Mobocracy

I had an opportunity to witness a political event up close and personal last weekend.  Following a business meeting, I walked past the Palmer House in downtown Chicago, when I noticed a crowd gathered in front of the hotel.  I immediately suspected it was some union protesting the working conditions at the hotel but the crowd was bigger than I normally see.  As I drew closer, it became clear to me that it was part of the group gathered to protest Donald Trump’s rally at UIC. 

The crowd was approximately half African American with a substantial portion of Occupy Wall Street types thrown in.   There were several people on megaphones, and most of the signs were hand marked, with either messages damning Donald Trump, or Republican governor Bruce Rauner, or demanding free this or free that.  If anyone in the crowd actually worked in an office, I would be surprised.  It was quite discomfiting, a middle aged businessman in a dark suit and tie, walking past the menacing sneers and glares.  This was not just a group of peaceful protesters.  This was an angry mob, yelling, fists punched in the air, girding for battle, and, as I learned later, organized to disrupt Donald Trump’s planned rally.  It occurred to me that if I had donned on of Trump’s red “Make America Great Again,” caps, I clearly would have been confronted or at least verbally assaulted.

This gathering was classic Saul Alinsky—deliberately designed to disrupt the process and shut down free speech.  And it is going on all across the country on college campuses.  It is pure thuggery, organized to implicitly threaten, intimidate and stifle dissent.

I got my first taste of mob disruption late last spring.  The University of Chicago has its annual awards ceremony at graduation and a friend of mine was to receive the Norman Maclean Faculty Award for extraordinary contributions to teaching at the University.  Others were to receive other academic and service awards.  Parents and relatives from all over the country came to see their family members receive these honors.   A group demanding that the U of C house a trauma center at its hospital disrupted the program, shouted everyone down, as the protesters marched around with placards yelling and giving speeches.  They were not going to leave without a physical confrontation with the authorities (which   clearly wanted).   As a result, the families and recipients had their day ruined.  Some of the recipients (including my friend) had worked tirelessly for a lifetime only to have the only day when their sacrifices and achievements were to be publicly recognized by the institution and their families ruined. 

The problem is that the bullying worked.  This February, the University announced plans for its new Level 1 Trauma Center.

I have a lot of problems with Donald Trump as the nominee of the Republican Party.  I do not like his stance on trade.  His foreign policy positions do not sit well with me.   His assertion  that “Bush lied” to get us into the war with Iraq was outrageous.  I’m  not partial to his interrupting, bullying style.

Nonetheless, Trump and his supporters absolutely have the right to speak and to whip up more support in an unimpeded forum.  Surely, BLM and the Marxists Moveon.org folks also have the right to speak.  But they do not have a license to disrupt legitimate political discourse, even if the person they are opposing is appealing to emotion.  Like the bunch that disrupted things at U of C, the protesters were spoiling for a fight.  Thoughts of Russia in 1917 flashed through my mind.

The Left has elevated its bullying tactics---disrupt to get what it wants or to shut down speech with which it disagrees.    It is working marvelously on college campuses across the country.  The U of C caved into their demands and will commit to millions to sustain its trauma center.  Donald Trump cancelled his appearance in Chicago.  Condi Rice was shouted down in Vermont last year and canceled an appearance at Rutgers.  Worse, immediately following the terrorist attack in San Bernardino,   General Loretta Lynch vowed to aggressively prosecute anti-Muslim speech (we are attacked and our government acts to curtail 1^st Amendment rights).

This is a scary development. More and more, we are allowing thuggery to change policy and to curtail free speech.  This is not how we make decisions or engage in debate and discourse.  We have institutions and political systems with structures in place to manage decision making and dissent.  Our bicameral legislature, for instance, was deliberately designed to cool mob passions. 

The Left has figured out how to manipulate and intimidate and, as a result, if we do not check this, we are in danger of descending into mobocracy. Seeing the angry mob with my own eyes was a stark reminder of how close we are to descending into chaos and violence as interest groups simply bully institutions into complying with their wishes.  This will be a terrible direction for our republic, and it needs to be checked now.  We haven’t seen this sort of thing since 1968.  But the flames are burning hotter and it was an unsettling thing to witness it in person.

The mob had an opposite effect on me.  I left the scene wondering if I should vote for Trump out of sheer defiance.