“The plywood businesses must be making a mint in major urban areas like ours: the workers were busy as beavers covering up and covering over business after business.” That’s the comment from a friend of ours in Washington, D.C. this morning, as the city boards itself up, preparing for potential violence in the aftermath of today’s election.

Thousands of feet of “non-scalable,” “ugly iron fencing” was installed around the White House and the adjacent Ellipse and Lafayette Squares. It’s now covered with “homemade signs with radical slogans”, our contact said, adding, “The White House fencing has been doubled or trebled so high it looks like Havana at the height of Castro.”  

It’s not just D.C. All across the country, retailers, banks and government buildings are covering windows and entryways. In Los Angeles, high end retailers along the city’s famous Rodeo Drive – like Chanel, Dior, Prada and Hermes – have emptied their shelves and boarded up their windows, fearing post-election rioting and looting.

In Philadelphia, the day before the election, The Daily Citizen’s Michael McGonigle reported that police and National Guardsmen were already in place near the Biden campaign’s state headquarters. “We suspect that, like many cities across the country, there will be unrest in the next 24 to 48 hours, and so do the Philadelphia police and the National Guard.” Businesses and offices were already boarded up in anticipation of potential chaos, McGonigle reported.

The New York Times reported that Nordstrom and Tiffany’s were hiring extra security and boarding up windows “of select stories in key cities.” The paper reports, “Anxiety has been mounting for months that the election’s outcome could lead to civil unrest, no matter who wins. In the retail industry, many companies are not simply concerned about possible mayhem — they are planning for it.”

Small businesses, grocery stores and retail chains like Target, CVS, Walmart and Macy’s are also preparing for possible violence in cities like Boston, Chicago and San Francisco and New York. This follows months of retail losses from COVID-19 lockdowns and rioting and looting, sparked first by the death of George Floyd in May.

In September, Axios reported, “The protests that took place in 140 U.S. cities this spring were mostly peaceful, but the arson, vandalism and looting that did occur will result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion of paid insurance claims.” That total – which doesn’t include other rioting and demonstrations from the past two months – rose above the record losses from Los Angeles in 1992 after police officers were acquitted in the death of Rodney King.

So what is the expected source for violence? Mainstream media and left-leaning outlets have been pointing – for five years now – to President Trump’s candidacy and election, and to white supremacist and nationalist militia groups as the cause of protests and violence.

In 2016, Vox reported “Trump’s rhetoric could cause Election Day mayhem – and worse.” That same year, John Cassidy from The New Yorker wrote, “For the past eight months, Donald Trump’s divisive, racially tinged Presidential campaign has been tearing apart the Republican Party. Over the next eight months, if Trump wraps up the G.O.P. nomination, it could well have a similar impact on the country at large.”

When a Chicago Trump rally was cancelled in March 2016, S.E. Cupp gave her opinion at CNN, “We are finally seeing the culmination of the Trump campaign’s combative, reckless and downright disturbing rhetoric.”

Trump supporters point out that it was leftist groups like MoveOn.org, People for Bernie [Sanders], and Black Lives Matter that fomented violence, protesting and shutting down the rally, in an “all out effort to stop Trump.”

After the President’s election and especially after his inauguration, protests and violence took place across the country. The Washington Post said that from Trump’s inauguration on January 21, to the end of 2017, there were “more than 8,700 protests in the United States,” labelling this group, “the resistance.” The paper said that only 7% of the events recorded were “to support the president and his policies.”

So is President Trump responsible for those events? Or left-leaning opposition groups? 

Conservative author Candace Owens, who hosts The Candace Owens Show on PragerU, told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that Democrats and leftist groups are responsible for “signaling tacit approval of Election Day violence.”

Fox News also reports, “A collection of groups led by Black Lives Matter and Shutdown DC reportedly has been holding training sessions for demonstrators to protest on Election Day – and apparently, they’re planning a large-scale event across the street from the White House expected to draw thousands.”

Shutdown DC even has an online interactive map of the capitol, pointing to Republican National Committee offices, federal buildings, and “Trump Boosters” like The Heritage Foundation, the Republican Jewish Coalition and Young Republicans. The group has actions “to defend democracy” scheduled in Washington, D.C. from election day through November 6.

Regardless of the source, left or right, Christians can act responsibly – voting, remaining at peace, and praying for our nation during these days of expected upheaval and unrest.

Photo from CARLO ALLEGRI/REUTERS

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