I don't know how many ways the Left can project their own proclivity towards violence and hateful behavior onto regular everyday Americans, not to mention their all-time favorite target, Bad Orange Man. But damned if they don't knock themselves out trying so hard.

If these were jokes - which actually they are in a way, they're so pathetically bad - me and my fellow Women Marines would have called them "Shelf Jokes." That was our catchphrase for anything so desperately, groan-worthy awful that you had to REACH for it.

And you still faceplanted with the effort.

Only we'd be laughing hysterically after dusting ourselves off.

Amanda Marcotte's shelf joke of a serious article, bless her little pointy head, is simply hysterical.

Girl needs professional help. Unplugging the projector playing in her empty brain housing group would be a good start. I think the film ends are whipping around and causing some issues.

Donald Trump is using campus protests to stoke right-wing violence for the election

Disinformation about leftist "violence" is used by MAGA to justify their own, very real crimes

Wait, whut?

Despite all the hysteria in the punditry about campus protests against the war in Gaza, by and large, the student activists have been peaceful. Even at Columbia University, where an ill-advised police crackdown caused an inevitably angry reaction from protesters that led to a building occupation, this has been true. As former Washington Post journalist Paul Waldman explained in his newsletter, "People who have actually reported from the protests (see here or here) have by and large found them to be well-behaved." The vast majority of scary, violent images stem not from the protesters themselves, Waldman argues, but from the police crackdowns. "At the universities where the administrators had the sense to just let the students have their say, there has been almost no violence."

As the cable news has breathlessly covered, there was violence this week at UCLA. But even then, it was not the leftist protesters to blame, but a gang of far-right counter-protesters who rushed in and started to attack students. As ABC 7 reported, violence only broke out "when counter-protesters tried to break down the encampment." Unfortunately, this was framed by much of the media as "clashes" between protesters and the right-wing assailants. Any good faith reading of the situation is clear: The far-right demonstrators stormed the encampment and started the violence. The student protesters were defending themselves. 

Why a group of right-wingers decided to swarm on the UCLA students hasn't been thoroughly investigated yet, but here's one likely factor contributing to the choice: The Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, told them they were entitled to assault unarmed, non-violent protesters. And he did so with his favorite tool: dishonest whataboutism.

YOWSAHS

Trump is "characterizing" the protests as violent, which is stoking violence among his already violence-prone MAGA supporters.

It's all part of Trump's stra-tee-gery.

When my beloved, mild-mannered SIL sent me this Salon link this morning, I just kind of glanced at it and saw THAT name. 

Holy smokes. I told her:

OMG she drives me NUTS. I'll probably have to have a cocktail before I read THAT. 

Sad to say, I didn't get a cocktail because my curiosity got the better of me. Like in a "what's a knife in a wall socket feel like" kinda way. So I started reading.

Marcotte even goes after - I mean torches - mild-mannered  Ari Fleischer. Whut?

...While there's no logical link between the Gaza protests and Trump's anti-democracy conspiracy theories, the two share an emotional connective tissue in the MAGA imagination. For many Trump supporters, the protesters symbolize the young progressives that MAGA wants to eject from the body politic. Former George W. Bush advisor and current MAGA-tinged right-wing consultant Ari Fleischer straight up demanded that the government "Arrest, imprison, expel, and deport" college kids who peacefully protest. As Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times pointed out on Instagram, Fleischer is quite literally saying we should "strip them of their citizenship and kick them out of the country." 

It's "fascist" according to Marcotte, not to change with the times, instead of "wallowing" in how you "imagined things were" when "you were kids."

Fascist to its core, she says, not to allow the current generation to express themselves however they choose about whatever they choose.

And, my goodness - of course, there are some potty-mouthed, unfriendly children at these demonstrations, but Marcotte insists it's just a few. Criticism is deeply unhelpful and unnecessary. Keep those thoughts to yourself before you give MAGA frenzy food to feed on. 

Marcotte is adamant on that point.

The behavior of a few is no reason to give the Bad Orange Man or his Right-Wing Storm Troops any excuse to pounce or use Democratic condemnation as props and excuses for their own inherent violence. 

...This is a big reason why it's not just childish, but short-sighted of pundits and centrist Democrats to be lashing out at the student protesters in the often-hysterical tones being used. Whether or not one agrees that encampment-style protests are good or bad, cherry-picking a few bad actors to demonize the entire protest movement is only helping Trump lay the groundwork for future right-wing violence. Have a few protesters committed vandalism or yelled unforgivably bigoted things? Absolutely, and it's foolish to deny it. But by conflating a few outliers with all the protesters, centrist liberals are validating Trump's efforts to characterize the protests as "violent" — which, in turn, is being used to justify actual right-wing violence. When faced with hurt feelings over protesters making you uncomfortable, it's always worth remembering that adage: Shutting up costs nothing. Especially when emoting at hyperbolic volumes is only helping Trump plan for the next January 6.

 ELEVENTY! SHE PLAYED THE JAN 6 CARD!

Suppressed violence, Marcotte warns, is waiting only for Trump's secret bat signal to be unleashed.

I mean, I know the movie I'm thinking of, but I'm not quite sure it's the one playing in her head.

If it is, man. Fever dreams are bad juju.

Her side had better take a quick manners course, some Adderall, learn to behave themselves and STAT.

We have LSU students chanting at Hamas Glampers that they have zero SEC championships

No matter how long I live, I won’t top this pic.twitter.com/eX7TtHiGjY

— Three Year Letterman (@3YearLetterman) May 3, 2024

The mockery is afoot, no stoking required.

JUST IN -- Three men atop the roof of George Washington University unfurl a massive American flag over the Palestine encampment. pic.twitter.com/OAQXI0fx9B

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) May 3, 2024

 And all the cut-up plastic 55 gal trashcans in the world won't save them when they start something they surely can't finish.