UCLA Crazies and Our Future

I’m going to take a few words to get to my primary point.  So to avoid losing you ahead of time, I want to touch on my ending.  Yesterday, while trying to enjoy Trump’s victory, I saw a video shot of UCLA students walking through a long hall.  There seemed to be hundreds of students.  They were all marching to a slow, continuously repeated chant of “F*** Trump”.  And it seemed like most, if not all were staring down at their phones.  It made me think of what a Nazi Youth march might have looked like, only with a different target and no phones.  It also made it hard to get to sleep.

I’m obviously a Trump supporter.  I really believed that the polls couldn’t be far enough off to support a Trump victory.  All the media, including a good portion of Fox News commentators and Wall Street Journal columnists, seemed to support Hillary Clinton and continuously criticize Trump.  Extreme, over-the-top criticism.  The few advertisements we saw here in Texas, most of which were focused on electing congressmen, were nearly content-free slander.  They took a few seconds of video of their opponent, out-of-context, and made them look like the great Satan out to destroy the good things in America.  I have always assumed most people, busy with their hectic lives working or studying 60 hours or more a week, do not have the time or energy to get past the information on the Main Stream Media and understand the policies and potential impacts of the candidates’ actual positions.  Everything Trump said was taken out of context or distorted to sound like racism, bigotry and misogyny--24/7.  Hillary got a light drubbing on honesty and misjudgments, but the media still depicted her as the nice, dependable, experienced candidate—without ever criticizing or describing her policies.  There were a few on Fox and at the Wall Street Journal that were honest.  But they seemed to be offset, maybe by an editorial policy, that there had to be 50% democratic talking heads on every show.  In written articles, anything criticizing Hillary had to be offset by at least a paragraph also pointing out Trump’s deficiencies.  I won’t be renewing my Wall Street Journal subscription again.

 

Anyway, on election night, I watched a movie and went to bed early.  I had watched McCain and Romney lose on election night TV coverage, and thought maybe I could avoid the heart-ache of a repeat.  I was unhappy with the nice-guy approach of those two.  They never seemed to fight back.  Trump fights back, and I’m actually a lot happier with his policies.  So I thought maybe I could limit my disappointment to a few minutes on Wednesday morning.  Of course, my wife watched the returns and couldn’t resist giving me a few results:  Texas went red (expected, but the media seemed to think it was in doubt), Evan Bayh lost in Indiana (I grew up with Birch Bayh and was really disappointed with his and Evan’s time in office), she said the media seemed to be going crazy (?), and she thought Florida was going to go red.  Avoiding the returns didn’t help, I couldn’t go to sleep worried about a Clinton future.

I woke up Wednesday morning, turned on my computer, and brought up FoxNews.com.  There was a big picture of Trump.  I thought, if Hillary won, why would they have a picture of Trump?  I scrolled down and saw the headlines of a Trump victory.  I have to say, I got a bit emotional, and a strong feeling of relief.

I turned on the TV and watched Fox News for most of the morning.  The criticism of Trump was over, though they still had a few of the bitter Democratic partisans on their programs.

I was especially affected by the scene at the Democratic headquarters earlier that morning, when Podesta came on and said Hillary would not show.  Her fans were crying.  And I felt empathy for their loss. 

I was a bit taken aback by Hillary not showing up to say anything.  Had she been so affected by the loss that she had some kind of medical problem?  Was she just so upset and bitter that she couldn’t maintain her composure on stage?  All those people showed up and stayed through 2:30 am with all the bad news, and she couldn’t even make an appearance?  Since then, I’m leaning towards a simpler explanation, she didn’t have any concession remarks or speech prepared, and she can no longer speak without a teleprompter or memorized lines.  Whatever the reason, her lack of appearance seemed to just emphasize my belief in her lack of character.

So I went through the day, feeling pretty good.  And I decided to watch Fox News from Bret Bair through O’Reilly, plus a little bit of Kelly.  I’m not sure when I saw it, but one of them showed a video of the UCLA students marching through a hall chanting “F*** Trump”, again and again and again…  And this morning I see marches in most big cities where worse rants were going on against Trump.

What gives?  The Left criticized Trump when he said he might contest an election.  The election took place, it wasn’t close, and now the Left, at least some of them, seem to think it was illegitimate?  Way too many people seem to be hypocrites.

But more worrisome is the behavior of the UCLA students.  Supposedly, these students are representative of the future of our country.  Did your parents let you curse in public or even in private?  Sure, no one is allowed to physically discipline their children any more.  But you figure most parents are still going to try to instill a sense of decorum and courteous behavior in their children.  They want their children to know right from wrong, how to think about what’s going on around them, and understand it so they can get ahead in life.  They want their children’s schools to teach them how to behave in society as well as imparting the knowledge necessary to live life prosperously in our country.

How did these students get to this point?  Did their parents fail them?  Did their schools?  Did the media or Hollywood lead them off course?  I know the latter two groups have had an obvious slant towards approving this type of behavior.  Schools have been tending towards nonsensical behavior for years.  Some parents may have been bad influences, but I cannot believe most did not want better for their kids and work to make that happen.

Maybe there were other hundreds or thousands of students at UCLA who disapproved of this behavior, whether they vote left or right.  Maybe that’s true on most campuses.  Maybe you don’t see the people with good manners, and that have the ability to think, because they don’t make spectacles of themselves in their schools’ halls and in the streets.

The problem is, you see the mainstream media throwing mud continuously.  You rarely see a new movie that doesn’t push liberal culture and morals.  You almost never hear of colleges promoting free speech and open debate.  You see riots and protests that take place without any apparent regard for the rule of law.  You see politicians pushing to abolish and ignore the Constitution of the United States.  You see people unwilling to admit that most terrorism is Islamic terrorism.  You see a complete political party that seems to want open borders as a way to get more voters for their positions.

All that is worrisome enough.  Then you see hundreds of UCLA students marching to and chanting “F*** Trump”, our new president elect.  Yeah, maybe this election will help us retain our rights and liberties under our Constitution for a few more years.  But the media, our colleges, our entertainment industry and half of our citizens are pushing a different direction.  If our young people move that way too, where is our future?