RE: Statues, Monuments, and Monsters, OH MY... I introduce the "Nose of history".
Have you ever watched someone start a bar fight? It's pretty easy to do. First, you take offense to whatever they say. Doesn't matter what they say -- whatever it is, you twist it to be an insult.
Then, you stick your chest out and start pushing the other guy steadily backwards with it. Meanwhile, you keep your arms far out and to the side, palms open, so that it is "clear" to all the onlookers that you are "not starting the fight." And meanwhile, while you are steadily pushing him backwards with your chest, you get your face right into his, and steadily scream at him to "get off me man, get off me!" Helps if you make your screaming nice and juicy so spit lands in his eyes and nose and mouth. Accidentally, of course.
Few guys can take that kind of provocation without swinging or pushing back with their hands. At which point, it's on, because "he started it."
That's Antifa. They are itching for a fight. They are pushing as hard as they can with their chest, meanwhile they have their hands out and to the side demonstrating their "non-aggression" in the sense that they insist that their violence is only retaliatory. Because the other protestors started it, right? Insert eye roll.
So here's what is going to happen. And this is not a wish. I fervently hope this does not happen. But history works out such that eventually a bully will cross paths with someone who is just as violent if not more so than they are.
Antifa is antagonizing a part of society that tends to believe in being armed, and furthermore a part of society that more often than not tends to have had some formal training, either military or police. And some of those guys have the ability to reach out and touch people from a long ways away. And I'm predicting that, just like happened in the Maidan in Ukraine, eventually some of these Antifa folks are going to get picked off. And after that, few people will be interested in protesting any more. This will not be a solution. It will instead be the death knell for any chance of peaceful, democratic change in this country.
What happens then, I don't know. I still think that racism and sexism and all of those things that the snowflakes seem so twisted up over are being artificially used to start a color revolution. We'll know for sure if they all start to show up wearing purple.
The color revolutions, the Maidan in Ukraine - that's a very good point you have here. All those so-called revolutions were inspired and actively supported by the US, via George Soros in some cases. The new leaders to 'emerge' from those protests were hand-picked by the US. What did the protesters get out of their struggle? Nothing. The illusion that they have accomplished something. Then they were all sent home to resume their lives, that had not changed one bit. The new 'democratic' leaders couldn't care less about the lives and welfare of their faithful supporters. (It's a condition most leaders suffer from.)
This is probably what's going to happen in the US as well. When the forces manipulating the antifa crowds accomplish their goal of removing Trump or at lest rendering him harmless, there won't be any need for protests. Class dismissed.
Note the discrepancy in size between the few people that showed up for the free speech rally in Boston -- a few dozen, but 40,000 counter protestors? Anyone else wonder where the buses were parked?
You're missing the point,
These people get paid, they have benefits, they are "made men". They are fighting for money. They are fighting exactly why almost everyone fighting alongside Washington fought for, money, promises of wealth, iou notes. Yeah they are fighting for scraps from the table of the crown, but equally they are fighting for "freedom" as much as the colonial troops weren't fighting for money or over money.