People used to accuse Democrats of being “soft on crime.” Now, Democrat-run cities can’t even properly identify crime, let alone punish it. (Except, perhaps, the ultimate sin of defending your life and home from the mob). The eccentric, oddball, strange and perverse crew of mayors that run these urban cesspools are intransigent in their refusal to fight crime.
If George Floyd were alive today, he would scarcely recognize his America.
President Donald Trump is increasingly at war with America’s Democrat-run cities—but only because their mayors refuse to fight the war with the crime on their streets. This week, the President announced that he was sending 200 federal agents to Chicago and Kansas City. He has already sent U.S. Customs Border Security guards to Portland in an attempt to alleviate the lawlessness and chaos in that city.
At least he can still distinguish between legitimate protest and rioting. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, apparently, cannot. Biden has not once addressed the mayhem transpiring in urban America over the past two months—not from the basement of his Delaware home, nor during his brief and embarrassing public appearances. If he becomes president in November, there will be little to no effort expended to address America’s urban anarchy—Biden is too beholden to these people.
Take Portland—please. What is happening in what used to be a sedate city in the Pacific Northwest backwoods is unbelievable. Watch the scenes of rioting mobs on your television screen, and you might be forgiven for thinking this anarchy is taking place somewhere in the Third World, or that it was stock footage of the carnage in Sarajevo from the mid-1990s. Incredibly, as of this writing, the riots in Portland have continued for 57 days! All, apparently, because of police brutality and all to avenge the death of George Floyd.
If George Floyd were alive today, he would scarcely recognize his America.
Antifa in Portland.
‘THIS IS FINE,’ SAYS OREGON POLITICIANS—WHILE PORTLAND BURNS
It is one thing for liberal politicians to wring their hands and cry for justice—it is another to be so incredibly witless as to still characterize the events in Portland and elsewhere as peaceful protesting. But that is exactly what these pitiful excuses for leaders are saying. Just listen to Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), who represents the crater that used to be Portland. On Monday, Blumenauer insisted that “Portland, Oregon is not out of control” during a speech on the House floor—even as the town and city merchants tally up the cost of the ongoing riots, amounting to tens of millions of dollars.
“Under no circumstances will I allow Trump’s troops to come to Chicago and terrorize our residents.”
Although the good congressman recognized that “there are some people who have strong feelings and there are some who have done things that are inappropriate and unlawful,” he suggested that this was a mere “challenge” for the local officials to sort out. Furthermore, he suggested that any interference from President Trump would be a grave insult to “the American people and their constitutional right to protest” while “seriously injuring people exercising their right to protest.”
Meanwhile, while this self-parody was taking place, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was telling the world on Twitter: “Under no circumstances will I allow Trump’s troops to come to Chicago and terrorize our residents.” Lightfoot’s timing was impeccable: just as she was getting tough with Trump, a drive-by shooting struck 15 people at a funeral home in a city overcome with gun violence.
Lightfoot has demonstrated extreme sensitivity about the carnage, though not necessarily about the victims. Her concern was with any suggestion that she might not be up to the task of governing America’s third-largest city. When White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany called her a “derelict mayor” who didn’t have a grip on gun violence, Lightfoot took to Twitter once more, this time tweeting, “Hey, Karen. Watch your mouth.” (No, the mayor had not forgotten McEnany’s name. She just felt justified using a pejorative term for a white woman, a gesture that would have ended the career of any white politician).
Clearly, something has gone terribly wrong in America’s cities. But it’s not just that they’re beholden to liberal criminal justice policies that don’t punish criminals. Liberal mayors also seem intent upon denying that crime exists. It’s a phenomenon that began with the coronavirus pandemic as New York City began releasing dangerous criminals, accelerating during the days following the death of George Floyd and the protests that erupted across America afterward.
Those protests quickly degenerated into riots and looting. Still, the Democratic leadership, refusing to recognize that shift, are continuing to insist that it is somehow normal or acceptable for people to burn down buildings.
The increasing success of the “defund the police” movement is both a cause and effect of urban chaos: anarchists on jumped-up charges of systemic police brutality and racism. They will continue to riot because the police, the preservers of law and order, are being defunded, and as New York City police union president Patrick Lynch said, “vilified by the media” and “abandoned” by their political masters, and are quickly being rendered powerless to stop the anarchy. Lynch further told Fox News, the city and state have “handcuffed police officers and given the street back to the criminal.”
Meanwhile, in the midst of all this are the black families that Antifa and Black Lives Matter say all this rage and rioting is about. But black people continue to be murdered with impunity in America’s cities, and many of them remain in poverty for generations. As economist Thomas Sowell has noted, President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society welfare state reinforced low economic achievement for black Americans. If the liberal policies of yesterday failed to deliver for urban centers, the anarchist proposals of the hour would only increase the misery index.
Civil rights leader Bob Woodson put it this way: “Obviously, the left has abandoned all pretense of being fighting for social justice for blacks. This is an assault on this nation is promoting anarchy. If they want a police-free state, they should move to Mexico … Where citizens have to arm themselves as vigilantes to protect themselves against the gangsters. Is that what they want for America?” Woodson asked viewers on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Portland riot.
IN A BIDEN WHITE HOUSE, AOC CALLS THE SHOTS
And where, again, is Joe Biden in all of this? His campaign put out a statement that Biden did not support defunding the police—but there was a crucial Freudian slip in the document: it said the former vice president would bring “transformative change to our criminal justice system.” It’s just another way of saying “reimagining” the police system—or defunding.
Americans in cities who have traditionally worked hard, invested their money, and obeyed the law will become not only marginalized but unwelcome—even persecuted.
That same statement—one that curiously Biden could not deliver in personal appeal, despite the importance of the subject matter at this crucial hour—does suggest police forces could benefit from some added funding, but this will be allocated for “training,” ostensibly to root out the malevolent cops that supposedly infect precincts across America. But you can guess that this will take the form of interminable sensitivity training that will require regular study of the latest ode to self-hate: “White Fragility.”
Will Biden have the courage or moral acuity to resist the calls from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)—the same Ocasio-Cortez whom he has embraced and made his climate change advisor? Of course, hasn’t Biden caved on every other position he ever had as a relatively conservative Southern Democrat—one who, at one point, favored law and order while opposing abortion and same-sex marriage?
New York City, which is also in the midst of a crime wave, just cut its funding for the NYPD by $1 billion—but that wasn’t enough for Ocasio-Cortez, who said, in her inimitable way, “defunding police means defunding police.” This is who Biden is taking his cues from.
If Biden is elected in November, he will undoubtedly continue to cave to the left-wing of the fast vanishing Democratic Party. The result will be an increase in urban chaos, the inevitable triumph of the “defund the police” movement, the normalization of lawlessness, and at least partial victory for the anarchy in the streets that will find itself increasingly welcomed in the offices of Washington.
Americans in cities who have traditionally worked hard, invested their money, and obeyed the law will become not only marginalized but unwelcome—even persecuted. They will move to the suburbs and probably eventually even outside that: to the rural countryside and start over again.
The left has repeatedly accused Trump of dividing America. Biden will not just divide America—he will rend it in two.