Antifa and BLM were allowed to destroy huge swaths of many cities across America, rioting with impunity using firearms, bats, bricks, fireworks, Molotov cocktails, fists, and just about anything you can use to destroy property and physically harm people.

On the other hand, a group of Oregonians were barred from entering a public place to protest lockdowns that are destroying people’s lives.

To Serve and Protect is now To Arrest and Enforce…unless they don’t want to do that either.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/12/the_reimagined_police_as_servants_of_the_left.html

By Carol Brown

We back the blue, but will they back us?

Like most conservatives, I support the police and the vital role they serve in a civilized society.

But like many conservatives, watching them stand down on orders from blue-state mayors during months of riots was jarring.  (They even stood down during a Back the Blue rally in Denver when speakers were attacked.)

Many of us asked how the police could obey such orders and allow criminals to have free rein in our streets — criminals whose victims, I might add, included over 2,000 police officers.

Don’t police officers swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution?  Well, yes, they do.  In fact, that is their paramount responsibility.

Perhaps this year, it seems we witnessed the rule and not the exception — the rule being that most people, including the police, will be cowards in the face of tyrants.

I have to assume that many police officers struggled with the position they were in this year, as noted in a piece written by David Hudson at Law Enforcement Today:

There comes a time, and maybe more specifically, there will come a time, in which a law enforcement officer must remember what he or she swore to when taking this oath.  Remember that order is everything, and by that, I mean the U.S. Constitution comes first, then State Constitution. Everything else is subordinate.

A law enforcement officer’s oath of office dilemma is this: “Do I enforce a law that is in opposition to the United States Constitution?”  In the current climate we see that law enforcement officers may have to face this dilemma.  I urge you to read about the Constitution, the powers delegated to Congress by the Constitution, the applicable laws passed by Congress and Supreme Court case law. I ask you to be introspective on how you will deal with this dilemma, all while taking into account what you swore before God and Country.

But struggle as some may have, the end result was that they obeyed, and in so doing abdicated their primary oath.

It’s scary stuff that does not bode well for the future.

And yesterday, perhaps a bit of that future arrived when anti-lockdown protesters tried to gain entry to the Oregon State Capitol building, where the Legislature was holding a special session.  Breitbart reports:

While legislative sessions are normally open to the public, today’s was closed to anyone other than lawmakers, police, some staff, and reporters, the Oregon Statesman-Journal reported. Legislators met to attempt to pass pandemic-relief measures including landlord and tenant assistance.

It appears that some of the protesters showed up armed (some with firearms and at least one with a pitchfork).  Although Oregon is an open carry state, several cities have open carry bans in public places.  And as is the case in many open carry states, no firearms are allowed inside public buildings anywhere in the state.

So there’s that.

It also appears that some of the protesters were aggressive against the police (who were armed and in full riot gear), spraying them with tear gas and bear spray.

YouTube screen grab.

For their part, the police appeared to get aggressive, pushing, using pepper spray, and shooting people at close range with rubber bullets.  Four people were arrested.

This event was complicated.  Among other things, it highlighted how differently the police may respond to one group and not another.

Antifa and BLM were allowed to destroy huge swaths of many cities across America, rioting with impunity using firearms, bats, bricks, fireworks, Molotov cocktails, fists, and just about anything you can use to destroy property and physically harm people.

On the other hand, a group of Oregonians were barred from entering a public place to protest lockdowns that are destroying people’s lives.

One would have hoped the police could have found a way to funnel people through a door and check for weapons, weeding out those who had them.  But maybe not.  I’m not a police officer, but I understand enough to realize that heated situations are complex and dangerous.  But aren’t they trained to handle such situations?

It was maddening to see the disparity between how rioters were given free rein all year while folks in Oregon were met with the full force of the law.

And this is a huge concern, because I fear that the police may be slowly morphing into an arm of the Democrat party to be used against citizens in ways that target conservatives and allow Marxists to roam free, destroying everything in their path.  This is one way I fear the left plans to “reimagine” the police.  Law enforcement can become a tool at the disposal of tyrants to inflict grave harm and further corral the citizenry into submission.  (See here for an AT blog post from 2013 that addresses this very thing.)

Yesterday’s event in Oregon also highlights how it feels like a powder keg is about to blow across this country.  Citizens are enraged and feel powerless.  It feels as though the stolen election was the final straw.  If the ballot box is rigged, then what’s left?  When you lose your voice in a civilized society, what remains?  Violence, I’m afraid.

This situation also highlights a phenomenon that probably has a name, but far be it from me to know it.  It goes like this: the left creates an environment that locks us out of power and silences our voice.  All the while, they accuse us of being “extremists” and “terrorists” even though we’re peaceful, law-abiding citizens.

But then they push us up against the wall such that we feel out of options.  It is at this point that otherwise law-abiding and peaceful citizens may express their rage in violent ways for lack of any other choice.  And in so doing, they become the thing they were falsely accused of being all along.  Their now violent actions confirm in the minds of the mindless that, you see, they are extremists and terrorists!

It’s a trap, part of the tangled, dark, evil sickness that is enveloping us from which we must break free.

To read more about what happened in Oregon yesterday, see here and here.  Normally, I would summarize more, but these days, it’s hard to know what to believe that’s in print, another sad sign of the times.

Please God give us strength and show us a path through.

Be seeing you