Don's Tuesday Column

                      THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   8/04/2020

         Riots, trashing Barr, Obama’s lying

First, can we all agree on something? Set aside other issues—“Vandalism Is Violence: Destructive Riots Are Not ‘Just Property Damage’; Property rights are human rights, and we discard them at our own peril.” (Brad Polumbo, Fee.org, 7/30) We must not accept that political or legal disputes—over justice, race, law enforcement, and (the stated BLM agenda) Marxist redistribution, destruction of America and ending the nuclear family—entitle the aggrieved to resort to vandalism, mayhem and arson.

When supporters of such causes won’t express sustained condemnation, those very causes become compromised and sullied, their supporters diminished. Over decades, the greatest damage from violent “protests” and riots has been to those least able to recover, those who benefitted from the economic blessings of business and free enterprise in their own humble neighborhoods. Jobs, police, food and drug stores, gone; gangs and drugs proliferate.

Consider Detroit before and after the 1968 deadly riots, South Central LA’s Watts after the “insurrections” over Rodney King and O.J. Simpson’s civil verdict, and other cities. Portland, Seattle and Minneapolis will likewise be injured economically, and in social justice and equity, long after the “antifa,” BLM and other instigators have moved on to collect their subsidies, trust fund payments and extorted funds.

“It is impossible that Democrats do not know the difference between peaceful protesters and rioters, but they mulishly pretend the latter are the former. They either turn a blind eye toward the ongoing mayhem or maintain, straight-faced, that the destruction is a righteous reaction to Trump. That is the deal: No stratagem that paints the president and his administration as deserving of anything more than contempt is beyond the pale.

“The transparent point is a cynical political one: Don’t engage the opposition, don’t talk out our disagreements. Portray the opposition with such anathema that voting for the incumbent president in November would be too monstrous to contemplate…

“It means there is no point in having congressional hearings. What it portends, though, is far more dire than that. It doesn’t matter how you feel about Donald Trump or Bill Barr. A faction that would rather delegitimize than debate its opposition can do that to anyone or anything. At that point, it’s about power, not policy or progress. Anyone who wants power that badly shouldn’t be anywhere near it.”

Andrew C. McCarthy, in “Democrats Make Mockery of Barr ‘Hearing,’” used the above stark and pointed terms for clarity and honesty over the disgusting, depraved game Democrats and the left are playing. Disagree with that perspective all you want, but when Nadler (Rep.-Antifa/BLM) et al reduce the dignity and purpose of a congressional hearing—paid for by, and on behalf of, 340 million Americans and the taxpayers—to a literal pillorying and vicious character assassination of the Attorney General of the United States, they’ve truly lost it. A cardboard cutout of Barr, thrown rotten produce, and shouted “shut up” could have replaced Dems’ kabuki theater of “reclaiming my time” (29 times) ad nauseam. They deserve electoral loss.

Look up “Attorney General Barr Scorches Democrats; Congressional Dems get exposed on their treacherous enabling of orgies of violence.” (Matthew Vadum, frontpagemag.com, 7/29), “AG Barr destroys Jerry Nadler in another House Democrat testimony disaster,” (Michael Goodwin, nypost.com, 7/28); “The Top Ten Epic Moments During the House Judiciary Committee Hearing With AG Barr” (M. Margolis).

In perhaps the greatest (or worst) example of a supposedly exalted, respected leader stooping to made-up examples of nonexistent injustices, you couldn’t do better (or worse) than Barack Obama. Millions of us endured Obama’s pompous pontifications of baseless, fallacious progressive pablum because we could always turn him off.

“Barack Obama’s Partisan Eulogy for John Lewis Reminded Many of the Paul Wellstone Funeral,” by Matt Margolis, showed why the disingenuous use of complete falsehoods in service of leftwing policy is now the standard Democrat strategy for political advancement. “George Wallace may be gone, but we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators,” Obama claimed, repeating the falsehood that violent rioters were “peaceful protesters.”

“Even as we sit here, there are those in power who are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting,” he falsely claimed, “by closing polling locations and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision.”

Margolis: There is no evidence that voter ID diminishes the ability of anyone to vote, and a whopping eighty percent of Americans support Voter ID laws, including 77 percent of non-white Americans. Obama then falsely accused Trump of “undermining the Postal Service in the run-up to an election that’s gonna be dependent on mail-in ballots so people don’t get sick.” D.P.: Every word, including “and” and “the,” is a lie. Trump’s mashing of facts, triumphalism and self-promotion doesn’t come close.

Tucker Carlson: “Obama Pouring Gasoline While Country Falling Apart From Racial Strife.” “The country falling apart riven by racial strife and tribalism and one of the most respected people in the whole country decides to pour gasoline on that and compare the police to Bull Connor? As if America or Minneapolis is like Birmingham, Alabama in 1963? It’s insane. It’s reckless.”

“Mean, sanctimonious, and divisive is no way to go through life, but it’s the way Obama has chosen. If he’d been the Obama of the 2004 DNC speech the country would be much better off. But he never was that Obama; the speech was simply a lie. And for the record, Bull Connor was a member of the Democratic National Committee. That’s who Obama is, that’s what Obama does.” (Glen Reynolds)