There's a fantastic little miniseries from the BBC called 'I, Claudius', a fictionalized retelling of the Roman empire from roughly 24 B.C. to 54 A.D. Throughout the series, we see the rise and inevitable fall of multiple Roman emperors and how their reign impacts the empire.
One of those emperors, Caligula, was -- in a word -- insane. Historians speculate Caligula suffered from some form of mental illness, possibly epileptic psychosis, but the diagnosis is superfluous to historical fact. His reign as emperor was marked by delusion and debauchery. He made his horse a senator, believed he was a god and demanded to be worshipped as such, randomly executed people both in and out of government, and spent Rome to the brink of bankruptcy which lead to the seizure of personal estates and outright blackmail.
In short, his four years marked a time of deep, unsettling uncertainty for the Roman people. It was a reign of terror.
People are not meant to live with such uncertainty, and certainly are not meant to live (or die) at the whims of people with fragile temperaments. Societies are crippled by such chaos.
Yet we are living in a time of such chaos and we're not only tolerating such behaviors, we're rewarding them.
I've written quite a bit about Just Stop Oil, the group of environmentalist terrorists -- yes, terrorists -- whose sole purpose is the destruction of priceless works of art and disruption of daily life.
For years, they've made their 'point' by blocking traffic and throwing various substances -- from paint to powder to food -- on artwork and historical artifacts like Stonehenge.
While some of these terrorist have faced prison time for defacing Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' and blocking traffic, the punishments have not been consistent nor severe enough to put an end to their brand of terrorism.
How do I know this? Because they keep doing it. Hours after their comrades were sent to prison for defacing 'Sunflowers', the terrorists were back at it, throwing soup on another Van Gogh work.
Just Stop Oil are the biggest clowns in the country.
— Nicholas Lissack (@NicholasLissack) September 27, 2024
Only hours after two of their brain-dead comrades were sentenced, they’re back at it, defacing another Van Gogh! It’s beyond disgraceful.
Lock them all up already!! pic.twitter.com/JdFhS0D8Qy
Instead of being allowed to throw the soup -- let's face it, the guards saw them, patrons saw them and let it happen -- or immediately being tackled and detained, they get to engage in their performative act of terrorism.
And now the National Gallery has decided to punish all patrons by prohibiting liquids.
Following recent incidents within the Gallery it is now necessary to introduce increased security measures to ensure the safety of all who visit, National Gallery staff and the nation’s collection of paintings.
— National Gallery (@NationalGallery) October 17, 2024
No liquids can be brought into the National Gallery, with the… pic.twitter.com/OmCX6dqWHD
The entire post reads:
No liquids can be brought into the National Gallery, with the exception of baby formula, expressed milk and prescription medicines. We urge all visitors to bring minimal items with them including no large bags.
We anticipate it will take longer to access the Gallery and we apologise for this inconvenience in advance of your visit.
This, by the way, will do nothing to stop them. I am hardly an eco-terrorist, but if I were, I would simply put whatever substance I intended to use to deface a Monet into a plastic hip flask or one of those travel wallets you hide under your shirt. Surely the staff at the Gallery aren't going to pat down every visitor.
I wouldn't even have to go that far: I'd just pretend the liquid I carried was formula (baby bottles can be had at the dollar store, after all), or breast milk, or served a medicinal purpose.
Mark my words: another defacing will happen, even with this ban in place.
How do I know this? The day after it was announced, Just Stop Oil demanded a meeting with the National Gallery:
“Nice art collection you have there. Shame if something happened to it”
— Mary Harrington (@moveincircles) October 18, 2024
On the climate racketeers and the museum https://t.co/mGlFvWPe6f
Which amounts to nothing more than blackmail. They are the criminals here, and they should have no negotiating power that isn't done through the plate-glass windows of a prison visitors room.
They have no intention of stopping. The chaos, uncertainty, and destruction are the point.
Getting the National Gallery to punish innocent patrons with liquid bans is the point.
The mental anguish and social chaos is exactly what they use to achieve their ends. This is why they damage artwork and block traffic: it doesn't advance their cause, but it hurts people. It makes us wonder if today will be the day we're late for work because they're lying prone across the freeway and snarling traffic. Or if today is the day they forever damage 'The Last Supper' or the 'Mona Lisa' so future generations only know of these artworks through history textbooks.
The eco-terrorists know, just like all terrorists, that people cannot live with the stress of chaos and uncertainty for long. It takes a toll, mentally, on people and eventually they snap.
They are hoping that the snap will happen in their favor: just give them what they want, and you can go back to bringing bottled water into the National Gallery.
Which will be lit by candles and accessible only by foot, if the Just Stop Oil goons get their way, mind you.
But the larger point is this: we live in a civil society. Or, we should. The Left doesn't want to, because that requires that they occasionally lose a battle and not get their way from time to time.
For the Left it's always a 'heads we win, tails you lose' mentality. The Left refuses to accept those rules of civil society and the rules of democracy because they cannot accept they might sometimes lose. I would argue they truly believe so deeply in the moral righteousness of their various causes, that they don't deserve to lose. They'd be wrong, of course, but it offers an insight into their mentality.
When they win, they ruthlessly enforce their will. When they lose, they take to the streets and reject the will of the people. During the BLM riots of 2020 and the subsequent aftermath, rather than working within the democratic system to do things like remove Confederate statues, they toppled them, melted them down, and challenged authorities to do anything in response. After the the October 7, 2023 terror attacks, they acted like the administrators of Columbia were picking the sites the IDF targeted. They didn't try to convince the public at large that their views are correct. They didn't try to persuade people to agree with them. They jumped immediately to rioting, civil unrest, and acts of terrorism.
On top of it all, they also demand not to be punished for their behavior and their crimes. During the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, the activists knew and accepted the fact they'd be harrassed, beaten, arrested, and jailed for what they were doing. They accepted that there were consequences to their actions, but felt their cause was worth the suffering.
The modern-day Left, however, has decided if they can't beat their opposition at the ballot box, they'll beat them -- sometimes literally -- at the barricades. When administrators at Columbia even offer mild consequences, they play the victim card. When authorities arrest BLM protesters it's 'racism' and 'fascism' and not the restoration of civil order. In other words, they want to have their cake and eat it, too.
This is, of course, untenable. Society cannot thrive, let alone live, when subject to the whims of toddlers and tyrants.
