized, with me routinely putting out food. The cat started coming out before I left the food behind. He relaxed into this routine and started coming to the food before I left. I even petted him once–noting there was no indication of sickness. Even this hasn’t managed to shed the fat off him. He allowed me to pet him, but I didn’t try to bring him in until I decided the farce must end and I must, at least in this instance, finally do the normal thing–capture him and take him to the vet.

So I grabbed hold of him and maneuvered him through the hole in the fence. Somehow he ended up on my shoulder, upside down. He squirmed halfway out of my grip so I followed him to the ground and trapped him there. I had badly hurt both hands days earlier and had no grip strength in my left hand at all; trying to hold him to me using mostly my palms I wrestled with him until he slipped out from under me and back into the brush.

And there he remains.

Actors reading the emails between Peter Stryk and Lisa Page. This should be adapted into a play.