Portland is slipping away

We had another riot in Portland last night. Most of the shinola went down in the Pearl District, but it might have spilled into other parts of downtown. It raged on for a couple of hours.

The cops and some of the media are downplaying the damage, but from what I saw on the internet, a lot of large storefront windows were broken. And it wasn't just Starbucks and a bank. Small businesses like Perch Furniture and Urban Pantry also got hit. The mob went on to trash a private security company's SUV that was parked in the route of the rampage. I couldn't tell for sure, but it looked like there may have been someone in the vehicle as the bricks went through the windows.

And of course, the spray paint with all the usual inane and redundant sloganeering went all over everything.

And what was the cause? It started off as vaguely about immigration enforcement abuses, but it wasn't really about that. It was more about anarchy. The "march" was advertised as "No Borders, No Nations." Ah, okay. I guess the whole world is going to be one big Portlandian utopia. Can't wait. 

They smashed the big plate glass of Umpqua Bank because, to quote the spray paint Picassos, "Banks Suck."

The Portland cops, who alternate between brutality and worthlessness, turned in the worthless version last night. There were more than a dozen of them riding around on bicycles like a circus act, but they didn't stop any of the damage. They arrested one juvenile and one man, both of whom were released. Oh, and good news, we don't actually hold such people in jail any more due to Covid.

You can read the police version of the events here. It has all the usual strangeness of a Portland police press release about an extremist riot. Included is a verbatim quotation of what the cop on the loudspeaker announced to the crowd before the rest of the cops did nothing. I'm never sure why that has to be transcribed for us.

And of course, in its account, the police bureau does its usual whining. The reason the riot was able to do so much damage with hardly anyone arrested was because there were so many shootings going on elsewhere in town. It's stunning how the cops use one profound failure of theirs to excuse another.

But despite their suggestion to the contrary, they had plenty of manpower at the riot, which was advertised well in advance and led to completely predictable results. As I say, there were at least a dozen officers on bikes, and another van parading around with a dozen or so troops in riot gear hanging on the sides. And yet they somehow managed not to stop what was surely six figures in damage.

Oh, well. None of this is news. The "protesters" are jackasses, and the cops are worthless. Just another Saturday crystal-night in Portland. And it's only February.

Ignore it if you want, but the cancer is moving to a new stage. Residents are moving out of the Pearl. Residents are moving out of downtown. Most businesses are already gone, and more will pack it in. The city isn't coming back any tme soon. And it won't even start to come back as long as last night keeps replaying itself.

The black-clad avengers do not want a better government. They do not want reform within the American system. They do not want a fairer version of the free market. They want violent revolution. I'm not sure they've thought any further than that.

There are about 200 of them, maybe 300. They have to be dealt with. No one is dealing with them. The cops certainly aren't.

Somebody told me the other day that Mayor F. Ted Wheeler thinks he's going to be the next governor. Given the state of the city he's running into the ground, I find that proposition dubious in the extreme. The place really has gone to pot under his watch. His record disqualifies him from any future public office, or any real job, actually. He's a dud.