Over 325 million people live in America. Most of us are good, decent, and law-abiding. We are not racists. Two infinitesimally small groups and Democratic Party politics changed that.
Now good people are subjected to furious demands to accept a false premise about our country. The weak succumbed. They bought in. In the background lurk the liberal lies about race Democrats have spread for years in hopes of cashing in when the time is right.
That time just arrived.
The first group to bring this change is rogue police officers. Some target minorities. They are a favorite liberal call to action. They don’t represent the police or the American people. If they did, incidents like George Floyd’s killing wouldn’t even make the headlines. Like the daily shootings in Chicago, we would be so used to the violence that we wouldn’t pay much attention.
This group is being used for political brinkmanship and to misrepresent America to our people and the world.
The second group is also violent and destructive. The left doesn’t like to acknowledge them any more than the right would claim ownership of white supremacists. The mayhem they caused while protests raged will have just as polarizing an effect as what happened in Minneapolis at the hands of the police. They remain a warning and a threat about what could happen the next time a violent racial incident makes headlines.
There is a third group. We rarely hear anything about them. When we do the news is fleeting:
Twenty-four law enforcement officers have been reported feloniously killed in 2020. During the previous year for the same time period, 19 officers were feloniously killed.1
This group already grew by 26% this year. There were no national protests. Compared to an issue like race, murdered police officers have little liberal political value. Far left Democrats would be happier if we eliminated law enforcement altogether.
Liberal lies from Democrats have a big payoff
There is a growing liberal consensus that the best way to protect people is to stop threatening criminals with consequences. To that end, America’s left added a push to disband and defund law enforcement to its decarceration agenda just as Democrats have advocated for years that we dismantle ICE to protect illegal immigrants from law enforcement.
It’s easy to use George Floyd’s killing as an excuse to create the appearance of a racially intolerant nation. The video is shocking to watch. With ample help from the media, activists, and politicians we focus on this incident. Massive protests lend credibility and the false assumption that murdering black and brown people is what America is all about.
There are enormous payoffs to this depiction. The largest prizes will be dished out at the polls later this year. In truth, even if we pay massive reparations, free every felon, and fire every police officer in America there will never come a time when politics will put history behind us. It is too painful and more important, too politically valuable.
That value is also part of our history.
Is your town’s library racist?
We’re far from the stage of looking back and reassessing. Instead, we’re shoving each other aside to prove who is the least racist. I just received an email from my local library declaring its opposition to racism. It never occurred to me that my library is racist or supports racist beliefs. Libraries don’t have opinions. They store books.
My bank made its declaration against racism. Corporations are dashing out press releases to declare they are not part of the problem, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Democrats hate mega-corporations and will judge them harshly no matter what they say they stand for.
What’s happening around the country now isn’t about change for the better. It’s about instilling fear in mainstream America whether that means fear of what politics will create or fear for our safety, homes, and businesses at the hands of an angry mob if we step out of line. None of this will make things better. It will breed more anger and resentment.
Only Trump’s words have a negative impact. Why?
If you want to arouse anger you need to pick the right words. If we believe Democrats, Trump is a master at this. He does it every time he opens his mouth. When they use the same explosive rhetoric they accuse the president of abusing they expect us to believe that their words are in service to saving America.
Many swallow the Kool-Aid. It only takes a few words to get the job done:
While the majority of police officers approach their job in a professional manner, we cannot allow black and brown bodies to be targeted, attacked, and killed with impunity.2
That was not about George Floyd. It was from Rep. Maxine Water’s (D-CA) January 2020 commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King.
We’ve heard those last three words before. We will hear them again. Are they true? Impunity means freedom from consequences. When police officers commit crimes they are charged. Sometimes justice isn’t served to the extent activism demands. The same can be said of offenders who are not prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Kate Steinle’s story is a perfect example, but the person responsible or her death was a party sacred cow.
The officers in Minneapolis were quickly arrested and charged. Justice won’t move fast enough to satisfy many, but in time it will be served.
It’s a fact that Democrats incite racial tensions with impunity. As much as some would like to muzzle the president there are no limits on congressional speech, either. Lawmakers know that this is such an explosive issue few will challenge their vision of America no matter how extreme, damaging, and dangerous.
What is lynching? Whatever Democrats want it to be
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) encountered post-George Floyd politics when he proposed that H.R. 35, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, be amended to specify what constitutes lynching. He wanted to prevent severe federal penalties from being meted out for lesser offenses. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) strongly disagreed and drew the racial battle lines:
The idea that we would not be taking this issue of lynching seriously is an insult. An insult to Senator Booker, to Senator Tim Scott and myself, and all of the Senators past and present who have understood this is a part of the great stain of America’s history. 3
The public heard that Paul opposed an anti-lynching bill on a “day of mourning,” that lynching goes unpunished, and that “black lives have not been taken seriously as being fully human.”4
Harris’s depiction of America is neither fair nor accurate. In the current shut up and agree climate how many lawmakers will have the courage to engage in honest debate when race is the issue? It’s easier to worry about the consequences of bad legislation later.
That’s how we wound up regretting mandatory minimum drug penalties that unfairly targeted black Americans.
Liberal lie: this is about the people
Joe Biden staked his claim to a battle for America’s soul long before the George Floyd incident. House Democratic Caucus members also put themselves in charge of changing our nation with their new police accountability bill. Chair Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) observed:
if we cannot have these conversations, as Members of Congress charged with changing things in our society, how can we expect others to do the same?”5
Changing society is not the job of Congress any more than it is the job of the judges they oppose for legislating from the bench when they don’t agree with liberal lawmakers’ views. House and Senate members take an oath to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” The notion of what defending the U.S. means is controversial to say the least, but reshaping society isn’t part of it. Lawmakers work for us. We don’t submit to them.
Liberal lies about race Democrats want you to believe
A truly horrific, racially inflammatory incident dropped right into Democratic laps. The killing of George Floyd seems to support the mistruths they have spread for years. How many of their liberal lies should we believe?
Lie 1: police murder black and brown people without consequences
This is simply not true. Democrats have confused the notion of justice to such an extreme that their ideal system would release the guilty and protect them from law enforcement while pursuing harsh penalties for crimes committed by the police and other liberal enemies.
In a just nation a crime is a crime. Your race should not decide the penalty. Neither should your job or your popularity with a political party.
Miscarriages of justice happen. Focusing on single incidents and using them to condemn our entire society, its people and institutions is wrong.
Lie 2: Democrats can stop racially-motivated violence
Minneapolis’ mayor is a Democrat. So is Minnesota’s governor.
The 2014 Eric Garner killing took place in New York City. Barack Obama was president. The mayor and the state’s governor were Democrats. They are still in office.
2014 also brought the Laquan McDonald killing in Chicago. The mayor was a Democrat. So was Governor Pat Quinn. Barack Obama was president.
When Freddie Gray was killed in 2015 and touched off riots in Baltimore the city’s mayor was a Democrat. Barack Obama was president.
All of these highly charged racial incidents took place on Democratic soil. Those in control had their chance to fix the problem. They could have reformed their police departments. Now with a Republican in the White House they are passing the blame for their failure to someone else.
Lie 3: only Trump’s rhetoric is responsible for inflaming America’s racial tensions
The president must be an incredibly powerful speaker. The moment he opens his mouth his words spark anger, hate, and violence across the nation, or so we’re told.
Democrats ignore their own responsibility for messaging about racial prejudice. The following bombastic remarks came from one of the party’s most prominent liberal voices, New York Senator Charles Schumer while the George Floyd protests raged.
our nation is reeling. Reeling over the memory of Ahmaud Arbery, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, and Eric Garner and the unimaginable number of innocent lives that were taken in similar circumstances.6
How many are in Schumer’s “unimaginable number?” The senator doesn’t say. He leaves it to our imagination.
Even today, slavery is still with us, its terrible legacy and evil effects felt in real and discernible ways, every single day.7
The issue is not slavery, but it’s an incredibly painful memory and political dynamite for Democrats at a time like this.
The racial disparities in our criminal justice system have been on full display, but these disparities permeate not just the criminal justice system but all of society.8
That’s a pretty broad condemnation of America. Does all include Congressional Democrats?
But he [de Tocqueville] also said that the one thing that could doom our nation was racism and racial prejudice. His words ring true today.9
Capitol Hill, not racism, is what will doom and eventually destroy our country.
Lie 4: America has too many bad people
Feckless Joe Biden is already borrowing from Hillary Clinton’s hatred for Trump supporters. While running his mouth about race last week he estimated that 10-15% of Americans are not very good people. Why not just call 30-50 million Americans deplorable? The timing is certainly right. His base will no doubt believe him.
Lie 5: taking a knee is a patriotic tribute to America
Endorsing public anti-American displays is wrong. Buying into it out of fear of being deemed part of America’s race problem is worse.
Not everyone agrees with that position, of course. Wisconsin progressive Rep. Mark Pocan not only defends taking a knee, in 2017 he did it on the House floor during a speech to “condemn President Trump’s divisive rhetoric and insults …”10
It’s a sign of love of country, a country with a promise that has to be for everyone, regardless of the color of their skin. So I join so many now, in the NFL and elsewhere, in taking a knee for the America that we all aspire for it to be.11
Democrats including House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Schumer took a very public knee and announced it to the nation before they pulled the wraps off their new police accountability bill. America got the message, but in case it wasn’t clear Pelosi reaffirmed our “entrenched system of racial injustice in America.”12
How much self-hatred should we endure at the hands of our federal employees? Enough to get them elected. Make no mistake. This is not just about racial injustice by the police, as House Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) made clear during Monday’s Policing Act press conference:
And most right-thinking Americans know that the greatness of this country is at stake. We have unveiled, for whatever reason, some faults that need to be repaired. Faults in our health care system. Faults in our judicial system.13
America is deeply flawed. Only Democrats can fix it.
Lie 6: no police = no black and brown deaths
Ask the families who lost innocent loved ones to gun violence in our Democrat-run big cities how they feel about disbanding police departments. Then ask the business owners who lost their livelihoods to looters and destroyers during the George Floyd protests.
Local, state, and federal lawmakers know that talking about defunding and dismantling their law enforcement agencies will earn them some short-lived notoriety. Most of them do not live in neighborhoods that benefit from a strong police presence, so they probably think it’s safe to spout harebrained anti-policing proposals that sound good to their base and are dangerous and unworkable in practice.
Democrats are staunch opponents to firearm ownership. Who do they think will take the guns away from criminals when the police aren’t around?
The biggest lie of all: the best way to mend our racial barriers is to put Joe Biden in the White House
Obama had eight years to fix what Democrats are blaming Trump for.
What happened?
That’s right.
UPDATE June 12, 2020: ignoring uncomfortable facts is another way liberals lie about race
We can’t build trust between communities and law enforcement by fleeing from the truth. That’s what we are preparing to do with police accountability legislation based on the liberal lie that brutal police attack communities of color indiscriminately.
The truth, as with most issues, is not that simple or convenient and it certainly isn’t good politics.
Police must follow the law. I don’t think many of us will argue with that. We don’t want to see what we saw from Minneapolis ever again.
Residents in the communities the police serve must also follow the law. That’s an enormous problem in many places and one that liberal Democrats encourage be ignoring the truth.
Chicago is a prima facie example of crime and violence so out of control that the strategy to stop it is little more than lip service from city officials. The Chicago Police Department will be put under a microscope as will law enforcement in all cities, but the fact of the matter is that regardless of the color of our skin, few of us would willingly set a foot in or even drive through some of the neighborhoods we expect the police to serve and protect.
Black lives matter. This is the biggest threat to those lives.
A relative handful of incidents will overwhelm the fact that the biggest threat to black lives is not from the police, but from their own communities.
Consider these figures from the most recent Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Victimization Survey:
Based on the 2018 survey, the offender was of the same race or ethnicity as the victim in 70% of violent incidents involving black victims, 62% of those involving white victims, 45% of those involving Hispanic victims, and 24% of those involving Asian victims.14
The FBI released its most current homicide statistics in the Fall 2019 Crime in the United States report. The following facts about the 14,123 murder victims in the data will not be seriously addressed or even discussed by liberal activists or Democrats:
53.3% of murder victims were black or African American.15
When the race of the offender was known, 54.9 percent were Black or African American, 42.4 percent were White, and 2.7 percent were of other races. The race was unknown for 4,821 offenders.16
These figures are neither a shock nor a surprise. We’ve read them before. There is no political advantage for Democrats to admitting crime within the black community is a tremendous problem Congress and the cities demanding police reform are powerless to stop.
Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats have staked their claim to a Justice in Policing Act banning chokeholds, no-knock warrants, qualified immunity, and other controls that will ensure being a police officer is a very, very bad career and life choice.
Senator Corey Booker (D-NJ) talked the liberal Democratic talk in support of the bill:
America has a serious and deadly problem when it comes to the discriminatory and excessive policing of communities of color – and that policing exists within a system that time and again refuses to hold police accountable for their brutality.17
Until these communities also hold their residents accountable for their own pointless brutality there will be no meaningful change. Black Americans will continue to die at the hands of black Americans while infrequent violent encounters with the police will be the headline-worthy issue Democrats will politicize as a nationwide scourge.
In an interview yesterday Speaker Pelosi mentioned:
But, in order for public sentiment to prevail, people have to know. 18
She is absolutely right, but too many Americans only know and hear what Pelosi and her power-hungry party wants them to know. They frequently question Trump’s pronouncements as not being “science-based.” We should expect evidence and fact-based policy from Democrats too, before they transform society based on their convenient liberal half-truths.
UPDATE June 22, 2020: how many shootings does it take to tip the scales in favor of more policing?
COVID-19 or not, we’re back to a Monday morning summer tradition in Chicago: counting the bodies and bullets after a shoot ’em up weekend. The numbers are bad. Americans nationwide are hearing early reports of 102 shootings and 14 deaths. At least twelve of those shot were minors including a toddler and a thirteen-year old girl.19
Where are the mass protests against urban genocide? There won’t be any.
Demands for shackling the police still rage across the country while urban violence continues unabated. At some point we’re going to have to decide where the scales tip. Do we worry about more shootings or focus our attention on a problem that makes for better politics?
So far we’ve got our answer. We have a lot of bad Monday mornings ahead of us.
Sources
1“Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted.” FBI.gov https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/ucr/leoka, retrieved June 7, 2020.
2“Rep. Maxine Waters: Dr. King’s Fight Continues On.” Rep. Maxine Waters: Dr. King’s Fight Continues On. January 20, 2020. https://waters.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-maxine-waters-dr-king-s-fight-continues, retrieved June 4, 2020.
3“Harris Rejects Attempt To Water Down Her Historic Anti-Lynching Legislation.” Kamala Harris. June 4, 2020. https://www.harris.senate.gov/news/press-releases/harris-rejects-attempt-to-water-down-her-historic-anti-lynching-legislation, retrieved June 6, 2020.
4Ibid.
5“Readout: Democratic Caucus Family Discussion on Race.” House Democrats. June 4, 2020. https://www.dems.gov/newsroom/press-releases/readout-democratic-caucus-family-discussion-on-race, retrieved June 5, 2020.
6“Schumer Floor Remarks On The Killing Of George Floyd, The Need For Bold Action On Systemic Racism And Demanding Leader McConnell Put A Law Enforcement Reform Bill On The Senate Floor Before The Fourth of July.” Senate Democrats. June 1, 2020. https://www.democrats.senate.gov/news/press-releases/schumer-floor-remarks-on-the-killing-of-george-floyd-the-need-for-bold-action-on-systemic-racism-and-demanding-leader-mcconnell-put-a-law-enforcement-reform-bill-on-the-senate-floor-before-the-fourth-of-july, retrieved June 5, 2020.
7Ibid.
8Ibid.
9Ibid.
10“Pocan Denounces Trump’s Attacks, Takes a Knee on the House Floor to Join Protesters I Solidarity.” Mark Pocan. September 26, 2017. https://pocan.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/pocan-denounces-trump-s-attacks-takes-a-knee-on-the-house-floor-to-join, retrieved June 8, 2020.
11Ibid.
12“Pelosi Remarks at Press Conference Unveiling Congressional Democrats’ Justice in Policing Act.” Speaker.gov. June 8, 2020. https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/6820-2, retrieved June 9, 2020.
13Ibid.
14“Criminal Victimization, 2018.” U.S. Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics. September 2019. p. 13.
15“Expanded Homicide Data.” Crime in the United States, 2018. Uniform Crime Report. Crime in the United States, 2018. U.S. Department of Justice – Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI.gov. Released Fall 2019. p. 2. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/topic-pages/expanded-homicide, retrieved June 12, 2020.
16Ibid.
17“Congressional Black Caucus Leads House Democrats and Senators to Introduce the Justice in Policing Act.” Congressional Black Caucus. June 8, 2020. https://cbc.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2195, retrieved June 12, 2020.
18“Transcript of Pelosi Weekly Press Conference Today.” Speaker.gov. June 11, 2020. https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/61120-1, retrieved June 12, 2020.
19Schuba, Tom. “12 minors among 102 shot, 14 fatally, as citywide gun violence spikes over Father’s Day weekend.” Chicago Sun-Times. June 22, 2020. https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2020/6/21/21298305/austin-killed-homicide-amaria-jones-13-shooting-mekay-james, retrieved June 22, 2020.
*Photo by Staff Sgt. Kenny Holston in “Fuel to the Fire.” U.S. Department of Defense. VIRIN: 160421-D-HG842-047.JPG. https://dod.defense.gov/OIR/gallery/igphoto/
2001519804/, retrieved and added June 10, 2020.
The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.
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