My wife was skeptical about this trip from the beginning. “Why are we flying across the entire continent in the middle of a global pandemic to take a vacation in Oregon, of all places?”
As one of those Red State Americans who consumes a lot of Fox News, she’d heard plenty about all the Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioters burning down buildings and shooting Trump supporters in Portland, Oregon.
“We are not going anywhere near Portland,” I assured her. “We are flying into Bend, Oregon, a quiet, quaint little town known for its breweries hundreds of miles away from the idiots tearing down statues of George Washington.”
Unfortunately, within the first hour of our arrival in Oregon, I was proven wrong.
Welcome to Oregon
As soon as we stepped out of Deschutes Brewery, we heard the bullhorns a few blocks away.
I’m blaming my wife for what happened next.
Her eyes lit up. She asked, “Is that a Black Lives Matter protest? Let’s check it out!”
“…from a distance,” she added.
I guess after spending six months quarantining on the couch watching Tucker Carlson every night, the temptation to snap a few pictures of a real honest-to-goodness live BLM riot was too much to resist.
Let’s just say we don’t have those where we live.
But me? I was more interested in moving on to the next place to drink beer…
…but like a good husband, I relented.
What the heck? Maybe we’ll snap a few pictures, text a few of my friends, and laugh about the insanity of white anarchists who think screaming obscenities into bullhorns is an effective form of political persuasion.
The Art of Persuasion: Screaming at Passing Motorists
Sure enough, on a sunny Friday afternoon at 2pm – when most of the employable citizens of Bend were hard at work – a few dozen heavily tattooed, very white, and “mostly peaceful” (insert sarcasm here) demonstrators were holding signs and screaming unintelligible demands at passing cars.
When a guy in a pickup truck with a Trump bumper sticker drove by, the mob erupted into a frenzy, chasing the truck and running down the middle of the street screaming “F*** Trump!!!”
My wife and I burst into laughter. She was snapping pictures like an Afghan war correspondent. I had my head down furiously texting the play-by-play to all my friends.
Then suddenly, as I looked up from my phone and my wife looked away from the lens of her camera, we were confronted by an extremely large, heavily tattooed woman with purple hair and a bullhorn demanding to know, “Are you here to support and learn – or to mock?”
“Learn what exactly?” I asked.
You’re About to Go Viral!
My wife, being the more diplomatic of the two of us, tried to reason with the lunatic as she started screaming at us, “You’re about to go viral,” and lifted her cell phone to begin recording us.
“I don’t know what just happened,” my wife replied. “I’m just trying to figure out why you are chasing that guy in the pickup truck.”
As I burst into laughter, the woman started yelling into her bullhorn, “Oh, you think this is funny?!?”
“No, I think it is hilarious,” I said.
“Why are you here? Where are you from? So you aren’t even from Bend, are you?” the “mostly peaceful” protester demanded to know.
My wife tried her de-escalation skills on the ranting lunatic to no avail. “We’re just visiting,” she said.
Refusing to disclose which specific deplorable red state we come from, my wife side-stepped the geography interrogation and simply stated, “We have no idea what is going on. We were just walking by and saw you chasing a guy down the street.”
Reasoning with an anarchist screaming into a bullhorn in one hand while recording you with the other was about as futile as a declawed cat trying to climb a razor-wire fence.
The Bend, Oregon Chamber of Commerce Would Be So Proud
As she continued video recording us, she started screaming, “Then get the f*** out of Bend, you racist mother******s.”
Such lovely people here in Bend. Welcome to Oregon.
I resisted the urge to tell my wife, “I told you we should just go to the next brewery.”
By this point, we noticed out of our peripheral vision more “mostly peaceful” protestors approaching from other directions.
My wife turned to me and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
As we turned to leave, the “mostly peaceful” screamer said, “Congratulations! You are now on the internet!! Take your white privilege asses back to California you racist b@#!ch!!”
California Would Not Have Been My First Guess
Only in Oregon could California be viewed as a source of relative right-wing agitation. It’s probably a good thing we didn’t tell her where we really were from. Her enraged large head would have exploded on the spot.
As someone who knows a thing or two about advocating for change in public policy, I have to give the Bend, Oregon Black Lives Matter anarchists a FAIL in the art of persuasion.
Calling a couple of tourists “racist mother******s” at first sight seems like an odd tactic to win someone over to your side.
And that is exactly the point of Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and all the other rioters.
It is not about persuasion or changing public policy – other than the obviously absurd “defund the police,” what policy have you heard them articulate?
Think about it.
After you burn down my city, tear down the statues of my heroes, tell me what movies I can no longer watch, ban Aunt Jemima, Daisy Duke, and Scarlett O’Hara – and call me racist without knowing the first thing about me…
…does that make me less “racist”?
Or more “racist”?
The answer to that question of course is obvious.
It is Not about Public Policy — It is About Fomenting Racial Violence
And that is the point of these protests. The point is to create and enflame racism, because racism — actual racism — is BLM’s currency and lifeblood.
No racism, no need for BLM. You see how that works?
That’s why they throw firecrackers at armed police, fabricate lies like “hands up, don’t shoot,” invent hoax “nooses” and call tourists “racists mother******s” livestreamed on the internet.
They are trying to provoke a response they can manufacture into the next viral “racist” incident, like the young blonde woman in Williamsburg, Virginia who threw her beer on a BLM protestor after being cursed and screamed at.
The video went viral (the beer throwing part, not the cursing part), then someone recognized and “doxed” the women online who was subsequently fired from her job and banned from the brewery for life.
BLM’s problem is since there is not enough actual real-life racism in America to fuel their power, they need to create it.
Fortunately, thanks to my wife’s calm de-escalation skills, we avoided handing the Bend, Oregon BLM fuel for their campaign to foment more racial violence in America.
So I’ll give her credit for that…
But just for the record, I was the one who wanted to go drink beer.
