But when you talk about destruction

(Photo by Tim Dickinson, posted on Twitter @7im)

It's open season on statues in Portland. Last night the kids pulled down old George Washington at 57th and Sandy. They went and burned an American flag over his face first. Thomas Jefferson in front of Jefferson High also got yanked earlier in the week. 

The University of Portland took statues of William Clark of Lewis & Clark expedition fame and York, Clark's slave, into protective custody after threats. I am not making this up.

I have nodded approvingly at all the demonstrations and revolutionary actions of the last few weeks, but I'm having a little trouble seeing how going after Washington is going to help with police brutality and systemic racism. There comes a time in every Portland protest season when the people who are there just because they like to break stuff, start breaking stuff. I think we may be at that point now.

The tighty righties are all over this, of course. "Where does it stop?" They'll blame "Antifa rioters," the new bogeymen concocted by the dear leader of the right, Orange Caligula. A nice little distraction from his bad, very bad, really awful, terrible week.

As done as I am with all things Republican, especially their cable screech monkeys, questions of line-drawing and pace of progress aren't completely illegitimate. Are we going to rename the state to our immediate north? 

Even more on point, it seems as if most of the streets in Portland bear the names of people who ruled the roost here when all of Oregon was proudly "whites-only." Do we change all the street names? A lot of those founders are buried in Lone Fir Cemetery. Do we dig them up and defile their skeletons?

Maybe we ought to stop putting up statues of historical figures altogether. They seem to divide us more than they inspire us any more. 

In any event, the bars of Portlandia reopen today. It will be interesting to see what effect that has on the nightly property damage. Last call is at quarter to 10.