Oh well if they’re young suburban adults nvrmd

 

So, I was just hanging out with friends, enjoying a smoothie at this nice outdoor place – don’t worry, we had masks, everyone was distancing! We’re totally about that. We heard something coming around the corner, and it sounded like a parade? My friend Jinny gets on her phone (well TBH she was already on it) and googles whether there was a parade scheduled for tonight, like a circus thing, but before she gets her results we see them. It’s a bunch of guys dressed in black with signs and umbrellas, and they’re, like, chanting? I got it on my phone, and I think it was something like Hey Ho, Hey Ho, Oligarchical Capitalism and its Inherent Systemic Oppression of BIPOC and Non-Heteronormative Paradigm Gender Non-Conformity Has Got To Go, or something, and I’m like, whatever –

But then one of them smashes a window, and I thought, can you believe that?

“NBD,” says Jenni. “They have insurance. Trust me. My dad’s in insurance.”

“I know we’re just hanging around downtown to escape the stultifying milieu of our soul-sapping suburban lives,” says Todd, I know, that’s so Todd, “but I have this sudden welling of passion for a cause I’ve barely spent any time thinking about. The sight of these people, their manifest passion, makes me think we should find a store and set it on fire.”

“Awesome,” said Lee. “And let me just say here and now that several of those androgynous people have made me suddenly question my own identity, and I am now going to change my pronouns to ‘they.’”

I guess it was just the heat of the moment – literally the heat, the crowd had set fire to the restaurant where we were sitting – but we just got up and fell alongside, and started marching and chanting and throwing things, and IDK it felt like I was part of something for the first time, so we went inside the drug store and Todd jumped over the counter and got some lighter fluid and we went to the bookstore next door and drenched some stuff and set it on fire. We all did a group pose for the ‘Gram and called it a night, went back to the car and drove back to the boring burbs, laughing, like, what was that about.

You know how you get caught up in something and go with the moment and you’re burning a restaurant and the next day you’re, like, okay, we were in the moment, but then it turns out it was for justice? That’s awesome. I wonder if I can put it on my intern application resume.

Published in General
Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 120 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. Sisyphus Member
    Sisyphus
    @Sisyphus

    No lie is too brazen in protection of the Narrative! Hail the Insurrection!

    • #1
  2. JennaStocker Member
    JennaStocker
    @JennaStocker

    Def a good plan for the gap year, at least. IMO it’ll prob get you into the U’s seminar course on how to “recover” from whiteness: “Recovery From White Conditioning”. Sounds like a great time!

    • #2
  3. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    I don’t get the story – of course there are suburban ‘kids’ involved. The only thing that bothers me about that is the idea that they might not get jailed like anyone else. 

    Including ‘journalists’. Freedom of the press is about being able to print what you want, not stand in other people’s way. 

    • #3
  4. Bryan G. Stephens, Trump Avenger Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens, Trump Avenger
    @BryanGStephens

    I love your sarcastic style, James.

    • #4
  5. Stina Inactive
    Stina
    @CM

    I like the implication that urban residents aren’t regular Americans.

    • #5
  6. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    James Lileks: I have this sudden welling of passion for a cause I’ve barely spent any time thinking about.

    That could just about be a tee shirt.

    • #6
  7. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    James Lileks: I wonder if I can put it on my intern application resume.

    It all goes on. Passion. Initiative. Looting. Arson. General mayhem. It will make the resume pop.

    • #7
  8. Stina Inactive
    Stina
    @CM

    Percival (View Comment):

    James Lileks: I wonder if I can put it on my intern application resume.

    It all goes on. Passion. Initiative. Looting. Arson. General mayhem. It will make the resume pop.

    Like a crackling fire burning down main street.

    • #8
  9. ctlaw Coolidge
    ctlaw
    @ctlaw

    I am reminded of Biden’s “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”

    They assume that Trump condemned the thugs because he must’ve thought they were black.

    Who’s the racist?

    • #9
  10. Gazpacho Grande' Coolidge
    Gazpacho Grande'
    @ChrisCampion

    Pretty good, James.  I understand now that you are down with the yoots today.

    See the source image

    • #10
  11. Lois Lane Coolidge
    Lois Lane
    @LoisLane

    “That’s so Todd.”

    Wonderful! 

    That’s so James!!! 

    • #11
  12. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    TBA (View Comment):

    I don’t get the story – of course there are suburban ‘kids’ involved. The only thing that bothers me about that is the idea that they might not get jailed like anyone else.

    Including ‘journalists’. Freedom of the press is about being able to print what you want, not stand in other people’s way.

    90% of the rioters arrested in Seattle have been released without charges.

    • #12
  13. Guruforhire Inactive
    Guruforhire
    @Guruforhire

    Yes Antifa et al have been Affluenza affected rich kids doing the communist revolutionary thing, this isn’t earth shattering news

    • #13
  14. Jimmy Carter Member
    Jimmy Carter
    @JimmyCarter

    “Some people did something.”

    • #14
  15. Ralphie Inactive
    Ralphie
    @Ralphie

    Impulse control deficit  medicalized and excused away.

    • #15
  16. Guruforhire Inactive
    Guruforhire
    @Guruforhire

    Seriously we have been mocking them for years over this.  I don’t understand how the AP is just figuring this out.

    • #16
  17. SpiritO'78 Inactive
    SpiritO'78
    @SpiritO78

    brilliant as always!

    • #17
  18. She Member
    She
    @She

    Six Characters in Search of a Purpose.  Pirandello would be proud.

    The AP article cited in the OP is here.  It’s masterfully sneaky and ambiguous.  But one of the phrases that caught my eye as I was reading through it was this:

    The 25-year-old lives with his parents in the Austin suburb and had never been in trouble with the law before…

    Now, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea of a 25-year old living with his parents.  (Heads up, though, Cyril, only one more year to go before you get kicked off Mom and Dad’s health insurance!)  But it reminded me of the post here a few weeks ago about another group of young, rich suburbanites caught up in the “heat of the moment,” during which heat, the cell phone belonging to one of the young women was destroyed.  She borrowed one from her friend, called her mother to explain this awful turn of events, and her mother obligingly and immediately delivered  a replacement.

    I’m sorry for these young people.  But not so sorry that I don’t want to see them suffer the appropriate penalties, even relatively minor ones, for their behavior.  By echoing the actions of their parents, and suggesting that because they are “young suburban  adults [sic]” with no prior criminal records, rather than lifelong troublemakers, terrorists or violent urbanites, they should be cossetted and there should be no consequences for their actions (that seems to be the point that the “review” is making and applauding), the AP is doing them no favors at all.  In fact, it seems to be  making just another argument in favor of a two-tier justice system from a place of rich, and most likely white, privilege.

    PS–I just noticed the URL for the AP linked article.  The actual text headline is “AP finds most arrested in protests aren’t leftist radicals.”  But the URL begins: https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-race-and-ethnicity-donald-trump-racial-injustice-arrests-

    Interesting.

    • #18
  19. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    If we don’t charge them and lock them up, we’ll be racists, since black people would be charged.

    • #19
  20. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    The AP tweet is a bit of a companion piece to the normal soft bigotry of low expectations that progressive thinking exhibits. In this case, the AP seems to be trying to calm worried middle and upper-middle class suburban voters that all the mayhem over the summer is being committed by inner city urbanites. Heck no! Those aren’t violent left-wing radicals from some big city environment — it’s just Timmy and Sally down the block expressing their outrage at the dystopian fascist nightmare Donald Trump has turned American into.

    So don’t be afraid that it’s some of those #Black Lives Matter people destroying the area. It’s the sons and daughters of the people you know who are doing it. They couldn’t possibly by psychotically angry left-wing radicals, so stop worrying about any threats to you, your family or your property and go mark that mail ballot for Joe Biden.

    • #20
  21. Eustace C. Scrubb Member
    Eustace C. Scrubb
    @EustaceCScrubb

    Ted Bundy, a regular looking citizen, caught up in his moments.

    • #21
  22. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    Stina (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    James Lileks: I wonder if I can put it on my intern application resume.

    It all goes on. Passion. Initiative. Looting. Arson. General mayhem. It will make the resume pop.

    Like a crackling fire burning down main street.

    With all the insane headlines and now an asteroid on the way, it’s great to laugh out loud again! Great post!!

    • #22
  23. DrewInWisconsin, Man of Constant Sorrow Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Man of Constant Sorrow
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Guruforhire (View Comment):
    Seriously we have been mocking them for years over this. I don’t understand how the AP is just figuring this out.

    Except it appears the AP is excusing the rioting, looting, and murdering, because, you know, that’s just kids these days.

    • #23
  24. DrewInWisconsin, Man of Constant Sorrow Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Man of Constant Sorrow
    @DrewInWisconsin

    She (View Comment):
    The actual text headline is “AP finds most arrested in protests aren’t leftist radicals.”

    I kinda think if you’re out there rioting and looting and getting yourself arrested, you earn the label “radical.”

    • #24
  25. She Member
    She
    @She

    Eustace C. Scrubb (View Comment):

     Ted Bundy, a regular looking citizen, caught up in his moments.

    Yes, it’s such a ridiculous and easy meme to parody.

    But the first thing I thought, when I saw the AP tweet which inspired James’s inspired post, is that the battlefields and military cemeteries of Europe and the Far East are full of millions of young Americans and their equally young allies who got caught up, willy-nilly in the heat of a moment that wasn’t of their own making, and who never came home. We owe them everything.

    The young people that the AP writes about, their sad, purposeless lives, their artificially-manufactured, constructed and reported fake causes, and their desperation to find something to do that will make them feel as if they “matter”–as life, in all its glory, passes them by–are pathetic, in every sense of the word.  

    • #25
  26. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    James Lileks: “NBD,” says Jenni. “They have insurance. Trust me. My dad’s in insurance.”

    Great piece as usual, James.  Shame on the AP for downplaying the rioters.  I guess they’d say the Nazis were “caught up in the moment” during Kristallnacht . . .

    There’ve been a few articles about how much the rioting and looting has cost the insurance companies.  That has been used as a warped justification for the mayhem, saying the businesses won’t lose any money.  Really?  What about businesses that have little or no insurance?  What about businesses whose policies don’t cover losses due to war or civil insurrection?

    What’s the other thing they say?  Oh yes, “It’s only property.”  When you set a building on fire, you have no idea if someone is inside or not.

    • #26
  27. CACrabtree Coolidge
    CACrabtree
    @CACrabtree

    A few months back the Washington Post had a pictorial that featured some “normal young suburbans” in their normal clothing and then in their Antifa outfits (full battle dress with their bicycle helmets and knee pads).  Totally laughable until you realize the damage they have wreaked without any sort of punishment.

    When will be the day of reckoning for the irresponsible press that has attempted to make heroes of them?

    • #27
  28. Bryan G. Stephens, Trump Avenger Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens, Trump Avenger
    @BryanGStephens

    DrewInWisconsin, Man of Consta… (View Comment):

    Guruforhire (View Comment):
    Seriously we have been mocking them for years over this. I don’t understand how the AP is just figuring this out.

    Except it appears the AP is excusing the rioting, looting, and murdering, because, you know, that’s just kids these days.

    Seems racist to me. I mean, it is a problem only when poor minorities do it?

    • #28
  29. DrewInWisconsin, Man of Constant Sorrow Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Man of Constant Sorrow
    @DrewInWisconsin

    CACrabtree (View Comment):
    When will be the day of reckoning for the irresponsible press that has attempted to make heroes of them?

    The biggest injustice of the modern age is that the press has faced no consequences for their lies.

    • #29
  30. Bryan G. Stephens, Trump Avenger Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens, Trump Avenger
    @BryanGStephens

    DrewInWisconsin, Man of Consta… (View Comment):

    CACrabtree (View Comment):
    When will be the day of reckoning for the irresponsible press that has attempted to make heroes of them?

    The biggest injustice of the modern age is that the press has faced no consequences for their lies.

    Well, I’d say that the ChiComs still get away with murder, but if we mean in the USA it is in the running. 😈

    • #30
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.