OPINION

The Third Worlding of America

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

The death of George Floyd was something out of the Third World. Anyone can empathize with the plight of another human being, hands cuffed behind his back, prostrate on the ground, with the knee of another person pressing into their neck for nearly nine minutes. A horrific scene.

But now the knee of the mob is crushing the neck of prostrate, civilized America, as we descend into a Third World cesspit with astonishing rapidity.

The images every night for the past week have been surreal. Hordes of Americans, black and white, burning, ransacking and pillaging with near impunity in cities across America, smashing windows and looting high fashion outlets and mom-and-pop stores alike. Police officers being thrown to the ground like ragdolls. Police officers being shot in the head or stabbed in the neck while trying to maintain order. Ivy League-educated corporate lawyers throwing a Molotov cocktail into a police car filled with officers. An old woman being beaten with a viciousness reminiscent of a beating delivered upon Jews by SS guards in the Warsaw ghetto. Her husband meets the same fate as he tries to defend her with a golf club.

A heroic 77-year-old retired black police captain shot to death trying to prevent looting. Shot to death for some televisions. Shot to death as he tried to protect the property at a friend’s pawn shop, after he’d spent a career defending the people of St. Louis.

God bless David Dorn. His final moments of life, captured by someone on a cell phone camera, were surely as painful to watch as those of George Floyd. And while no one should die as either man did, Mr. Dorn’s life exemplified what all Americans should aspire to, serving his fellow man. The same cannot be said of Mr. Floyd.

The brilliant conservative commentator, Candace Owens, did research into Mr. Floyd’s background. Her findings were very illuminating and can be seen here in a must-watch video. How many people know that Mr. Floyd, who many are holding up as a pillar of the community, was found by the medical examiner to have methamphetamine and fentanyl in his system? Or that he had served five separate stints in prison for various crimes? Or that one of those crimes was a home invasion, in which he stuck a pistol in the belly of a pregnant woman, while four cohorts ransacked her home looking for drugs and money? They settled with stealing her wallet and cell phone. Fortunately, the woman’s neighbor, suspicious of the activity at the home, caught the license plate of the men’s vehicle and called police. When caught, Mr. Floyd was driving the getaway car.

Yes, I understand that none of the foregoing excuses the actions of police officer Derek Chauvin in subduing Mr. Floyd while he was being arrested, yet again. No police officer I’ve ever met would condone kneeling on any detainee’s neck.

But if nationwide wilding and mayhem are to occur, with all the attendant deaths and destruction we have witnessed, how paradoxical it seems that the Great Rage should result from the unjustified death of home invader George Floyd, while David Dorn’s life was so casually forfeited by those claiming to be outraged at police brutality visited upon blacks. David Dorn was a police officer too, defending fellow blacks, and Missourians of every other stripe, for nearly four decades. His death has produced no similar outrage.

Kneeling into the neck of George Floyd only began our descent into national madness. Kneeling continues to be a theme in this continuing societal trauma as we witness the creepy spectacle of a crowd of “progressive” white automatons kneeling, with hands raised, before black activists demanding penitence. It appears to be some sort of ritualistic obeisance to blacks as atonement for the supplicants’ sin of having enjoyed “white privilege.”

The psychic damage evident in so many Americans today in the form of ideologically-based self-loathing has become shockingly apparent. No society whose members evince such self-hatred can be long for this world. Others with self-confidence will see opportunity and eventually seek to displace them, just as a lioness on the African plain can smell weakness among her prey.

Those who do the displacing may take the form of Islamic militants or anarcho-communists who call themselves Antifa, officially labeled a domestic terrorist organization recently, that is well-known and long-studied by those in the national security establishment. (For an excellent discussion of Antifa’s history, methodology and threat profile, see this Washington Times piece.)

The current anarchy is just the latest symptom in the Third Worlding that has been going on in America in recent times. Flashing warning signs have abounded for years.

Barack Obama weaponized the entire national security establishment of our country to remove his party’s political opponent in a fraudulently predicated counter-intelligence operation worthy of a tinpot South American dictator. Of course, even before he launched that seditious campaign, he had sicced the IRS on conservative Tea Party groups, which effectively crippled them before the 2018 elections, helping his party retake the House of Representatives that year.

And of course, we’ve had a pandemic virus, whose origin (whether in a lab or in a wet market) is still to be definitively ascertained, sweep the land. This resulted in the mandating of face mask-wearing for most Americans, like equatorial tribespeople in sub-Saharan Africa. This policy proved oh-so-helpful as the aforementioned Antifa destroyers could blend so seamlessly into crowds of similarly masked protesters as they went about their ransacking ways.

And finally, we’ve had most of the country’s population under virtual house arrest for nearly three months.

The total picture in America today – between virus, Visigoth-like mayhem, and economic shutdown - is so shocking as to be almost incomprehensible. It will be the responsibility of the current president and the one elected, or re-elected, in November, to restore sanity. Let us hope a return to the First World awaits.

William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private, and non-profit sectors for more than 30 years. He is a senior investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc., and a contributor to Townhall, American Thinker, and The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter at @BillMarshallDC1. (The views expressed are the author’s alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.)