Political rallies are a thing of the past, at least this year. Conventions are not happening, not in any recognizable way at least. But this reality hasn’t stopped Democrats from having a slice of both, only it comes with a side of death. More accurately, death comes with an opportunity to have a rally or a convention-esque speech. It’s pretty sick, actually.
There are states that have allowed their entire population fewer funerals with fewer attendees than either George Floyd or John Lewis had. Nothing against either man. I’m sure their families miss them dearly, but there are bodies in refrigerator trucks that can’t be claimed by family members because of state-imposed restrictions. Their families miss them dearly too, and would love, and need, to memorialize them as well. It’s an important part of the grieving process.
Yet, they can’t, or at least can’t have more than a few people. Who wants to be the person to tell family members they didn’t make the cut for attending grandma’s funeral because a governor said there could only be 10 people there?
Meanwhile, Floyd and Lewis were taken on tour, with Floyd receiving three services and Lewis six. While they were allegedly subject to some restrictions, you’d be hard-pressed to spot them from the pictures and videos.
Again, it’s not their fault. Each man likely had ideas of what they’d like their memorials to be (Lewis more than Floyd), but why did they get exemptions?
Lewis was a civil rights leader and a member of Congress, so under normal circumstances a week’s worth of events across several states wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. Floyd was an unknown with a less than clean past, to put it politely. The likelihood of his memorial filling one church was a longshot, let alone three services in three different states. But these aren’t ordinary times, and those things happened anyway.
They happened because Democrats were able to exploit them. Noted Democrats, who did nothing that helped George Floyd while he was alive, eulogized Floyd like they grew up together or he’d cured cancer. At two of the memorials, Al Sharpton gave a speech that you could have heard at the Democratic National Convention if there was one. Why would a race-hustling, progressive grifter who’d never met him be chosen to speak at two memorials if not for political reasons?
Joe Biden showed up at the memorial in Houston, on video at least (his handlers likely didn’t trust him to deliver a speech in person). Why would a former vice president submit a video? At least it was, unlike Sharpton’s performances, non-political (in content anyway; him doing it was plainly political). Still, inappropriate. Even though invited by the family (more likely an idea planted by Sharpton or some other partisan hack manipulating the family; because who’d think to invite Joe Biden?) a normal person would have felt weird and politely declined.
The Lewis funeral was different in that the people who spoke of him actually knew him. Even there, the left-wing’s inability to be appropriate for the moment could not be contained. When pursuing political power is your life, everything is political.
Former President Barack Obama spent a chunk of his eulogy attacking President Trump because why not? Obama was always given credit for being things he was not, and he was regularly called a good and decent human being. So telling the world that black people somehow can’t get a photo ID, among other standard liberal tropes, was not surprising.
In the case of Obama, Lewis likely would have approved of partisanship dripping from the pulpit. Lewis was as partisan as people come. When Democrats were ramming through Obamacare, Lewis claimed to have been called the N-word by Tea Party protesters in his walk through a crowd to cast his vote. Every step of that walk was filmed, and Andrew Breitbart offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who could prove anyone had said it. To this day, that reward remains unclaimed.
Lewis lied and smeared innocent Americans in an attempt to help Democrats during his life, so why wouldn’t he embrace more lies after he died for the same end?
Some people love a parade; Democrats love a funeral. In 2002, the memorial service for Senator Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash, turned into such a disgraceful partisan rally that his former staffers ultimately apologized for it. The only difference between then and now is Democrats are done apologizing for exploiting death and have become rather shameless about it. When you can’t have a convention and the media coverage that comes with it, any gathering will do. And if you’re a shameless hack willing to do anything to obtain political power and there just happens to be a casket there, so be it.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter and on Parler at @DerekHunter.