Sam Stroud
Opinion Editor
Over the summer, Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District Rep. Earl Blumenauer gave a speech directed at the President where he chastised Conservatives and the Republican Party at large for fear mongering and insisted there was no need for federal troops to be deployed in Portland where a federal courthouse was attacked repeatedly by rioters.
Recently, Democrats have shifted from ignoring the chaos and violence in their cities to blaming their issues and mistakes on Donald Trump. On Monday, Congressional Rep. Adam Schiff stated Trump was “willfully fanning the flames of violence.” Later the same day, Joe Biden echoed such sentiments. This is a patently insane claim. Left wing politicians and activists, not the President, are to blame for the waves of rioting across the country in America’s big cities.
There are two ways which leftists have created this internal strife. One, leftist figures and activist groups have provided proper motivation for rioting. Two, they have fostered environments in which rioters can loot and burn at will.
To the first point. The narrative the Democratic Party has been pushing for years, but has been particularly intensifying upon lately, is the notion the United States is a systemically racist country. Not only is the country racist institutionally, your neighbor is racist as well.
Racism is entrenched into every institution and every individual who is not of color. This point is echoed constantly within Democrat political circles. In June, Michelle Obama gave a graduation address to the class of 2020 on YouTube. In her address, she said, “for too many people in this country, no matter how hard they work, there are structural barriers working against them that just make the road longer and rockier, and sometimes it’s almost impossible to move upward at all.”
What are these structural barriers and how do they work to prevent success? She never clarified.
This sort of talk comes from current Democrat politicians as well. Former Congressional Rep. and back-to-back unsuccessful senator and presidential candidate Beto O’ Rourke claimed America was, “founded on racism” and “is racist today.”
The principles of the Constitution, this country’s founding document, are not a form of racism. Individual liberty, private ownership and limited government are not racist ideals. The racism persisted was not the founding itself, but the failure to then apply those principles to everyone.
It may be fair to say America was founded by racists, but it is wildly inaccurate to say it was founded on racism. The distinction is critical, and one Democrats such as O’ Rourke are not interested in making. Their message to their base is America was a society founded on discrimination and oppression, and it remains one to this day.
And what about the people living in this society? Robin DeAngelo, author of “White Fragility,” a number one New York Times bestseller book, has the simple answer. If you are white, “You are racist, pure and simple, and without a lifetime of conscious effort, you will always be.” To be white is to be racist to many on the left, and they preach it to a growing audience. As DaAngelo’s book sales can tell you, this is not a fringe belief.
Not only do Democrats and leftist groups push the narrative that America is systemically racist, they actively discourage counter arguments to their perspective. The National Museum of African American History and Culture released a pamphlet labeling 13 values which are part of “white culture.” Among the list of values was the nuclear family. Another sign of “whiteness” was listed to be objective, rational, linear thinking, as was believing hard work is the key to success. So to was respecting authority. This is not a joke.
If you think linearly and rationally, your “whiteness” is showing, and as DeAngelo puts it, to be white is to be racist. So in partaking in rationality, you might be participating in racism. The same is true if you believe hard work can alleviate your problems. If you try to make an argument against DeAngelo, O’Rourke or Obama, you are simply engaging in racism.
These are the three pillars or leftist thought. America was founded on racism, continues to be racist, and all white people are inherently racist no matter what they do. Violence may seem like the only way to break through system to some people. Since the system was designed to oppress people, does oppress people, and a large portion of society who participate in it are incapable or unable to fix it.
Lighting police stations on fire and trying to burn down churches and courthouses can seem justifiable. By painting a portrait of an oppressive nation, in which certain groups are actively persecuted by the government and their own neighbors, leftists offer motives for people to violently take to the streets.
The second way in which leftism has created this surge of chaos across the country is simply by letting the rioting and violence continue in their own cities. Chicago, Portland, Atlanta, New York, Seattle—all these cities have seen massive spikes in violence, some more than others.
Seattle saw an autonomous zone form in which innocent people were gunned down in the streets and ambulances were not allowed to pass into the zone to supply medical aid. In response to this crisis, the city cut police funding. The chief of police, the first Black woman to hold the position, was forced to step down in light of those cuts.
In Portland, a right-wing protester was shot and killed over the weekend. Yet, both Washington and Oregon governors and mayors of Portland and Seattle all declined offers from the President to send in troops to quell the violence. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler earlier this week went so far as to tell Trump to “get out of the way.”
New York City saw its homicide rate jump 50% for the month of July 2020 as compared to July 2019. Meanwhile, Mayor Bill De Blasio paints words on streets and slashes the police budget by a billion dollars.
Not one of those cities has a Republican mayor, city council or, with the exception of Atlanta, a Republican governor. These police departments which are apparently riddled with racism are under the leadership of Democrat chiefs of police, district attorneys and mayors. How is it Trump’s responsibility and not the local leaders, most of whom are all Democrats.
Despite what various media outlets such as CNN, where Anderson Cooper called the violence in the streets “Trump’s America,” claim, this is not Trump’s doing. It is the left’s. They have preached the United States is a country is which is fundamentally immoral, abusive and oppressive, and they sit back and simply let the chaos reign in cities and states they have political power in.
This is not Trump’s America: this is the left’s America. Your government is evil, and your neighbor is your enemy, even if they do not know it. This is not Trump’s message; this is the left’s.
