Protests Fueled by Shitty Response to Protests

May 1: Cops at Columbia … Violence at UCLA … Trump fined … Trump’s 2025 agenda …

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The White House yesterday weighed in on student protesters occupying a single building on a single campus, Columbia University. Y’know, the way the White House hasn’t responded to each individual building that’s been utterly destroyed in Gaza even when people were in it at the time.

“President [Joe] Biden has stood against repugnant, Antisemitic smears and violent rhetoric his entire life. He condemns the use of the term ‘intifada,’ as he has the other tragic and dangerous hate speech displayed in recent days. President Biden respects the right to free expression, but protests must be peaceful and lawful. Forcibly taking over buildings is not peaceful – it is wrong. And hate speech and hate symbols have no place in America.”

The word “intifada” is Arabic for “uprising.” It has been used to mean killing Jewish people. It has also been used to mean uprising. Much like the word “revolution” has referred to just revolutions and to unjust revolutions without becoming hate speech in each and every utterance.

As for protests being lawful. No. Not a thing. Never has been. But certainly not a thing in an age when the law has been weaponized to bar anything that might pour even a grain of sand into the sacred cogs of capitalism. It’s called civil disobedience because the people doing it are disobeding.

And the protests have been peaceful. If Biden’s priority is peace, he should focus on the police shattering that peace.

In fact, the protests spread nationwide after and in response not to the Columbia University protest itself. It was the decision of Columbia President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik to sic armed police on college kids — her college kids — for doing what college kids have done for generations. Especially at Columbia.

Yesterday, Shafik asked police to stay through May 17.

It was this — this decision to enemy-ize the school’s own students, the reason for the school’s existence — that touched off protests nationwide. Because it concretized the warped priorities of the academic communities where college kids spend four years of their lives. (Or five, in the case of some college newspaper editors I could name and/or be.)

Because when you sic the cops on peaceful protesters, you are saying something about your values. Order is more important than ethics. The perception of proximate safety for some is more important than the safety of millions of distant others. Fear justifies violence.

With a few, rare, individual exceptions, both of our national political party establishments have embraced the police-ification of daily life, and the militarization of police.

After 9/11, both parties told us if we see something, say something. Act on our fears. Yes, especially on the un-expert, unfounded fears adrenalized by Osama bin Laden.

They call it terrorism for a reason. They want us to act out of fear. They want us to prioritize our physical safety over our personal liberty.

Because that’s the opposite of the precepts on which this country was founded. Al Qaeda wanted us to torture them. Wanted both parties to create the Department of Homeland [sic] Security. Wanted us to surveil ourselves. Wanted us dedicated to the infantile goal of eradicating evil.

Because they understood that the machinery we built would inevitably get turned against us.

But we can’t blame just bin Laden. Even before him, Roger Ailes and other Republicans emasculated and humiliated Democrats until they, too, followed Richard Nixon’s model and got “tough on crime.” As if toughness is how you solve complicated social issues.

And then Timothy McVeigh blew up an Oklahoma federal building. With a daycare center inside. And Democrats got even tougher. Death penalty? Fuck, yeah. Even for the developmentally disabled? F…u…c…k … y…e…a…h.

So, after 9/11, only one, single Democrat, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) voted against giving the president even more power, even though the president was George Actual W. Bush, already well known as an idiot, incurious of intellect, confident in ignorance, callow of nature, devoid of depth, unschooled in history, and undisciplined of character.

And then his shadow president, Dick Cheney, implemented The 1% Doctrine, the childish notion that the U.S. should respond to even a 1% possibility of a threat as if it were a certainty. This, of course, is the equivalent of absolute, unchecked power to do whatever you want. Anyone with a degree from a prestigious law school can gin up 1% worth of reason to fear anything. And then justify doing whatever they want in the name of addressing that fear.

And, of course, to achieve safety, to guarantee safety, you must have order. Law and order. But it’s never really about law and order. Laws, in theory, constrain even the powerful. “Order,” in theory, means keeping sea levels where they are. Means not destroying a third of the buildings in Gaza.

“Order” is the marketing team’s branding for “control.” Is Columbia University really devoted to law and order? As the American Association of University Presidents (AAUP) pointed out, according to its own bylaws, Columbia cannot call for a mass deployment of the New York Police Department on campus without approval by a majority of the faculty.

That didn’t happen. So Columbia is breaking the rules. So where, then, are the truncheons with which police will beat the disorderly Columbia administrators? It’s not about order, it’s about control.

Police were called to UCLA last night, presumably to preserve order. And yet, those police didn’t protect the protesters when counter-protesters showed up to confront them, and violence broke out. Because the police weren’t there to protect everyone. It’s not about order, it’s about control.

WKCR-FM posted a picture of police last night massed on the streets of Manhattan, outside Columbia, preparing to enter a private university to use physical violence against non-violent protesters. 

(WKCR-FM.)

This is not order. This is control.

Of course, all of this disorder, this violence, this systemic, institutional violence — this body politic rejection of the foreign presence (justice) within its bloodstream — must be justified. 

And the methodology for justifying invading campuses and attacking protesters is the same as that used to invade Iraq. Or Vietnam, for that matter. The bullshit remains the same.

Whatever useful truth can be found is exaggerated and hyped and conflated and bullshitified with half-truths and untruths until it’s been Frankensteined into something sufficiently approaching a casus belli.

The hoary myth of the “outside agitator” — It’s not REALLY our (wealthy) kids at good schools doing this, “outsiders” are responsible. Who these outsiders are, and why they’re not entitled to the same deference our kids are, goes said. They’re the unknown stranger, star most recently of the long-running Stranger Danger.

Presumably they’re antifa, whose outlaw leaders still remain at large after they burned down most of America’s cities after police preserved order control by killing George Floyd.

And then there’s the bullshit that gets thrown at even real college protesters: That they’re only doing it because they’re kids and it’s fun and it gets them out of class.

Well, they do it for several reasons. One, that’s the age when your perspective expands and you question why everything is everything. It’s also the age when you learn that some of the answers to that question are shitty fucking answers.

As a guy long removed from that time of his own life, I can tell you that one reason old people are seen as and sometimes are more selfish is that they’ve spent their lifetimes getting beaten down and beaten back every time they pursued positive change on a big scale. So their aperture narrows: What can I do about my life? My circumstances. Not because old people are bad or selfish, but because the self is literally the last circle of territory in which they retain some modicum of control and influence.

Another reason it’s so often college kids protesting: College is a community. When else in our lives do we go and live with thousands of strangers in communal circumstances like that? Of course they’re going to act collectively — they’ve been collected! Why the hell else would society end that near-utopia (the best time of most people’s lives, not-so P.S.) after a brief four years and immediately silo us all as lonely individuals in apartments and houses and cubicles and offices?

No more quads or dorms for you motherfuckers. Grow the fuck up and make the best of the boxes you have to spend the rest of your life in before we put you in the last one.

College Democrats of America put out a statement yesterday, calling the protesters “heroic.” It said “We stand with the broad and interfaith coalitions of students protesting.” The Intercept’s Ryan Grim called it “extraordinary” to see such a statement from this historically centrist organization.

And there’s another dynamic, which I saw well articulated on Twitter. College kids understand that our society doesn’t actually love kids. Doesn’t actually care about them, let alone the Palestinians trapped in a giant box of war and death and starvation.

Kids grew up with active-shooter drills because the government valued the freedom of gun ownership over the freedom of not being killed by guns at your desk in kindergarten.

As the Tweet in question said, “a generation who watched as leadership stood by and did nothing while their peers were routinely killed inside k-12 schools with automatic weapons does not believe that anybody in power has their best interests at heart.”

And it wasn’t just guns that illuminated our collective priorities for these kids. Corporations actively, successfully pushed to get workers — disproportionately young, poor, and non-white — back into the viral workplace meatgrinder to protect the bottom line with their bodies.

We responded to Wall Street crashing the entire world’s economy by bailing out Wall Street. We’ve let Big Oil continue to both Big and, worse, to Oil.

The U.S. doesn’t just write checks to arms dealers for Israel, it also writes checks to the rich people destroying our climate. It hands over land — this land is our land! — to oil companies and tells them that, for the purpose of drilling climate-destroying oil, this land is their land.

The same Democratic Party leaders who cannot countenance peaceful protesters occupying buildings and campus quads until the semester runs out actively abetted the illegal invasion of another country.

And the response to the protests itself also reveals where kids stand on the priority list. All that college administrators had to do was wait a few weeks. All they had to do was not call the cops. 

And this mentality predates these protests. It predates Oct. 7.

Last year, I went to an event at Columbia University. A panel of journalists were talking when an audience member stood up and, out of turn, began to harangue the mainstream journalists about their outlets, barraging them with questions.

The person was not violent. And the panelists, to their credit, were willing to engage with his challenges. There was, in other words, a substantive, albeit heated dialogue. But, dear Newsfucker, this critic was Speaking. Out. Of. Turn.

And so, for the sake of order, violence was initiated. By the dean of the school. He and a guard put hands on the audience member, bringing him to the floor and ultimately forcing him out of the room.

The school was the school of journalism. The dean of the school of journalism was a journalist. Who used violence to preserve order by silencing speech after powerful journalists were challenged.

This is how far we’ve fallen. Because now the last remaining American who doesn’t have a Ring camera is the crazy one. Because now we all see something, say something. Because now most Americans think our historically low crime rates are at historic highs.

We so succumbed to fear that we sought to make our nation a fortress and created armies to patrol its corridors and dedicated all of our war machinery to the preservation of order above all and then turned this vast and brutal engine on our children just as we have turned it on people of color and poor people and immigrants and indigenous people and eco warriors and uterus havers.

Except, of course, I lie a little. It’s not all of “we” doing this.

The kids themselves and their allies around the world are not the “we” who live in fear, who cherish order and physical safety, even their own, above all.

Some schools are playing this right. And some political leaders are speaking up. 

New York Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat and former cop, last night trotted out the outside-agitator stuff and warned protesters to leave “before the situation escalates” (because he was going to escalate it). Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) responded to him, saying: 

“If any kid is hurt tonight, responsibility will fall on the mayor and univ presidents. 

“Other leaders and schools have found a safe, de-escalatory path. This is the opposite of leadership and endangers public safety. A nightmare in the making.”

Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) wrote, 

“Washington University administrators have joined the disgraceful nationwide trend of violent, aggressive responses by university administrators and local law enforcement aimed at curbing the rights to free speech and assembly by students, faculty, staff, and community members. Violently assaulting and injuring people who are courageously advocating for peace and justice for Palestinians and Israelis alike is unconscionable.”

To everyone who says, “Well, what are college administrators supposed to do when protesters take over buildings?” the answer — get your smelling salts! — is to let them. 

To, in the parlance of academia, chill. 

To permit these brief moments of disorder comforted by the knowledge that they will soon be gone with the cherry blossoms.

And it should be easy to tolerate this flagrant lawlessness, because are practiced in it. We do it every minute of every day.

Has anyone sent in the cops to stop the unlawful transfer of U.S. weapons to Israel without legally required guarantees that the weapons won’t be used against civilians? Did anyone storm Bush Hall or the Cheney Academic Center for violation of due process? Do we not let oil executives walk free among us and attend parties and accept awards while breaking international treaties on emissions?

Tolerating lawlessness, it turns out, is really fucking easy. 

But, but, what about graduations? Fair question!

Hold them somewhere else. Lookit, I just solved a problem!

The real problem is the disparity of justice, a justice system that imprisons poor people and people of color disproportionately for minor property crimes when wholesale, crime-cartel-level wage theft is punished with fines…against the corporations, not even the executives responsible who benefited.

And if you want still another example of the disparity in our justice, in our dispensing of government violence and control, on literally the same day police stormed campuses to protect no one, you needed look no further than a few miles south of Columbia, without even leaving Manhattan Island…

Trump Faces Slap on Wrist for Urging Supporters To Do More than Slap

For violating a lawful judicial order meant to protect witnesses, jurors, prosecutors, and the judiciary itself from the millions of potentially violent supporters of a former president of the United States, after he repeatedly made public utterances any reasonable person would recognize as capable of motivating that violence, the former president was fined $1,000 for each time he did it.

A fine. Of one thousand dollars. For each of the multiple times D4FRFP¹ Donald Trump crossed the line that safeguards the integrity of the entire justice system and the physical well-being of its people.

In all, Trump was fined a total of $9,000, which he can raise from his Legion of Suckers with a single Tweet. At two campaign events today, he’ll be able to solicit funds to pay that fine, but could also draw a harsher penalty if he continues to violate the gag order against him.

In Trump’s New York trial on charges that he violated campaign-finance laws to conceal from voters his alleged attempted sex with Stormy Daniels, Judge Juan Merchan yesterday warned Trump that if he keeps violating the gag order, he will face “incarceratory punishment,” fancy talk for “jail” and/or “hoosegow.”

When court resumes tomorrow, Merchan will consider the prosecution’s allegations of other instances when Trump violated the gag order. Lawlessly.

Trump Rolls Out Platform of Executive Lawlessness

In perhaps the ultimate display of lawlessness and disorder, D4FRFP Donald Trump in interviews published yesterday made clear that a second term of office would little resemble his first term. Trump suggested to Time magazine that the deep state within his party has been vanquished. 

He has tamed and purged the Republican establishment and now, rather than being restrained by it, he will use it and be supported by it in an unchecked drive to seize new levels of authoritarian power not just in the executive branch but in the judiciary, as well.

Trump laid out a number of goals and ambitions that fly in the face of America’s history of ostensible ideals and principles but in fact hew pretty closely to the vision pursued by a rich, virulent minority of Americans for centuries.

As the Washington Post points out, Trump was characteristically vague and noncommittal about what he will definitely do. It’s what Trump refused to rule out — “I would not rule out anything” (for fear, presumably, of erecting anything resembling restraints for his id) — that has pundits today pooping their pants and the pants of their viewers. 

Interestingly, one thing Trump said he wouldn’t rule out — though this could change tomorrow — was putting conditions on military aid to Israel. And he didn’t stand up for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Or commit to vetoing a federal abortion ban.

In all, he sounded more reasonable — or at least reason-proximate — than some more histrionic coverage might suggest. Trump said a lot of things a lot of non-MAGA people would be happy about. “I’m going to try and help Ukraine,” for instance. Supporting the 22nd Amendment’s two-term limit on the presidency.

But it’s that ability to sound reasonable — in contrast to coverage that ignores his pseudo-reasonable caveats — that makes him so dangerous. Because when people read the coverage and then see that it doesn’t accurately reflect what Trump said, they dismiss the fact that what he did say is actually also still insane and terrifying.

Here’s some of what he said he would do or wants to do:

• Use the National Guard against student protesters, if police failed to end protests.

• Use the National Guard, and the military “if necessary,” to deport suspected undocumented immigrants.

• Give police “immunity from prosecution if they're doing their job” (which, of course, police already have, it’s not doing their job that gets police prosecuted).

• Consider firing prosecutors who refuse to press charges against people at Trump’s direction.

• “Probably” disband the new Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy.

• Let states prosecute women who get illegal abortions.

• Let states monitor pregnant people in order to determine whether they violate abortion-ban time limits.

Trump also said that this month he’ll be making policy statements on abortion pills and whether he’d enforce the Comstock Act, which prohibits the mailing of pornographic material like contraceptives and abortifacients.

In other words, he’s already preparing to torpedo whatever benefit he got from sounding reasonable in this new interview.

TCB

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Go get ‘em, kids…!

1. D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.