I use to live in Portland (the largest city in the state), back about 40 years ago.
I sold my house for "
$2000, and you take over the payments" on my GI Bill loan.
Ten years earlier, $30,000 for a cottage on the East Side of Portland was (in the words of our real estate agent when my wife and I bought it) a "steal".
But I got divorced, and gave my ex-wife the proceeds from selling the house. At the time, I regretted having give up a 2-story house with a front and (fenced) back yard, detached garage, and a basement with an extra bedroom.
Now ... I realize that I could not have foreseen what a Liberal Hell-hole Portland would become. And I'm glad I got out while "the getting was good".
What happened to Portland is what's happening to America. Our elected officials are allowing violence by people who call themselves "anti-fascists", but who are in fact becoming the most violent fascists in America.
What happened in Portland is fanatics who wear masks and hoodies and assault total strangers on the mean streets of our most "Progressive" city.
It's difficult to understand what these Rebels Without A Cause want, but they are
more than willing to engage in anonymous violence to achieve their bizarre purpose.
It's just a guess, but I think what they want is anarchy. So I'll call them Anarchists; people who have no clearly defined goal but mob rule .... and they do it because they can.
The state of Oregon, the city of Portland, have made no effort to curb these Anarchists even while they commit crimes of assault against innocent passers-by.
...
I remember, back in the day, driving 'home' to Portland and being greeted by a huge neon sign of a prancing White Stag (the emblem of a well-known outdoor clothing company)
That sign was ... well, it felt like
coming home to me. It was a comfortable welcome to the Portland of
my era, and I loved it.
I don't know if that sign is still up; I have passed through Portland a few times on my way up the I5 Interstate highway, but I no longer look for the White Stag sign. In fact, I try not to look at anything but the road; it's all too gruesome and disgusting to drive through this "Major City".
Portland, Oregon: The canary in a coal mine for the violent Left:
The last time I passed through Portland, Oregon, I was treated to the sight of a bum squatting with his trousers around his ankles, dumping a huge load of poop on the pedestrian walkway of the Morrison Street bridge.
This was not the Portland of my memories. It was a Third World hell-hole, which I had become accustomed to in Viet Nam ... but not in
My America!
This was a consequence of the progressive permissiveness which seems, to me, endemic to extend "Liberality" to the point where laws are not enforced, anarchy is tacitly permitted, and basic rules of respectable human behavior are ignored.
Forget the riots, forget the protests, and forget the concept of human dignity.
If anyone wonders why I am a convicted Conservative, it's because
I think that in an America which is becoming increasingly populated by people who have no concept of "Correct Behavior" ...
I don't want to be known as a part of that America.
This is
not the
America which drafted me, which sent me to war, or which expected me to act like a responsible human being in a country that I didn't care whether it went communist or was free.
Because I was, and I remain, an American. I have my standards ... and I insist that those standards are respected and accepted by every American.
Don't shit on the bridge.
Don't shit on the Constitution.
Is that too much to ask?
