Three Protests, Five Miles, Rainy Day

The Proud Boys (not men, I guess) are protesting in Portland tomorrow, despite being denied a permit on the grounds of the coronavirus. They announced plans to hold their protest the outskirts of town in Delta Park, a complex of athletic fields. I've been there many times watching my nephew play lacrosse, but alas this year there are no lacrosse, soccer or softball players. The left-wing is demonstrating, also permitless, in a park about three miles away, and BLM about two miles further beyond.

Why do I feel those distances are going to evaporate, even with the forecast calling for the day to be cloudy with showers, winds 5-10 mph, high 67 Fahrenheit. Because there have to be confrontations for the iPhones, the Androids and the evening news. This is Oregon, so everyone has pretty good rain gear, so everyone will come ready to protest for the entire day. 

The Oregon State Police and the County's Sheriff's Office have refused to help with crowd control because of the city's ban on the use of tear gas. If they can't use their toys -- toys banned in warfare by the Geneva Protocol of 1925 -- they ain't gonna play.

With the way protests are going around the country this summer and this past week in Louisville, it won't surprise me if guns get drawn and someone gets shot, or three. Or someday not far off, twenty or thirty. That's where things are headed, it seems to me. There are 400M guns in America and lots of open carry laws, even for assault guns, and the idiot legislators with their gun ideologies probably weren't smart enough to foresee the day when things turned like this. (Or, even more frightening, they were.) Once this starts -- and it seems to me this summer was a fair to middling shove off -- it's hard to stop it, especially if this election is a mess, as it seems it will be, thanks to Commander Chaos. A lot of people, especially the clowns on the extreme right wing, are just itching to dress up in their Walmart commando gear and play Red Dawn in real life that they've all been playing some version of virtually since they were kids. 

I don't like where things seem to be heading. Worse, a good friend of mine, a retired Presbyterian minister, agrees with me that something like a civil war is coming and America is slowly but surely circling the drain. She's the last person I would have expected to hear that from.