It was with no shortage of mirth that many witnessed the whiplash change in position from Don Lemon last week. After ponderous weeks of Democrat support and warm media coverage of the protests and riots across the country CNN’s star pundit suddenly was very dire in his call for the Democrats to speak out against the violence. The craven position now revealed is that months of destruction of property and lives was acceptable for their cause. Only after Dems began seeing their support burning down was it a problem to condemn.
Lemon even cited what had him so spooked - "It’s showing up in the polling. It’s showing up in focus groups.’’ What caught his eye were a couple of the polling results that had recently come out. One national poll showed support of the protests underwater, with 50 percent showing support for the police. Another by Marquette Law School showed in Wisconsin prior support for the protests fell by 25 percent over a two-month period. It was a clear sign the riots were having a negative impact, and making this all the more jarring for Lemon and the left, that poll result was just before the Kenosha riots.
The result of this has seen both Kamala Harris, and her running mate Joe Biden, coming out this weekend with speeches calling for peace and pledging for an end of violence. They presented this newly-discovered policy as if it were a novel idea no one had previously considered. Their past positions, however, are not suddenly wiped clear from a dry-erase board, such as Kamala backing the funding of bail money accounts to free the rioters and looters who had been detained.
The primary reason the Democrats look like flailing newcomers to this is that they, and their backers in the press, are the reason that riots and protests are inextricably connected in the minds of voters. When police are called out to tamp down uprisings they are blamed as "attacking protestors" in the press. When federal agents were sent to Portland to guard the federal courthouse, Mayor Ted Wheeler accused them of instigating the violence. The press echoed this charge, despite there being two months of mayhem predating their arrival.
CNN in particular has clowned itself in just the past week by having a reporter standing in front of firebombed buildings while the chyron on screen blared the insipid claim made over the years, "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests." With such a stable of bumblers it is hard to pick the most inane, but Chris Cillizza is forever a contender. He tried to send out a notice that Trump was lying and desperate to call the uprisings "riots." Too bad the accompanying photo in his tweet was of a plaza completely engulfed in a conflagration.
This is why to see them all suddenly concerned over violence is risible. The dichotomy in the coverage the past few months defies their recent ability to see a negative in the result. When protestors set up an encampment in Seattle the mayor likened it to the Summer of Love, and the press described the festive nature in adoring terms; meanwhile, it was ignoring how businesses and residents in the area were subjected to all manner of assault on their community. They proclaimed to be in favor of black lives, yet ignored those POC victims who lost their lives in the protests, at a rate far exceeding those taken by police force. They deliver messages about the impacts on black communities but then acquire blind eyes when black businesses are gutted and looted, and black neighborhoods are literally crippled in the aftermath. To see this trap that the media and Democrats set for themselves you need only look at two stories concerning their prized policy talking point: guns.
In springtime there was a protest in Michigan against Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s oppressive policies locking the state down. Citizens went to the capital and sat in the rotunda, an act the media normally loves to see. Except these were protestors opposing a Democrat, and many of them sported guns on their hips in legal open-carry fashion. The media went into full outrage mode. In uniform fashion almost every report details the danger of the weapons, and that the protestors "stormed" the capitol. Not detailed - police were there to manage capacity, people filed in with orderly lines and succumbed to temperature checks prior to entrance. But, they "stormed."
Now look at that fawning coverage in Seattle with the CHOP/CHAZ occupation. It was illegal assembly, trespassing, and a number of other violations taking place, but the most glaring was met with almost complete silence in the press. An individual named Raz Simone was a self-declared "warlord" of the occupied zone, and he was seen on video passing out guns from the trunk of his car. No explosive commentary in the media, no inciteful language to describe the danger, no condemnation on the presence of these vile weapons.
Mind you, here was someone violating a laundry list of illegal deeds involving guns - on video. The result? Before it was finally disbanded, inside the CHAZ/CHOP zone there were half a dozen shootings, and two deaths of POC individuals. The outrage in the media over this would not have disrupted a cricket. Contrast that silence with the outrage reported on the legal gun owners in Michigan, who committed no crimes.
This is why the sudden call for peace from these permissive pacifists is laughable. Not only have they fostered this violence, they have demonized the efforts to curtail it, so when they attempt to place blame on the Trump administration it is being met with chuckling knowledge. Resorting to the "mostly peaceful" dodge, and lending vocal support to the outrage has made the demonstrations and the riots conjoined. Their own words have made the riots intertwined with the protests all this time; declaring now that they wish to see them as separate entities is a shallow shift in their narrative.
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