In “1984,” George Orwell pointed out that, “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
Like so many other things written by Orwell, that is spot-on for our times. The revolution we are watching is being funded and directed to drive regime change.
Many of my colleagues have suggested that re-electing the president is the only way to ensure law and order. But that is a fundamental misapprehension of the nature of the protests, whether they be sponsored by BLM, or teachers’ unions, or just the random children engaged in extended and ugly cosplay in Portland.
These protests are not designed to do anything other than establish the new regime. Consequently, they will not end until the new regime is installed or until the old regime takes action aggressive enough to stop them. The violence, the protests, and the extortion will, in almost all instances, substantially subside once Vice President Joseph R. Biden is elected. At that point, they would have accomplished what they were designed to accomplish.
Think about what each set of protesters want.
BLM wants, of course, a Marxist society. Who can make that concession? Where they have made more specific demands, BLM has acted more like a protection racket than a social movement, insisting that businesses meet certain goals with respect to diversity among employees and vendors.
The teachers’ unions want more cash (always). They want no new competition in the way of charter schools. They want someone to dismantle white supremacy and defund the police. No clue who might do the dismantling.
College football players have even gotten in the game, mixing demands for profit-sharing (which is reasonable, although it would ultimately turn college football into not-college football) with demands for a plan to address systemic racial injustice. How does a college president even concede such a demand?
In each instance the protests have included demands so vague and expansive that no one person, groups of people, or institution can meet them. Defund the police! No wait, reimagine the police! Dismantle white supremacy! Establish a Marxist utopia!
The protesters and their enablers in the media are not interested in intermediate concessions. They are interested in a grand bargain — you vote for our crew or the disruptions continue indefinitely. That is the real demand.
The whole purpose of the enterprise is to inform voters that no peace will be had until a reliable client is installed in the White House. Only then will protests recede. If Mr. Biden becomes president, schools, then freed of most teacher protests, will almost certainly reopen in January. BLM will fade back into the background. Places like Portland will be at peace.
Cable outlets will stop running tickers of deaths “related to” (whatever that means) COVID-19. They will explain that perhaps some drugs may be therapeutic. They may even quietly note that while 150,000 deaths are a lot, they are, proportionately, fewer than the deaths from the Hong Kong flu in the late 1960s.
Those on the left can’t make it any clearer. They have no intention of constraining any of the violence or rejecting any of the demands. They are using the violence — and counting on fatigue — as a means to achieve their actual goal, which is, of course, the power to remake the nation.
All they want is the unconditional surrender of everyone who might have qualms with that.
*story by The Washington Times