Rush Limbaugh has long made sport of the Toyota Prius, the tiny, half-cylinder four-door that serves more as (I’m paraphrasing) a modern-day cancer ribbon. People buy them in part to save gas but, as Rush says, they do so mostly to show everyone how much they care about the environment — not realizing that the Prius’ positive impact is questionable due to the toxic process required to produce and later dispose of the batteries. A Prius in your driveway is for many an attempt to avoid being called heartless.
Recently, we’ve experienced this type of “care mongering” from politicians regarding the incidents in Falcon Heights, MN, Baton Rouge, LA, and Dallas, TX. Unfortunately, it’s not just with Democrats.
Let’s skip Mr. Obama’s soulless excuse for a memorial in Dallas as he stood over the bodies of the slain police officers and their families, and wagged his finger at us over school funding, Glocks before books, and the unconscious racism in us all –pardon me- just us whites. Instead, let’s examine how our side has handled these situations. First up, potential Trump VP pick and former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich: “If you are a normal white American, the truth is you don’t understand being black in America and you instinctively underestimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk.”
Marco Rubio, Stage Left-ist:
Those of us who are not African American will never fully understand the experience of being black in America. But we should all understand why our fellow Americans in the black community are angry at the images of an African American man, with no criminal record, who was pulled over for a busted tail light, slumped in his car seat and dying while his four-year-old daughter watches from the back seat.
All of us should be troubled by these images. And all of us need to acknowledge that this is about more than just one or two recent incidents.
The fact is that there are communities in America where black families tell us that they are fearful of interacting with their local law enforcement. How they feel is a reality that we cannot and should not ignore. And as we work through this it will require us to ask and to answer some very difficult and uncomfortable questions.
Finally, Colorado Republican candidate for US Senate (to replace Democrat Michael Bennet) Darryl Glenn:
What happened in Minnesota, Dallas, and Baton Rouge was unspeakably evil. It is impossible to watch what has taken place in these three cities without feeling a mixture of grief and anger.
With tragedy like this unfolding around us, we need to hold in our head two distinct thoughts at the same time: You can support and be grateful for your police and at the same find the actions of certain individual police abhorrent. In the same way, if a pastor or priest violates the trust of his flock, it does not mean you do not love your church. But it does mean there’s a serious violation of trust.
Trump got in on it, too, but I’ll spare you the link.
Gingrich and Rubio’s comments, nearly identical, are non sequiturs. Conservatives believe behavior, not melanin, is the only thing that matters. Claiming we don’t have sympathy for blacks or other minorities because we’re not of that color is no different than the pointless argument that men can’t have an opinion on abortion because we don’t have a uterus. We can have sympathy if systemic or institutional racism is true, but that’s the point: Is it? Are blacks being murdered or treated differently by white police officers strictly due to racism? The answer is no, but this will of course be ignored by most of the media.
Darryl Glenn is an intelligent and well-spoken man. His background — Air Force Academy graduate, retired Lieutenant Colonel, JD, MBA — is impressive. To top it off, he’s an articulate conservative and a good speaker. He’s one hell of a candidate, and I eagerly await his mopping the floor with Bennet. But Glenn, like Gingrich and Rubio, has evidently come down with a case of the “feels” which forces its victims to put pandering over principle, and convict these police officers before the facts come out. It would appear the justice system worked for Walter Scott in South Carolina. Let’s let it work for everyone. Our country is not divided by race, as the Left would have us believe, but by the notion that truth is worth pursuing if you give it a minute.
photo credit: Marco Rubio via photopin (license); Gage Skidmore
