Last year we saw the cities of Portland and Seattle turn into criminal havens—where even the police are leaving. Rioters, looters, those burning buildings, in the name of George Floyd are allowed to do their deeds, with police watching and no arrests. The few stupid enough to be arrested were let go by the DA’s—they want violence in their community. Los Angeles has done the same.
“Today, no one knows how many Americans support their government. But many Americans are upset with inflation, immigration from Latin America, and apparent Democratic favoritism toward certain minority groups.
The big question is this: Will the American middle class, in the future, rise up to change who controls the nation’s politics?
With mask and vaccine mandates, racism and sex taught in the government schools, reparations are the order of the day in California, are we headed for more violence and destruction? Sadly yes. Progressives are never satisfied—as they did last year, they will riot, loot and burn till they get their way—wanting us to be a version of China and Cuba.
POLITICAL CHANGE CAN BE VIOLENT
By Richard Colman, Exclusive to the California Political News and Views, 8/6/21
When the middle class of a nation feels threatened, political change — sometime violent political change — occurs.
After World War I, defeated Germany experienced violent political change. From 1918, when World War I ended, to 1923 Germany experienced hyperinflation. What cost one German mark in 1918 cost one trillion marks in 1923. There was violence between Communists and anti-Communists.
In that same year, 1923, Adolf Hitler tried to overthrow the government of Bavaria. Hitler’s efforts failed, and he was sent to jail, where he wrote “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”). The book is loaded with vicious anti-Semitism. Hitler argued that the Jews were responsible for Germany’s difficulties.
(“Mein Kampf” is also loaded with grammatical errors.)
After Germany’s inflation ended, Germany experienced an economic depression. During that depression, Hitler’s political party, the Nazis, did not win a majority in a German election. But the Nazis gathered enough votes so that Germany’s president, Paul von Hindenburg, made Hitler Germany’s chancellor, a position like that of prime minister.
On Jan. 30, 1933, Hitler became chancellor. In May 1933, there was the infamous book burning in Berlin’s Bebel Platz. Jews were the authors of many of the burned books.
If one visits Bebel Platz today, there is a memorial to the book burning. Near the memorial are the words of the German Poet, Heinrich Heine. Heine was a Jew. Years earlier, Heine wrote, “Where men burn books, they ultimately burn people.” From 1933 to 1945, the Nazis ordered the extermination is six million European Jews.
Inside his Berlin bunker, Hitler committed suicide on Apr. 30, 1945. At the time, troops of the Soviet Union were closing in on Berlin. On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered to the Soviet Union and other opponents of Germany: the United States and Great Britain.
What can Hitler’s actions during his years in power (1933 to 1945) tell us about the United States?
On several occasions, when the American middle class has felt threatened, political change has occurred.
In 1932, during America’s Great Depression, voters threw the Republicans out of Congress and the White House. With huge Democratic majorities, Franklin Roosevelt became president, ushering in the New Deal, a big-government plan to provide government jobs and pensions (Social Security) to America’s wage earners.
In 1968, the U.S. had been bogged down in a war in Vietnam. From 1965 to 1968, the number of American troops went from about 20,000 to over 500,000. In 1968, there was no end in sight to America’s involvement in Vietnam.
On Aug. 8, 1968, in Miami Beach, Florida, Richard Nixon, in perhaps the best speech he ever gave, accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for president. Nixon said. “When the strongest nation in the world can be tied down for four years in a war in Vietnam with no end in sight, . . . then it’s time for new leadership in the United States of America.”
In 1968, there was violence in America. On Apr. 4, 1968, the civil rights leader, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. In June 1968, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, running for the Democratic presidential nomination, was also assassinated.
After Dr. King’s death, violence erupted in many American cities.
At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, anti-war demonstrators clashed with police. There was violence.
In 1968, the American middle class voted to change parties controlling the White House. Nixon beat his Democratic challenger, Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
At another time, in 1980, Americans were experiencing an inflation rate close to 20 percent. Unemployment was rising. Gasoline was in short supply. In Iran, over 50 Americans were being held hostage.
Former California Governor, Ronald Reagan, a Republican, accepted, in Detroit, his party’s 1980 nomination. Reagan said, “Never before in our history have American been called upon to face three grave threats to our very existence, any one of which could destroy us. We face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense, and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity.”
While the 1980 election campaign eschewed violence, Reagan overwhelmingly won the 1980 election. In the Electoral College, Reagan received 489 votes. His opponent, President Jimmy Carter, got 49 votes. In addition, the Democrats lost control of the U.S. Senate, giving Republicans control of the Upper House for the first time since January 1955.
In the 1980 election, the House of Representatives remained in Democratic hands, where control had rested since January 1955.
In 2016, America’s middle class became upset with Democratic control of the White House and elected Donald Trump, a Republican, as president. In 2016 presidential campaign, Trump argued that America was being threatened by crime and illegal immigration.
At his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017, Trump said, “And the crime and the gangs that have stolen too many lives and robed our country, of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump, just before leaving office, gave a speech outside the White House. About 30 minutes later, an unruly mob broke into the U.S. Capitol. Five people were killed. There was destruction of the Capitol’s property. Many of the protestors were Trump supporters.
Today, no one knows how many Americans support their government. But many Americans are upset with inflation, immigration from Latin America, and apparent Democratic favoritism toward certain minority groups.
The big question is this: Will the American middle class, in the future, rise up to change who controls the nation’s politics?
