Politics of Upside-Down America

There was even more yelling and screaming than usual in Washington last week. I’m not talking about the “peaceful” demonstrators in Lafayette Park, who were putting ropes and chains on the statue of Andrew Jackson and trying to pull it down.

I’m talking about in Congress, where there’s always a lot of brave yelling and screaming about “We gotta’ do something about this” and “We gotta’ solve that.”

Last week it was the police reform bill proposed by Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.

Called the “Justice Act,” it included incentives for police departments to ban things like chokeholds and no-knock raids, plus grants for body cams and a commission to study the social status of Black men and boys.

Everyone – especially the Democrats – has been clamoring for police reform for a month in the wake of the George Floyd killing by police in Minneapolis.

Scott’s proposal, designed as a first draft subject to bipartisan debate, went nowhere.

Though Democrats and Republicans agreed on probably 75% of its content, Democrats in the Senate wanted much more, so they killed the Justice Act in its cradle.

You can understand why ordinary Americans are so frustrated by the people in D.C. They posture. They bloviate. They sling all this BS – and then do nothing until after the next election.

Meanwhile, across the country young demonstrators continue to use Floyd’s death and what they claim is systemic racism by police as excuses to riot and mindlessly tear down or threaten the statues of American heroes like Abraham Lincoln.

Dozens of cities – all run by Democrats and many with Black mayors and police chiefs – have done virtually nothing to protect their statues or property owners from the mob.

It’s long past time for Barack Obama, Basement Joe Biden and Blue State political “leaders” to condemn the lawlessness of the street protesters, the statue destruction and the takeover of several blocks in downtown Seattle.

Yet even as people die, buildings burn and gangs of looters and violent professional agitators roam their streets, Democrats and the liberal media keep calling it “a peaceful revolution.”

But the mass of the American people knows better. For a month they’ve been watching nothing being done to stop the destruction and violence.

Is it any wonder gun sales are going through the roof?

Of course, if you take up arms and defend a statue from the mob, you’ll be the one who ends up in jail.

This is where we’re at in upside-down America. The good guys are the bad guys and bad guys are the good guys.

The sad thing is, nothing is going to change anytime soon.

The Democrat appeasers are not going to get tough on the street mobs. They see the wave of lawlessness and disorder as a weapon to defeat President Donald Trump.

It may backfire, however.

Democrats are so foolish they actually think if Joe Biden becomes president things will get back to normal.

I’m sure the Poles thought the same way when they were taken over by the Soviets after World War II: “If we just act nice to these bad guys, it’ll all be OK.”

But Democrats have learned nothing from history.

You don’t appease mobs, especially destructive mobs. You don’t take a knee to vandals. They only get more violent and demand more power.

The young Americans mindlessly tearing down statues of Ulysses S. Grant and demanding that police departments be defunded or disbanded are historical illiterates, but that’s not all.

They’ve been brainwashed by their college teachers into thinking that America is a terrible country built on racism.

Are there racists in America? Sure. But racism is not systemic the way it once was for 70 years in the Jim Crow South by law and in fact in the North.

Institutional racism, even if it existed the way Black Lives Matter and the demonstrators claim, is no excuse for destroying the country. It’s time for all of them to grow up, quit breaking things and start studying history.

Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” His column is distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.