Ryan: Buddy Holly, Kobe Bryant, and the rest of us

Photo by Sean Ryan

Buddy Holly played his last show at Surf Ballroom, site of the Democratic Wing Ding. Right there in Clear Lake, Iowa, as part of the disastrous and possibly illegal "Winter Dance Party" tour. Tickets cost $1.25.

The show didn't sell out, partly because it was an unplanned gig. And partly because the tour itself was a nightmare, a series of disasters which would go on to haunt the teenage heart of America for years and years.

These were the first wild days of Rock N' Roll. The girls hurled their waists with some new primal dance, luminous in their bright poodle skirts and their delicate hair bundled.

And the boys in blue jeans pretended not to notice, brittle underneath it all, chewing at the inside of their cheeks or rubbing their sweaty palm on their thigh.

About a thousand kids. Mostly high school, teenagers, who had to smuggle in their booze, who only wanted to know love and had to borrow a car and drive there from anywhere, on a school night no less.

And where was Buddy Holly?

Was he really right there in Clear Lake like the posters and disc jockeys had promised?

The teenagers shook as they stood, waiting.

Most of them had seen Buddy Holly on the Ed Sullivan Show, jittery in black and white. They had heard him on the their favorite radio station. Had played his single in high fidelity.

They just knew he was going to be bigger than Elvis. Everyone did. He was going to be the musical king of the nation.

*

The musicians, with a clear look at the audience, played along. But under all the stagelit excitement there were hiccups and obstacles that they hated.

This tour was rickety.

A few days earlier, drummer Carl Bunch had to be hospitalized for frostbite, on account of the horrible travel conditions and the near-arctic weather, so the band had an onstage rotation.

That night, at the Surf Ballroom, Buddy Holly started behind the drumkit, with a hat down over his face.

"Well who's the drummer?" one of the performers hollered, grinning so wide and phony with a wink.

"We call him … Buddy Holly!"

And the crowd catapulted into a frenzy. Screech screech screech. There he was! Buddy Holly!

The teenagers loved the world all around them. Isn't the world so sweet to us, and youthful? Pressing into the stage, and dancing and dancing. How wild, how freeing, how perfect that must have felt.

*

I started writing this story last August, while visiting Clear Lake, Iowa. Worked on it for two months. I have run stories about Iowa leading up to the Iowa caucuses.

For this story, I wanted to know, How does the loss of a cultural idol affect us?

With news of Kobe Bryant's death, the Buddy Holly story seemed inappropriate. I asked around. Mentors and editors and my wife, who is a counselor, and my father. Should I pull the story? Was it exploitative? My work is usually guided by optimism and comedy, a striving for humanity. If I bungled the story, I'd be violating that.

All last week in Los Angeles, clouds. Beneath any sunshine, the breeze was especially nervous. A dense fog had covered the city.
"You depressed me with that cold, and very sad story," my father told me. "I've read many Buddy Holly stories and I saw the movie, but that one was straight-to-the-heart good. I went to sleep thinking of cold Iowa cornfields in January, and I could almost picture the scene in the ballroom before they flew."

*

The band was exhausted from the tour, but they hung out with the kids in the audience every time there was a break.

The hidden drama of the night was Holly's struggle to make the flight happen. He couldn't handle another grueling bus trek. He ran the scenario over. Then before anyone arrived at an answer it was back to the stage or "Will you sign my record?"

If they flew to Fargo, North Dakota, they could arrive ahead of everyone else for the next show in Moorhead, Minnesota, giving them time to do laundry. And it cannot be stressed how severely they all needed clean clothes. Holly also wanted a chance to rest. He was tired. He was alone. Far from his wife, his wife who was pregnant with their first child, and here he was freezing in the winter far from Texas.

Everyone was bloody sick of the cold tour bus.

Their clothes were filthy. And cold. Everything, brittle. Teeth like mallets on a xylophone. Cold.

They went through five buses in those 11 days, school buses mostly, broken and wonky and unfit for any sort of travel.

As the "Winter Dance Party" tour snaked the Midwest in January, temperatures dove 30 degrees below freezing. Several of the musicians caught the flu.

A cold. Whatever else.

Who ever knows.

*

And they'd just traveled 350 miles on the bus. It would be another 365 miles to the gig in Moorhead. The day after that, another 325 miles back in the direction they'd just come from.

And it was cold in that dressing room as they mulled it all over. They had cash in their pockets, plenty. They could afford the $36 each.

So Holly said, "Let's take a plane."

*

To this day, the Surf Ballroom has the phone Holly used to call his wife. He told her that he'd be flying next gig. Done with that bus.

They'd only been married for six months. He was 22 years old. She was supposed to have gone on tour with him, but something held her back. Pregnancy maybe. But for the rest of her life she blamed herself, always wondering how things would have played out had she been there that night.

*

There were only four seats in the 1947 single-engined, V-tailed Beechcraft 35 Bonanza, so three bandmembers and a pilot.

Their pilot was himself exhausted after a 17-hour day. A 21-year-old local with only 700 flying hours — 1,500 is the standard. He was ill-equipped for disastrous weather. He relied on the flight instruments, didn't know how to land a mechanically-damaged plane.

It was like handing your car keys to a 13-year-old with decent coordination and saying, "take me through the mountains" right as it starts snowing.

It could go well. Or the slightest impediment could be needlessly fatal and who should ever have to deal with that?

*

Guitarist Tommy Allsup had reserved a seat on the plane, but Richie Valens kept pleading with him to give it to him.

At some point, Allsup shuffled out of the theater, went to a nearby gas station, and came back, left and came back, and Valens was still there in the green room pleading.

Which was odd because Valens had a tremendous fear of planes, had constant nightmares about hurtling down out of the sky.

And for good reason. Two years earlier, the day he stayed home from school to attend his grandfather's funeral, he heard an explosion and looked outside just as a plane was collapsing downward like a comet, a flaming mess.

He and his family rushed to the crash site. Turns out, the plane collided into the playground of Valen's school. Three students died, 90 were injured. One of the dead was Valens' best friend. Had Valens been there that day, he would have died beside him.

After that, he receded into himself and focused on music, and when he looked up, he had become a cultural renegade.

Pretty much an alternate ending to "Donnie Darko."

*

But Valens, the man who turned "La Bamba" into a massive hit, wouldn't let it go. He wanted on the seat. He wanted on that plane. So Allsup and Valens decided that they would flip for it.

Someone produced a half-dollar coin.

Valens called heads.

Tink!

Hear the whirl of air as the coin spirals up into the unknown. Wobble wobble spin and smack, flat and smooth like a tiny silver dinner plate.

As it lands like a timpani flare.

Feel the weight of the moment right before there's an answer.

The moment without a heads or a tails.

It's a moment that lasts centuries.

If it's your life, you build empires of doubt in that moment.

Because any outcome will help determine the unknowable shape of your future. Although you don't realize it because you're just trying to get a private plane ride.

Heads.

Allsup lost.

Years later he said, "That's the first time I've won anything in my life."

Waylon Jennings was meant to be on the flight, but he gave his seat to J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, who had the flu. Jennings took the bus instead, and Buddy Holly jokingly told Jennings that he hoped he would freeze on the bus.

"I hope your ol' plane crashes," Jennings joked.

He felt guilty about that remark for the rest of his life. Blamed himself for what happened.

*

At 12:40 a.m., Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson arrived at Mason City Airport. Richardson had $272.53 and and a guitar pick and a pair of dice in his pockets. His gold wedding ring sparked like a mirror on his finger.

At the airport the weather was fine, some light snow was all. But a vicious cold front was looming just out of view. The pilot never got an accurate weather report. The plane took off at 12:55 a.m.

Five minutes later, silence on the radio. The operator couldn't get a response. Then the blizzard plummeted down and nobody could see a thing in any place or direction. There would be no rescue flight, no immediate rescue.

The blizzard was so bad that nobody could reach the crash site until the morning, 10 hours later.

The plane hadn't made it far. Six miles northwest of the airport. Most likely, the pilot experienced what's called spatial disorientation, coupled with a rush of vertigo. That — with the low clouds and the snow and the violent wind and no visibility — he lost sense of what was up and what was down, then chose the wrong direction.

Down.

Tails.

Because the plane smashed into the frozen ground at about 170 mph.

For years, the scene haunted the Iowans who found Holly and the others. Like the man who had to identify the bodies, he never outlived those memories. Even the crime scene photographer and the mortician got squirmy. They had faced the cruelty of immediate loss played out in the most violent possible way.

Holly's wife was at home when a friend called and told her not to turn on the TV. She hung up and turned on the TV.

"We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin," said the announcer. "Three young singers who soared to the heights of show business of the current Rock N' Roll craze were killed today in the crash of a light plane in an Iowa snow flurry…." Blink. Collapse. Blink. Collapse. And her vision surged and her body sank. That's how she found out? After the rest of the world? Here she is, carrying the man's child, and this is how she finds out?

*

Did you know that all the major eulogies in newspapers or shows or news websites are pre-written? Periodically updated, like a resume, so that, when that person dies, there's a story ready.

It's morbid, really.

Why can't journalists just keep the admiration for these cultural icons alive in each moment, like a normal person? Money. And prestige. But also compassion. Get the story out first. But make it the best.

If you have to give a speech at a funeral, how will you handle it? Will you break open, sobbing, and rush off the stage. Or will you remain composed, harnessing the deep, complicated sadness and beauty alive, and bring everyone in the room to tears? How much of what you do is for yourself? And how much is for others?

*

Earlier that morning, some farmer outside Clear Lake looked out at his field as he chomped his Quaker Oats and said to himself, "Now what in the hell.

Three music legends, heaped around into a frozen terrain. On one frosted landscape. A big ugly cornfield plashed white with ice and snow, almost metallic, certainly gross, but beautiful in its repose, in a rusty dumpster of bright-black morning light.

Meanwhile the earth did not care. Nature had no opinion. It only shook and offered more chaos.

A formidable wind.

A treacherous breeze.

A spindrift hate of ice and snow and blood and subtraction.

All four men died immediately. Thank God for that, is what I say.

When the sheriffs found Buddy Holly, not far from the fuselage, slumped into the ground, he had $193 cash in his pocket. The coroner's fee was $11.65, so they deducted that, making the total amount of physical money that Buddy Holly died with $181.35. At the time, he was worth $1 million.
In all the ice and snow, the sheriffs could see his yellow leather jacket. He was no longer innocent. He had traveled and lived and dreamt and loved. He had gotten married.
He was to have become a father.
He had traversed life best as any of us can.
He sang in an enchanting way. He grunted into microphones. He was supposed to be bigger than Elvis. He was so damn young.
*
A decade after Holly's death, folk singer Don McLean wrote "American Pie," a tribute to Holly as a symbol of our country. McLean declared Holly's death-date, February 3, 1959 "the day that music died."

Did you write the book of love
And do you have faith in God aboveIf the Bible tells you so?
Do you believe in rock and roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?

Innocence determines a lot of things, but most of all it will make a disaster so much uglier and more devastating.
If your hero dies, you ache in a newly cumbersome way. The after-light seems dimmer.

It's not our fault that we, as Americans, are innocent. How do you think we keep going? If we were cynics, we would never have formed a nation, let alone made it through a Civil War, two world wars, everything else, too much to even fathom, because it continues, as recently as this Sunday, with Kobe Bryant.

Optimism and laughter are the two greatest coping mechanisms for the condition of life, and they do well with innocence.

In America, optimism is a natural reaction. Dream and dream, we're taught. So we dream. And it is awful when you're yanked from a dream and wake up to a disaster.

But, behind it all, there's a spirit that is ready for the next great adventure, along the sacred frontier.

Once a year, we celebrate our independence from Britain, with explosions of gun-powdered color that decorate the heat, and tiptoe each river, and allude to the heavens.

*

Now imagine that it's 1959.

Rock 'N' Roll just burst to life. But you live in Iowa, in the winter, so there's not a lot happening.

And you see a flier that says Buddy Holly is playing in Clear Lake. Tonight. A Monday. You are 17, with all the love and rebellion of the nation in your eyes.

You are enamored of the sounds of pop music. In the car, you hear it and you smile, a bright wind through your hair. You love America's unique features. The limitless sunsets, and daunting mountain ranges, and glinting skyscrapers, and you have gawked up at them while holding a cheeseburger and a Coca-Cola.

You love Hollywood with all those starlit celebrities who draw you nearer and nearer, as close to the screen as possible. You have a father who fought the Nazis and a grandpa who fought the Nazis' fathers.

So you do the American thing, and borrow your mother's Pontiac Catalina, and you and your friends just drive, 80 miles of farmlands heaping with snow, to Surf Ballroom.

Imagine that car ride. Smoking cigarettes, blaring the radio, taking rips of whiskey from a flask, as you slide along the road. You enjoy the moments when the pale sunlight drapes over you, even though it's still winter, when the cornfields bend at the will of the Canadian draft.

Entire 15-minute-spans pass without your seeing another car. You sing and laugh and smile. You tell all the jokes you know, you even tell some of your secrets.

You are ready to find love. You ramble about the girl or boy you will meet at the concert, as the band plays "Peggy Sue." Maybe you'll even cozy up to one another in a booth. Maybe you'll get married. You are ready to witness magic. You are magical. Adulthood does not scare you, but it definitely scares you.

You wiggle in your seat the closer you get to Clear Lake. You are ready to see Buddy Holly with your own eyes.
Maybe you unwittingly drive past the field where his plane will crash later that night.

But you could not in your most depraved thoughts imagine something so awful. It doesn't even occur to you as a possibility.
You are 20 minutes from the ballroom, wondering what is Buddy doing right this instant?

You are in the middle of the American commotion. And every time you look out at the landscape, you think, "All of this represents something much bigger, doesn't it?"

The human world doesn't ever change so much. When someone important dies, we all suffer. A cultural legend is unique. Artist, politician, musician, master chef, comedian. An athlete — an NBA legend. They shape our lives and fill us with answers. Or they at least fill us with enough comfort to get through any given moment.

Because we are not Buddy Holly. We are those teenagers heading to that ballroom, in that car ride, passing those icy cornfields, looking out at snow-dappled farmlands, on that February evening in 1959. We have the multiplying light to our star-pointed eyes.

New installments come Mondays and Thursdays. Check out my Twitter. Email me at kryan@blazemedia.com

Could China OWN our National Parks?

Jonathan Newton / Contributor | Getty Images

The left’s idea of stewardship involves bulldozing bison and barring access. Lee’s vision puts conservation back in the hands of the people.

The media wants you to believe that Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is trying to bulldoze Yellowstone and turn national parks into strip malls — that he’s calling for a reckless fire sale of America’s natural beauty to line developers’ pockets. That narrative is dishonest. It’s fearmongering, and, by the way, it’s wrong.

Here’s what’s really happening.

Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized.

The federal government currently owns 640 million acres of land — nearly 28% of all land in the United States. To put that into perspective, that’s more territory than France, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom combined.

Most of this land is west of the Mississippi River. That’s not a coincidence. In the American West, federal ownership isn’t just a bureaucratic technicality — it’s a stranglehold. States are suffocated. Locals are treated as tenants. Opportunities are choked off.

Meanwhile, people living east of the Mississippi — in places like Kentucky, Georgia, or Pennsylvania — might not even realize how little land their own states truly control. But the same policies that are plaguing the West could come for them next.

Lee isn’t proposing to auction off Yellowstone or pave over Yosemite. He’s talking about 3 million acres — that’s less than half of 1% of the federal estate. And this land isn’t your family’s favorite hiking trail. It’s remote, hard to access, and often mismanaged.

Failed management

Why was it mismanaged in the first place? Because the federal government is a terrible landlord.

Consider Yellowstone again. It’s home to the last remaining herd of genetically pure American bison — animals that haven’t been crossbred with cattle. Ranchers, myself included, would love the chance to help restore these majestic creatures on private land. But the federal government won’t allow it.

So what do they do when the herd gets too big?

They kill them. Bulldoze them into mass graves. That’s not conservation. That’s bureaucratic malpractice.

And don’t even get me started on bald eagles — majestic symbols of American freedom and a federally protected endangered species, now regularly slaughtered by wind turbines. I have pictures of piles of dead bald eagles. Where’s the outrage?

Biden’s federal land-grab

Some argue that states can’t afford to manage this land themselves. But if the states can’t afford it, how can Washington? We’re $35 trillion in debt. Entitlements are strained, infrastructure is crumbling, and the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, and National Park Service are billions of dollars behind in basic maintenance. Roads, firebreaks, and trails are falling apart.

The Biden administration quietly embraced something called the “30 by 30” initiative, a plan to lock up 30% of all U.S. land and water under federal “conservation” by 2030. The real goal is 50% by 2050.

That entails half of the country being taken away from you, controlled not by the people who live there but by technocrats in D.C.

You think that won’t affect your ability to hunt, fish, graze cattle, or cut timber? Think again. It won’t be conservatives who stop you from building a cabin, raising cattle, or teaching your grandkids how to shoot a rifle. It’ll be the same radical environmentalists who treat land as sacred — unless it’s your truck, your deer stand, or your back yard.

Land as collateral

Moreover, the U.S. Treasury is considering putting federally owned land on the national balance sheet, listing your parks, forests, and hunting grounds as collateral.

What happens if America defaults on its debt?

David McNew / Stringer | Getty Images

Do you think our creditors won’t come calling? Imagine explaining to your kids that the lake you used to fish in is now under foreign ownership, that the forest you hunted in belongs to China.

This is not hypothetical. This is the logical conclusion of treating land like a piggy bank.

The American way

There’s a better way — and it’s the American way.

Let the people who live near the land steward it. Let ranchers, farmers, sportsmen, and local conservationists do what they’ve done for generations.

Did you know that 75% of America’s wetlands are on private land? Or that the most successful wildlife recoveries — whitetail deer, ducks, wild turkeys — didn’t come from Washington but from partnerships between private landowners and groups like Ducks Unlimited?

Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized. When you break it, you fix it. When you profit from the land, you protect it.

This is not about selling out. It’s about buying in — to freedom, to responsibility, to the principle of constitutional self-governance.

So when you hear the pundits cry foul over 3 million acres of federal land, remember: We don’t need Washington to protect our land. We need Washington to get out of the way.

Because this isn’t just about land. It’s about liberty. And once liberty is lost, it doesn’t come back easily.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

EXPOSED: Why the left’s trans agenda just CRASHED at SCOTUS

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

You never know what you’re going to get with the U.S. Supreme Court these days.

For all of the Left’s insane panic over having six supposedly conservative justices on the court, the decisions have been much more of a mixed bag. But thank God – sincerely – there was a seismic win for common sense at the Supreme Court on Wednesday. It’s a win for American children, parents, and for truth itself.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s state ban on irreversible transgender procedures for minors.

The mostly conservative justices stood tall in this case, while Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson predictably dissented. This isn’t just Tennessee’s victory – 20 other red states that have similar bans can now breathe easier, knowing they can protect vulnerable children from these sick, experimental, life-altering procedures.

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, saying Tennessee’s law does not violate the Equal Protection Clause. It’s rooted in a very simple truth that common sense Americans get: kids cannot consent to permanent damage. The science backs this up – Norway, Finland, and the UK have all sounded alarms about the lack of evidence for so-called “gender-affirming care.” The Trump administration’s recent HHS report shredded the activist claims that these treatments help kids’ mental health. Nothing about this is “healthcare.” It is absolute harm.

The Left, the ACLU, and the Biden DOJ screamed “discrimination” and tried to twist the Constitution to force this radical ideology on our kids.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court saw through it this time. In her concurring opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett nailed it: gender identity is not some fixed, immutable trait like race or sex. Detransitioners are speaking out, regretting the surgeries and hormones they were rushed into as teens. WPATH – the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the supposed experts on this, knew that kids cannot fully grasp this decision, and their own leaked documents prove that they knew it. But they pushed operations and treatments on kids anyway.

This decision is about protecting the innocent from a dangerous ideology that denies biology and reality. Tennessee’s Attorney General calls this a “landmark victory in defense of America’s children.” He’s right. This time at least, the Supreme Court refused to let judicial activism steal our kids’ futures. Now every state needs to follow Tennessee’s lead on this, and maybe the tide will continue to turn.

Insider alert: Glenn’s audience EXPOSES the riots’ dark truth

Barbara Davidson / Contributor | Getty Images

Glenn asked for YOUR take on the Los Angeles anti-ICE riots, and YOU responded with a thunderous verdict. Your answers to our recent Glennbeck.com poll cut through the establishment’s haze, revealing a profound skepticism of their narrative.

The results are undeniable: 98% of you believe taxpayer-funded NGOs are bankrolling these riots, a bold rejection of the claim that these are grassroots protests. Meanwhile, 99% dismiss the mainstream media’s coverage as woefully inadequate—can the official story survive such resounding doubt? And 99% of you view the involvement of socialist and Islamist groups as a growing threat to national security, signaling alarm at what Glenn calls a coordinated “Color Revolution” lurking beneath the surface.

You also stand firmly with decisive action: 99% support President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to quell the chaos. These numbers defy the elite’s tired excuses and reflect a demand for truth and accountability. Are your tax dollars being weaponized to destabilize America? You’ve answered with conviction.

Your voice sends a powerful message to those who dismiss the unrest as mere “protests.” You spoke, and Glenn listened. Keep shaping the conversation at Glennbeck.com.

Want to make your voice heard? Check out more polls HERE.

EXPOSED: Your tax dollars FUND Marxist riots in LA

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

Protesters wore Che shirts, waved foreign flags, and chanted Marxist slogans — but corporate media still peddles the ‘spontaneous outrage’ narrative.

I sat in front of the television this weekend, watching the glittering spectacle of corporate media do what it does best: tell me not to believe my lying eyes.

According to the polished news anchors, what I was witnessing in Los Angeles was “mostly peaceful protests.” They said it with all the earnest gravitas of someone reading a bedtime story, while behind them the streets looked like a deleted scene from “Mad Max.” Federal agents dodged concrete slabs as if it were an Olympic sport. A man in a Che Guevara crop top tried to set a police car on fire. Dumpster fires lit the night sky like some sort of postapocalyptic luau.

If you suggest that violent criminals should be deported or imprisoned, you’re painted as the extremist.

But sure, it was peaceful. Tear gas clouds and Molotov cocktails are apparently the incense and candles of this new civic religion.

The media expects us to play along — to nod solemnly while cities burn and to call it “activism.”

Let’s call this what it is: delusion.

Another ‘peaceful’ riot

If the Titanic “mostly floated” and the Hindenburg “mostly flew,” then yes, the latest L.A. riots are “mostly peaceful.” But history tends to care about those tiny details at the end — like icebergs and explosions.

The coverage was full of phrases like “spontaneous,” “grassroots,” and “organic,” as if these protests materialized from thin air. But many of the signs and banners looked like they’d been run off at ComradesKinkos.com — crisp print jobs with slogans promoting socialism, communism, and various anti-American regimes. Palestinian flags waved beside banners from Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, and El Salvador. It was like someone looted a United Nations souvenir shop and turned it into a revolution starter pack.

And guess who funded it? You did.

According to at least one report, much of this so-called spontaneous rage fest was paid for with your tax dollars. Tens of millions of dollars from the Biden administration ensured your paycheck funded Trotsky cosplayers chucking firebombs at local coffee shops.

The same aging radicals from the 1970s — now armed with tenure, pensions, and book deals — are cheering from the sidelines, waxing poetic about how burning a squad car is “liberation.” These are the same folks who once wore tie-dye and flew to help guerrilla fighters and now applaud chaos under the banner of “progress.”

This is not progress. It is not protest. It’s certainly not justice or peace.

It’s an attempt to dismantle the American system — and if you dare say that out loud, you’re labeled a bigot, a fascist, or, worst of all, someone who notices reality.

And what sparked this taxpayer-funded riot? Enforcement against illegal immigrants — many of whom, according to official arrest records, are repeat violent offenders. These are not the “dreamers” or the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. These are criminals with long, violent rap sheets — allowed to remain free by a broken system that prioritizes ideology over public safety.

Photo by Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg | Getty Images

This is what people are rioting over — not the mistreatment of the innocent, but the arrest of the guilty. And in California, that’s apparently a cause for outrage.

The average American, according to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, is supposed to worry they’ll be next. But unless you’re in the habit of assaulting people, smuggling, or firing guns into people’s homes, you probably don’t have much to fear.

Still, if you suggest that violent criminals should be deported or imprisoned, you’re painted as the extremist.

The left has lost it

This is what happens when a culture loses its grip on reality. We begin to call arson “art,” lawlessness “liberation,” and criminals “community members.” We burn the good and excuse the evil — all while the media insists it’s just “vibes.”

But it’s not just vibes. It’s violence, paid for by you, endorsed by your elected officials, and whitewashed by newsrooms with more concern for hair and lighting than for truth.

This isn’t activism. This is anarchism. And Democratic politicians are fueling the flame.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.