OPINION:
The interim president and CEO of the NAACP, Derrick Johnson, said in a speech at the National Press Club that Americans could bank on the fact that more Charlottesville protests were a’coming, and a’coming fast — and it’s all President Donald Trump’s fault.
The logic strikes as eerily similar to a rapist’s defense — to blame the victim.
Walk with me.
“There will be many Charlottesvilles,” Johnson said, The Hill reported. “We are in trying times. Unfortunately this administration has created a climate where … [hate groups] feel comfortable to walk in public without the hoods anymore.”
OK. It’s true the times are trying. It’s not true this administration created the trying times to which Johnson referred.
It’s true a White House commander-in-chief can have a great influence on the cultural and political direction of the country, even to the point of emboldening certain elements best left hidden to emerge and openly take actions that ought not be taken in proper, law and order societies. Witness: Barack Obama and his constant harping on the so-called inherent racism of police.
In July 2016, Politico reported of such scenario in a story that was headlined, “Police group director: Obama caused a ’war on cops.’ “
And in the piece, William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, put it bluntly: “I think [the Obama administration’s] continued appeasements at the federal level with the Department of Justice, their appeasement of violent criminals, their refusal to condemn movements like Black Lives Matter, actively calling for the death of police officers, that type of thing, all the while blaming police for the problems in this country, has led directly to the climate that has made Dallas [the targeted shooting that left five police officers dead] possible.”
The general line of thought that plagued Obama’s White House for years was indeed this: His rhetoric was always falling on the side of the thugs, rarely if ever on the side of police. And it was that rhetoric that created a situation that emboldened and fueled the thug element to come forward and, well, target police.
But what has Trump said to fuel the fiery violence of the far left? The antifa thugs? The college kids who can’t stand to hear conservatives speak, so instead burn buildings and battle those wearing Make America Great Again caps?
Trump, pretty much down the line, has condemned violence — of all kinds. Trump, for as far back as he’s run for the presidency, has spoken in harsh terms against criminal behaviors — from all sides.
Yet somehow, Trump’s law-and-order approach and blind justice mindset has been twisted by the left, by the NAACP, by Johnson, to be a call for violence. How so?
Well, the answer’s really quite easy: The left lies.
Those on the left, angry at Trump’s crackdowns on the border, outraged at this administration’s no-nonsense approach to terrorism, stung at this White House’s open support for police and the rule of law, have turned wicked eyes toward an all-resistance, all-the-time end line, and — with the help of a complicit media — flipped right for wrong.
They’ve accused law-and-order Trump of fueling unlawful and disorderly street violence — simply because he’s made clear he won’t stand for the unlawful.
They’ve turned wagging fingers away from the sources of the violence — the street thugs, their own angry rhetoric — and shook them at the source who’s drawn a line in the sand to say “no more” to street violence and thuggery, Trump.
Like a rapist who blames his victim, they’ve similarly cried that Trump has made them do it.
Note to left: Setting boundaries is not one and the same as creating chaos. Generally speaking, those who break the lawful boundaries are the criminals. Those who set and hold and abide the boundaries? They’re called good citizens.
This argument from the left, the NAACP isn’t just illogical. It’s pretty evil. Biblically evil. And as Isaiah 5:20 notes: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” One day, justice will prevail.
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