Tired of Little Children -- Like Antifa and Palestinians

I was not the most well-behaved child.  Let's get that out of the way.  I was very typical in that if I didn't get my way I was as likely to scream and yell and pout and do what little children did, as the next little child.  It was the '50s.

So were you, if truth be told, right, whenever you grew up.

Now, children can be cute and funny and clever, and they see things through eyes mostly unsullied by experience.  Art Linkletter made a career out of trotting such kids out on his show, asking them questions and then a fortune writing books full of their answers.

But their unwillingness to accept things that don't go their way is not exactly their most endearing quality.  Half of parenting books, if truth be told, consist of what we are supposed to do when our children act up.  Whack them on the behind, perhaps, or give them a treat to shut them up.  Those are the two extremes of guidance, and they result in what you would expect those kids to grow up expecting (hint: the ones who get the treats end up needing "safe zones" in college).

That was pointed out to me when the latest group acting like children acted like children.  That would be the Palestinians, who are calling a general strike on the West Bank because the USA is moving our embassy to Israel from its old location in Tel Aviv, where the Israeli government is not, to Jerusalem, where the Israeli government actually is.

Of course, children don't usually then take up arms and commit violence.  And of course, the Palestinians most assuredly will, as is their norm, particularly if their strike is greeted with a ho-hum and no change in the status of the embassy, which it likely will.

The Palestinians might have an argument about their own status, and they are perfectly free, depending on what country they are in, to try to press that argument like rational adults.  In fact, to the extent that it is the Israelis that they are actually pressing that with, a rational discussion might lead to a reasonable outcome -- assuming they actually want a reasonable outcome.

But the inevitable violence will only tar them with the same brush that we here in the USA have experienced -- with the Antifa types, the ones who protest whatever they are protesting by breaking windows, clashing with police there to protect them, and leaving people wondering what they actually do for a living, fascists pretending to oppose fascism, that actually does not exist where they see it.

It is the same violent reaction we saw in Baltimore, and in Ferguson and Watts.  And now we are seeing it -- OK, we have always seen it -- in the Middle East.

Commonality?  Of course there is.  Much like congressional Democrats, except for the violence, there are people who resort to violence when they have no sound point to make.  I would also add that these people with the immediate turn to violence lack something besides an actual agenda of solutions that have worked before -- competent, thinking leadership.

Look not just at Antifa, or the Baltimore rioters, or the Palestinians, none of whom have an idea to offer and none of which have any leaders with whom you would want to have a rational conversation.  Is it any wonder that their immaturity leads to groupthink, which ends up leading to violence?

Is it any difference that congressional Democrats, absent any ideas, have been forced to rally behind "leaders" of no capability whatsoever, like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, neither of whom can articulate a single reason why anyone should ever vote for a Democrat?  Are we surprised a bit that violence hasn't broken out there in Congress, or are they simply too old to remember how children behave?

I've written before about basic human actions, why children bully each other and befriend some and try to embarrass others to make themselves look good.  It would be depressing to think that groups bereft of ideas fall, absent articulate leadership, into that same level of maturity and turn to violence.

Perhaps the Palestinians, like Antifa and the urban rioters before them, simply have nothing to say.

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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