Once again, note to "antifa," violence is not the answer

Some of the folks with the pretentious name of "antifa" thought it WAS the answer over the weekend.

The basically rebranded old Black Bloc folks, in Portland (remember, the Pacific Northwest is the heart of the Black Bloc) attacked and assaulted Andy Ngo.

The fact that Andy Ngo is a wingnut makes it no better.

It's rare as hell for me to agree with someone like Hillbot Charlotte Clymer on a  matter of substantive politics, but I do here.

The likes of Andy Ngo thrive on producing a reaction just like this. It's fuel for furthering their narrative.

Much of the Black Bloc doesn't care about that anyway. For 20 years, many of them have shown — primarily in violence against property, but, with Trump unzipping his id letting them do the same, now in more violence against persons — that violence is their stock in trade. To be frank, as with the Seattle WTO meeting 20 years ago that kicked off their violence against property (not that I am fetishizing property), I think many of these people just look for excuses.

"Librulz," left-liberals and leftists who are edumacated SHOULD know this. Should have known this for years.

And yet, too much of my Twitter feed over the weekend had comments defending, even glorifying, these nutters.

Also, you may not like the media sources for which he reports, or his style, but he is a journalist.

So, "congrats." You assaulted not only a person, but two of the five freedoms of the First Amendment. Possibly three, as I think again.

I use filters much less on Twitter than on Facebook, via FB Purity. I debated, by Sunday, about doing it there. I didn't. Rather, it lets me keep my eyes open in case I need to do some muting, even blocking.

As with librulz like this:

Fuck his free speech I guess. And yours tbh https://t.co/NtXxBeH3Re

— Kamala Harris is a Cop (@BethLynch2020) July 2, 2019

I'm not a First Amendment absolutist, because I'm not a philosophical absolutist in general. So, I'm not Glenn Greenwald or Popehat, both of whom, IMO, are "First Amendment weaponizers."

But, short of that, I take those five freedoms very seriously.

Beth, and others, could stand to revisit Thomas More's famous lines from "A Man for All Seasons":

Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law! 

More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? 

Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that! 

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

Or listen to other famous characters or real people.

As both Tevye and MLK knew, riffing on the bible, attitudes like this, riffing on "eye for eye and tooth for tooth," leave the whole world blind and toothless.

Beyond that, there's a boatload of #twosiderism already popping up on this issue.

Time for Idries Shah again:

"To 'see both sides' of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides." ~ Idries Shah

This one of his, in photo poster, is also good