Don's Tuesday Column

      THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   6/01/2020

     Demo-pocalypse now in cities

The killing of George Floyd doesn’t produce emotional angst over race here because I don’t see anyone solely through the lens of their skin color. Never have, never will. That doesn’t remove race from this or other unjust situations—an obviously poorly trained white officer, clearly indifferent fellow officers and an African-American suspect, doesn’t prove racism.

It’s sickening that a fellow American was treated that way, even assuming he broke some counterfeiting law as reported. Every fair-minded citizen can use common sense to know that subduing a suspect on the street requires the most effective and efficient transfer into the squad car with no more physical violence than necessary. Is that reasonable? Those officers failed lethally.

It doesn’t mean he was killed because he was black. Let’s allow the autopsy to tell us the particular cause of death; the cop was fired with obvious cause, and charges of murder or manslaughter will be filed.

I had to wonder, given Officer Chauvin’s previous complaints, if the process of union representation and rules had the same effect as those involved in the education field. We all know the stories of incompetent, even malignant, teachers that are given empty rooms for a classroom due to the expense and time required to fight the teachers’ union for termination.

When “hiring/firing at will” becomes a dance or chess match with public employee unions and burdensome rules, it must be agreed that getting rid of incompetent, bad cops or teachers becomes difficult. We may never know what role that played, just like we may never know why Democrat Hennepin County Attorney (now Senator) Amy Klobuchar never prosecuted Officer Derek Chauvin for prior offences.

There’s an obvious lesson in this—previously raised over the violent arrest of a large, black man selling single cigarettes on a New York sidewalk, who died in the process. Likewise, in the recent physical arrests and citations of law-abiding people for violating “stay-at-home,” business lockdown and “zero tolerance” outdoor recreation policies.

 When laws and emergency rules have the backing of elected officials—with the authority of the people—those laws and rules are enforced ultimately with physical force, tasers, pepper spray, handcuffs and/or “the barrel of a gun.” We on the conservative side favor the lightest reasonable burden of laws and rules for just that reason; those on the left seem to favor lots of laws and rules but then resent and protest when the police “force” compliance, often against the violent objection of the offender.

The underlying philosophies are irreconcilable: We believe in the constitutional principle that we are free to do whatever we want as long as no law says we can’t. The left seems to prefer that everyone only do or say that which is approved and permitted; otherwise, it’s not allowed. You do see the difference, right?

Protests that are the “peaceable assembly to petition for redress of grievances” are a right; subject to a permitting process, the space needed is assured and protected. Signs, however outrageous, and angry, even hysterical speech, is cherished participatory democracy, used by all sides.

That stopped after the first days and after sundown. The riots, looting, violence and property destruction disgustingly played out from coast to coast in many American cities—that is what I call the Democrat Apocalypse, or “Demo-pocalypse.” Why so partisan, you ask? First, there haven’t been Republican mayors in these cities for decades; next, the violent rioters, looters, and occasional killers are the literal demographic that Democrats woo and curry favor with spending programs and entitlement payments.

Finally, Democrats high and low have not a discouraging word beyond the routine disapproval of immediate city officials. While hardly approved by the rank and file, it’s true that Democrat inner circles, operatives and their connected financial sources accept the legitimate role of anarchists, thugs, race-hustlers, hate-mongers and their well-organized violence, looting and burning of cities. From Saul Alinsky, perhaps?

This applies to the so-called “Anti-fa” and the violent side of the Black Lives Matter movement. They differ little beyond their uniforms from the Ku Klux Klan, who were, in fact and deed, the terrorist arm of the Democrat Party in the post-Civil War South, subjugating the otherwise Republican-leaning African-American population.

“Like the guaranteed ritual of swallows returning to Capistrano, you can always count on certain Democrats to defend thugs, arsonists, and criminals even when those scum are burning down the cities those Democrats operate. You see, some Democrats hate this nation so much that any wanton violence against person or property is fine with them as long as it damages the country in any way.

“What they don’t get, but President Trump does understand, is that a vast majority of the American people, regardless of color, are decent individuals who are disgusted by the antics of the thieves and looters afoot in many major cities in the U.S.

“President Trump, by calling these animals ‘thugs,’ put himself on the side of that American majority (much like Richard Nixon did in 1968 in regards to violent New Left and hippie protests against American troops fighting in Vietnam) who recoil from rioting and looting no matter the supposed reason.

“By his accurate use of ‘thugs,’ Trump brilliantly baited the Democrats into coming to the visceral defense of said thugs. Well played, sir.” (“Trump Baits Democrats Into Defending Arsonists and Looters,” by David Kamioner, Thepoliticalinsider.com)

Also, look up: “Our leaders have sided with the agents of chaos – we're told crimes of the mob are our fault,” by Tucker Carlson. More cops are killed by black criminals than the other way; of the 2,925 blacks murdered in 2018, 2,600 (89%) were killed by black criminals (FBI). I missed the protests, I guess.