I am very disappointed in a lot of youth in our country. Countless times in recent days we’ve watched on TV and social media total disrespect displayed by kids as they antagonize police and reporters. They did not benefit from being swat on the fanny when they did wrong and learned to be impudent twits. I’m talking the Antifa and BLM anarchists like the ones who mobbed and harassed a TV news crew in Seattle. They’re aggressively bating cops and news reporters into getting rough with them so their friends armed with cell phone cameras can capture video of a cop or establishment types which they can sell to CNN to be looped over and over as “evidence” that all police are bad. The restraint of police and normal people against the juvenile stupidity of these 20 somethings must be remarkable.

Some rotten parenting has gone on in the last 25 to 30 years.

Lots of us who know the Bible know what II Timothy 3 said: “You can be certain that in the last days there will be some very hard times.  People will love only themselves and money. They will be proud, stuck-up, rude, and disobedient to their parents. They will also be ungrateful, godless, heartless, and hateful. Their words will be cruel, and they will have no self-control or pity. These people will hate everything that is good.  They will be sneaky, reckless, and puffed up with pride. Instead of loving God, they will love pleasure.”

* * * * *

I’m troubled by the speech given by Samson Gonzalez at the recent demonstration at Whitmore Park in answer to the George Floyd death in Minnesota.

Samson handed me his copy because I missed many of his words when speaking to someone else in the crowd. Samson seemed like a nice guy but I wondered who indoctrinated him into this twisted leftist ideology.

He sees an America that I don’t see.

Samson said: “I myself have grown tired of the corrupted system in which we call our home. I grew up with the understandings that America is the land of the free and home of the American dream. But what I see is no dream. I see hatred. I see death and most importantly a see corruption.”

What part of this am I missing? This is coming from someone whose ancestors migrated to America for better opportunities from another country and he’s privileged to be attending UC Merced. Maybe he would have a better shot at a better life in say Venezuela which has been destroyed by socialism; or in Mexico where 44.2 percent of its citizens live in abject poverty with little chance of getting a decent education.

Samson obviously has been molded by a dishonest cable TV news media and education system overrun with leftist professors. Perhaps it came from his father, whom he compared police to criminals with the only exception being police only they have the authority to kill. Those are dad’s words.

I remind you that Samson was also the same young man who said the bad far outweighed the good in police and white people. Those are his words.

* * * * *

It’s no wonder why our children are being indoctrinated. Look at some of their teachers. Teachers like Pawtucket school teacher Derrick Garforth, 34, who was charged with felony desecration of the Christopher Columbus monument in Rhode Island.

* * * * *

Now Aunt Jemima is being labeled a racist symbol. Are you kidding me? Nancy Green (1834-1923) was born a slave and yet became an American success story. She was hired in 1890 by the R.T. Davis Milling Company in St. Joseph to represent “Aunt Jemima,” an advertising character named after a song from a minstrel show. Davis Milling had recently acquired the formula to a ready-mixed, self-rising pancake flour and were looking to employ an African-American woman to promote their product. In 1893, Green was introduced as Aunt Jemima at the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago, where it was her job to operate a pancake-cooking display. Her amicable personality and talent as a cook helped establish a successful showing of the product, for which she received a medal and certificate from the Expo officials. She was offered a lifetime contract to adopt the Aunt Jemima moniker and promote the pancake mix. Nancy Green was a wonderful human being, one of the organizers of the Olivet Baptist Church. Her career allowed Green to become an activist and engage in antipoverty programs. She was one of the first African-American missionary workers and used her stature as a spokesperson to become a leading advocate against poverty and in favor of equal rights for individuals in Chicago.

Now these modern-day ignoramuses are desecrating a successful black woman’s place in history.

All this cleansing of history the left doesn’t like reminds me of an episode of The Waltons where the folks on Walton’s Mountain were burning German books after the rise of Hitler. Book worm and wordsmith John Boy Walton is mortified at the ignorance that burning books would rectify matters. He prized thought, good or bad. In an impassioned speech against their behavior, he asks if they know what they’re burning. He reaches into the heap of books and starts reading, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…”

They all realized how foolish they had been.

* * * * *

Have any of these young people ever read the novel 1984? It was written in 1946 by George Orwell (1903-50) and gives a scary picture of a futuristic totalitarian government. The concepts envisioned by Orwell are coming to pass and it’s scaring those of us who love freedom and history. “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

That’s right. The Party is tearing down statues.

The Democrats have kowtowed to political correctness and Black Lives Matter and removed the iconic statue of Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella in the State Capitol rotunda. The 1883 statue was a beautiful work for art crafted in Italy, and seen in the background when Ronald Reagan took the oath of governor in 1967. It’s a shame that it’s been removed.

Columbus changed the world by courageously braving the seas and landing in the Bahamas that would lead to the colonization of America. He was a historical figure in the same vein as Neil Armstrong. While he had his shortcomings, his achievement cannot be ignored. Columbus had his faults like every human being who walked the planet. So was Martin Luther King but I don’t see the call for removing his name from schools. Since we’re eradicating any memory of Junipero Serra maybe we should cleanse King’s names from street across the land. Shall we go full frontal assault on renaming every school with JFK’s name because he was a sexual predator in the workplace? Should the name of Lyndon B. Johnson be removed from the Houston Space Center because his multiple displays of vulgarity, including his naked exposure to people on Air Force One? And why isn’t there any call to take the names of avowed racist Democrat Senators James Eastland and Robert C. Byrd off of their memorial highways?

Most Americans realize what’s taking place is bull crap. That’s why when HBO announced that they were removing the movie classic Gone with the Wind that sales shot through the roof.

With the ridiculous suggestion to get rid of police, gun sales are booming. Americans value their security and protest insane ideas from the left.

Think about it. We have nearly 18,000 police agencies in the United States with about 686,665 full-time officers who engage in millions of interactions with the public on a daily basis. Most officers conduct themselves professionally as they deal with a vast myriad of rotten apples who treat them like dirt. But when one bad cop handles an arrest badly in Minneapolis and the cable news media’s 24/7 focus on that one bad incident, there is an emotional reaction to eliminate all of them. Hardly a logical reaction but that’s what you get with the Left. But I digress since no defunding of police will happen outside of liberal run cities.

* * * * *

Have you notice the #MeToo movement is over now that presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden has been accused of a 1993 sexual assault by Tara Reade? In an interview with the AP, she said that she was asked by a supervisor to bring Biden his gym bag as he was on his way to the Senate gymnasium. She said Biden pushed her against a wall in the basement of a Capitol Hill office building, groped her and penetrated her with his fingers.

Where is the feminist outrage like we saw displayed when Bret Kavanaugh was accused of an unwanted sexual advance back in his high school days? Why the sellout to their own values? We know why, of course, because Biden is their only hope of taking out Trump.

* * * * *

Do you know how many stories I’ve written about people who crash their cars, run from the scene and minutes later call to report that that car was stolen? It’s the oldest trick in the book when you crash your car because you’re drunk or high on drugs.

Last week was a first, however. Andralas Wallace Matthews, 21, of Ceres, crashed his car near Visalia and left his passengers dead or seriously injured and then called a friend for a ride home. He didn’t care about the lives he just destroyed, only about getting home. He then called to report his car had been hijacked – presumably by his three passengers – and that they beat him up for it, even though he had driven the car.

I can’t think of a more despicable young man.

Maybe our schools can teach some morals since everyone has abandoned the churches, the place where morals are taught.

* * * * *

My column gets teased on our Facebook page and last week something interesting was posted in response to my column. The intro pulled from the piece read: “I used to be a Democrat when I was in college. I thought Democrats were for the little man. I started wising up to what was going on around 1991. I saw that the Democrat Party was not concerned with bettering the lives of Americans and getting them to self-sufficiency.”

It’s probably not very smart for a Century 21 agent in Turlock to be slamming a newspaper and spreading false information but Colleen McCue Perry risked alienating clients when she posted: “Ceres Courier at one time was respected and fair and honest. With remarks like this now I know why rumors report they are going out of business.”

She is what you might call an internet troll because her “at one time” comment does fly since I doubt if she was reading the Courier prior to 1987 when I became editor of the Courier  and nothing has changed about my political views in over 30 years. Perry apparently has trouble understanding the concept of an editorial versus a news story. She’s likely the one ginning up the rumor mill about us going out of business because it’s not true. She must be confused with the Modesto Bee, which has done the incredible shrinking act over the last 5-10 years and now has no offices.

She didn’t like us removing her comment – which was done because she was spreading false information. She later posted it again and it was removed. She then claimed we were against free speech. We are a newspaper so of course we believe in free speech and free press. But we have a right to limit speech on our platform which is intended to spread misinformation (rumors), especially when subsequent posts from her suggested our sister paper the Turlock Journal was also going down the tubes.

Maybe wishful thinking.

* * * * *

More insanity. Did you hear about the San Diego Gas & Water employee who was fired because somebody suggested his knuckle-popping one mile from a Black Lives Matter rally in Poway was a white supremacy gesture? Apparently the left sees the OK hand gesture – made by touching the thumb and index finger to make a circle with the remaining three fingers held outstretched – as a white supremacist rather than an OK that it has represented since 1839. Apparently this started as a hoax in early 2017 when somebody on social media began what they called “Operation O-KKK,” to see if they could trick the wider world — and especially liberals and the mainstream media — into believing that the innocuous gesture was actually a clandestine symbol of white power. It worked. The stupid masses fell for it.

Emmanuel Cafferty, a Latino, said he was nowhere near the protest and was only cracking his knuckles with his hand out the window when somebody snapped a photo and made a social media charge – which was later recanted. He has asked for his job back and the dumb utility is not going to.

It’s insane things like this which are firing up the conservative base in November. 

This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or Morris Newspaper Corp. of CA. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com