As usual, the Smarter-than-Thou Left Wing Examines All Options Except the Very One Which Is Staring Them in the Face

Recently leftists have sent me articles from the New York Times and The Economist who, in the wake of the Tyre Nichols killing, purport to show how to reform police departments.

What follows below is based on a letter I wrote back to them:

This is amazing. And it is typical of the mainstream media. Totally typical.

The MSM (the Mainstream Media) examines an entire problem, and looks everywhere for the solution to the problem, except the very spot where it is staring them in the face — just as it is staring in the face of their readers.

Here are three typical examples, one from the past month and two (very) famous ones from America's past

1)  BRUTALITY AMONG POLICE OFFICERS (2023)

I am sent articles in the New York Times, in The Economist, as mentioned, on what must be done to solve the problem, on how to better train policemen ("How to hold bad police officers to account"), etc…

The Left's point being this is an insidious problem within the USA itself, within American society, a dark recess of said society, a problem that America itself is overlooking, and one more problem that the forward-looking, enlightened activists on the left must spring forward to solve (just like these knights in shining armor do with everything else).

Guess what problem/solution they miss entirely?

The one —  the very one — that is staring them in the face.

It is the DIVERSITY ideology.

There you have it:  that's the cause of the problem.  Nothing else.

When hiring policemen, the city of Memphis — a town where, incidentally, the police chief is black, the assistant police chief is black, and nearly 60 percent of the police force is black — followed the Left's deranged modus operandi: they were more interested in DIVERSITY than in getting competent workers — in attracting and hiring the best workers. And any doubts they had, or might have had, about the half dozen gangster-type police cadets they hired (whom they would have definitely swept aside if the cadets were white — and rightly so), they brushed aside aside in favor of D.E.I. (Diversity Equity Inclusion).

As Matthew Boose of American Greatness points out, 

What one sees in the video is a group of poorly trained, impulsive mercenaries beating a fellow hood to a bloody pulp. It is the viciousness of the inner city in all its ugliness laid bare. How many incidents just like this happen without a peep of protest every Saturday night on the South Side of Chicago?

 … The entire public framing of the issue is skewed by the suppression of awkward truths.

 … In the era of Black Lives Matter, this chaos is officially encouraged by the state and its warped “social justice” agenda, which makes cops into demons and criminals into angels. … [The Left's] specious crusade against “police brutality” is one large and costly exercise in evasion.

Before you accuse a conservative of racism, it's totally possible that a black candidate can be the best in a certain environment or that a white can be the worst in same environment.  But that was not the case in this Tennessee city police department.

Sure, if the blacks are good enough by all means hire them.

There is a second reason mediocrities (black or white) are being hired, according to Tucker Carlson.  That is because in the past two or three years, with all the anti-police demonstrations going on, many police officers (black as well as white) are resigning.

"Police are responsible for all the violence in black communities" said Joe Biden in the State of the Union, which "is a lie", a "provable" lie (plain ol' statistics).

How do you think these "mediocrities got the job?!" asks Tucker Carlson.  "Because normal people quit"

So, leftist friends, you — and everybody else — you holler about George Floyd.  Fine.  Why does that mean that all other police officers should be painted with the same brush?!  And that we should all be told to "defund the police"? And that police officers should operate under so much pressure that their jobs are impossible to perform?

There are obvious people (black or white) who are not fit for a job, whether it is policeman, cook, architect. or doctor and nurse.  So:  do not choose them!

But everywhere this DIVERSITY insanity is being implemented.

With architects and builders and lawyers, universities are asking for more DIVERSITY among students.

In hospitals and clinics they want diversity.

What would you say if you came to Dr Smith's cabinet and he was gone, replaced by a black person or a woman or a homosexual (male or female) or two or more of the above combined?

I wouldn't mind, personally, provided that the black lesbian was more competent, or at least as competent, as the white professional.

Would you like to live in a house built by a black person — if he is as good as, or better, than the whites, yes!  Sure thing! If he was chosen to fulfill some (black or white) bureaucrat's bean-counting, I would offhand admit to being reluctant.

In "woke" law schools, hard exams (like the LSAT) are being taken down to allow for a more diverse student body.

Fine.  But when a citizen (black or white) like you and I needs a competent lawyer (black or white), how will that be good for us — or for him/her — if we get somebody who was not competent to pass the (now defunct) exams?

Oh, by the way, quite a number of the writers in the NYT opinion pages and of the "journalists" in the newspaper that the left celebrates are professors or were students at the "woke" universities.

To solve this Memphis problem, the race-baiters and the Left's hysterical activists have to acknowledge that they created the problem themselves.  And they cannot do that because that would preclude them from identifying, and embarking on, more pressing hysterical crusades

This is the modus operandi of the Left's hysterical crusaders.  They embark on a crusade and, if it doesn't go well, or if it becomes unpopular, they accuse everybody but themselves. 

In other words, they blame America in general.

This becomes the accepted narrative, both in America and among Europeans.

I can think of two historical examples — two major historical examples — where this applies…

2)  PROHIBITION (1920s)

Today, Prohibition (which incidentally was also pursued in Norway, Finland, and Sweden, where the difficulty of purchasing alcohol survives to this day, so the Swedes cross over the sound (i.e., the border with Denmark) to Copenhagen to buy alcohol and get drunk) is called a problem of traditional America, that the problem was that the (deep sigh) population was, and is, puritan (tch-tch).

This is how the Left rewrites history, (conveniently) forgetting its own role in the equation.

Prohibition is a typical leftist crusade, following the Left's mantra, "we need to change hearts and minds" (en français, il faut changer les mentalités).

Don't believe me?  Take two famous conservatives from the 1920s and the 1930s:  Can you imagine hard drinkers John Wayne or General Patton, first of all, being willing to give up their own whiskey?  And, second, rooting for a new armada of policemen to go around in America's streets and arresting people to stop them from buying and drinking booze?

That would be mighty hard to imagine — not No, but Hell no!

But prohibition was a failure.  And so, the Left drops the history of its participation in, indeed its central role behind, the Prohibition movement and pins the blame all the blame, on Americans, and on America itself

3) SLAVERY (first century of the republic)

Today, slavery is called a terrible American sin

Even though more than half the country (more than half the states) had abolished it by the year 1800 — and were among the first people on the planet to do it. While all the black slaves were in the South — all of them Democrat states.

Here is a question that Dinesh D'Souza asks audiences when he holds speeches:
"Name me a single Republican, dead or alive, who has ever owned a single slave"

Not one audience member can answer, because there are none. (Actually, there is one, adds DDS with a twinkle in his eye:  At one point, Captain Ulysses S Grant did own a slave. But context is key: he inherited the black man from the father of his Southern wife when he died.  But at the time, Grant was a Democrat, and within weeks, in any case, if not days, he started doing the legal work necessary to give the man his freedom.)

Just like with half a century later or so, when slavery became unpopular, Democrats put it all on the backs of the entire country and, in the process, started reinventing themselves — again — as the eternally great moral crusaders of the nation.

But never forget this:  When a Republican won the election of 1860 (Abraham Lincoln), the Democrats went berserk over the presence of such a black-hearted scoundrel in the White House and tore the country apart for four years.

Sounds like Donald Trump in 2016, does it not (although admittedly on a much more extreme level)?

Well, there you have it. 

Incidentally, this was one of Jonah Goldberg's main arguments in his book Liberal Fascism:

In the liberal telling of America's story, there are only two perpetrators of official misdeeds: conservatives and "America" writ large. Progressives, or modern liberals, are never bigots or tyrants, but conservatives often are. For example, one will virtually never hear that the Palmer Raids, Prohibition, or American eugenics were thoroughly progressive phenomena. These are sins America itself must atone for.

Meanwhile, real or alleged "conservative" misdeeds — say, McCarthyism — are always the exclusive fault of conservatives and a sign of the policies they would repeat if given power. The only culpable mistake that liberals make is failing to fight "hard enough" for their principles. Liberals are never responsible for their historic misdeeds, because they feel no compulsion to defend the inherent goodness of America. Conservatives, meanwhile, not only take the blame for events not of their own making that they often worked the most assiduously against, but find themselves defending liberal misdeeds in order to defend America herself.

Related: • Who, Exactly, Is It Who Should Apologize for Slavery and Make Reparations? America? The South? The Descendants of the Planters? …

• The 1930s Persecution of the Jews in Europe? It's the Fault of the Nazi Party (Not Germany); The Segregation of Blacks in the South? It's the Fault of the South, or America Writ Large (Not the Democrat Party)