By Hank Beckman -
Last week I wrote that Democrats only began to notice the riots tearing our cities apart when it started showing up in the polls.
No honest person can deny Democrats have been missing in action on the issue. Now, in their desperation, they’ve concocted a new narrative—the riots are happening because Donald Trump is spreading hatred.
In other words, the wanton violence, looting and targeting of random strangers really has nothing to do with Marxist thugs bent on destroying the country and spreading racial hatred. (Except when they’re “mostly peaceful) It’s Donald Trump’s America that’s to blame.
Actually, what we see playing out in the streets of our cities is not inspired by Donald Trump. Rather, it’s a continuation of Barack Obama’s America.
The chaos didn’t begin in 2017, as Democrats would have us believe. Antifa and Black Lives Matter existed several years before Donald Trump even announced his candidacy.
Antifa, a loose collection of left-wing terror groups, had already been active in the United States for several years prior to Trump being elected. BLM formed as a result of the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and several other high profile, police-involved killings of black men.
It mattered little to the Marxist hate group that both Martin and Brown were in the process of attacking people when they met their end. All that mattered was that the incidents could be portrayed as “yet another” example of the police in a racist society hunting down innocent black men.
There were riots in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland after the killings of Michael Brown and Freddy Gray. To his credit, Obama forcefully condemned the Baltimore riots, but conveniently failed to mention how he had helped create racial tensions.
From the beginning of his presidency, Obama went out of his way to paint a picture of the country as one that still oppressed blacks as a matter of routine.
When the Cambridge, Mass. police had the audacity to question Obama’s friend Henry Louis Gates, Jr. when he appeared to be breaking into a house that later turned out to be his own, Gates was filled with righteous indignation at the thought of cops doing their jobs and an angry confrontation ensued.
Charges against Gates were dropped, but Obama used the incident to lecture the country on race.
Admitting that he didn’t have all the facts regarding the incident, he couldn’t resist saying that the Cambridge police had “acted stupidly” in questioning Gates. No sense waiting for an investigation that might lead to actual evidence, evidence that would have showed Gates was complicit in starting the confrontation; Obama had a narrative to promote, and he wouldn’t let the opportunity go to waste.
When Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman, Obama once again slipped into his black victim persona, noting that if he had a son, he would have looked like Trayvon.
A trial showed that Martin had been in the process of beating the smaller Zimmerman to a pulp. Police photos clearly show Zimmerman with injuries sustained in the attack. It was only under enormous public pressure from con artists like Benjamin Crump and Al Sharpton that Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder.
It never mattered to Obama what the actual facts of the case were, or that a jury acquitted Zimmerman. He’d accomplished his objective of promoting the black-male-as-victim narrative so crucial to a political party largely lacking an actual vision as to what direction the country should be headed.
Then there was the Michael Brown killing. Brown was portrayed in media as a victim, ignoring the fact that he had just robbed a convenience store, abusing a much smaller Asian man in the process.
You’d think trained journalists would have become immediately suspicious about his friend Dorian Johnson claiming that the officer grabbed Brown around the neck to pull him into the squad. Did it really seem plausible that a giant like Brown could be pulled into a squad car? From media/activist accounts of the incident, one could get the impression that Darren Wilson just decided one day to murder an innocent black man.
Apparently the Obama administration knew a racist when it saw one, because it spared no effort to find fault with the police, launching a DOJ investigation that failed to come up with any evidence that Wilson had violated Brown’s civil rights. The final report also contradicted several of media’s favorite talking points about the incident. Activists and journalists had repeatedly spread the “hands up, don’t shoot” line that was proved to be completely false by black witnesses to the shooting.
If Obama ever went out of his way to condemn the media/activist reaction to the two shootings as disgraceful hoaxes, most of us missed it.
Even when five police officers were murdered in Dallas by a racist black man, Obama qualified his condemnation by linking the murders to unresolved racial problems in the country’s criminal justice system.
Obama no longer sits in Lincoln’s chair, but his party and supporters are carrying the heavy lifting in helping to inspire chaos, destruction and outright violence.
Robert De Niro has been particularly profane in his rantings about Trump, calling him a racist and letting the world know that he’d liked “to punch him in the face.” Jennifer Lawrence is on record as saying she’d like to throw a martini in Trump’s face and wanted to tell him, “Hey Trump, f—— you.” Madonna told the world that she’d thought a lot about blowing up the White House, and Johnny Depp famously wondered when the last time was that an actor assassinated a president.
Actual Democrat politicians have been less profane, but no less eager to encourage the chaos in the streets. A compilation of calls for chaos can be found on the Fox News web site.
“I just don’t know why there haven’t been uprisings all over the country. Maybe there will be,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass) said there “needs to be unrest in the streets as long as there’s unrest in our lives.” Her House colleague Maxine Waters (D-Cal) called for members of the Trump administration to be confronted in public.
Eric Holder advises that when Republicans go low, “kick them.”
Media figures like Chris Cuomo wondered why protesters were supposed to be polite and peaceful, apparently unaware that the First Amendment guarantees the right of the people “to peacefully assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Donny Deutsch said “people need to start taking to the streets.” And Don Lemon warned about the threat from right-wing white males.
Not to be outdone, Republicans are reaching across the aisle to help the loyal opposition inspire violence.
Jennifer Rubin responded to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders being asked to leave a restaurant with a call for people to take to the streets.
“No one is telling them to be violent protesters, but we’re not going to let these people go through life unscathed. Sarah Huckabee has no right to live a life of no muss, no fuss, after lying to the press, after inciting against the press.”
Someone should let Rubin know that thugs all over the country are taking her advice in “scathing” innocent citizens.
“The president is embracing open white nationalists,” said Charles Sykes, editor of the Bulwark. “How much lower can we go?”
And Jonah Goldberg, while insisting that Trump was not a dictator, nonetheless was comfortable comparing him to Vladimir Putin, Josef Stalin and Fidel Castro.
Subtle.
Anyone paying attention the last few years knows that the left and its Never Trump friends regularly employ rhetoric that makes Donald Trump sound like a Boy Scout on even his worst days.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany got it right when she said that blaming Trump for the riots was like “the arsonist blaming the firefighter.”
