The Left Definitely Requires More Vespene Gas

Last week, on January 7, an incident occurred in Minneapolis, Minnesota which set the internet commentary world ablaze. A professional left-wing activist, 37-year-old Renee Good, was shot and killed by an ICE agent as she attempted to run over him with her vehicle. Good, billed as a “legal observer,” had been harassing ICE agents who were involved in local enforcement actions, blocking traffic, taunting federal agents, and otherwise trying to interfere with their duties. And then, in what video evidence pretty much shows was a deliberate attempt, she tried to run an agent over with her car, hitting him with her bumper…but then getting shot for her troubles.

Predictably, the anti-ICE Left was outraged. They became even more so after the narrative they originally attempted to build - that Renee Good was just a scared, lost mother trying to drop her kid off at school and get away from the Mean Orange Man’s Fascist Hordes - evapourated in light of decisive video evidence. Nevertheless, myself and many others in the Real Right expected that Minneapolis was going to become the epicenter for yet another series of George Floyd-style riots as the Left utilised the opportunity to bully the Trump administration into compliance and contrition as they did back in 2020. I mean, the playbook was right there - push and push and push until the dog bites back and then use that as an excuse to run wild, scare the normies into submission, and force the ratchet further left.

Yet, that hasn’t been happening. The expected riots and civil disorder have yet to materialise. This time around, the energy just does not seem like it’s there. Rather than hundreds of thousands or millions hitting the streets and entire city centres going up in flames, the Left can barely marshal a few hundred protestors at any particular protest, even in the larger cities. The average age of those who DO show up is around 70. We were all expecting fireworks…and all we got were those stupid snake things that just smoke and fizzle a little bit before leaving a soot stain on your driveway.

After all, the Left has to know that it’s now or never. If they don’t do something then the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. Their future voting pools (as well as some of their present one) is being deported. They could potentially lose dozens of electoral votes and House seats. Their foreign-grifter-to-donation money-laundering pipeline if being revealed and dismantled. Several of their politicians - including Gov. Tim Walz himself - potentially stand to be arrested and prosecuted. If they don’t get this stuff stopped cold and soon, the Left’s very existence as a viable political force could well be in jeopardy.

But still, the energy just doesn’t seem like it’s there, at least not nearly to the extent that it has been. I believe there are five overlapping reasons why this is the case, at least as far as their current exoteric response if concerned.

First, the funding is drying up. With the cuts in USAID and other NGO money funnels that went into effect back in October, their ability to gin up 2020-style rent-a-mobs doesn’t seem to be there. The best they can do now are the diehards who don’t have to be paid - the really ideological lefties and the old retired boomers still reliving their glory days from 1970. A lot of folks have been noticing that for all the sound and fury generated on social media, the actual numbers at these rallies have been…underwhelming. And this isn’t just something associated with the Renee Good protests, either. The last round of “No Kings” protests seemed to be running dry as well.

Second, they aren’t able to get the blacks on board. Other than the “intelligentsia” of professional black agitators, blacks seem to be sitting this one out. This is probably at least partly due to the aforementioned money problems. But also, there’s the simple fact of black ethnocentrism - if the victim isn’t black, they just don’t care. If it was another George Floyd, Minneapolis would be an orange glow visible from space right now. Some white lady got shot? Who cares? Their extreme ethnonarcissism undercuts progressive efforts to generate a “we’re all in this together against Bad Orange Man!” consensus. This hearkens back to the breakfast question:

“If you hadn’t had breakfast, how would you feel?”

“But I did have breakfast…?”

“If it had been a black woman who was shot, how would you feel?”

“But it wasn’t a black woman who was shot…”

Plus, there’s also the fact that it’s harder to get black people whipped up in support of illegal aliens and other foreigners. After all, in percentage terms, blacks are in the most direct competition with Latinos and other immigrants for blue collar jobs, cheap housing, and social spending bennies. Keeping those folks around isn’t exactly beneficial to them.

Third, there is a palpable “unrest fatigue” that seems to be broadly distributed among the American people. Since Trump was elected, it’s been one non-stop string of protests, one after another. When they’re not burning down Tesla dealerships, they’re assaulting federal officers. When they’re not closing down streets full of commuters trying to get to work while chanting about “No Kings” (what does this even mean?), they’re doing so in support of “kings” (i.e. dictators like Nicolas Maduro). The drumbeat is never-ending, in many cases literally so as some protestors have taken to keeping entire neighbourhoods up all night. It certainly isn’t helping their case that many of the same people attacking ICE agents for a justifiable self-defence shooting are the ones who cheered the Charlie Kirk assassination just a few months ago. It’s hard to give yourself the moral high ground when you have that on your record.

Fourth, despite some fake polling, there is a general feeling that the public doesn’t find the anti-ICE protests to be very compelling. This is probably because they don’t generally identify with the targets of deportation. Somalis who have stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer monies? Guatemalans who are driving down local blue-collar wages? Haitians committing crimes and eating Mr. Patches? These aren’t very sympathetic in the view of most people. It doesn’t help that the objects of the Left’s sympathies come from very difficult cultures which most definitely do not operate under anything close to Western norms, and who don’t really see anything wrong with committing crime and fraud if they can get away with it. When most Americans think of the “communities” that they want defended and strengthened, they’re not thinking of these folks.

Fifth, and perhaps most importantly, they’re actually getting significant pushback from the current administration, which is something they are not used to. Biden certainly let them do whatever they wanted. Even in Trump’s first administration, he let them run rampant and shape the narrative. This second time around, he seems to have learned some lessons. Instead of backing down, the administration has gone all in, flooding the zone with more ICE agents and standing by their guys in the field even as leftie “influencers” flog misinformation in an attempt to hype up emotions. This is not something that left-wing protestors are used to and it is demoralising to them. The playbook isn’t working so they’re scrambling to figure out their backup moves.

And they definitely will have some backup moves. As mentioned above, the Left knows it has to do something, anything. They can’t simply let the deportations and the fraud investigations and the voter roll purges and all the rest continue unopposed. So what can they do if the mass protesting angle is no longer really viable, and their exoteric presence in many cases actually turns public opinion against them? They’ll have to rely on other means, ones which the general normie public - high time preference and sportsball-addled as it is - are less aware of.

There’s always the tried-and-true stochastic terrorism angle. Instead of masses in the streets waving signs and impeding traffic, you have random lefties appearing out of the blue to try to run over federal agents or physically assault counterprotestors or whatever else. We’ve already been seeing them do this, too. As they get more desperate, we’ll probably see even more of these wackos try to take matters into their own hands, whipped up into a frenzy by the Left’s irresponsible rhetoric. The thing about stochastic terrorism is that it has a way of escalating since there is no “central group” which can be negotiated with and talked down. It’s just individual nutcases - like Renee Good - who have convinced themselves of the moral rightness of their delusions while having no emotional capacity to rein themselves in. Low IQ and left-wing ideology are a dangerous combination.

They’ll probably try to redouble the lawfare angle as well. The ideas are widespread among left-wing circles that “ICE aren’t really police” and that “ICE can’t touch American citizens” and so forth (these are all, by the way, quite incorrect). If you get hurt while being dragged out of your car for doing something stupid like trying to ram into an ICE vehicle, however, the legal liability is on you. Nevertheless, expect a host of frivolous lawsuits to hit the courts in the near future, and expect activist judges and biased juries to hand down rulings against the administration. Couple this with the continuation of judges handing down ridiculous-but-unfavourable decisions against Trump, and you see a recipe for the Left trying to overturn the will of the people as it was expressed through the last election. We may even see judges ramp up the effort to proactively intervene or even try to arrest administration officials. There has essentially been a judicial coup taking place for the past year as judges have overstepped far beyond their actual Article III powers into the realm of blatant manipulation of procedural outcomes.

As a last resort, they may actually try some version of secession or nullification, utilising the state and local-level subsidiary political power they control. From the language they’ve been using, this already seems like it’s on the table for them in some circles. While there are certainly some circumstances where nullification, and even secession, would be appropriate responses to federal overreach, opposing explicitly, constitutionally stated federal powers over immigration policy while trying to defend blatant fraud by both immigrants and your own political party is not one of them. Essentially, some on the Left would be willing to go so far as igniting another civil war just to keep the lid on their vote and financial fraud schemes.

These last few are things the Left will definitely invest their time into, knowing that sympathetic media will provide them with cover and narrative spinning. They’re losing the mass energy which they once enjoyed just a few years ago. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to go quietly into the night. In fact, like the rats in the box in those old respondent behaviour experiments by B.F. Skinner, their response to the button not working anymore is going to be to go nuts hitting the button even harder to get their rewards. The thing about the Left is that because progressives are so invested in the eschatological inevitability of their cause, threatening that never-ending “progress” only causes them to become more desperate and dangerous. So the next few months will be interesting, to say the least. However, if the Real Right and the Trump administration can stay the course, there’s a very real opportunity to actually break the Left and remove the threat they pose to our society.