John Klar: Of crows and ravens — how aggressors weaponize victimhood

It is not uncommon to see crows attacking ravens, a much larger bird, especially in springtime. Sometimes a group of crows will “mob” a raven; other times a single aggressive crow will be observed harassing a raven as the pair fly across the landscape. This strange interspecies conflict is common and well-documented. In human political or other conflict, we also often see this same strange inversion.

I noticed this phenomenon as a criminal defense attorney handling domestic abuse cases. Protective orders are designed as a “shield” to protect women, but often that shield is abused when women obtain a restraining order to use to manipulate their partner and get him incarcerated. Sadly, this “using the shield as sword” is quite common — sometimes a “victim” will call the alleged abuser on the phone after a protective order is served, invite him to come visit, then promptly call the police and say “he’s coming over, please protect me.” This is like the crow attacking the much larger raven, and sometimes the men subjected to this decide to ignore the court orders and brutally assault, or murder, their partner. It is dangerous to provoke violent people, and often ends tragically — the court order will only protect so far.

John Klar

I saw another variation of crow-like pursuit in a Hannaford’s parking lot when I was loading groceries into my car. A shortish woman was pursuing a tall, burly man through the rows of cars, yelling at him that he had intimidated her when he pulled his car into a space in front of her. He was visibly distressed, moving away from her, and he kept saying, “Ma’am, I told you I did not intend to alarm you and I am very sorry. Will you please leave me alone and stop following me? I said I’m sorry and explained.” The angry lady was not accepting apologies for her perceived transgression. Smelling his vulnerability, she pressed, “Well, as a woman it is very intimidating when a man speaks that way to us.” I had heard enough, so as they passed I turned to the woman and said, “If he is so threatening and intimidates you, why are you aggressively harassing and pursuing him through the parking lot? If he is dangerous, you must not antagonize him.” She was outraged and screamed at me that this was none of my business. I said: “It would be clear to anyone watching that you are the aggressor, that this man is distressed, and that you are pursuing him as he flees. That is not you being victimized. Why don’t you leave him alone before he calls the police and has you arrested?”

She was speechless, and the exchange ended. The man, nearly in tears, came up to me and shook my hand. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I barely even saw her when I pulled in and she just latched on to me. I’m very ill and just moved here from Alaska. The last thing I want to do is fight with some lady in the grocery store.”

This crow-like behavior is widespread in Vermont, as people like Mari Cordes and Harold Colston berate the entire state of Vermont for being racist. Colston, who is black, has benefited from Vermont’s culture and community for decades, grandstanding about his supposed victimhood (sure does act like that lady in the parking lot). After all, if Vermont was white supremacist and horribly racist, only a minority who was crazy would stand up and give a devotional with such a brazenly insulting and false racist chip on their shoulder. Nothing better exposes the vapid foolishness of Colston’s rant than this — he would not even be able to considerdoing what he did, if his allegations were true. The very act of a black man delivering an intolerant harangue to a 98% white state that voted by very large margins for Obama is proof positive that said oppression is nonexistent.

Rep. Colston is not the only one. Consider the laughable case of the University of Vermont and Professor Aaron Kindsvatter, a very intelligent “raven” who bravely dared stand up to the toxic ideological garbage called “Critical Race Theory.” A cacophony of crocodile tears from the murder of crows called the Sisters of Color ensued. The “sisters” launched a petition against Professor Kindsvatter in which they lambasted his claims as “unsavory and asinine,” alleging he advanced “an ideology of white supremacists.” Constitutional or psychological academia is not permitted to question the crows’ tyrannical race “theories” — it is verboten by those who use shallow caws of victimhood as a brutal cudgel. Aaron Kindsvatter’s video presents an earnest, well-reasoned professional appeal — the petition reveals a rabid, aggressive attempt to suppress open discussion. It is thuggery by those in power pretending to be frightened.

Lacking actual harm, UVM’s furious crows manipulated the truth to make the absurd allegation that they felt physically unsafe and threatened by Professor Kindsvatter’s dissenting opinion: that his tacit agreement with a person’s self-defense comment on his video (“ … if they persist I’m going to knock the s– out of them.”) meant that Dr. Kindsvatter was “an educator who’s condoning violence against students.” This perverse rationalization (then used to histrionically allege that students were “terrified”) reveals what murderous murders of crows do — they lie, then shriek indignantly of how scared they are as they launch their assaults. Clearly it is the ravens who are on the run.

Another bizarre example of Vermont Critical Race Theory crowing occurred at the Vermont Liberty Network event in Rutland on May 1. The subject of the get-together was restrictions of constitutional liberties during COVID. Near the end, a white Jeep drove past Main Street Park where a group of people were still gathered, it’s lone black occupant shouting at the all-white audience through a bullhorn: “White Power! White Power! White Power!”

In that awkward moment, I realized the driver’s problem — with zero KKK or Nazis in Vermont, and almost zero Confederate flags (there has never been one at our VLN events), the race-agitating crows must create their own racists with which to attack the ravens — when there is no white supremacist to be found, a black Antifa stand-in will just have to do. But more, this driver had no fear that a bunch of white supremacist ravens would flock after him: a lone black man can scream racist epithets at a gathering of white Vermonters and veterans with complete impunity and zero fear or retribution.

Scientists’ studies of crows may help us understand this barbaric animal behavior by CRT proponents. Recent studies show that when there are chases between crows and ravens, “97 percent of the time it is crows chasing ravens, not the other way around. … Though previous behavioral studies have shown bigger birds usually have the upper hand during feeder interactions, it’s also clear that having a mob mentality can upend the dominance hierarchy.”

You can always tell who the aggressor is in any conflict — it is the angry, pursuing, controlling, manipulative, lying person who screams how they have been harmed by their victim. CRT attracts mobs of such thuggish crows. Presumably, when patriotic ravens gather in defense for that 3% of the time that this battle is reversed, the cry-baby crows will complain of a conspiracy, then scatter.

John Klar is an attorney and farmer residing in Brookfield, and the former pastor of the First Congregational Church of Westfield. © Copyright True North Reports 2021. All rights reserved.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Sardaka

5 thoughts on “John Klar: Of crows and ravens — how aggressors weaponize victimhood

  1. The Progressive invasion into Vermont is the same as an invasive insect tribe. They chew from the tree of liberty to spread out, then they excrete misery eventually killing the host. Vermont is the host and their implied racism is toxic to our state, our government, our customs, our liberty and our institutions. They are no different than the aggressive crows in the article above. If there are no racists to be found, they just create their own like the examples above or the government hires them to shame us for something we have never been. Is this how we want to live and raise our children to be victims, to carry hatred being taught in our schools or have someone make them their target to be bullied? This is not the state I was born and grew up in and it disgusts me more each day. Is this how you want to live?

  2. Forewarned forearmed. Perhaps not.

    As we reflect upon the state of our world, our communities, our politics, our families and the nuts and bolts management of our day to day lives, it behooves us to consider how our environment affects our perception and judgment. Our success, after all, may very well be in the data we collect. Because, if we don’t measure, we can’t manage.

    In 1966, Edward T. Hall published The Hidden Dimension, “one of the few extraordinary books about man-kinds future which should be read by every thoughtful person” – Chicago Tribune.

    Hall’s missive is a collection of studies on the visual, auditory and olfactory effects of stress among various groups of human and animal cultures. The following excerpts describe some of the conditions humans and animals have been facing for millennia. The success or failure of past civilizations is not only a reflection of how they coped with those conditions but a lesson for us to use as we navigate our own journey today.

    “It is clear … that even the rat, hardy as he is, cannot tolerate disorder and that, like man, he needs some time to be alone.”

    “Probably there is nothing pathological in crowding per se that produces the symptoms that we have seen. Crowding, however, disrupts important social functions and so leads to disorganization and ultimately to population collapse or largescale die-off… pansexuality and sadism were endemic. Rearing the young became almost totally disorganized. Social behavior of the males deteriorated, …. Social hierarchies were unstable, and territorial taboos were disregarded unless backed by force. The extremely high mortality rates of females unbalanced the sex ratio and thus exacerbated the situation of surviving females,…”.

    It is worrisome that world gender ratio statistics (even in the U.S.) appear to support these assertions.

    There is more. Consider Hall’s summary and the growth and sophistication of our communication technologies.

    “The animal studies also teach us that crowding per se is neither good nor bad, but rather that overstimulation and disruptions of social relationships as a consequence of overlapping personal distances lead to population collapse.”

    “Man and his extensions constitute one interrelated system. It is a mistake of the greatest magnitude to act as though man were one thing and his house or his cities, his technology or his language were something else.”

    “The ethnic crisis, the urban crisis, and the education crisis are interrelated. If viewed comprehensively all three can be seen as different facets of a larger crisis, a natural outgrowth of man’s having developed a new dimension—the cultural dimension—most of which is hidden from view. People need to know that they are important… The question is, How long can man afford to consciously ignore his own dimension?

    Remember, Hall’s missive was first published more than 50 years ago and deserves a reading by today’s thoughtful people too – perhaps now more than ever before.

    The full book can be read online.

    • Very intriguing. Tangentially, does this not also dovetail with the post-modern nihilism of godless man, and the technological separation form our natural ecosystem and community relationships? John Lukacs, Wendell Berry, and Wes Jackson (Nature as Measure) also address this existential crisis. Sartre and Camus never left us a roadmap….

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