Protestors protest for lots of reasons – against injustice, to give a voice to the voiceless, or to speak truth to power. But mobs riot and loot because they think they can get away with it — or possibly, as some news reports suggest, someone is paying them to create chaos. Or maybe it’s simply because they have a leftist celebrity or Biden staffer on hand to pay their bail.
The United States this summer has endured the most sustained episode of mob violence – looting, arson, organized property destruction, assault, even murder – in two generations. For weeks, these riots raged – burning buildings, shuttering businesses, and destroying neighborhoods. Yet the mainstream political media looked the other way. The media’s silence has been largely responsible for the mob’s staying power.
Most mainstream political journalists today are liberal Democrats before they are reporters. They do not serve the truth so much as the narrative. And the narrative this summer has been that the riots are justified and good. According to the narrative, the rioters are noble, progressive citizens rightly disgusted by police brutality and President Donald Trump. They’re like peaceful protesters, just a bit more passionate.
That’s why, even as cities burn and people died, the mainstream media called the riots “mostly peaceful.” That’s why they write books like “In Defense of Looting.” And that’s why they spent June, July and August obscuring the obvious political connections between the riots and the Democrat Party’s cynical 2020 campaign to create fear, chaos, division and insecurity. (RELATED: 3 People Charged For Assaulting Police Officers During Portland Riots)
President Trump, on the other hand, has been consistent in his view that riots are crimes, not political speech, and rioters are criminals, not activists. The president understands that there is a word for political activists who use violence to persuade. That word is terrorist. That’s what the rioters are. The American people know it. Even Democratic politicians implicitly admit it.
The message from the Democrat Party since their convention has been that the riots will continue as long as Donald Trump is in the White House. “This is Donald Trump’s America,” they say. That’s not a campaign slogan; it’s a threat: vote for us, or your cities will burn.
But the president has condemned the violence since it started. More than that: he has offered the support of federal law enforcement for every beset city and state to restore public order. And even before these recent riots, President Trump led on criminal justice reform and police reform, to improve some of the very real problems that do exist in many communities around the country. But at every turn, the president’s open-handed offer of help has been rejected by the left.
Democrat mayors and governors have mostly refused Trump’s offer to help. And Democrats obstructed the Senate from taking up police reform legislation – despite guaranteed debate and votes on all their amendment proposals. Why? Because in truth, the violence in our cities is a partisan problem – entirely created by the Democrat Party.
The riots are not “Donald Trump’s America,” they are blue cities and states, run almost exclusively by Democrats for decades. Democrats run urban school boards and zoning boards, which consign poor and especially minority children to substandard education and housing. Democrats control blue city councils and state legislatures, which empower public employee union bosses at the expense of the taxpayers who they both ostensibly serve.
The real story behind these riots is the “Big Blue Lie” constantly repeated by the left: that they truly care about disadvantaged communities, and that Democrats alone can help poor and minority neighborhoods.
The fact is, both urban police brutality and urban civic violence is the generational failure of Democrat urban politicians to deliver basic government services to their communities: public safety, economic investment, educational opportunity, and accountability for abusive government employees. Their governments are run by and for union bosses and special interests, and citizens pay the price in high taxes, social neglect, and lawlessness. (RELATED: The Myth Of Systemic Police Racism Is Leading To Targeted Attacks Against Cops)
This fact is not because Donald Trump is president. It is why Donald Trump is president. The American people are sick of self-serving, unaccountable elites empowering themselves at everyone else’s expense, then blaming the rest of us for their catastrophic failures.
The rioters are rioting because they know Democrat politicians and the leftist media will let them get away with it. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that wealthy elites on the left are supporting this mayhem for political purposes. For their part, the media and Democrat politicians enable the rioters by making sure they do get away with it – and since the left controls the media and the narrative, these terrorists know the American people cannot punish them for their treachery.
But, despite the media coverup, the victims of big blue-state lies are beginning to see the truth. And on November 3, let’s hope the American people – once and for all — destroy the Big Blue Lie with their votes.
Jim DeMint is a former U.S. Senator from South Carolina. You can follow him on twitter @JimDeMint
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
