—If I burned down my house to get a mouse, a snake, or even a man-eating tiger, would you consider me rational?
—If I drained Lake Michigan because about 40 drown in the “Big Lake” each year, would you think it wise?
—If I somehow forced auto manufacturers to stop building and selling vehicles because over 35,000 die on American highways annually would you say, Yes, that’s appropriate risk aversion?
—If I labeled all American military personnel killers, then decommissioned the military because we’ve experienced tragedies like the Wounded Knee, My Lai, Abu Ghraib, would you think this action justified given these war crimes?
These illustrative scenarios sound ridiculous, and they are, but this is the kind of logic now being applied in debates ranging from Defund the Police to Immigration and Border policy to even the First Amendment right of freedom of speech…i.e., by all means don’t offend anyone and if you do, be prepared for silencing, personal ridicule, and professional ruination.
No empirical, honest and unbiased review of the actual data re police killing alleged perpetrators demonstrates police are disproportionately killing, much less hunting, black Americans. It just isn’t happening. Yes, there have been some egregious cases like George Floyd, but this is not the pattern being marketed by the Defund the Police narrative.
And given that police are by far good people trying to do a decent job serving and protecting citizens, and given that crime rates would suggest we might need not less but more police in certain areas, wiping out PDs is like burning your house to get a mouse.
But much of what passes today as political discussion (there is none) or reporting (there’s very little of this) is ideological narrative. Its’s the place we find ourselves in postmodern 21st Century America.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020
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