My town’s not getting burned down because the rich coastal liberals with “Hate Has No Home Here” signs on their exquisitely landscaped front yards will never put up with that nonsense here in Shangri-Lib. In a very real way, the chaos that the liberals are creating by handcuffing other people’s cops – do you think my cops will ever get the order to stand down? – is not my problem. And, unless you are still living in some Democrat hellhole, it’s probably not your problem either.
So, why again when some big blue city that hasn’t had a Republican mayor since phrenology was the pseudo-science of the day – as quackery goes, head bump interpretation is way less damaging than weather paranoia and flu panic – suffers self-induced ritualized convulsions upon the death of yet another felon should the rest of us care?But of course, we do care. When one of us is hurting, we are all diminished. But our solution is not to burn, loot and murder, nor is it to defund the police. While it may be that some police officers behave poorly, the majority of the police in fact do the right thing most of the time.
We haven't always had police in the United States, or for that matter anywhere. The first police department in the U.S. was in Boston in 1838. That was followed in 1845 by the Albany, NY police department. Before that, you had county sheriffs, and Federal Marshals. But for the most part, people settled differences themselves. Sheriffs would occasionally gather a posse to go after felons, but that left most people to settle things themselves. And if people couldn't settle their differences peacefully, they settled them by the feud. The Hatfields and McCoys is illustrative of what results. The feud between these families was not justice, but a series of acts of revenge. To have something approaching justice, we need the police.
As Schlichter points out, where the bullies are burning, looting, and murdering, the locals want to see the police doing their duty.
So, even though we do want to help – for now, because eventually there will come a point where non-blue city dwellers just shrug and say, “You’re on your own” – it’s not really clear what we can do gently. About 29 years ago this week, a bunch of soldiers and I tried to make Los Angeles safe again for a few weeks when we deployed in the Rodney King riots. It was quite an interesting time for a suburban guy who never ventured into the tougher parts of South-Central to be rumbling through it with an M16A1 rifle and a basic load of ammo. I got an up-close look at the reality of liberal misrule, though it was largely obscured by flames.
The people of the inner city loved us. They did not dig the LAPD, but they loved the Guards' citizen-soldiers, particular because many of our troops – my unit was 3rd Battalion, 160th Infantry based in smoldering Inglewood, for people who know the geography – were from the affected neighborhoods. And they took no guff. Many carried their own weapons and (allegedly) engaged in firefights with gang members with their own pieces so they did not have to account for spent Army rounds. The official combat tally was low. A Salvadorean drug dealer got his head blown off trying to run down some guardsmen at a road block – legend has it that the investigation consisted of some LAPD detectives rolling up, asking what happened, saying “Oh, okay,” then driving away. Also, rumor has it that a fleeing rapist got free gender reassignment surgery with a 5.56mm round. At other times, so it has been said, the guardsmen just beat the crap out of gangsters, who learned not to screw with the Army guys.
And why wouldn't the have loved to have someone on the streets putting down the burning, looting, and murder. The media pretend as if the gangsters and drug dealers are these peoples' friends. The are not. Instead, the gangsters and drug dealers prey on the people living in the inner cities. BLM and the race hustlers do not actually speak for the people living in the inner city. We watch the news and see angry black faces telling us that the police are unfair. But what we don't realize is that the media hunt these people down for an interview. We almost never see the real victims of the drug dealers and gangsters, who are held up as some sort of Robin Hood. But even Robin Hood wasn't Robin Hood.
Over time, we have developed a system that generally works in terms of delivering justice. The police investigate crimes. The District Attorneys prosecute the crimes. The courts act as referees between the DA and the Defense, to which anyone accused has a right. The courts try cases and where the accused is found guilty, mete out punishment. When each of these institutions act with even a modicum of faithfulness to finding the truth, as much justice as you can have in this world is the result.
No one thinks this system delivers perfect justice. But what are is the Left proposing to replace it? Sending unarmed social workers to handle domestic disputes? These are some of the most dangerous situations police encounter. What sort of fool would go into such a situation unarmed? And it is not like we don't already have programs designed to reduce gang violence. How successful are these programs? Have they gotten rid of gangs or reduced gang activity? No?
So, there is an answer to the violence. It’s called law and order. In extreme cases, like riots, it consists of massive, overwhelming force. But that’s a choice too, and one our gutless elite is not willing to make. They’d rather let the body count rise. They could end the murder spike tomorrow by backing the cops and dumping the leftist-bought prosecutors for real DAs. They could shut down riots and gangs and drug houses by simply shutting them down.But, getting back to the original question, should we let the blue cities burn? As Schlichter says, we have no choice. As long as the people in charge of these cities can tolerate them burning, and they can tolerate a lot, they will contine to burn. But don't believe what the media is pushing. The people stuck in these cities would rather see law and order. Wouldn't you?
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