Dealing With Shakedown Artists
By CHRISTOPHER MANION
The current wave of violence riots, and looting often bring quieter accomplices. These can include various forms of intimidation that corrupt social comity but suffer no consequences for doing so. Let’s consider an example from south of our border.
In El Salvador, opening a business takes a lot of work. There’s a great sense of exhilaration when you open the doors on the first day.
But not for long. Soon a youngster stops by and offers to “take care of” your place. Keep it “safe.”
You laugh and tell him, “Everything’s OK, we already have insurance.”
Then he comes back with an older companion who is not so nice. The tough guy explains that his informal syndicate provides a different kind of “insurance.” They will make sure nothing will happen to your store from “bad people” in the neighborhood who often cause problems. “We provide this service to businesses in the whole area,” he says. “And you pay by the week, starting now.”
You get the message, and you pay.
After a few weeks, you’ve been laying out serious money for this “security.” Now another stranger walks in and tells you that your business needs to have his special “insurance” too. You explain that you’re already paying Mario and Miguel. “No, ours is different,” says Manolo. He doesn’t mince words. “We’re another gang. You need protection from us too. Pay up.”
Do you have a choice? No. You pay, and by the time the third or fourth gangster shows up, by the time they’ve had several gang wars to sort out their territories, you give up, you close your business, and you leave the country.
This account describes what happens all the time not only in El Salvador, but in corrupt countries all over Latin America, and indeed all over the world. The intimation of harassment, even violence, is easily conveyed without pulling a gun. After all, if you didn’t pay, and your store gets a broken window, or robbed, or even firebombed — hey, you asked for it, didn’t you? We warned you, didn’t we?
Closer to Home
Four years ago, Trump fans often had to be careful about voicing their support in public. Here in rural Virginia, campaign yard signs were usually unmolested, but our neighbors commuting into the D.C. Government Zone (DGZ) had to be careful. Parked cars displaying a Trump bumper sticker were fair game for vandalism. After all, one had to understand just how offensive the very notion of Trump could be to the feelings of a Woke Washingtonian.
As a result, magnetic Trump bumper stickers became a hot item. The driver could remove it when she parked her car near work. Nonetheless, the vulgarities (both vocal and visual) in traffic demonstrated the fragility of the petulant pique, that passion so fervidly nurtured by the TrumpHate crowd. Their message: How dare you!
Fast forward four years and all semblance of sensibility has evaporated.
Every social sector has been infected with a morbid desire to self-annihilate. The command of Karl Marx — destroy society in order to change the world — is now embodied in countless ways. Once more, Trump represents all that must be eradicated. Avenging bumper stickers has gone the way of Aunt Jemima. Now all knees must bend to the new gods, a jumble of idols that swirl chaotically in the Left’s war against reality. Which lives matter? Better be careful — your own life might depend on your answer. Your job certainly will, and perhaps your family’s safety will too.
Consider: a “peaceful demonstration” has been announced for your hometown tonight. Before it starts, a stranger knocks on your door. He carries a “Black Lives Matter” yard sign. He wants you to put it up on your lawn. Over his shoulder you see several others knocking on the doors of your neighbors, making the same request.
Do you have insurance? The right “kind” of insurance?
For years the Left has been preparing for this moment. Lenin called it “Iskra” — “the spark.” It has been lit. The iron is hot. Who will wield the hammer? And if the hammer falls, can the sickle be far behind?
So far, the Left has the upper hand. In classic form the fashionable elites fervently worship at the rampages of rambunctious youth. Weary after their four years of squeaking “Orange Man Bad,” they’re finally getting some real action. What James Burnham called “The Suicide of the West” has morphed into a roiling cauldron featuring the classic circular firing squad. The proud anointed vie to cancel, doxx, and, in Orwell’s telling term, vaporize one another.
The mob is at their door. Aghast, they call 911 and no one answers. Oh — so that’s what “defund the police means!”
Too late.
Chaos Has No Kill Switch
Words won’t work. What has been spawned in violence must be met by force. Lenin taught that “anything that furthers the revolution is ethical,” and this, folks, is the revolution.
Persuasion? Sorry. Humpty Dumpty rules — and the Left wants to rule. Ethics? In normal times — well, in Christendom — we might turn to our bishops for guidance, even leadership. Forget it. There we find only paralyzed prelates who proffer plaintive political slobber. Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso kneels in silence reverence to Black Lives Matter as they burn down Minneapolis. For years he has endorsed lawbreakers at the border, so it was no surprise that he bent the knee to the latest wave. In Washington, the local archbishop lies about the president, pandering for faint praise in the nation’s power capital of sodomy and sin.
During the virus lockdowns, many Catholic bishops nationwide sternly remonstrated with Catholics who longed for the sacraments, especially the Sacrifice of the Mass. Yet as soon as the riots started, the majority jumped on the Black Lives Matter bandwagon. “Racism” was their unanimous cry, until they were stunned, shocked, and silenced by attacks on statues of great saints like Junipero Serra and St. Louis of France.
These are our “leaders.”
Our hierarchy has married the spirit of the age. A few holdouts will not be able to avoid the coming collapse. Let’s face it. This year America’s bishops are supporting “Catholic Joe” Biden. Their virtue-signaling cheers him on. They are silent as Joe flounders ever further to the left, embracing every new moral corruption.
What could possibly motivate them? Who knows? They gave up on Humanae Vitae fifty years ago, Cardinal Dolan sighs. Obama’s triumph over racism was “a great step forward for humanity,” says their African-American leader.
Liar’s poker. We lost.
So who’s left? The laity. And when it comes to leadership, the official organizations have their hands tied. The Knights of Columbus can’t even expel members whose promotion of abortion is a public scandal. A century ago this inspiring organization sent my father to graduate school to teach Catholics how to defend American principles. Today it can’t even defend the statues of their patron from wanton, criminal destruction.
Yet we have to look for leaders — now, yesterday, immediately. The stakes are too high, the danger is too great. No single group can do it, and in our constitutional republic the president can’t do it all. An ensemble of local grassroots leaders, on the model of the early days of the pro-life movement, must emerge. Yes, Black Lives Matter has untold millions in funding — of course they do! This is the revolution!
Our shepherds sleep, but Satan never does. The revolution’s ultimate target is the Church, and then the world. In the words of General José Moscardó to his son Luis, we must “commend our souls to God and cry ¡Viva Cristo Rey! The Alcázar does not surrender.”
Neither do we.
