Ah, I Was Waiting For This ...
When my wife turned on the radio to listen to the news on Sunday morning she heard CBS reporting that "thousands" of protestors had turned up in DC on Saturday. What? "Thousands?" Not "a million" as predicted? Not "hundreds of thousands?" Not "tens of thousands?" I'm seeing unconfirmed reports that it was "barely ten thousand" (quoted by Don Surber). I'd been waiting for that news. Could the Democrats really muster only those few people in DC, of all place--possibly the Bluest place in America? What does this tell us?
Have you noticed how many people--liberal and conservative alike--have been referring to "the murder of George Floyd"? Not to his "suspected" or "alleged" murder--which, in view of much of the evidence, would be rather more accurate. Rush to judgment anyone? Two track system of justice?
If you owned a store or a business--anything from a mom and pop business to a Walmart to a corporate office block--would you continue to do business in a city that defunded and/or dismantled the police force? If you ran an insurance company, would you continue to insure such businesses? Not just hike their rates--would you refuse to insure those businesses in areas where there was no police protection, or where it had been seriously curtailed?
How would you feel as a parent about sending your kid to a public school in such a locality? Or as a teacher, would you want to teach in a school where the seating chart had to take into account rival gang affiliations--P Stone Nation v. Latin Kings, perhaps--or rival ethnicities--Hmong v. Somali? With no police protection.
As disgraced former FBI Director Jim Comey would say: So many questions.
And you can bet Americans will be asking those questions and more from now until election day in November.
Here's Alisyn Camerota interviewing Lisa Bender, President of the Minneapolis City Council. I can see this--and so many more similar sound bites--featuring in Trump campaign ads:
CAMEROTA: "What if in the middle of the night my home is broken into. Who do I call?"
BENDER: "Yes, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors. And I know — and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege."
CAMEROTA: "What if in the middle of the night my home is broken into. Who do I call?"
BENDER: "Yes, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors. And I know — and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege." pic.twitter.com/WhubQ9yJIf
— Eddie Zipperer (@EddieZipperer) June 8, 2020