Are there stars born among the flames? Like maybe the next Barack Obama?

In his book Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky laid down rules for radicals to follow. In American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson tries to figure out what the rules are for our modern-day radicals.

After watching hours of such footage of mayhem and destruction, one can glean a few rules that the rioters apparently followed quite religiously. And they are often disconcerting if not bizarre. Here is a sample of 10.

Rule No. 1: Selfies
...In our culture of narcissism, rioters seemed intent on obsessing with their smartphones, often to capture their criminality with as many selfies as possible, as well as recording friends’ crimes in action. It was almost as if looting was envisioned as performance art.

Rule No. 2: Masks
...What will be the governors’ new narrative about masks and social distancing: if you wish to protest, even loot or burn, the state grants you permission to violate quarantine, but only as long as you don’t try to reopen an urgent care or a florist shop?

Rule No. 3: Race
In a crusade to end racial hierarchy, some protestors seemed adamant in practicing racial separatism and spacing. Young, white, single, childless, upper-middle-class kids, perhaps many living in their parents’ basements, are usually stigmatized as Pajama Boys. So often they compensate by posing as hardened deadly revolutionaries. But, in fact, they also consider themselves precious assets and therefore more equal than others. They have professional futures and with them resumes that a felony indictment might sidetrack. So they ease back in the shadows to plot grand strategy on social media and issue periodic orders where to assemble and which store to torch.

Rule No. 4: Staples
Why do not the soldiers of a revolution that seeks to bring social justice to the underclass that is deprived of the very staples of daily existence, focus on life essentials? Why instead do they hunt Louis Vuitton bags, Nike sneakers, iPhones, and laptops? Are these treasures edible? Is the point to destroy capitalist triflings or to run off with them? What is the logic of officials in major cities who plead with Walmart to stay in the inner-city, after its unguarded stores were left to be attacked and ruined?

Rule No. 5: Class
Those in academia, Hollywood, and the media count on rioters to be arrested for the cause, and they certainly will generously provide electronic bail and moral encouragement on Twitter. The heroism of those with two-by-fours and rocks will be championed from the Upper West Side and Menlo Park. The elite Left asks only of the looters to keep clear of Palos Verdes Estates and not enter Westchester.

After this is all over, it is assumed that their present empathy in a moment of revolutionary fervor does not mean that the children of those arrested will school with those of their abettors. Looters and rioters will not be welcomed as noble peasants in the sacrosanct feudal keeps of Presidio Heights, and they should not expect a dinner invitation from the Hollywood Hills. The Malibu manor walls of Cher and Barbra Streisand will not come down with the revolution. Cyber-solidarity between left-wing rich and poor, white and black, ends when the last rock is thrown and the final match is lit.

Rule No. 6: The Children
Demonstrators never know who is among their arrested. Take, for example, New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio’s daughter, who sympathizes with the looting her dad seems to fuel. Or Keith Ellison’s councilman son who praises Antifa and wants to abolish the police. Perhaps consider Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s daughter, who was supplying Antifa with tips about the arrival of the National Guard. Or U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar’s (D-Minn.) daughter, who was shouting that the United States is racist from the barricades.

On the battlefield, the police chief, the mayor, the state attorney general, and the governor are strangely seen as allies, so much so that some seem willing to give over their Twitter-warrior children for the cause, at least momentarily in zero-bail states.

Rule No.7: Because . . . Reasons
What was the purpose of setting St. John’s Church on fire, breaking into a Lincoln automobile dealership, or defacing the World War II monument and the Lincoln Memorial?

Rule No. 8: Media
Nothing is more embarrassing for journalists on camera, while assuring America of the demonstrators’ passivity and lawfulness, than to see flames lick the top of their television monitors.

Rule No. 9: Stuff Happens

...Are rioters fans of the protocols of the rogue cops who feel they can beat up the arrested to advance law and order—as they burn, loot, and beat to show us our shared future of racial ecumenicalism and tolerance?

Rule No. 10: Mixed-up Messaging

...Were the thefts from Nike stores to remind us of an impoverished barefoot nation? Or were the massed protests and shoulder-to-shoulder looting a planned scientific shock experiment to show us that social distancing had become outdated, or the lockdown was far past its prime, and the virus tired and in retreat?

Was the point of these Trump-haters to end the lockdown by massing without masks, and thereby jumpstarting the economy to get Trump re-elected?

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