Below is an updated version of my column in The Hill newspaper on how the discussion of reforms following the killing of George Floyd has been increasingly overtaken by the most radical elements in politics and commentary. The atmosphere is strikingly similar for those familiar with history and specifically the course of the French Revolution. That image of reformists becoming reactionaries was particularly evident in New York Mayor Bill de Blasio being booed by a crowd calling for his resignation and the same response to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey when he refused to commit to defunding and dismantling the police department. In Washington, Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered the square near the White House to be named “Black Lives Matter” Square with giant letters painted on the street. BLM however denounced it as a meaningless stunt and activists added ‘Defund the Police.” Bowser refused to answer multiple questions on whether she would remove the added words. To do so is to risk a scene like the ones in Minneapolis and New York.
As writers, editors, and politicians yield to extreme measures, they might want to consider the fate of those who sought to ride the radical wave of the French Revolution.
Here is the column:
Jean-Paul Marat, one of the key leaders of the French Revolution, once mocked the notion that liberty could be established by his fellow revolutionaries since “apart from a few tragic scenes, the revolution has been nothing but a web of farcical scenes.”
Welcome to the French Revolution 2.0.
The tragic killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis resulted in an important focus on race relations and justice in this country. However, it is being lost to an emerging radicalism that challenges people to prove their faith by endorsing farce. Across the country, political leaders and commentators seem to outdoing each other in calling for a new order by attacking core institutions and values. There is much to be done after the tragic death of George Floyd, but there is a growing radical element fighting to out shout each other as leaders of a careening movement. Politicians are joining calls to “defund the police” and writers are calling for private censorship. Moderate voices seem to be fading with escalating demands that leaders demonstrate a truth faith by denouncing the values that define them.
Many are proving their faith by endorsing farce. Take those calls to “defund the police.” Once the mantra of only the most extreme elements in society, it has been picked up by elected leaders. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) has said that defunding all police should not “be brushed aside.” Brian Fallon, former public affairs director at the Justice Department and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign press secretary, has declared support for the movement.
Said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who represents part of Minneapolis: “The Minneapolis Police Department has proven themselves beyond reform. It’s time to disband them and reimagine public safety in Minneapolis. Thank you to @MplsWard3 for your leadership on this!”
Other politicians have joined pledges to go after police budgets or entire departments, even as their officers continue to maintain order and stop looting. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti declared that, despite the huge cost of the riots, he will refuse to expand the police budget. Instead, he said his administration has identified $250 million in cuts and pledged to give as much as $150 million from the police budget to the “black community … as well as communities of color, and women and people who have been left behind.”
In Minneapolis, city council member Jeremiah Ellison assured the public that “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. And when we’re done, we’re not simply gonna glue it back together.” Others, including Council President Lisa Bender, agreed. During the protests and rioting there, Ellison publicly proclaimed support for antifa, a violent and vehemently anti-free speech movement. In 2018, his father, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, supported the antifa movement as deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, tweeting that it would “strike fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump.”
Politicians seem eager not to be left in the center of a movement shifting rapidly left. Democratic socialist and New York state senator Julia Salazar expressed her delight: “To see legislators who aren’t even necessarily on the left supporting [defunding or decreasing the police budget] … feels a little bit surreal.”
That surreal feeling is likely even more pronounced among looting victims whose stores are left unprotected while politicians and experts excuse such crimes entirely. Socialist Seattle council member Tammy Morales dismissed concerns about looting, insisting that “what I don’t want to hear is for our constituents to be told to be civil, not to be reactionary, to be told looting doesn’t solve anything.” New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones said that “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence” while, on CNN, Clifford Stott, a professor of social psychology at Keele University in England, said “looting is expression.”
Northwestern University journalism professor Steven Thrasher declared: “The destruction of a police precinct is not only a tactically reasonable response to the crisis of policing, it is a quintessentially American response … Property destruction for social change is as American as the Boston Tea Party.” Of course, the patriots in Boston did not keep the tea and the looters seen running out of Target stores with flat-screen TVs do not seem like they are searching for a harbor for disposal.
As politicians rallied around defunding police or defending looting, the media had its own storming of the Bastille this week. Some journalists at the New York Times denounced the newspaper for publishing an opinion column by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on the use of troops to quell riots. Despite the outcry and calls for editors to resign, Times editorial page editor James Bennet and publisher A.G. Sulzberger gave full-throated defenses to using the opinion section to hear all sides of such national controversies.
That was a highpoint in journalistic ethics. It did not last. Hours later, Times editors confessed they had sinned in allowing a ranking U.S. senator to express a conservative viewpoint on the newspaper’s pages; they promised an investigation and a reduction in the number of opinions. The only thing we were spared was the appearance of Bennet and Sulzberger being rolled down the street in a French trumbrel for public judgment in Place de la Concorde.
Ultimately, the public self-flagellation of Bennet did not save him. As demanded by various writers, he resigned.
Even art and creative work apparently must be censored or erased in this new orthodoxy. In Dallas, the well-known statue of a Texas Ranger has been removed because an article in D Magazine referred to racist history connected to the rangers. USA Today reported on the possibility that TV cop shows, from “Dragnet” to “NYPD Blue” to “Law & Order,” must be taken off the air now, so as not to glorify police work.
History suggests, however, that such demonstrations may not be enough. As proven by the French Revolution, today’s revolutionaries are tomorrow’s reactionaries — or victims. Pierre Robespierre led that revolution’s “Reign of Terror” until he was guillotined as one of its last victims, and Dr. Marat’s “farcical scenes” ended with his own stabbing in a bathtub in retaliation for some of his own blood-soaked excesses. It is a cycle repeated in revolutions throughout history: When the music stops, fewer and fewer chairs can be found by those who readily embraced extreme measures.
That is why many of our leaders should consider the words of the French revolutionary Abbe Sieyes. Sieyes was a Catholic clergyman and the author of French Revolution’s manifesto of “What Is The Third Estate?” Yet, when asked what he had done during the French Revolution, he simply responded “I survived.”
Funny bit:
WH Press Sec bragged yesterday that Romney only won 2% of the black vote, and Trump won 8%.
Romney won 6% of the black vote running against Barack Obama.
No one cares about your plantation crimes.
Overwhelmingly, most of the rioting and looting was in urban areas with large black majorities running things. Out in the suburbs and small towns not so much. I’d guess rioters are cowards and wont’t matriculate to areas where the odds of getting shot are considerably higher than in gun-controlled Dim cities. For me, the issue comes down to how much violence will be tolerated. If you arm inner city black business owners, you’d see a precipitous drop in violence and looting. You’d also see a lot more respect for private property. If they defund the cops, invest in casket manufacturers since we’ll need more to make up for the thugs getting blown back into the street after some I’ll-advised home or business invasion. It’s cowboys and Indians without the sheriff but the Cavalry is still around. Maybe it good we start participating in our own defense and hence our lives. Kinda brings a moment of clarity and a sense of empowerment our grandfathers had but we seemingly have lost. At least the targets are in plain sight. Go tally. Good hunting to us all.
Mespo– it is ironic that those who justifiably were repulsed by lynchings in the past by citizens’ committees or other such groups are leading us back to that same blight by seeking to defund or abolish the police. There always have been and always will be outlaws. Vigilantes stepped in because there was no law enforcement around to deal with the outlaws and so people took it into their own hands. Who was it that said those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. The good news is that there are online classes in how to tie a proper hangman’s noose.
Another lawyer poster here writing favorably of the South’s lynching tradition.
And these guys are officers of the court and members of the bar?
Book– Your ignorance is astounding. Vigilantes were prominent in the Old West. In Virginia City, Montana the vigilantes hanged a corrupt Sheriff Plummer. The vigilantes of Tombstone got tired of outlaws going in the front door of the jail and right out the back and took to hanging them as a remedy.
Self help springs up when the law fails, and it is failing now in California and New York particularly. How long before citzens administer summary punishment to criminals caught in the act when they have lost faith in a useless criminal justice system?
The lawyers here are not endorsing it; they are trying to warn.
Maybe your grandfather hunted black’s, mine didn’t Fortunately, lynchings are now rare to non-existent, even in Virginia.
In the 1800s, there were as many whites lynched in Texas as blacks primarily because horse and cattle stealing were lynching offenses. I never actually knew either of my grandfathers. I’ve been told that one of them ran moonshine in the hills of Georgia so I doubt he had much time to hunt anyone. The other one fought in the civil war and so I know he hunted Yankees. I’ve never actually heard of anyone who “hunted” blacks but maybe I’ve led a sheltered life.
Apparently so.
HLM:
No there’d be no lynchings despite our resident troll’s bleating. Typically, if someone committed an offense, the folks in the community would exact some street justice and that would end it. Now, if you come a breaking into a man’s home or curtilage, expect there to be a swift and disproportionate response usually with a gun. And the law applied equally to any race committing the offense or aggrieved. Don’t do the crime and stay perfectly safe. You can make it about race if you want to shamelessly smear the concept, but it’s fundamentally about self-preservation and the role of men in the community in that endeavor.
An officer of the court speaks.
Mespo– In our electronic modern era, perhaps if citizens’ committees assume the role of law enforcers, instead of lynching perhaps outlaws will be locked in a room and forced to listen to bythebook read his posts?
“In our electronic modern era, perhaps if citizens’ committees assume the role of law enforcers, instead of lynching perhaps outlaws will be locked in a room and forced to listen to bythebook read his posts?”
*********************
Even I’d find that an 8th Amendment violation post-conviction.
“instead of lynching perhaps outlaws will be locked in a room and forced to listen to bythebook read his posts?”
Cruel and unusual punishment.
Honest, about 8 miles from where I sit this moment, 6 blacks were lynched in 2016 at one time on one tree, without a trial and by a crowd of 200 for allegedly aiding the escape of a wanted man. 2 of them were women and 1 was a minister. This was the one closest to where I live, but others occurred throughout the area. If you grew up in the south the odds are good that your area had similar events.
“6 blacks were lynched in 2016”
in 2016???
bythebook– I don’t know where you live but I never heard a story about six blacks being lynched in 2016 anywhere in the US. Can you link a news article or something about it? It’s hard to believe it occurred.
The last reported lynching in Texas was in Waco in 1916. The last reported lynching in our county occurred on our ranch in the 1800s.
Honest, I would except that my anonymity would possibly be breached and I don’t trust all who post or lurk here, which include a known stalker. You may find it by googling some of those details I posted. It is a true account and well verified, and I doubt much different from similar or worse events in our past. I can refer you to a lynching (blown away by gunfire) in the late 1940s Georgia, about 1/2 way between Atlanta and Athens where 2 couples (one of the men a WWII vet) were ambushed by a crowd on a rural creek crossing . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_Ford_lynchings
Not a black man, but instructive of the nature of lynchings, was the famous Leo Frank lynching near Marietta which included very powerful members of Atlanta and Marietta business and society. On that one I recommend the very long “And the Dead Shall Rise” which covers the crime, the lynching, ad the national response to both very thoroughly. “Devil In the Grove” won the Pulitzer Prize a couple of years back, which is about an almost lynching of 2 men (one another WWII vet) in a rural area about 50 miles form Orlando, capped off by the execution of one, and near execution of another (he played dead) on a lonely country road by the Lake County Fl (home of the “Villages”) sheriff who served into the 1970’s, died in the early 90’s , and until after 2000, still had a local street named after after him.
Honest, I don’t know if you saw it, but I wrote a post addressed to you after your moving comments about white and black babies crying (“can’t tell them apart”) and I meant it. I assume from that that you are a man of good faith and conscience. The south has much to be proud of in it’s past – it’s the home of almost any type American culture which we are recognized for and which the world often seeks to emulate , and by the way, much if not all of that due to AA influence – but slavery and race relations are rightly not among them.
“…and by the way, much IF not all of that due to AA influence …”
I meant to write “and by the way, much BUT not all of that due to AA influence ” and hear I am thinking of Bluegrass and other great arts and culture.
bythebook– I am all too familiar with the racism in the south having been raised in a family that most anyone would consider racist. Fortunately, over time and with good influences I was able to get it out of my system like any other sickness. I remember realizing I was “healed” when I met a black man that I could not stand and realized it had nothing to do with his race. It was simply because to me he was a jerk. It was a liberating feeling. Over the years, a fellow attorney and good friend spent a lot of quality time fishing. He was black and an ivy league educated lawyer. He told me any number of times that he could deal with people who were openly bigoted. What he could not stand were those who pretended to be pure and decent but underneath it all still believed that blacks were inferior. Sometimes he would call and just scream into the phone because it hurt so much. That is why I have harped on affirmative action. I have no problem with extending a helping hand to those in need but to me, when democrats push so hard for programs like affirmative action– now 60 years after the civil rights legislation– I believe it is because down deep inside they believe that black people just can’t make it without white people helping. That, to me is deeply offensive, and spits in the face of the many, many successful black people I know and work with here in our small town. Our town votes Republican by a wide margin and at one time, may years ago, the KKK was very active here. But today, on our five person city council, two are black men and our mayor is a Republican woman. We all get along. I am proud of us and really do not understand why other towns and cities seem incapable of doing the same. Maybe its because we spend a lot of time on human relations and not so much on race relations.
Honest, I appreciate your comments and good faith. I suspect that your life situation now is guarded in a good way and perhaps an awareness that very few AA go to the Ivy League or even to decent schools would be worth looking at. Specifically on affirmative action (aa), keep in mind a few things.
1. After 400 years of slavery, segregation, and racism should we really expect that all will be fine in 2 generations, all accounts paid, all in fair balance, and all damage individually, socially, and culturally resolved, healed, and in the rear view mirror? That would be getting off cheap and not realistic. America is partly – a large part – living on a built environment and accumulated capital established through the free or very cheap labor of AAs (that continued up until the 60’s at least). It is self serving Pollyannish to think we can leave before the check comes.
2. Most jobs in America are small business and so aa does not apply. That means that for most jobs any prejudice, or just natural mentoring tendencies, put blacks at a disadvantage. Is reserving a certain number of jobs in government and larger businesses really unfair to whites, or still just a balancing mechanism.
3. Education begins in homes not high schools, and while blacks themselves bear a most important responsibility to fix this (and the hated Obama spoke directly to this), a broken family and cultural landscape does not heal itself quickly. We broke it starting with slavery and continuing through segregation (powerful whites well into the 20th century in the south had black concubines, as well as free labor provided by the sheriff). Realistically, can we expect fair competition will work?
4. Many whites bring up aa as a black mark (no pun intended) on educated blacks. Hey, do they think the same of whites handed every opportunity since birth, up to and included if not limited to legacy enrollment? No. That is simple racism, a self serving blindness which then some blacks – see Clarence Thomas – blame on a system they would otherwise be watching from a field, factory, or check out counter back home.
Affirmative Action is not perfect – no system is. Yeah, it would be great if it was not justified or necessary still. It is. We as a nation need to pay that debt and heal that wound.
Your understanding of history and reality is atrocious. Look throughout history and look around the world.
Aha!!
My bad, 1916 and I realize how that changes my post.monumentally.
Sorry!
“Honest, about 8 miles from where I sit this moment, 6 blacks were lynched in 2016 ….”
*****************
Tell an obvious dramatic whopper, give details, get caught, feign mea culpa, wash and repeat. See why nobody cares what you think? I think it’s masochism.
Unlike the always seething mespo, I admit errors of typing, like this one, and other substantive errors of intent as I did in a debate with him not very long ago. I posted the words “Mespo was right and I was wrong.” Mespo’s soul is apparently too puny to do anything like that, or even acknowledge when someone of apparently higher moral bearing than himself does it. It’s OK and expected at this point. We all know what we are dealing with.
Why are you concerned with what happened in 1916??? Sheeesh, the Huns were bayoneting babies and Red Cross nurses back then. The Titanic had just sunk, and the Lusitania.
Why don’t you worry about something relevant to 2020, like black women popping out 77.3% of their brats into a single parent/single income home???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Sadie Mae, because Mespo raised the issue of the past.
Did you see it?”
Do you have a picture of it?
How did you hear of it?
Do you have evidence of it? Did you get first hand information or information that went around in circles until it reached you?
None of the above answers would jeopardize your anonimity so let us hear the answers.
If you have reasonable evidence, why didn’t you go to the police, state or federal authorities?
Honest, I don’t know for sure but my understanding was that before the Civil War the predominent lynchings were white though in California and certain other areas lynching included Mexicans and Chinese. Racist lynchings in my understanding took place some time after the Civil War though I would bet the lynching of Asians and Mexicans was in part racist as well. Lynching was quite common throughout the world. Though this type of vigilante justice is horrible I think the numbers of blacks actually lynched over the less than a century was a bit over 4,000. I say this because some think the number to be many multiples higher.
The strange thing is that in the inner cities violence alone between blacks kills around that 4,000 number, perhaps higher. That would make anyone wonder what is in the minds of some people that attack America as racist when they refuse to focus on those young lives lost in those cities.
“Maybe your grandfather hunted black’s, mine didn’t”
Behind those who protest too much and accuse others is a lynching or some other hidden eggregious act.
Mespo– Great comment. One PC error though. Can we still say Cowboys and Indians or must we say Cowboys and Native Americans?
DOJ Has Evidence That Antifa, Other Similar Groups Have ‘Instigated’ Violent Activity: Barr
The Department of Justice has evidence that the far-left extremist organization Antifa and other similar groups have been behind the recent riots in order to fuel their own violent agenda, according to Attorney General William Barr.
Barr told reporters at a June 4 presser that there are “three different sets of actors” involved, including peaceful demonstrators, opportunistic looters, and extremist agitators. Foreign actors have also played a role in the violence, he said.
“We have evidence that Antifa and other similar extremist groups, as well as actors of a variety of different political persuasions, have been involved in instigating and participating in the violent activity,” he said. “We are also seeing foreign actors playing all sides to exacerbate the violence.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/doj-has-evidence-that-antifa-other-similar-groups-have-instigated-violent-activity-barr_3377095.html
I think the ultra far left which wants to defund and disband police are beginning to get a persisting inkling of what they have wrought and they fear it.
Yeah, they don’t mind destruction in black communities or middle class white communities but when it hit Rodeo Drive they were scared and upset. ” What? Here? Surely they aren’t coming here!”. They’re here!
https://www.nysun.com/editorials/a-sad-day-for-the-times-and-for-newspaperdom/91158/
Allan has trouble using quotation marks, supplying a link, and giving credit where credit is due.
Crystal Night.
If you’re comparing Black Lives Matter thugs and riots over the past week to the German “Kristallnacht,” the night Nazi SD, SS and SA Brownshirts broke storefront glass and came after Jews, you’re close, it’s a good analogy – however the differences are profound. The Jews were an unarmed minority in 1930’s Germany – Americans, specifically including white Americans, are a very heavily armed majority.
No small difference.
After reading the comments and watching and listening to all the noise about BLM and Antifa and defunding the cops and people on tv actually being told to describe insurrection as protests, I agree with Prof. Turley’s interpretation of this entire picture of what is occurrin.
If our Communist and other dictatorial enemies ever dreamed of destroying us, they must be watching in awe as the destruction of America is appearing before their very eyes.
They would be very proud of their work over the course of years, to subvert all of our educational, research and media.
The result is a great success for our enemies, who want to destroy us, and a loss of all we have fought for and valued since 1776.
You couldn’t be more wrong. Without doubt, you are a Trump dupe. The strength of America lies in its ability to criticize itself, regardless of the validity of the points made, either through the system of voting or the system of protesting. Each system is necessary although each system is not without fault. China and Russia not only envy what they don’t understand and do not have the capacity for and therefore fear, but look upon these demonstrations as any level headed person with an ability to balance historical fact, as what they are, fine tuning. Civil rights were not voted in until the argument took to the streets. My America is strong enough to undergo these tune ups. My America is not afraid that its basic institutions will become weaker but will become stronger.
These demonstrations are what nudges America and Americans with the ability to understand, forward socially progressive. If you have trouble with socially and progressive then you are part of the problem, a dupe.
@issacbasonkavitch
I will take your comments seriously when you offer yourself, your relatives and/or property to the brave masked warriors of the antifa (who are fighting for justice) and BLM.
Check your own “white privilege”!
antonio
If one isn’t socially progressive and doesn’t talk the Leftist party line, then they are a “problem”, a ” Trump dupe” , and just plain “wrong.” Where’s the tolerance and diversity in that?
Yeah, disagree….not evolving in a positive direction. Not at all.
I am looking at all the Trump revolutionaries who are already on the outs with Trump, and are today’s reactionaries. John Kelly, Gen Mattis, Jeff Sessions, Michael Cohen – there is a really, really long list. That is what being a Trump revolutionary means, if you ever stray from anything Trump says.
Mr Turley may find this someday as well, if he ever stops his full throated Trump support.
all they who were opportunists, now flee the ship, rats
let them flee. but dont be so sure it’s going down
The political elite are working overtime to rationalize and justify the wanton destruction in US cities. Watching clips of the Minnesota governor Tim Walz over the weekend was a tutorial on left leaning ideology at work. The governor started each news conference by condemning the violence and destruction of the mobs. But he immediately undermined his perfunctory condemnation by trotting out the tired tropes used by leftist activists to drive their political agenda: structural racism and police violence. While Bull Conner and George Wallace and the Klan haunt the fevered dreams of the left every night, the reality of America is much different. Jim Crow was dismantled in the South by the 1960’s. The Great Society poverty programs exposed the tax-paying class to an unprecedented wealth expropriation that flowed to rent-seekers and the nontax-paying class. The justice system has supported race-based systemic discrimination in favor of law-abiding minorities since the 1980’s. Contrary to the inflammatory cries of genocide, the data undeniably demonstrates that police are far more likely to be killed in the line of duty than is an unarmed black man to die by police violence. But with hundreds of businesses serving multi-ethnic city residents destroyed by anarchists, the governor was mired in the trivial as he worried about the optics of the use of force instead of presenting a plan to protect the property and livelihoods of citizens. The message transmitted by those who should jealously guard their monopoly on authority but instead retreated in the face of danger, was the uncontrolled fury that attacked law-abiding society was not appreciated but probably justified.
The sympathies of the governor and the media were clearly with the rioters and not with the taxpayers not rioting and not destroying. The law-abiding residents will be the ones expected to provide the taxes to replace the ruined police cruisers, rebuild the burnt-down 3rd Precinct building, cover the swelled state unemployment benefits for everyone whose workplace was destroyed, and clean up the debris left behind. And of course, the tax-paying class is expected to accept this burden without raising uncomfortable questions about the legitimacy of the demands placed on them by the rioters and looters. Any suggestion that individuals bear any responsibility for their own well-being is shouted down in hyperbolic spasms of indignation that the victims are blameless. In the same way that nuclear power is a heretical topic within the secular cloisters that seek zero carbon emissions, the concept of responsibility cannot be part of the solution. Accountability would constitute a direct assault on the progressive project that proselytizes the only legitimate source of solutions for societal dysfunction is through the coercive power of the government. Or put more succinctly, the conversation must only be about what people outside the black community owe blacks. The retributive project of the progressive Left clearly on display for those willing to see is to lay claim by any means necessary to the productive results generated by those who operate within the conventions of a well-ordered society. If sanity returns and governments stand up to their responsibilities, one wonders if the supporters of the mayhem cheering from the safe bleacher seats will be named as co-conspirators given that Antifa is now labelled as a terrorist organization.
The death of any citizen through State-sponsored use of excessive force is a matter that needs to be handled in the justice system. At the same time, undermining the police efforts through grandstanding statements or rush-to-judgment summary personnel actions or hollow virtue-displaying knee-bending performances only serves to reinforce the well-documented Ferguson Effect that puts the most vulnerable further at risk. The irony of mobs surrounding the White House while ignoring the inconvenient fact that police have been under the control of Democrat governors, mayors, police chiefs, and unions for decades in these burnt and looted cities is suffocating. Defining the problem as amorphous societal racism rather than the specific actions of heinous individuals is very telling; no one needs a revolution to curb the bad behaviors of a few. The progressive left is not serious about solving the vestiges of societal dysfunction because that dysfunction is the source of their political power. A person could set a clock based on the predictable rollout of some manufactured outrage designed to drive low information voters to the polls every four years. Nominal Democrat presidential candidate Biden after a lifetime with his hands on the levers of governmental power has waited until now to bridge the racial divide? How many times can the same old tired cliches be wrapped up and presented as something new? The voters of Minnesota and similar cities across America should think about how their current one-party governments are failing in their fundamental role to protect the interests of the vast majority of the citizenry. The voters need to see beyond the media cheerleading and inane diversions and send a strong message in the next election that they will not support those who facilitate attacks on society.
good post, kurt
Trump Feels Need To Rekindle NFL Tensions
President Trump is once again weighing in on a culture war topic he helped elevate: NFL players kneeling during the national anthem.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said last week that the league was “wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier” on issues of race and oppression. Then Trump tweeted this Sunday night:
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
Could it be even remotely possible that in Roger Goodell’s rather interesting statement of peace and reconciliation, he was intimating that it would now be O.K. for the players to KNEEL, or not to stand, for the National Anthem, thereby disrespecting our Country & our Flag?
124K
8:54 PM – Jun 7, 2020
The NFL commissioner released a video message on Friday that offered condolences to the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. All three are African American. Floyd and Taylor were killed this year by police, and in the case of Arbery, one of the three white men accused in his killing is a retired law enforcement officer.
“We at the National Football League condemn racism and the systematic oppression of black people,” Goodell said.
“We, the National Football League, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the National Football League, believe black lives matter.”
As NPR reported on Friday, Goodell released his statement after nearly 20 players called on the NFL to take a stronger stance amid the nationwide protest against police brutality against black people.
Edited From: “Trump Questions NFL Commissioner’s Reversal On Protests During Anthem
Today’s NPR
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
This is a good example of how Donald Trump instinctively plays a polarizing role in the national discussion. Amid pandemic, recession and civil unrest, kneeling NFL players are the very ‘least’ of our worries. Yet Trump feels obliged to reignite this debate as a litmus test of loyalty towards him.
Trump apparently presumes NFL fans take their cues from his Tweets. This time Trump may discover no one cares what he thinks regarding the NFL. In fact, Trump may discover, in the weeks ahead, that Americans care less and less what he thinks about anything.
“This is a good example of how Donald Trump instinctively plays a polarizing role in the national discussion. ”
Paint Chips, If you weren’t so un-American you would see that Trump is leading the way for a country united and not a country of violence and hate that the Democrat Party promotes. A lot of Americans died protecting that Flag you defame. You spit on their graves though without them you would have been killed already because to Nazi’s and the like you are a deviant.
If it weren’t for them, he may have been killed by actual, German Nazis. Soliloquizing is easy from your living room.
Nice to see you recognize those that fought and died so you could comment on this blog. I am greatful to them for what I have gained by their actions and try to live up to them rather than being anti-American supporting intolerence and a decline in this nation.
Alan, if you get back to planet earth give us a call.
If Alan is calling Seth from Earth it will be a very long distance call.
Paint Chips, I’m back on planet earth and you are in West Hollywood. You might as well be outside of earths orbit.
Gettimg his nails done–do not disturb.
Roger Goodell has a net worth of around $150 million and his combined salary is about $45 million. As such he serves the powerful richer owners of the NFL who want him to keep the circus racket of NFL in business.
However, they understand that it’s even more important to scare the bejeezus out of the American middle class with rioting a la BLM, so, Roger has been ordered to defy Trump and say “black lives matter”
Roger has “taken a knee” like Krapperneck , and has “taken the knee” to offer fellatio to the rioters, like all those weak and lame white people crying over the blessing of having European ancestry, self hating fools who are pawns just as much as the baggy pants looters, who are all out there on a tear, unknowingly executing a mission to scare the law and order middle class into voting for Biden. Who will lead a crack-down that will benefit the rackets the billionaires actually do control, instead of the ones they dont.
Simple as that.
Cut the phony populism s… Kurtz. Your hero claims to be a billionaire and might be richer than Goodell. His key longest lasting appointees are Mnuchin and Ross. You’re phony to the core.and couldn’t care less about working people who will be paying for the Trump tax cut/rich boy’s stimulus for a decade.
I never been to an NFL game and never will go. this in spite of personally knowing at least 20 different players who have made lots of money in the game, mostly black guys, and knowing plenty of lawyers who made their bread on negotiating contracts. Decent chaps, none of them named Krapperneck. Not friends anymore, thats for sure. I’m below their vaunted level at this stage in my life.
What happens in the NFL, I could care less, and most NFL fans>? I have no clue what sort of person they are. They’re not the kind who type on Turley’s blog I can guess that much.
The NFL as a sort of capitalist cartel of privileged local monopolies, is kind of interesting. You would think they care about the tons of harm done to to their licensing fees by looting. But you see that would be a narrow minded person’s thinking about capitalism. the kind of myopia that liberterians have.
I used to be a liberterian, then i grew up. And I saw how the people who own controlling interests in various businesses, will subordinate one business agenda to their own overall agenda. this dynamic was well illustrated in this clip from Citizen Kane. Which applied to newspapers, but, you could apply it just as well to any other racket like the NFL. short term profits are not as important as whatever other “social change agenda” the billionaire ownership has in mind for we the underlings.
See if we were owners of NFL we would call “Sell” and get out as fast as we could
https://theundefeated.com/features/nfl-boycotts-from-both-sides-over-anthem-protests/
bu the NFL is owned by a couple handful of billionaires who only operated for their own interests
they are now interested in whipping up the BLM riot squads into scaring their mostly-white clientele into submission, for other reasons. if it costs them revenues, they can bear the loss easily
and what is the competition, anyways? they are all local monopolies and we can see there has not ever been a viable league competitor to the NFL
they should have been hit with the antitrust hammer decades ago. now, it’s just another piece of news in a fast moving game that’s a lot bigger than football
but did they give white fans the finger? Yes of course they did. they spit on the fans. Fans must take a knee and fellate the rich players now to keep them happy, all riled up with BLM propaganda.
Kind of like in college football, when they send the white girls in as “tutors” to “help” the players “Make the grade.,” You know how a lot of those tutoring sessions end, right?
Any white person who spends a dime on football is a sucker.
You want a sport? MMA is the sport for you. Or maybe IPSC. We should not waste energy on frivolous games anymore. Smart people will aim at sports that can help build life-saving skills.
Seth, you missed the latest memo. You aren’t supposed to be talking about the NFL or how murder hotnets are Trump’s fault. You are supposed to be explaining that Democrats didn’t teally mean it about defunding the police.