"summer of love"

One year ago we were in the midst of what the mayor of Seattle Jenny Durkan said could have been the "summer of love."  This "summer of love," was in reality a summer of true anarchy in which mostly peaceful protests erupted into riots all across the world.  What was peculiar about these riots was that the majority of people shared the sentiment that these rioters were entirely justified in their actions.  Where did this permissive view of riots come from?  Certainly everybody didn't come to this conclusion on their own, because that would be giving people too much credit.  This is because people don't think for themselves (sad, but true).  Where did this interpretation of events come from, then?  It came from the media, of course.

I normally don't watch television.  I don't even have a television in my house.  But last year I had a unique vantage point when I was observing the events of the "summer of love" 2020.  At that point in time I happened to be living on a ward in the Oregon State Hospital, and in the community room there was always a television on, blaring the news whether I liked it or not.  And so I had the opportunity to watch and see how the media was spinning the riots.  It was clear to me that the talking heads on CNN (or NBC, or ABC, it didn't matter which channel) were not only calling these people justified in their actions but they were intentionally inciting people to anger and throwing fuel on the fire.  I don't think this is very difficult to do.  People in general are fed up.  The tired masses of people (most of them low paid service workers and laborers) live on the edge every day, and they need very little encouragement to express their discontent.  All they really need is permission.  

If anybody doubts this, observe the work of union organizers.  Entire labor pools quietly get up every morning years on end and put up with their bosses to earn income.  As soon as it comes time to negotiate a contract the union stirs up the discontent of the work force and they generally will come together in order to strike, and it doesn't take all that much encouragement.  This is because life sucks.  It's that simple.  And some people know how to spin the discontent of the masses to their own advantage, although it never improves the lot of the masses in the end.  I believe this is what we were seeing on a massive scale during the "summer of love" in the year 2020.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prepare to Die

A few years ago I was contacted by my priest who asked me if I could give a ride to church to a new member of our community.   He was a college age kid (Zoomer) who attends the local university.   He gave me the boy’s phone number and I arranged to pick him up outside of his dormitory.   He came to church with me, and stayed after the service for coffee hour.   The boy’s name was Adam.   Sitting around the table during coffee hour our conversation turned towards politics and somehow the name of Nick Fuentes came up.   Suddenly, out of nowhere, Adam turned to me and asked me point blank “would you die for Nick?”   I was taken aback, and didn’t exactly know how to respond.   It was clear to me by the way Adam had asked this question that he had already settled the question in his own mind, and if I had asked him the same question he would have answered in the affirmative.   This isn’t the first question that a normal person would have asked in polite company.   Under normal circumstance
Read more

Don't Sleep on Young P.

I work as a groundskeeper at a hospital.   I’ve been working there for 18 years.   It’s a four man crew.   I’m the only person in the department who graduated from high school, and sometimes I feel out of place.   When I was in high school I went to class and passed without having to study.   The guys in my department skipped class to smoke cigarettes and joints, probably.   They didn’t study either, probably.   The previous lead of our department also didn’t graduate high school.   He could barely even read or write.   When he would try to write “grounds” (as in “grounds department”) he would spell it “gronds.”   I could just picture him staring into space and trying to pronounce the word phonetically, mouthing the “o” sound, when he figured that one out.   Nobody ever said anything to him because it probably wouldn’t have done any good because he was so hard headed that he was impervious to being told anything.   Also, we thought it was funny.   You can read “gronds” every day and it
Read more

Since You Asked…

Lately I’ve been on a kick promoting monasticism on social media.   I got a lot of pushback because of it, and that’s okay.   I think the crux of the matter was that people who were already married or are planning on getting married took it personal when I laid out the argument that monasticism is a higher path than marriage.   Where did I get such a ridiculous idea, anyway?   Allow me to explain. First, I’ll cite a few sources.   I have two books called The Law of God .   One is by the priest Daniel Sysoev who was killed in a church in Moscow by a Muslim man who was angry that he had been converting Muslims to Orthodoxy, and who is generally known for his missionary work in bringing people from other faiths into the true faith.   In the section of his book dedicated to the sacraments of the Church he has a subsection on monasticism.   In this section he cites the apostle Paul who “says that one who remains a virgin is more blessed than one who enters into marriage…This does not mean t
Read more