This has been great- a year that will stand forever as a triumph of what uncontrolled money and fervent ideology can do to the most prosperous society our species has produced. I have to stand in honor of the strategy that has brought us to this amazing time in America.

I speak as a one-time professional in the mass opinion business, and strive to apply some of that art to understanding what is going on today. To that end, I appreciate the famous quote “Follow the money” which was popularized in the 1976 docudrama film “All the President’s Men.” The quip suggested that political corruption can be exposed by examining financial transfers between various parties to achieve a desired goal. I have tried to keep that framework in mind as I examined the way our government and society are working. It is an art, and the people doing this campaign are good. Very good.

From the grandstands, watching it happen has been great. The urgent movement to rip down statues that were important to the people that raised them a century ago has been fantastically successful, even if the rioters appeared to have little understanding for what the statues honored.

At the start, it was memorials to Confederates, but quickly evolved to any statue in any public place. My favorite was the dramatic and emotional assault on the statue of an elk in Portland. This riot focused a righteous outflowing against a 120-year-old structure called the“Thompson Elk Fountain,” which sat outside the Federal courthouse. It celebrated the largest member of the deer species, and was named after a fellow named David Thompson. He had moved to Oregon in the 1850s as a teenager, and through dedicated work on railroads and in mining, wound up as the 24thmayor of the city.

I have no idea what Thompson’s crimes against the 21st century might have been, but it mattered to the rioters, even if they also did not know what it was, and that was also good enough for the current mayor. They have been rioting each night for 56 days, as of today. Amazing success, harnessing the local government to support the madness.
I have great admiration for the way this particular assault on stone and brass was organized. There is a lot of unhappiness in this land. I think it stems from the way 2020 has played out. Lock-downs, masking, prohibition of social gatherings like church services, graduations and funerals were irritating, and were orchestrated almost completely by municipal and state officials. Money? The elite cadre of violent protestors are funded through a network of financial support provided by citizens and corporate interests who apparently thought they were supporting something else.

You can follow the money if you want. I have. It is complicated but equally straightforward. Money, as donations, goes in one end, ostensibly over the unfortunate death of a career criminal who was high as a kite, passing counterfeit currency and resisting arrest. I oppose his death, of course, and like most of us am appalled at the brutality of his detention. There is more to it, of course, and same guy now lionized as an innocent hero also once held a pistol to the stomach of a pregnant lady during a home invasion. It was one of a dozen felonies he committed, but that information is as irrelevant to the narrative as the contributions of the elk are to modern Oregon.

What it actually was, of course, was horrifying imagery captured on a cellphone camera, and all the rest of it was irrelevant. It was something that was useful, and the professional rioters were bussed all over to demonstrate the outrage against a system of racist oppression that dates to 1619 on these shores, when English Colonists invented slavery. No kidding. I heard that from the resolute junior senator from my home state. He was quite earnest about his assertion, even if wildly wrong. There is slavery in many places on the earth today, and they invented it thousands of years before there was a United States. Our independence strengthened the British resolve to abolish the horrid institution, and a decade later, we spent 800,000 young men’s lives to end it here. My historical sources, not derived from the New York Times, indicate that number is twice that of the persons of color brought to America. Current events are a masterful performance of the absurd.

The 1619 project was naturally honored with a Pulitzer prize, even if the history behind it was a twisted yarn and largely bogus. The people who think this country is evil and malign from its birth were excited, and eagerly conflated ancient alleged crimes into current events. You take what you can get, as a revolutionary, and hope to bring utopia through convenient lies supplemented by direct action.

It was well done, and I speak as a former practitioner of the art of convenient and rapid narrative construction. My targets were elsewhere, but as former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel used to say, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” It is a tool of multiple uses.

The current mayor of the Windy City has played her part with determination. She removed, at city expense, the statue of Columbus that was attacked a few nights ago. If that expensive action was intended to satisfy the paid rioters, she apparently did not read to the bottom of the memo everyone else got. Also heeding Rahm, the rioters immediately moved to surround her mansion.

It is fantastic, and the movement of lies is masterfully constructed. It has been in progress for years. It has been largely successful in demonizing a majority of the population based on historical inaccuracy and asserting the unlikely. This particular campaign showed its public face in the 1619 manifesto, then selected a likely public emergency as the vehicle, and then orchestrated riots conducted by paid agents using crowds as cover. What is next on the agenda? Continued restriction of public movement due to emergency seems to be in progress. Continued panic is stoked over an epidemic that appears to be ending of its own. The necessity of instituting a never-before seen national voting mechanism subject to a never-before-seen collection process well outside the voting booth.

The result? To a mass rapture, the Millennium arrives with the triumphant election of a non-threatening old white man with obvious emerging dementia.

This has been brilliant, and the timing almost perfect. That is where the peril is. As a former planner, it still feels a little early for the overthrow, but nothing is perfect, and the best collection of favorable events appears to be now. My hat is off to them. I never thought I would see this in our lives, but the second attempt at overthrow in four years is unfolding right now. It may end badly for all of us, but I will be watching with interest, and reporting as long as it is permitted. Victory may be at hand. Victory for the people, or at least some of them.

More as it happens. Is this a great time to be alive, or what?

Copyright 2020 Vic Socotra
http://www.vicsocotra.com