In a Tuesday article, I suggested there might not be a better mind-meld than that between Trump-loathing Lincoln Project co-founder George Conway and MSNBC. Perhaps my observation was premature.
Turns out that publicly-funded National Public Radio (NPR) on Monday hooked up with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison for some good old fashion race hustling on the subject of ending “police violence.”
I might be wrong [winking emoji], but it seems to me that in most cases — before so-called “police violence” occurs — some “other form” of violence likely precipitates it. Then again, I’m an old white guy, so maybe my mind is clouded by “systemic racism.” Then again, maybe not.
Anyway, before we get to the race hustling, here’s NPR’s background story on Mr. Ellison:
Minneapolis police officers murdered George Floyd three years ago this week.
Video captured how Derek Chauvin, who is white, used his knee to pin Floyd, a Black man, to the ground for more than nine minutes while Floyd pleaded for his life. Within hours, protests erupted in Minneapolis and then around the world.
When the local community lost faith in the county prosecutor, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz urged state Attorney General Keith Ellison to build the case against the former officers who killed Floyd.
Ellison kept a diary of that process. And he’s releasing it to the public in the form of a book called Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence, out Tuesday.
In it, Ellison recounts how he cried when watching the video of Floyd’s murder for the first time.
Nice touch, don’t you think? The “crying” part? I wonder (rhetorically, that is) if Ellison would’ve cried if Floyd were white and Chauvin, black. Either way, God knows Mr. Ellison could readily find examples if he so chose.
The far-left AG told NPR:
For me, it was a gut check moment, one of those moments where you ask yourself, ‘What am I about and what am I in this for?’ And my answer had to be, we’re going to do anything we can to try to make sure that the outcome is fair, just, and right.
Not to sound insensitive, but there was zero desire to arrive at a “fair, just, and right” outcome. Please understand; I’m not suggesting Derek Chauvin wasn’t guilty. But I am suggesting — strongly — that the violent riots across America that occurred, night after night, week after week, had zero to do with fair, just, and right. No, untold numbers of rioters across America demanded O.J. Simpson “justice,” let’s not kid ourselves.
Ellison said the conviction of Chauvin for killing Floyd provided “lessons.”
We have not gotten to the point where we’ve arrested this problem. But I still believe that the George Floyd prosecution still offers a possibility if we muster the political will to bring it to a stop.
Sadly, these kind [sic] of things are likely to happen again before we bring this phenomenon to an end. And we need other folks to help to know what happened so that they can make good policy choices.
I hope somebody reads this book and says, ‘This could happen to my town. Here’s [sic] some things they did here that worked. Here’s [sic] some things they did that maybe didn’t work.’ And we can use them to prevent and to stop this problem, to break the wheel.
Speaking of wheels, in this context, there are innumerable wheels to break: out-of-control black-on-black murder in urban America, racist attacks on Asian Americans, senseless random murders in New York City in broad daylight, and other violent crimes.
Unfortunately, we won’t hear Keith Ellison talking about those sorts of crimes, let alone condemning them. I wonder why that is? Just kidding. Because every type of crime I just listed “breaks the wheel” of the left-wing narrative, and “we” simply can’t allow that to happen.
The coin of the realm of the left is selective outrage, which Democrats beat the ever-loving hell out of.