When I was stationed at El Toro many decades ago, "Irvine" was just beginning to blossom into Donald Bren's - chairman of the Irvine Ranch Company - vision of the Mediterranean on the West Coast. The east side of I-5 was nothing but glorious groves of oranges that ran all the way to the Trabuco foothills, with a couple of chicken farms to spoil the wonderful perfume blossom fragrance if the wind shifted. The west side of the interstate was almost as pristine agriculturally. There were hundreds of acres of fields on either side of Sand Canyon - a sleepy oil and stone-covered, two-lane country road - that rotated regularly as clockwork between artichokes, pink "3-pak"  tomatoes, red peppers, and asparagus. 

A fabulous old country store, snugged up to the offramp from I-5, still had operational, ancient Coke chests, and there were these huge, impressive grain towers across the street falling into disrepair.

Sand Canyon ran out towards the 405, but dead-ended in a field with an irrigation ditch running on either side in sight of that freeway. You couldn't get there from there.

Bucolic as could be. 

Working on the flight line at night, the wafting scent of orange blossoms in the heated air is something I'll always remember. Night crew memories include seeing the lights and hearing the roar not of the jets I was working on but from the top-fuel dragsters and stockcars at the OCIR - the now long defunct Orange County International Raceway.

They could raise hell over on the other side of the highway because there wasn't a soul but Marines to bother with their noise.

The county changed drastically in such a short period of time.

The city that was being developed south of Tustin in those fields and groves was being carefully groomed to fit certain well-to-do parameters, and it was becoming obvious the military didn't fit, and soon would be unwelcome. 

Although they did prove useful on occasion. Irvine, under continuous fire from the federal government for not providing low-income housing, cleverly negotiated a compromise. The city built brand new base housing for the Marine Corps on the back side of MCAS Tustin, which satisfied their "low income" requirements and allowed the city to keep a handle on what sorts of undesirables occupied it.

That's Irvine. Insufferable.

We were always aware the University of California had a campus up in the hills opposite El Toro, but none of us had any time to attend. We also knew the campus had a reputation for being an egghead hub - heavy into sciences and research, even then. It was no surprise that Mazda opened their headquarters just down the road away a few years later (and playfully hidden in plain sight the front and rear ends of their top-secret "Miata" embedded as sculpture in their lobby wall a year or two before the car was released), just to mention one company.

In 2020, besides (with one exception) going completely for Biden, Irvine overwhelmingly elected a Democratic mayor named Farrah Khan. The former mayor had apparently been critical of the BLM rioters, and Khan said those remarks weren't reflective of their community. Khan won that race handily.

Unsurprisingly, Khan has been supportive of the current campus unrest, and took to her private X account to chastise police in Los Angeles for the UCLA confrontations.

Well, maybe more than that. She threw in a little spicey anti-zionism for good measure.

Rejecting capitalism as mayor of one of the most privileged and expensive cities in the country, with an average household income of, like, $147K was a deft political touch, too.

Naturally, comments on her honer's sweet little post exploded, so she did what proud anti-Semites do when they run their jibs and catch flack - she protected her personal tweets.

CALL A WAAHMBULANCE

As she was cheering on the Hamasholes in LA, her own little slice of the UC system was fixing to explode, and it finally did.

After tolerating a campus "encampment" for two weeks, the university declared it "violent" and had to ask for police to come clear the refuse. The chancellor seemed shell-shocked that this could happen. What a pathetic fool.

...“What a sad day for our university. I’m brokenhearted,” Chancellor Howard Gillman said in a late night message to the campus community.

“For the last two weeks, I have consistently communicated that the encampment violated our policies, but that the actions did not rise to the level requiring police intervention,” he said. “And so after weeks when the encampers assured our community that they were committed to maintaining a peaceful and nondisruptive encampment, it was terrible to see that they would dramatically alter the situation in a way that was a direct assault on the rights of other students and the university mission.”

.@UCIrvine — Far-left extremists trashed the campus for Gaza at their direct action to try to besiege part of the university. pic.twitter.com/Q5vtS3wGxs

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) May 16, 2024

Clear it they did, with help - as requested - from neighboring city Newport Beach, CA (NSFW language). Those Orange County cops went in to get the job done.

UCLA and UC Irvine are only about 50 miles apart. But the fact that the latter cleared out the cosplay terrorists in about an hour while the former took a week, tells you all you need to know about quality of life in Los Angeles vs Orange County. pic.twitter.com/n2EUF9zXRd

— David Pivtorak (@piv4law) May 16, 2024

Again, it was the university that said, "Get them out of here" after they'd stormed several buildings, and occupied one.

Police on Wednesday took back a lecture hall from pro-Palestinian protesters who for hours occupied the building at the University of California, Irvine, then cleared a student encampment that stood for more than two weeks, witnesses said.

Officers from about 10 nearby law-enforcement agencies converged on the campus after university officials requested help because protesters had occupied the lecture hall, leading the school to declare it a “violent protest”, police and university officials said.

About four hours later, police had ejected the protesters from both the lecture hall and the plaza that had been the site of the encampment, according to the university and witnesses.

“The police have retaken the lecture hall,” UC Irvine spokesperson Tom Vasich said by telephone from the scene. “The plaza has been cleared by law-enforcement officers.”

And, gosh - some of the faculty participating in the riot took it badly when they got snatched up with the rest of the rotten apples.

You hate to see it.

Pro-Palestine Professor of Global Studies at UC Irvine just got arrested, unmasked and became completely unhinged.

She turns into a total train wreck of gravely shouting and insanity.

You want this person teaching your kids? pic.twitter.com/HeylyQ7wYg

— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) May 16, 2024

Do you know who else "took it badly"?

The frickin' mayor of Irvine!

HOW DARE POLICE MANHANDLE THESE CHILDREN

Deliciously, an adult took Khan's words badly and put her in her place beautifully.

Will O'Neill, mayor of Newport Beach, who had sent officers to assist, said, "EXCUSE ME, WHUT?!

"...Your message is preemptively accusing our officers...of violence. If that's what you meant, then your message is beneath the office of mayor..."

Holy smoking shot across the bow.

What a based thing of beauty.

As you can imagine, O'Neill is being showered with thanks from everyone for both his stalwart support of all the officers involved and his unfiltered condemnation of a fellow elected official's vicious lunacy. That guy's a keeper.

"Well done, you!" to all the officers.

I hope they send a helluva bill to the UCI administration, and I hope students who couldn't get to classes or were physically threatened drop some lawsuits.

As for Mayor Khan?

What a miserable sack of carbon.

So Irvine.