Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   5/14/2024

Local political event of the year

It’s the annual Red, White, and Blue Dinner brought to you by the Tehama County Republican Central Committee and Republican Women; June 8, with a 5 PM social hour and 6 PM dinner and program. The feast is always memorable; guests include Congressman Doug LaMalfa and Assemblyman James Gallagher.

Call 530-949-2761; online tickets are at https://givebutter.com/TehamaGOP at the “Donate & Tickets” link. Seating is limited and tickets must be reserved. Through May 31, they’re $65; $75 after that. Checks payable to TCRCC; mail to PO Box 1959, Cottonwood, CA 96022. Location: Heart S Ranch, 17420 Bowman Road, Cottonwood, CA.

Words fail to convey the camaraderie and fellowship that’s found every year as we break bread and get caught up on fellow Republicans’ lives; I personally urge you to take the time to reserve seats and go.

Funds raised and auction proceeds go to annual scholarships, booths at the Tehama District Fair and the Corning Olive Festival, the election integrity project, voter registration, petition drives and candidate support.

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Here are some promised thoughts on the semi-violent campus protests, encampments and occupations (i.e. UCLA, Humbolt): The long view extends back a half-century to the 1960s and 1970s, when masses of young “baby-boomers”—having been fawned over by media, Hollywood and cultural leaders—took unquestioning “guidance” from professors, news pontificators and progressive/socialist propagandists. I plead guilty to brainwashing.

Our parents, the well-described Greatest Generation, had gone through a depression and World War II, and carried on while tens of thousands of slightly younger soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines lost their lives and futures in the Korean War that produced a stalemate. Most wanted only to get on with normal lives of home-making, income-earning, and career planning; thoughts, concerns and fears of national threats faded.

The turmoil of the Civil Rights movement, assassinations of political and racial leaders, and conflict with the existential threat of Communist takeover of Southeast Asian nations—it was all secondary to our (the Boomers’) parents’ daily priorities. America had come through intact; having made incalculable sacrifices already, the “adults in the room” happily ignored protests and turmoil.

As a 1969 high school grad and freshman at Valparaiso University in Indiana, I was fodder for the anti-war, and cultural leftist, movement. Having made efforts for racial justice—speaking to local church gatherings; working to elect Richard Hatcher as the first Black mayor of Gary, Indiana; a college sojourn to the South to help with race relations (another story)—it was a short hop to anti-war activism.

It’s been written that a major difference between then and now on college campuses, street demonstrations and protests is that, whether delusionally mislead or intentionally mal-intended, students saw real racial injustice and real death and devastation occurring in America and abroad.

Today, pro-Palestine (really pro-Hamas terrorism and anti-Israel’s existence) turmoil is at its core anti-American, anti-Capitalism, and anti-free market socialism. Nothing about the USA pleases these mind-numbed robots rooting for the deconstruction of Western civilization. Western values informed the civil rights movement; anti-Western values pollute the anti-Semitic Hamas cheerleaders on campuses, blocking streets and disrupting events.

I’ll spare readers tales from my campus activism and a trip to Washington, D.C. to protest against the Vietnam War in 1971. Suffice it to say that there were equal parts of free-ranging protests, street disruptions and demonstrations, as well as youngsters doing what every generation does: getting to know each other, if you know what I mean. I saw no violence, destruction, rioting or vandalism; there was some unintended jail time (told to leave an area, I was arrested trying to leave).

What did it all “learn me” about such things? My proximity to the leaders proved that they were no more virtuous, moral, or principled than those they were “protesting” against. Without being privy to the Communist infiltration and guidance—since proven by revelations that came out of then-Soviet Eastern European intelligence—I realized that we were the literal “useful idiots.”

The undermining of America’s justified military campaign—against the takeover of nations by the most bloodthirsty, ruthless, totalitarian behemoths, the Communist U.S.S.R. and China—was accomplished. The Vietnam War was nearly won, albeit at the cost of tens of thousands of young men: from “Vietnam-ization” (which succeeded in neutralizing the Viet Cong) in the 60s, to North Vietnam’s capitulation brought about by Nixon’s bombing campaign.

The pro-Communist, anti-war movement had its “beachhead” in our nation’s politics. The Democrat Party (and some Republicans) used its Congressional “power of the purse” to renege on promises—not to send American soldiers to fight the North Vietnamese army—but to simply replace armaments, vehicles and ammunition used by the South to secure its freedom and independence (like Biden with Israel). Those familiar with history know this.

You can see the logic, the wisdom born of ignorance, and the pro-American principles that inform my disdain and anathema for the current Hamas-nicks, and before them, Occupy Wall Street scum, the Black Lives Matter scam-masquerading-as-virtuousness, and the violent “antifa” thugs and fascists. Ditto climate crazies.