Left-wing protesters in Seattle have now occupied several downtown blocks of the city for weeks. The area around Capitol Hill, first known as CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) and now as CHOP (Capitol Hill Occupied Protest), originally took over six square blocks and a park, centered around a police precinct building that had been abandoned by the police department in the face of large protests against the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd. Now reduced in size to three blocks, the zone remains, and is largely free of the city’s interference. But while its defenders tout it as a bastion of freedom, is that really the case?
It’s important to remember that just because CHOP is free from the city government doesn’t mean that it’s free from government or that it’s a haven for anarchy. Almost from its inception, the zone featured struggles between those who saw it as a lawless free-for-all and those who wanted to seize power for themselves. All indications are that those in power in the zone have gotten to their positions through force and intimidation. And now a series of recent shootings that have killed one man and left others injured have many fearing for their safety in the autonomous zone.
What’s happening in CHOP is the natural result of allowing people to do what they want without consequences. The type of people who took over the area aren’t deep thinkers and have no understanding of human nature or how human beings act with each other. And they fully believe that their left-wing ideology of treating white people as oppressors and elevating minorities solely for the color of their skin will result in a successful social experiment.
While CHOP will ultimately fail, you have to wonder whether its founders will draw any lessons from it. Undoubtedly they’ll blame its failures on the city, the state, systemic racism, etc., in other words, they’ll blame everything and everyone except for their own personal faults and inability to accomplish anything substantive or productive.
The one silver lining to this episode is that many Americans watching this from afar are understandably horrified at what they’re seeing, and they realize that this Mad Max-style nonsense is the result of allowing socialists and communists a taste of power. Hopefully that will galvanize enough people in November to reject the political party that coddles and enables those socialists, otherwise we’ll be in for rough times as this cancer spreads across the country.
Image: Wikipedia