Call Rioting What It Is: Moral Depravity. And Hold Its Enablers Accountable – Wirepoints

By: Mark Glennon*

If there’s a silver lining in the riots it’s that we’ve learned how many morally depraved people we have and, more importantly, how many in positions of influence and power condone and even encourage that depravity.

The names of most the rioters will be lost, but the names of their enablers are known, and they should be marked forever.

This article is about those enablers. It’s not about George Floyd’s murder or police conduct because most of the violent reaction to the murder wasn’t, either. Nor is it about peaceful protestors or those who actually did the killing and looting. It’s about the immorality of others responsible for the largest and most violent insurrection most Americans have lived through, the costs of which have fallen most heavily on African-American communities themselves.

Rioting is the American way.

It starts with the now commonly made claim that violent protest is as American as apple pie. CNN, MSNBC and their guests routinely say violence is the only way protests actually accomplish anything.

Have they lost their minds as well as their souls? In just 15 years – warp speed for such things — America went from opposition to gay marriage by no less than Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump telling a cheering Republican convention, “As your president I will do everything in my power to protect LGBTQ citizens.” That change was accomplished without violence. Countless peaceful movements have succeeded throughout history without violence. And just what have decades of violent protests accomplished for African-Americans?

It’s not limited to CNN and MSNBC. It has reached the highest levels. A couple examples:

A professor at Northwestern’s Medill journalism school, Steven Thrasher, wrote that “destruction of a police precinct is not only a tactically reasonable response to the crisis of policing, it is a quintessentially American response, and a predictable one.”  And property destruction for social change, he said, is “as American as the Boston Tea Party.”

Equating the riots to the Boston Tea Party as Thrasher did is common. Really? Did the looters throw their Nikes and TVs into a harbor, or just steal them?

And New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones said that rioters destroying property is “not violence” and describing it as violence “goes against what’s moral.”

Illinois officeholders.

What excuse do Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Governor JB Pritzker have for not calling in the national guard? Petty pride? The demented strategy of “giving space” to the violent? Tacit support for violent protest?

At its maximum the guard in Chicago was tokenism – 500 troops. Minneapolis brought in over 20 times that. Lightfoot waited until Sunday – too late to save much of the city — even to make any request, initially for just 375 with a “limited presence,” she said. That was a day or two after it was clear Chicago police would be vastly overwhelmed. Lightfoot and Pritzker have no excuse.

And what about their words?

On June 2 Lightfoot said, “The opposite of violence is not security. The opposite of violence is justice.” What? There’s no justice when your head is smashed in and your store is looted. A similar theme has been in most of Lightfoot’s comments – primarily lectures about social justice – as if the rioters care — though at least she has firmly condemned the violence as a secondary matter.

Some major Illinois officeholders haven’t bothered with even a superficial comment about the violence.

For Sen. Tammy Duckworth it’s all about Donald Trump. He is predictably who many want to make the riots to be about. He’s a “draft-dodging, wannabe tinpot dictator,” she said. Since the riots at least in part are an insurrection against everything about America, you would think this isn’t the right moment for saying such things about any duly elected president.

How about Illinois Senate President Don Harmon? He “struggled to find the words,” he said, finally releasing a statement on June 4. But his struggle didn’t lead him to even a single word about the violence.

And then there’s Pritzker, also making the riots about Trump His appearance on CNN on June 1 – near the peak of the violence — came about as close to incitement to riot as you can get. He has “got to go,” Pritzker said. Trump is “a racist, a homophobe, a xenophobe and a misogynist.”

And it was textbook projection. He boasted that he told Trump, “I’ve been extraordinarily concerned about the rhetoric that’s been used by you. It’s been inflammatory… we have to call for calm.” But did Pritzker ask for calm or criticize the violence? Nope. Just a call to remove Trump and inflammatory rhetoric.

Support for Black Lives Matter.

Many major corporations including Cisco, Pepsi, Dropbox and Airbnb contribute to the Black Lives Matter network and BLM’s presence was deep at many otherwise peaceful protests. But what do they stand for?

It’s not a monolithic organization and has many chapters. However, “defunding the police” is now a central goal.  That’s right, no more police departments. The group’s co-founder also said they want to abolish all prisons. And their website says “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another….”

Started in 2013, Black Lives Matter faded in recent years, in part because of controversial positions like that, but it has come back strong thanks to blindness to its mission and its new contributions.

Empathy. Yes, empathy.

Try some empathy for the rioters and we’d understand, we’re often told.

Great, let’s try. Do so and you might even think hatred for white people makes sense and that the entire system must be destroyed. Who then would you blame for a violent uprising? The enablers, I submit – the condoners and provocateurs.

They’ve used schools to pound the in the messages of systemic racism and implicit bias. Training in that is mandatory for Illinois teachers. They say the inflammatory things at the height of a riot like those above. They say, as Mayor Lightfoot did, “f-you” to the president. They’ve implemented in school curriculum the fraudulent 1619 version of American history as a horror of capitalism and racism. Their Chicago teachers’ union even sent a “solidarity mission” to communist Venezuela. In short, they have taught a generation of young African-Americans to hate white people and that the entire system is rigged against them.

Blame those messengers, not just the rioters.

Everybody agrees about George Floyd; motivation for solutions is not lacking.

Most everybody was repulsed by the videos of George Floyd’s murder. They want his killers prosecuted. They want police to treat people equally. They want bad apples kept out of the police.

If solutions haven’t come it isn’t because violent protests failed to motivate the decision makers, at least in Chicago. Aside from the intrinsic merit of reform and political pressure, Chicago is paying dearly. Since 2004, the city has spent $757 million on settlements, losses at trial and other payouts in police cases plus another $200 million on attorneys’ fees, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis.

The problem, instead, is that a means of eradicating police homicide and keeping the bad apples out has been elusive. Lightfoot herself, prior to becoming mayor, was president of the Chicago Police Board and chair of the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force. Now she runs the whole show. She didn’t need riots to motivate her to make reforms.

And data don’t support many extreme claims about the scope of the problem.

But this is a massive, systemic, national problem, we’re told. “Genocide” is the commonly used term.

That’s simply not true. The numbers are publicly available. Maybe Minneapolis is different in light of persistent recent incidents, and it’s certainly true that blacks routinely get treated horribly by some cops in some places, including Chicago. But claims of genocide and systemic, national police racism are not consistent with the facts.

As summarized by the Wall Street Journal, African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year across the nation, a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict. Police fatally shot just nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015.

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The rioters themselves probably will be forgotten and most will go unpunished. ABC Chicago reported that just a fraction of those arrested were even presented by police to the Cook County state’s attorney for possible serious felony charges. “I would imagine the majority of people brought in, are not going to be prosecuted,” said Jeff Cramer, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago. That’s virtually certain given who the Cook County state’s attorney is — Kim Foxx, who let Jussie Smollett off.

Instead, justice of some form will only come if those in positions of influence and power who condoned and even encouraged violence start getting the blame they’ve earned. Remember their names. Hold them accountable. This is about moral depravity and they are culprits.

*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.