The lesson from Columbia

The protest is not getting much traction for several reasons.

My 4-foot-9 wife is easy to find in a crowd. I just look for the empty spot in the sea of people and whoomp, there she is. What is missing in the sea surrounding the Columbia University protest is any public interest. Despite all the news actualities on TV and all the commentary, Americans show a deliberate disinterest in the shenanigans on college campuses.

This is a far cry from the college protests of the Vietnam war. Maybe it was the constant barrage of protests and counter-protests on TV each night, but both sides were very involved.

This protest is not getting much traction for several reasons.

The first reason is nobody cares. Jim Carville had a rant on Twitter and he said of 15 issues people under 30 were asked to rank, young people listed the Palestinian war as No. 15.

I am pretty sure Vietnam was the No. 1 issue among young people from 1965 to 1973, when our participation ended. A generation of young men had draft cards which meant we had skin in that game. History says the protests worked but history is written by idiots. Nixon carried 49 states while the antiwar George McGovern carried Massachusetts and DC in 1972.

We do not have 500,000 troops stationed in Jerusalem. We do not have 5,000. American involvement is all CIA and a few menacing ships at this point. This is not our war. The well-funded communists who organize these protests may as well be talking about the Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict.

Unlike the Vietnam protests, these protesters are siding with the bad guys, Hamas, the people who raped, tortured, murdered and then mutilated the bodies of 1,400 people on October 7 — taking another 240 people hostage. You cannot say you are antiwar if you take a side.

Which leads to the third reason the protesters turn people off: anti-Semitism. America may be the last nation in the world that’s not named Israel that still opposes the hating of Jews. The Holocaust still bothers many Americans and swastikas remain evil in our country.

Indeed, polls show Americans overwhelmingly side with Israel.

The Hill reported, “An overwhelming majority of Americans support Israel in its war against Hamas over the militant group running the Gaza Strip, according to a new poll.

“The Harvard CAPS-Harris survey shared with The Hill showed 80% of registered voters said they support Israel more in the war, while 20% said they support Hamas more. That is about in line with the poll’s findings from last month, when 79% indicated they support Israel more.”

There are aesthetic reasons as well. As I recall, the girls in the Vietnam protests were hot. Two generations later, the girls are chubbier and wearing masks. You also don’t know if you will get a surprise when she takes off her jeans.

The masks are a relic of the war America had with its government over covid. We lost to a 98-pound weakling named Tony Fauci, who is like 100 years old. The masks remind us and we are ashamed of our cowardice.

Times have changed. In the 1960s, colleges were seen as places of scholarship. People revered the Ivy League schools. Over time, the schools shed their reputations in favor of promoting bad science (climate change) and bad policy (DEI) and outright racism (critical race theory).

And it is a because of this that instead of promoting their anti-Semitic cause, the protesters are undermining it. Woke is a dead end politically now. Lefties could not shut down Chick-fil-A but Americans shut down Bud Light, didn’t they?

Woke may be the kiss of death.

Andrea Mew of Evie magazine wrote, “Gen Z Believes Wokeism Is Only For Ugly People — Are They Right?”

Mew wrote, “When you hear the word “woke,” what images begin populating in your brain? You might conjure up visual generalizations based on people within any woke movement who then became viral memes, like Trigglypuff.

“Perhaps he or she has vividly – and unnaturally – colorful hair dyed pink, purple, green, blue, or red, which is cut or buzzed into edgy styles like microbangs, undercuts, or pixie cuts. Perhaps he or she is either shockingly skinny, with barely visible musculature that points to a diet deficient in animal-based nutrition, or he or she is totally out of shape, with a BMI ranging from obese to morbidly obese that points to a lethargic lifestyle and hedonistic tendencies.”

Ah yes, good old Trigglypuff. Dean Wormer was right. Fat, drunk and stupid are not the way to go in life.

While I am goofing on Trigglypuff’s looks and weight, the real problem is this entitled sense of infallibility on the left. They believe they are so smart and well-educated that by definition they are right. Remember The Emperor’s New Clothes? The tailors convinced him that only a fool could not see his coat — and while he walked around naked, they walked away with his money.

The reality is the protesters are indoctrinated and misled. Jews do not occupy Gaza; Palestinians do. The cruelty of the Palestinians — whose numbers increase at the highest rate in Arabia — is that they now have the people who were nearly wiped out by the Holocaust portrayed as genocidal Nazis.

And maybe — just maybe — they should stop telling those lies because the lies are doing the Hamas-holes in.

But just to be safe, the left ought to dump the Trugglypuffs and recruit a few Riley Gaines lookalikes.