AstroTurf

The political silly season continues, in its default mode of high dudgeon. The target is, of course, that human lightning rod, Donald Trump. Apparently, he is fomenting violence against peaceful protesters, dutifully pursuing their All American 1st Amendment rights to free speech. The Donald just will not abide such behavior at his rallies, and has even gone so far as to promise to pay legal fees for any supporter who will take these Norman Rockwell types out.

At the risk of committing a micro-aggression, I say balderdash. It's true that Trump's rhetoric exceeds the bounds of normal political speech, but that's because Trump is not engaging in political speech. He riffs in the common tongue, utilizing the kind of language you chair warriors use every day watching TV news. ''Look at those jerks ... Somebody ought to punch him in the nose ... Get 'em out a here!''  And Trump gets away with it; and the fact that he does is a large part of his attraction.

On this scale, the Trump scale, he is entirely within the bounds of acceptable speech. Because what his supporters hear is a guy mouthing off, blowing off steam, and they like it. But they do not take it literally as a license to assault a protester.

And the proof of this is clear for all to see. Trump has been assembling crowds upwards of 25-30,000 for months and months, and in all that time we have exactly one Trumpster who has actually attacked anyone. One. Per capita, that is a record of non violence that easily exceeds any confab of Democrats, Black Lives Matter, or even the Vatican Council of the Catholic Church.

What's really going on at these Trump rallies is that the Democrats are out of the closet and all in on the tactics of thuggery as a tool to crush political opponents. Democrats have a long history of these tactics, dating back to the KKK and voter suppression of Blacks for 100 years or more, but also more recently (and currently) with the deployment of Union thugs to tidy up voting habits in certain strategic regions of the country. But it was the advent of the radical student left in the McGovern campaign of 1972 that brought a whole new swath of shock troops into the Democrat orbit, together with a new public 'cover' for baldfaced intimidation: civil rights disobedience and protest.

The cover is, of course, a farce, which would be easily identified as such in any other cultural moment that pretends to honesty. However, these days the national media follows the Democrat party line no matter the circumstances.

These groups are not grassroots, but pure AstroTurf. Black Lives Matter is a transparent racist movement, with liberal elements of anarchy, cop hatred, and old fashioned theft and looting sprinkled throughout, and there is nothing about its 'demonstrations' that can be tied to a real  concern with civil rights for anyone. It wields the power of the mob, but a mob not spontaneously combusted, but one put together with the help of paid apparatchiks who have all the authentic passion for a cause of a used car salesman.

It's time for Republicans to come out of the closet as well and to call these 'demonstrations' for what they are. For some reason (intimidation? rank cowardice? plain stupidity?), the Repubs have gone along with the 'civil rights' meme of the Democrats. The time is now to speak plainly and honestly about what these groups really are all about: thuggery and intimidation and anarchy and vandalism and power, specifically Democrat power. They are anti-1st Amendment, anti-American culture, and anti-America.

The Republic stands at the brink. If not now, when? If not Republicans, who?