August 13 2018 – Click here to listen
I’m old enough to remember the anti-Vietnam war riots combined with the racial strife of the 1960’s. In fact, I was in San Francisco at the Haight Ashbury district when the turmoil was most rampant. It was an ugly time. John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, his brother Robert and Martin Luther King were assassinated in 1968. The draft and the Vietnam war were being violently protested and Antifa-like groups such as the Weather Underground sprang up. Their membership was an anti-American militant radical left-wing organization organized in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society. Their political goal was to create a revolutionary party to overthrow perceived U.S. imperialism. They were opposed to the Vietnam War among other things and embraced the black power movement and they considered the violent Black Panthers allies.
The group conducted a campaign of domestic bombings through the mid-1970s and took part in actions such as the jailbreak of LSD advocate Timothy Leary. Their first public demonstration was affectionately named, “Days of Rage”, and it occurred on October 8, 1969. Ironically it was a riot in Chicago timed to coincide with the trial of the Chicago Seven, a group of hate filled radicals charged with anti-Vietnam riots and bombings. In 1970 the group issued a “Declaration of a State of War” against the United States government, under the name “Weather Underground Organization”. Their reign of terror ended when the Weathermen began to disintegrate after the United States reached a peace accord in Vietnam in 1973, after which the New Left declined in influence. By 1977, the organization was completely defunct.
It seems that like a smoldering ember the fire did not go completely out. Left-wing domestic terrorists are back and waging terror against the United States again under the name Antifa and Black Lives Matter. This time they aren’t protesting the draft or the Vietnam war; no, their venom is aimed at President Trump and all that he stands for that they hate. Of course, they throw in a variety of other issues with the reliable old go-to standby, race, used by marchers everywhere. And they throw in climate change, illegal migrants, Wall Street, Planned Parenthood or whatever to sweeten the cauldron.
When I was in Haight Ashbury there were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. I can’t remember anyone marching or setting off bombs. Most of us were going to pop festivals and staying stoned out of our gourds. On rare occasion I saw the Black Panthers and the radicals on the streets handing out leaflets, but I didn’t see anyone reading them and they certainly didn’t rule the streets. They were a small minority of misfits for the most part. They had a few successful rallies, but the overwhelming majority of the people in the streets just wanted to have what they perceived as some fun.
I wonder what percentage of young people are truly a part of Antifa? Or even know anyone associated with it? My guess is very few. The media will take 50 protestors in a country of 300 million and make it out to be something that every young person in America is involved with. I would not get too discouraged at what we are seeing. There are always going to be the disaffected on both sides. The Aryan Brotherhood is real, Antifa is real, the New Black Panthers are real, but how many of these folks do you personally know? By contrast how many people do you know that attend church every Sunday. I don’t know about you, but the church I attended yesterday had five times the number of worshippers attend versus the number of Antifa protestors that were in D.C. and Charlottesville this weekend and that’s just one church!
The driver for the media is ratings. Sensationalism, violence, controversy, divisive hateful people spewing venom seems to be what gets views and clicks which gets money in their pockets. Don’t fall for their games – Turn it off. Enjoy your life and avoid the attention seeking haters and those who just want to make a buck with high ratings.
Yesterday evening I lowered my boat off the lift and went down the river and noticed some porpoises. I slowed down to their pace and just sat there watching them gracefully swimming back and forth alongside my boat and occasionally surfacing for air. The sunset was gorgeous, and the setting was magnificent. It was relaxing and brought me very close to God at that very moment. I could have been watching someone rant on the news.
Ahh . . . but I refused to allow that junk in my mind. And I’m so happy I held firm. Go for a walk or take a boat ride and turn off the news tonight and check it out.
Romans 12:2
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.