If America persists on its present course, we might soon observe something like the following interaction:
911 Operator: This is 911. What’s your emergency?
Caller: I’m at the bank on Eliot at 19th. A guy with a gun is demanding cash.
911 Operator: Stay calm. We’ll dispatch a social worker immediately to mediate.
This dialogue is probably close to what will happen if the Minneapolis City Council gets its way and abolishes the police force in favor of “alternative peacekeeping solutions.”
A logical next step would be to ban all firearms to avoid shootouts that result in carnage. (Corollary question: Who would even collect all these firearms without a police force? The local gangs? The mafia? Black Lives Matter activists?) Maybe the city will institute a tax on protection payments made to the enforcers who take over “policing,” and all will be well.
The driving force behind the defund-and-abolish-the-police movement is Black Lives Matter, a classic oxymoron if ever there was one. If BLM actually cared about black lives, the group would be calling for more police.
According to 2018 FBI statistics, black offenders (90 percent of them male) committed 48 percent of the 6,570 murders in the United States, and 83 percent of their victims were black. Only 8 percent of murdered blacks were killed by whites. High incarceration rates among the African American population are not surprising, given that various studies attribute a similar percentage of violent crime to black perpetrators. If you do the crime, you do the time.
Yet BLM preaches there is systemic racism among police, which leads directly to a supposed epidemic of unarmed blacks being killed by police. This is clearly a fabrication, as only 10 such cases occurred in 2019, and half of those victims were violently attacking the officer when they were shot. The George Floyd killing is a clear case of gross misconduct and the offending officer should spend the rest of his life in prison. But Floyd’s case is not typical in any sense.
BLM-inspired demonstrations have protested even justifiable police action recently in St. Louis, Baltimore, and other places, deterring officers from proactive policing (known as the “Ferguson Effect”) and increasing the toll of black victims above all others. BLM’s lies have killed innocent people.
Abetted by the media, fearful employers, and “woke” liberals, BLM has established the premise that to disagree with them is, essentially and by definition, racist. Facts are subservient to their “truth.” According to them, every disadvantage (and there are many to be sure) experienced by blacks is inherently driven by racism. Common sense and proper attribution of responsibility, especially if directed at blacks and individuals rather than classes, have no place.
Thus, it’s past time to recognize BLM for what it is: a fascistic movement seeking to gain power through false narratives, suppression of dissenting speech, and a takeover of the policing process under the banner of “Defund the Police.” The Floyd murder has offered BLM a golden opportunity. BLM has made clear that for public figures, simply demanding justice via prosecution is totally insufficient. They are expected to grovel before the mob to pay tribute to the gross exaggerations BLM promulgates by their portrayal of police as systemically racist or brutal. They require that we all ignore crime statistics and thus reality.
Ironically, BLM is engaging in classic discriminatory behavior: condemning people for who they are and imputing their actions to racism. Their followers are discovering that there are no consequences for punishing innocent people who do not bow before their altar. In the process, they are inviting reactionary racism among those unfairly targeted. Perhaps that is BLM’s desired outcome to further justify themselves.
There has been a recent wave of employee firings for perfectly acceptable speech or behavior that fails to conform to the BLM standard. Companies that capitulate are depriving employees of their livelihood for exercising free speech on subjects irrelevant to their jobs. How is that acceptable? This is no different than firing employees for their sexual orientation. Companies have no right to a pseudo-morality test, nor should they kowtow to “woke child mobs” (as Senator Tom Cotton, R-Ark., calls them) in their midst.
Ritual confession of guilt is what happens in North Korea today or what was demanded during Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution. Even the totalitarian concept of guilt by family has become a firing offense—as exemplified by a Serbian MLS soccer player whose wife questioned BLM (in the Serbian language, no less) in a tweet.
BLM also declares it racist to criticize black cultural norms that perpetuate their societal disadvantages. Yet nobody more than blacks should want those norms to change. Homes without fathers and children from multiple fathers, kids born out of wedlock (75 percent or so), or dependence on welfare are not conducive to good long-term prospects. Mothers have limited time (or motivation) to nurture, discipline, and read to children if they are the only ones working to support their families. Too many black men in the home have a history of abuse and end up passing that behavior down to their children and stepchildren.
Yes, there are indignities (and sometimes abuse) when police stop blacks under dubious circumstances. Reforms should be welcomed by all. Also, a handful of cops in almost every large city are just angry and abusive, and not solely with blacks. Their use of unjustified physical force or detention, or intense verbal harassment should be carefully monitored, and appropriate discipline applied to offending officers, including firing. Yes, police unions are a problem to be addressed. No argument here.
Politicians of all stripes are also complicit in depriving African Americans of equal opportunity. The public school system has failed in most big cities, and although charter schools often provide a far better path, a devil’s bargain between the teachers’ unions and politicians stifles them. Donations and votes overwhelm politicians’ concerns for low-income and minority children. Pols kneel before the unions, so where is BLM? Pressure here would actually matter!
Americans are falling for, or intimidated by, the BLM ruse out of a sense of justifiable revulsion and reflected guilt over the George Floyd murder. However, that miscarriage of justice does not justify accepting fascistic controls on thought, speech, and action. It does not justify punishment for not agreeing with the BLM agenda or accepting BLM’s blatant racism just because they are black. Condoning BLM and tolerating their fascistic methods is a dramatically more serious threat to this country than the police.