Over at the Free Press, River Page has his morning news roundup for today. Below the fold, Page notes that protests are beginning to appear around the country. True, the Left spent considerable time recovering from November and has been trying to keep up with the flurry of activity from the White House. But it would appear that in some sectors, the progressives are getting their feet back under them and dusting off the old outrage.
Page notes:
After a month characterized by a notable dearth of protests, the crowds are beginning to show up. Students—like at Stanford this past week—are shouting down conservative speakers, and Democrats nationwide are seeing a surge in fundraising as they begin to launch legal battles against the administration. Overflow crowds have inundated Bernie Sanders’ rallies. His adviser said, “There is a lot more anger building, such that we are seeing in deep-red Republican-held districts that people are coming out.”
The Stanford Review reported that on Tuesday, ten-plus protesters shouted down and disrupted a debate between Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez and former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president Lawrence Summers and took over the stage for around 20 minutes. On Wednesday, around 50 anti-Israel protesters took over a building at Barnard College in New York City. Their ire stemmed from the expulsion of two students for storming buildings at Columbia and handing out pamphlets laden with anti-Jewish propaganda. One employee was assaulted in yesterday's collective tantrum.
Part of this is because the Left is finally over its shock, and it has things like USAID to use as red meat. And then there is the faction of people who continue to mouth the anti-Trump mantra, no matter the topic at hand. And the weather is getting better. Today's generation is nowhere near as strong as their counterparts who lived through the Battle of the Bulge, stormed Omaha Beach, or went through the grueling process of island-hopping in the South Pacific. To put it in terms of historical warfare, it is campaigning season again. The weather will soon be nice enough to get out and break a few things in the name of justice.
To a certain degree, many of these people, particularly the young ones, have no idea what they are doing or even protesting. Back in April of last year, Olivia Reignold wrote of an antisemitic protest at Columbia:
It’s a Monday afternoon at Columbia University, but hundreds of students are not in class. They’re camped out on a lawn in front of the main library, making friendship bracelets, painting scraps of cardboard, and gossiping about the Zionists on campus.
“What should I do?” a girl with a mullet pops out of a tent to ask her friend. She’s holding a Sharpie in her hand, staring at a blank poster board. “I’m thinking ‘Dykes for Divestment.’ ”
A few steps away, in front of a sign that says “Paint Ur Nails 4 Palestine,” a girl is fanning her freshly polished red toenails. Nearby, a student with Farrah Fawcett’s hairstyle—except purple—is frantically asking other students if they’ve seen her vape. When she finds it buried under a copy of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, and a hoodie, she gasps and clutches it to her heart. No one is paying much attention to a nearby woman with a microphone, desperately trying to rally the crowd.
True to form, one never sees such people handing out blankets to the homeless, holding food or clothing drives, or even picking up trash at the local park. They are an exploitable resource because they have been fed propaganda throughout much of their lives, and their existence revolves around their social media profiles and themselves.
They are praised for their outrage and have come to believe that a day of screaming around campus, beating up a random Jew, spray painting a building, or having a meltdown on TikTok are all substantial promotions of the general welfare. Small wonder that an appalling number of them cannot spell.
When they discover that well-paying activist jobs are few and far between and that there is a shutoff notice in their mailbox from the power company, they will be exhorted to take to the streets to demand free electricity or that, at the very least, someone else pays for it, probably you. The Left knows how to tap into those resources and has conspired to keep such people ignorant for decades. Progressives may be down, but they are by no means out. Keep that in mind.
I am reminded of the movie "Rollerball." I'm not talking about the remake, but the original 1975 film. Although it debuted to mixed reviews, the film is genuinely creepy, even more so now since we seem destined to eventually end up in the future the film predicts. A martial arts expert addresses the Houston team and tries to explain that Houston's next opponent, the Tokyo corporate team, employs karate and other violent innovations. The Houston team does not heed the warning.
Technically, Houston wins the match, but two players die, and one is left in a coma. In the rush of DOGE revelations, the Gulf of America, the anticipation surrounding the release of the Epstein files, and the sale of the tasteless and execrable Trump whiskey glasses with a bullet lodged in them, it is easy to get swept up in America's new "Golden Age." Yes, there is "so much winning." But the Left is smarter and craftier than you think and far more patient than the face it presents to the public. Ignore that at your peril.