For crying out loud, it's a conservative speaker coming to campus

UC Berkeley and the city of Berkeley is doing its best to make sure what, when this was still the United States America, would have been a routine appearance by a visiting speaker, becomes yet another idiotic spasm of violence on that campus:

Law enforcement presence will be heavy. Police Chief Andrew Greenwood vowed to make “very strong, rapid arrests” if any demonstrators come carrying weapons or donning masks, according to the Associated Press. Campus buildings will shut down early, and police are planning to surround the area with concrete blockades.

In an extraordinary move, the Berkeley City Council voted 6-3 this week to allow the police department to fire pepper spray at violent protesters, ending a two-decade-old city ban on using the weapon in such circumstances, as the East Bay Timesreported. Police can also fire tear gas canisters to control crowds from greater distances.

“We have seen extremists on the left and on the right in our city,” Mayor Jesse Arreguin said at a Tuesday council meeting. “We aren’t distinguishing between ideology, we are concerned about the violence on both sides.”

What goes down tonight will tell us a great deal about how near post-America is to total collapse.