Anger over his arrest blurred perception

This long, thoughtful piece by a former military officer with a good education, published in National Review, could have been helpful. Instead, it merely adds to the problem.

For all his education, Johnson forgot one simple rule: put yourself in the other fellow’s shoes.

His conclusion that there is widespread racism in the police ranks is based on his own arrest.

He has black skin. He was pulled over. He was questioned, handcuffed and jailed.

No one likes being jailed. But let’s look at the details.

One important detail he left out was the location. Was it in a high crime area where many crimes had been committed by black people?

As one officer noted, their suspicions were increased by the fact he was smoking a cigar. Smoking “blunts” – cigars containing marijuana – is common, and illegal.

So officers were doing pro-active policing. When they see someone black, in an area frequented by black criminals, doing what black criminals often do, they use a legal means to stop him and check him out. There is no reason for the police to stop and question an 80-year-old Asian woman driving to the grocery in broad daylight in a suburban neighborhood with a low crime rate.

Unfair? Perhaps. Except that he would have been sent on his way if he had a valid driver’s license.

The alternative then was this: police could ignore all suspicious activity, or possibly just suspicious activity by black citizens, and not arrest people for violating the law, if they are black.

Does that seem reasonable?

For all its length, most of which dwells on slavery without ever making a connection with today’s events, Johnson’s article is remarkably short on solutions.

Stop and question no one? Stop and question only white people? Arrest no one for failing to have a driver’s license. Do not arrest them if they “forgot”?

If the cops making the stop have the same color skin is that racist?

Johnson was placed in handcuffs because that is standard policy, for the protection of officers.

All you have to do is watch the Cops reality TV show, before it was banned, or countless YouTube videos showing citizens, black and white, attacking police officers while being arrested, and sometimes killing them.

Another thing you will see on those videos is black drivers refusing to comply with legal orders to provide a driver’s license, proof of insurance or other information. They have been told, overtly or covertly, since birth that they are oppressed and the police are their enemy.

So they choose to argue or fight rather than help the officers do their duty.

There is a lot of data about deaths during interactions with the police. But one important data point does not seem to be readily available: How many citizens have been injured or killed while NOT resisting arrest?

Statistics list “unarmed” deaths, but that term isn’t really relevant when the unarmed person is large, powerful, fighting violently and trying to take the officer’s weapon, as in the Ferguson case, which still is shrouded in myth.

In a study published last year, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 89 percent of 211 people killed by the police were armed, and 83 percent were physically assaulting the officers or someone else.

In rare instances a police mistake results in a death, as in the George Floyd case. In that case, there was almost instant justice. Cops were fired and arrested.

Johnson has the background and education to understand, if he could put aside his own bias and look at the crime problem through the viewpoint of those trying to protect him and others.

Many police agencies invite citizens to ride with officers. It can be eye-opening for those willing to open their eyes.

Liberals lie, often in what they think are clever ways

The intellectual dishonesty of liberals is well known, but still can be stunning.

Take, for example, a 2016 study of police violence.It was done by the Center for Policing Equity, a far left organization.

Both the summary and conclusion hemmed and hawed about irrelevant points, trying to suggest that police engage in wholesale violence against black Americans, an important Democrat voting bloc.

In neither the summary nor conclusion did it mention the most salient fact in the study, which was buried on the 19th page of the 29-page report.

Police are 42 percent less likely to use lethal force when arresting black people than when arresting whites.

(Hat tip to the Web site JustFacts for noticing the discrepancy.)

But there's more.

The dishonest liberal "study" also buried this: "...significant attention should be paid to additional situational factors in attempting to quantify and explain racial disparities in use of force. For instance, might racial disparities in the tendency to resist, flee, or disrespect officers be implicated in the observed differences?"

"Might"?

This is a sneaky, backhanded way of ducking the essential point:If you don't resist arrest, the chances of surviving an encounter with the police are virtually 100 percent!

Almost every cause celebre of the left has been a case where a black suspect resisted arrest by the police. Cases involving white suspects generally are ignored.What is the harm in complying with a lawful police order?

If you watch the popular reality show Cops you will see any number of people who want to try the case on the streets, rather than in the courts, by arguing rather than complying.

If is far easier, and safer, to follow orders, seek legal assistance and fight the charge in court, and also seek redress for the manner in which the case was handled if necessary.

But liberal schools and the media have hammered the notion into the minds of black Americans that they are oppressed and exploited and therefore have no responsibility to obey police commands.

What I'd like to see in the meantime, is an honest study that looks at cases where suspects are injured or killed and determines how many of them failed to comply or resisted.

Wikipedia is not a good source for political information

There may be no better example of Wikipedia’s leftward tilt than its entries on two of America’s First Ladies.

The entry on Michelle Obama is so glowing it might be likened to the nomination of Mother Theresa for sainthood.

But the entry on Melanie Trump is more aptly compared to a story from Confidential magazine -- a product of the 1950s that is considered the prototype for scandal, gossip and expose’ journalism.

Michelle Obama never produced or accomplished anything of note, but she wed a community organizer who went into politics, got rich and rode the PC movement into the White House.

Despite her lack of accomplishment, Obama was not known for her humility. "I have been at every powerful table you can think of...They are not that smart," Obama once told Newsweek.

However, author Dinesh D’Souza has described Michelle Obama’s college thesis at Princeton University as “illiterate and incoherent.”

The late author Christopher Hitchens said of Mrs. Obama’s thesis:

“The only thing you can definitely tell from the attempt to read it, because I maintain it cannot actually be read, it’s a degradation of the act of reading, is that she favors, or views with favor, black separatism, or as she calls it, separationism.”

“You should be able to be fluent, witty, self-deprecating, insightful, amusing, personal,” Hitchens said. “Not a bit of it. It’s a trudge. It’s a hateful, lugubrious, boring, resentment-filled screed written in some very bad form of sociologies.”

But Michelle Obama, who is of African descent, got a degree then parlayed that into lucrative, high-paying positions before meeting the very ambitious Barack Obama.

The two entries are done with some subtlety but you can’t miss the differences.

The article on Obama is more than twice as long as the one on Melania Trump. It reads like a month by month account of her life, with a wealth of trivia.

In passing, the article mentions the comment by Obama that infuriated millions of Americans. She said she was “proud of her country for the first time” when it elected her husband, but Wikipedia brushes it off by saying it was “seen as a gaffe.”

At times it borders on the grotesque: “Obama has been compared to Jacqueline Kennedy,” it says, as if the Obama reign was Camelot 2.0.

The gushing, fawning Wikipedia article on Obama stands in stark contrast to its treatment of the lovely, effeminate Melania.

Trump is not described as a beautiful, accomplished woman who speaks five languages, but more as an opportunistic harlot, which is how she often is described by Trump haters.

Like many supermodels, she posed nude on occasion. Wikipedia dwells on this, essentially depicting the common practice as pornography.

It takes care to mention that her father belonged to the League of Communists in Slovenia, where she was born. Also, that she dropped out of college.

It quotes a snarky piece from the Trump-hating Washington Post questioning her citizenship, which she obtained in 2006, a year after she married Donald Trump.

It goes on to accuse her of plagiarism, but grudgingly notes that she was a defamation suit against the tabloid Daily Mail, (offering a chance to rehash the defamation). It also regurgitates the liberal media complaint that she spends too much on travel, comparing it to the cost of Michelle Obama’s travel. (But in doing so it compare’s Obama’s “solo travel,” apparently ignoring her frequent lavish junkets with a huge entourage of friends and family).

One curious passage: “During the 2020 State of the Union Address, President Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh, who was sitting right beside Melania in the gallery and she presented the medal to him.”

What has all that to do with an article about Melania Trump? One with a suspicious mind might think the only point of the paragraph was to get the name “Rush Limbaugh” into the article, because it is a trigger for liberals.

Wikipedia might be useful for detail on the migratory habits of Canadian geese but when it ventures into politics it should be read, not with a grain, but a hefty helping of salt.

Silver linings, and such

"Sweet are the uses of adversity...."
Shakespeare's words are a good reminder that terrible events can have beneficial consequences.
The worst plague to befall humanity was the Black Death of the 14th century.
No one really knows but it probably wiped out one-fourth to one-half the population of Europe.
Then what happened?
Wealth -- especially land -- fell into the hands of fewer people. Wages and productivity rose. (At different rates in different places, but overall and fairly swiftly.)
The old feudal system began to collapse. The Renaissance got under way. Science, especially medical science, began to make great strides.
Everyone hopes the current pandemic will not prove to be as catastrophic and the economic prospects look terrible at the moment with businesses failing and rising unemployment.
But perhaps, when it is over, there will be benefits for the survivors that we cannot yet calculate.

Another day of hate for liberals

Today is the day liberals devote to their annual distortion of world history by trashing the great explorer Christopher Columbus.

Columbus was long venerated for finding a viable route to this continent that led to sustained visitations and then colonization.

So it was inevitable that when liberals turned against America they extended their hate to all of Western Civilization, which had given birth to capitalism – the greatest economic system ever devised and an enemy of the socialism that liberals prefer.

Liberal historians spent decades revising history and teaching American students the fiction that rather than opening a New World, Columbus destroyed an ancient civilization that was a utopian dream.

It is all bunk, but there are those who take it seriously.

Although the life of Columbus is not well documented, he was an Italian who had acquired great skills in navigation and believed he could find a route sailing east from Europe to China. He did not prove the world was not flat because most educated people of the time knew it is a sphere but they had not been able to calculate its circumference.

Trade and gold were among his goals, along with spreading Christianity. These all indicated he was evil, according to liberals.

They also deplored his treatment of the people already living in the areas he visited, although he used standard tactics of people in the 15^th century.

But all the twisting of fact cannot change what Columbus accomplished and the impact it had on history.

Happy Columbus Day.

Brave New World

The Green New Deal is the logical successor to the New Deal and the Great Society.
Those two epic failures promoted even grander visions of the Utopian world liberal always promise but never deliver.
Here it is in its entirety:

This resolution calls for the creation of a Green New Deal with the goals of

• achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions;
• establishing millions of high-wage jobs and ensuring economic security for all;
• investing in infrastructure and industry;
• securing clean air and water, climate and community resiliency, healthy food, access to nature, and a sustainable environment for all; and
• promoting justice and equality.

The resolution calls for accomplishment of these goals through a 10-year national mobilization effort. The resolution also enumerates the goals and projects of the mobilization effort, including

• building smart power grids (i.e., power grids that enable customers to reduce their power use during peak demand periods);
• upgrading all existing buildings and constructing new buildings to achieve maximum energy and water efficiency;
• removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation and agricultural sectors;
• cleaning up existing hazardous waste and abandoned sites;
• ensuring businesspersons are free from unfair competition; and
• providing higher education, high-quality health care, and affordable, safe, and adequate housing to all

Here's what it promises:

Everyone will have everything he needs and wants.

There will be no crime because there will be no need for crime. We will have justice and equality instead.

Millions of high wage jobs will be created magically by the government, for those who want to work.

Blight, pollution and ugliness will be eliminated (as it has in Detroit).

Taxes to pay for all this will be astronomical, probably even unachievable. Yet, somehow only "the rich" will pay taxes. How anyone would become rich or why they would want to is not detailed.

It is all mind-boggling, but perhaps none more than the assertion that "businesspersons are free from unfair competition." What on Earth could that possibly mean? The government will choose winners and shoot their competitors?

The New Deal prolonged the depression, which in itself was created by government. The Great Society consigned generations of people to perpetual poverty and set the stage for today's immigration crisis.

Any more help from the government and we are doomed.

The "trickle-down" putdown is bogus

In 1921, when the tax rate on people making over $100,000 a year was 73 percent, the federal government collected a little over $700 million in income taxes, of which 30 percent was paid by those making over $100,000.
By 1929, after a series of tax rate reductions had cut the tax rate to 24 percent on those making over $100,000, the federal government collected more than a billion dollars in income taxes, of which 65 percent was collected from those making over $100,000.
This disturbed big-government liberals who loved raising taxes. They began mocking the idea of cutting taxes as "trickle-down economics," meaning that tax relief for the wealthy who pay taxes was supposed to trickle down to the less wealthy.
It made no sense, and no one proposing tax relief ever made such a claim, but liberals adopted it and have repeated it ever since, in the mindless way they repeat nonsense that appeals to unthinking people.

They tried it when Ronald Reagan got Congress to reduce tax levels in the 1980s. It had the same effect then, just as it had when the Democrats cut taxes under Johnson, fulfilling a proposal by the late President Kennedy.

When people are allowed to keep more of their own money they don't stuff it under the mattress. They invest it, which creates jobs and wealth. Everyone benefits.

Liberals would spend every dime you earn if you let them, because they fancy that they know better than you how best to use the money.