TulaneLSU's Top 10 signs of a civilization in ruin in Portland (NSFW)

Dear Friends,

Mother and I are traveling to Portland and Seattle at the moment. While I am trying to keep up with my correspondence with nursing homes, I am also trying to take in as much as possible from these two cities. Fear not, though, I have over 2000 photos to share with you already, and am just now getting to organizing a few of them. Over the coming days, when time permits, I will share with you some of the photos of the scenes I am seeing here.


(A Top 10 signs of Portland is forthcoming)

Although I have attempted to sneak out at night to photograph and view the nightly protesters, as well as speak to them encouraging words of peace and love, Mother has forced me to stay in our hotel, which is taking precautions to keep us safe. Many of the buildings here in the downtown area are boarded completely, and only with special insider knocks do they allow outsiders in, such is the precarious situation in which all of us here exist.





It is reminiscent of New Orleans after Katrina, but the lawless ones here very loud and carry bullhorns to spread their message. They are, ironically, extremely anti-federalist, much as a Southerner would be in postbellum days. And at the same time, also in favor of a large government and no government at all. In the few conversations I shared with protesters, there was a lack of coherence to their argument, with some saying the government needed to fix this problem, while others said the only good government is no government at all.

The message shared by all protesters I met in Portland is largely one of revolution, and I fear many of them are nothing more than anarchists attempting to destroy a civilization that they feel has left them behind. For them, police brutality is an excuse to protest or a convenient means to an end, an end to which is an atheist, nihilist revolution. It is frightening to me that they seem to have hijacked a relatively peaceful, benevolent civil rights movement to further their cause that existed independently and separate from a minority led civil rights movement. The protesters I encountered were 20 something white people with many tattoos and a philosophy that sits far closer to Lenin than to MLK. Godless revolution is simply terrifying to me.



It is still a lot to take in and I am computing it all slowly because it is far too much for me right now. I wish I understood this movement better and its characters, but I do not. So I took pictures to relay to you, my friends, who have heard so much about these cities on the news, but may or may not have seen the activities and aftermath in person. I will continue to risk my personal safety to bring you these firsthand accounts.

My impression of Portland, as a whole, is a sad one. There is a significant homeless population, and many of these people are addicted to drugs, it seems, based on the orange plastic syringe covers littering the streets, are intravenous in origin. I have seen middle age women defecating in the middle of a street in broad day light and men walking around wearing no pants. It is repulsive and pathetic, and a warning to all of the dangers of drugs and of a society that turns it back on Christianity. It is evidence of a civilization in ruin.

Here are TulaneLSU's Top 10 photos showing that civilization in ruin. I apologize for the excessive profanity in these photos, but I do not want to edit them so that you can see just how much anger and spite is present there.

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1.


Justice and Peace,
TulaneLSU

P.S. I will post some of the other photos I saw, also disturbing. If desired I could fill TD with thousands of similar images, as vandalism is as rampant here as syringe needle caps.