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Quote of the Day: The Lady Who Wouldn’t Raise Her Fist
“Courage is being scared to death — and saddling up anyway.” — John Wayne
I started thinking about courage after I read a news account of a lady in a restaurant in DC who was harassed by a roving mob of Black Lives Matter fanatics.
They surrounded her and others in the restaurant and screamed that everyone must raise their fists to show solidarity with BLM. (Yes, this is America, 2020.) Everyone raised their fists except for one brave person, Lauren Victor (the lady in pink below), who refused to raise her fist.* They screamed within a few inches of her face. She still wouldn’t raise her fist.
I started wondering what I would have done. I hope I would not only refuse to raise my fist but that I would also tell the little fascists to go to hell.
That’s what I hope I would do. It’s hard to say what I would actually do without being in the shoes of Ms. Victor.
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*The story would have been better if Ms. Victor had been a brave conservative. Instead, she sympathized with BLM goals and had actually marched on its behalf numerous times. But these particular bullies got her hackles up when they tried to coerce her into raising her fist. So she refused.
One would hope that Ms. Victor’s enthusiasm for BLM would wane just a bit after she got home and gave this little episode some further thought.
Published in General
Also keep in mind that in locations where these fascists mobs run wild have Leftist prosecutors. Your stink bomb trick could get you a long legal battle. You have a job and a good credit record and they could take it all away from you. That woman was in DC and the law would be against her. The Kenosha Kid is facing a lifetime of charges and Jacob Blake has had all charges dropped. In a “progressive” city you are not safe from mobs and if you defend yourself, you will be prosecuted.
And I live in GA, not Atlanta for a reason
Even stranger than that, they’re all white.
Great courage, indeed.
And her stand is especially remarkable because–according to what she said–she pretty much *agreed* with BLM.
Here’s a historical reference: John Dos Passos, an American writer, was in his younger days a man of the Left, and he was very involved with the Sacco and Vanzetti case. But he was more than a little disturbed by some of those that shared his viewpoint. Describing one protest he had attended, he wrote:
From sometime during this spring of 1926 of from the winter before a recollection keeps rising to the surface. The protest meeting is over and I’m standing on a set of steps looking into the faces of the people coming out of the hall. I’m frightened by the tense righteousness of the faces. Eyes like a row of rifles aimed by a firing squad. Chins thrust forward into the icy night. It’s almost in marching step that they stride out into the street. It’s the women I remember most, their eyes searching out evil through narrowed lids. There’s something threatening about this unanimity of protest. They are so sure they are right.
I agree with their protest: I too was horrified by this outrage. I’m not one either to stand by and see injustice done. But do I agree enough? A chill goes down by spine..Whenever I remember the little scene I tend to turn it over in my mind. Why did my hackles rise at the sight of the faces of these good people coming out of the hall?
Was it a glimpse of the forming of a new class conformity that like all class conformities was bent on riding the rest of us?
Quoting Dos Passos and connecting his observations to our own time, Jay Nordlinger wrote:
I know these people. I saw them in Ann Arbor. I saw them in many other places afterward. Today, you can see them on campuses as “SJWs”: “social-justice warriors.” You can see them wherever there is arrogant, intolerant extremism (no matter which direction it’s coming from).
The thing that frightened Dos Passos in the attitude of these protestors–who were, remember, his allies–is quite similar to the thing that is so disturbing about so many of today’s “progressive” protestors. Dos (as he was called) was entirely correct to be disturbed by what he saw, but I don’t think he diagnosed it quite correctly. Though he refers to the protestors he observed as “those good people,” quite likely many of them weren’t good people at all–even if they were right about their cause–but were rather engaging in the not-good-at-all pleasure of conformity and the enforcement thereof, and would given half a chance have gone all the way to the even-worse pleasure of bullying.
Conformity, Cruelty, and Political Activism
No, I don’t think that it’s strange. I think that they’re doing penance for the sin of being white.
This isn’t meant to be a joke. These kids have been told throughout all their years in public school and in college that to be white is to be racist. There is no way to remove this stain; all they can do is repent and atone every waking moment of their lives.
David, thanks for the really germane quotation by Dos Passos. Unfortunately, you have to be self aware and open-minded to go through the thought processes that Dos Passos went through. Otherwise you merely interpret the looks on the faces of those emerging from the protest meeting as bathed in righteousness. Not self-righteousness. Righteousness.
Thanks for your response. I was pleased that you brought up Dos Passos. I read quite a bit of Dos Passos when I was young and always felt wiser when I had finished one of his books.
Here is a very interesting Nazi propaganda piece, from 1929, which gives some insight into how that process starts. Skip to the last why? paragraph…”Why do we oppose the Jews?”
Just when I think I’ve seen most of the ugly attacks on Jews, I read something like this propaganda. It’s frightening to me. It wasn’t that long ago. But I appreciate being educated. Thanks @davidfoster.
Note how calm and ‘moderate’ that propaganda piece was compared with what actually happened a few years later…it was ‘why do we *oppose* the Jews?’, not ‘why do we want to kill the Jews.’
And the launching of wars to gain territory wasn’t even mentioned at all…memories of 1914-1918 were probably still too raw.
Muckraker and novelist Upton Sinclair concluded that Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty; his biographer notes
Maybe if they can get themselves killed in a Race Jihad?
Take off your mask and start coughing.
Yeah, I suspect that if that mob had tried that in a Kennesaw restaurant they would have left with steak knives protruding from their derrieres.
To the (above) comment of getting restaurant management involved; good luck with that as they’re probably cowering in the kitchen. I hate to say it but for those of you who have to live in a place like Washington D.C., it is best to have an “action plan” before you even go out.
Although I live in a rural community, I’ve gone back and reviewed my local and state laws; especially those that pertain to the right of self-defense.
Amen, brother.