I wrote recently about protestors who were taking down statues
and monuments that they thought were offensive. I wrote that
once we begin removing these memorials, where do we stop?
There are a lot of things that I find offensive but I hesitate to
order them removed; I choose to simply ignore them.
Last night, June 23, 2020, in Madison Wisconsin, an angry mob
tore down two statues which had stood on the Capitol Grounds
for decades. One, the statue of Col. Hans Christian Heg, was
decapitated and dragged thru the streets before throwing it into
Lake Monona. His only offensive I assume, was he was one of
only two statues on the Capitol Grounds. Col. Heg was a
Norwegian immigrant who became an American citizen, he was
an abolitionist who fought and died in the Civil War. A war in
which he fought on the side of the Union.
The second statue that was torn down was "Forward", any of
you who have a passing acquaintance with Wisconsin or the
University, will recognize Forward. The statue has been called
by other names; Lady Forward, and Miss Forward, but the
statue's true name is just "Forward", that is the motto of the
state of Wisconsin. She represents an "allegory of devotion
and progress" according to her creator, a woman named Jean
Pond Minor. The statue's right arm is outstretched and her
left arm clutches an American flag to her bosom.
The statue was completed in 1893 and was commissioned for the
Columbian Exposition in Chicago, it was to represent the state
of Wisconsin at the Expo. Forward then stood outside the
Capitol Building until the early 1990s, when it was moved
inside to the Wisconsin Historical Society building. The women
of Wisconsin raised the money, $100,000, to create a bronze
replica of Forward and it was placed at the west entrance of
the Capitol Building at the end of State Street.
There it remained until a mob of young nihilists decided for
whatever reason, it had to go. The picture on the front page
of this mornings paper shows Forward lying in the dirty street
and with it lies any credibility that those rabble-rousers ever
had. But that was not the end of their reign of terror last night,
a Wisconsin State Senator from Milwaukee, Tim Carpenter (D),
was attacked by the mob on his way to his office in the Capitol
Building. Mr. Carpenter stopped too record the activity with his
cellphone, when several protestors knocked the phone from his
hands and punched and kicked him. The Senator later told the
news, "It's a sad thing, I am on their side for peaceful
demonstrations...I am a gay progressive who has been the
Legislature for thirty-six years."
The reason for the gathering last night, was the arrest of another
protestor earlier in the day. A black man, Devonere Johnson,
was using a bullhorn and carrying a baseball bat to harass
patrons of a open-air restaurant at their sidewalk tables. He
followed one man inside and proceeded to use the bullhorn
to rant at other customers using profane language. The
manager called the Madison Police, but before they came
Johnson had moved back to the outside seating again, still
using the bullhorn and carrying the bat.
The police officers told Johnson to cease and desist or he
would be arrested, he refused and tried to enter the restaurant
once more. At which point the officers attempted to arrest
Johnson. I say attempted, because it took nine police squads
and over two dozen officers ten minutes to bring the situation
under control before they could subdue Johnson and drive him
away in a squad car. With at least a dozen by-standers recording
the proceedings on their cell phones, the scene was pure
pandemonium. This is what police work has come to.
The mob last night was demanding that Johnson be released, and
to prove their point, they broke the windows and threw a Molotov
cocktail into the City County Building. Thankfully the fire was
quickly put out. In that building there were over 140 people,
many of them prisoners, among them Devonere Johnson. They
have a funny way of rescuing someone.
Any sympathy that Black Lives Matter had garnered in the past
three weeks was lost last night. Any credibility in their cry for
civil justice fell by the wayside. This was not protesting for
reform, this was anarchy. This was mob justice, not civil
disobedience. The governor has called out the National Guard
for tonight. It appears that appeasement did not work. The
theory of letting them have their tantrum, and then they will go
home never works. Mob mentality does not respond to logic.
These are young people with nothing better to do with their
time, they have no job, and if they did it would have been shut
down due to the virus. Their families take no responsibility
for them, so they feed off one another.
Madison has seen this before; I have seen this before. The
original good intentions have been coopted by mob psychology.
It's time for the grown-ups to take over. It is time for the
protestors to turn their energy toward something usuful. You
want change? The way to make change happen is by changing
the rules. Get out and support a candidate who will work for
you, and when you find him, go out and vote for him. If you
want what I have, you have to get it the way I did; I worked
for it!
I'm just sayin'
