Saturday, August 29, 2020

AMERICA: THE DEATH RATTLES ARE HEARD AROUND THE WORLD

 This violence, as its apologists like to emphasize, is predominantly property damage—setting fires to courthouse buildings, firebombing police stations, smashing windows, and covering Portland buildings with graffiti—but it has not been confined to such crimes. Police officers have been sent to the hospital on multiple occasions as a result of street battles with mortar-wielding anarchists. In the past week, a disturbing new video surfaced showing a driver being pulled out of his pickup truck and brutally beaten by a mob.

AS WALL STREET PLUNDERS AND IS HANDED BILLIONS IS IN SOCIALIZED CORPORATE WELFARE, THIS IS THE REAL AMERICA BEYOND WALL STREET:


“The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has deeply destabilized American society. Over 185,000 people have been killed. Some 27 million people are unemployed. Food lines stretch for city blocks, and one fifth of mothers with young children say their families do not have enough to eat.”


On Thursday, the final day of the Republican convention, the Federal Reserve announced a change in its basic methodology whose only discernable purpose was to tell the financial markets that it would continue to give them ever more money in perpetuity.


“Low Rates Forever!” proclaimed the Wall Street Journal, declaring that the strategy will lead to “more financial manias, panics and crashes.” The financial markets cheered, with all three stock indexes now in positive territory for the year despite what has been called the worst peacetime economic crisis in a century.

 

Social crisis, class struggle and the 2020 election

29 August 2020

The 2020 election is taking place against the backdrop of the greatest social, economic and political crisis in the modern history of the United States.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has deeply destabilized American society. Over 185,000 people have been killed. Some 27 million people are unemployed. Food lines stretch for city blocks, and one fifth of mothers with young children say their families do not have enough to eat.

The ruling class’s efforts to force workers back on the job, despite a raging pandemic, have led to a wave of strikes and protests and seen millions of people demonstrate against police violence in thousands of cities and towns throughout the country.

The 2020 election is defined by these twin processes: the protracted crisis of American capitalism exposed by the pandemic, and the explosive growth of anti-capitalist sentiment and mass radicalization in the working class, as part of a growing wave of social protest all over the world.

In their own ways, last week’s Democratic National Convention and this week’s Republican National Convention represented the response of the parties of the ruling class to the eruption of social opposition, to which they are both hostile and which they both fear.

The more direct response comes from the Republicans. Speaker after speaker railed in hysterical fashion, some literally screaming, against a tide of left-wing opposition engulfing the nation. They ranted against “Marxism,” “socialism” and “mob rule” by left-wing demonstrators.

In his fixation on the growth of socialist sentiment, Trump knows he is not speaking about the Democrats, such as Biden, Pelosi, Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He has taken the measure of all of them, and some, such as Kamala Harris, he has directly financed. Rather, he expresses the dread within the ruling class of mass working class opposition emerging outside of the two-party system.

The Democrats’ response is more sophisticated. Employing their army of professional apologists and left-talking spin doctors, the Democrats sought to present themselves as sympathetic to the demands of protesters against police violence and of workers facing a social disaster. But this was only to chloroform and disarm the mounting opposition, to splinter it into an array of warring “identities,” and to channel it into the dead end of racial politics.

It is a testament to the Democrats’ sensitivity to the growth of social radicalization that Bernie Sanders dropped all talk of a “political revolution” as soon as the pandemic broke out. He has since become the most enthusiastic proponent of the corporate shill Joe Biden.

Like patent medicine salesmen, both parties peddle their candidates as the miracle cure for what ails the country. But it is already clear that this election, regardless of its outcome, will not restore any form of normalcy to American political life.

In fact, the crises facing the country are so vast, sweeping and all-pervasive that neither convention was capable of even addressing them by name.

American capitalism, its exports increasingly uncompetitive on the world market, is hooked on debt. Its corporations, with their astronomical valuations and massive executive bonuses, cannot survive without ever larger government handouts. On Thursday, the final day of the Republican convention, the Federal Reserve announced a change in its basic methodology whose only discernable purpose was to tell the financial markets that it would continue to give them ever more money in perpetuity.

“Low Rates Forever!” proclaimed the Wall Street Journal, declaring that the strategy will lead to “more financial manias, panics and crashes.” The financial markets cheered, with all three stock indexes now in positive territory for the year despite what has been called the worst peacetime economic crisis in a century.

Millions are cutting back spending on food because Congress refused to extend emergency unemployment aid. However Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, has nearly doubled his wealth since the start of the year, becoming the first person with a net worth of $200 billion.

In the background, there are mounting warnings that the economic arrangement that gave rise to America’s “exorbitant privilege”—the hegemony of the dollar—may be at an end, as the price of gold breaks record after record.

Unable to compete with China’s rapidly developing technology sector, which has eclipsed the United States in several key areas, Washington is provoking a “Cold War” with Beijing. America has been continuously at war for three decades, but its effort to reconquer the Middle East has been a disaster. Its hulking military machine is under major strain. In simulated tabletop conflicts, insiders complain that China’s military beats the United States. And yet, every day, the two countries are inching closer toward a military clash.

The toxic effects of inequality, reaction and war—with their resulting sociopathic detachment to human suffering—have been given expression in America’s disastrous response to the pandemic, with its grisly toll of nearly 200,000 dead.

The only concern of the White House, local governments and major corporations is to sweep infections under the rug in order to limit corporate liability and paid time off. The number of tests is constantly shrinking, and the White House this week shockingly demanded that those exposed to the disease not be tested.

“Why Don’t The Dead Matter?” asks a columnist for the military blog Defense One. Endless wars--“military adventures overseas that took… human lives… with near reckless abandon”--he argues, have made America “anesthetized” to death. Indeed, mass death has been so institutionalized that the nightly news does not even report the daily death toll.

This orientation continues in the 2020 election. The Democratic Party has cobbled together a coalition of right-wing former Republicans, generals, representatives of the state intelligence bureaucracy, members of the financial oligarchy and, most of all, the affluent suburbs, which are repeatedly invoked as the party’s target demographic.

In other words, the Democratic Party is conducting its 2020 election campaign as a re-run of the 2016 election, which resulted in the defeat of Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College despite the fact that she won the popular vote by more than three million ballots.

Trump is framing the election, as he noted ahead of his impeachment, as a “civil war,” in which all methods of political, military and paramilitary struggle are permissible. By contrast, his Democratic opponents see the conflict, in the words of former President Barack Obama, as an “intramural scrimmage,” in which the greatest mistake would be to play too rough.

Outside the conflicts in Washington, however, another political force is entering onto the scene. Over the past several months, workers in major manufacturing facilities throughout America’s industrial heartland, as well as educators throughout the United States, have begun to form rank-and-file committees to resist the efforts by corporations and the government to force them to work in increasingly unsafe conditions.

Millions of workers and young people have participated in mass demonstrations—according to some, the largest protests in American history—against police violence and the Trump administration’s deployment of federal troops to American cities.

However much Trump may rant and rave, puffing himself up in imitation of Mussolini, the next stage in American political life will be a movement not to the right, but to the left, in a mounting social and political offensive by the working class.

 

Bated Breath for Barr's Big Break

By Erik Gregory and Todd Gregory

With the reported guilty plea of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) lawyer Kevin Clinesmith to a false statement charge as part of John Durham's Russia Hoax investigation, true conservatives are celebrating the much heralded arrival of Attorney General (A.G.) William (Bill) Barr, who, we are being promised, will round up the coup-plotters with dispatch and bring a rain ruin to the anti-Trump cabal that engaged in the illegal spying and sting operations against the president and his associates. 

And yet...and yet..Kevin Clinesmith?  Not exactly a ringleader in the anti-Trump cabal.  And what of the instigators of this audacious plot against the president (i.e., John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Joe Biden, or Barack Obama to name but a few)?  Thus far, Barr has indicated no intention of prosecuting anyone beyond the low-hanging fruit of Kevin Clinesmith and even publicly issued assurances to Barack Obama and Joe Biden that they have no criminal culpability (to say nothing of Barr's exoneration of Andrew McCabe on Valentine's Day).  Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief John Brennan was reportedly told by Durham that he was not a target (or even a subject) of the Russia Hoax investigation.  And it appears that Durham has not even interviewed most of the principal figures central to the Russia Hoax.  While Barr and Durham should be applauded for finally taking some judicial action, however limited, if Kevin "little fish" Clinesmith is their biggest catch and the true ringleaders escape unscathed, we can be assured these serial abuses of power will escalate under a Joe en administration.

Consequence #1 — The DOJ Will Ensure a Two-Tiered Politicized Justice System (Exclusively Targeting Conservatives and Protecting Progressives): The DOJ began visibly putting its thumb on the scales of justice in favor of fellow progressives and against conservatives during Obama's reign.  Examples are extensive, but to recap a few highlights, recall the persecution of conservatives by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Sharyl Attkisson/James Rosen spy scandals and the shameless protection of Hillary Clinton, who (along with several members of her staff) committed multiple and flagrant felonies including lying to Congress and felony dissemination of material classified at the highest security levels.  Out of these scandals, and more, how many progressive Democrats were indicted and prosecuted?  None.  Under Obama, the progressive DOJ was the quintessential "hometown referee" for the Democrats.  They blew the whistle on everything Republican (including false allegations, like the Russia Hoax) and looked the other way, every time, when Democrats committed real crimes (just ask Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama).  By some estimates, 97% of DOJ political donations went to the Democratic Party.  Republicans and conservatives, and soon even moderates, are, or will shortly be, subject to a nearly impossible standard of justice.  With Biden's 2020 victory, the progressive Democrats will cement their stranglehold on the DOJ, and the political persecution and censorship of all future generations of Republicans (and, indeed, moderates) is assured. 

Consequence #2 — Escalating Federal Government Attacks against Republicans and Conservatives: Progressive-dominated federal government agencies will renew and escalate attacks against conservative organizations and individuals in the confident knowledge that the politically aligned DOJ will not hold them to account.  The IRS (dominated by left-wing ideologues), among other like-minded agencies (such as the CIA), under a Biden presidency, will be emboldened to renew their attacks on Republicans and conservatives with impunity (just as they did during the Obama years).

Consequence #3 — The Russia Hoax Investigation Will Be Dissolved Immediately by President Biden.

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Consequence #4 — The DOJ Will Disenfranchise United States Citizens by Enforcing Open Borders: Under Biden, the DOJ (and the John Roberts–led Supreme Court) will use the awesome power of the law to enforce open borders and grant amnesty to millions of illegal migrants, which will ensure many millions of new voters for the progressive Democrats (to say nothing of breaking the social welfare state at U.S. taxpayer expense).  This will result in the widespread disenfranchisement of United States citizens, whose votes will be essentially nullified.  The DOJ and Supreme Court will be all too happy to ensure Democratic hegemony for the foreseeable future, but along with the new voters will come criminals, gangs, smuggling, disease, and an endless supply of illegal drugs (effectively making the United States an open toilet for the rest of the world).  The rich and happy public "self"-servants of the DOJ and Supreme Court will not suffer the consequences of their disastrous policies from behind their gated and secure communities.  We will. 

Consequence #5 — A One-Party United States: Owing to Consequence #4, we will live in a one-party (Democrat) country.  Diversity of thought and policy will no longer be tolerated.  Those that stray from progressive orthodoxy will be targeted for destruction by the awesome and unchecked powers of the DOJ. 

Consequence #6 — Persecution of Christians (and Rigorous Protection of Non-Christian Faiths): If you burn a Koran, the DOJ will arrest you and charge you with a hate crime.  If you burn a Bible, you won't be.  It's that simple, and it helps explain why the DOJ has taken no steps to protect churches even while they are being actively targeted for desecration during the riots.  If mosques were being burned down, be assured that the DOJ would arrive in force with guns drawn.  If churches are being burned down, the DOJ is cool with that. 

Consequence #7 — Election Interference and Election Rigging Will Be Assured in a Manner Favoring Progressive Democrats: Mail-in voting, already so rife with fraud, along with so-called ballot-harvesting, will be enthusiastically supported (and enforced) by the progressive-friendly DOJ.  Progressive judges called to adjudicate these matters will invariably side with their political allies over the rule of law.  It's an open joke that Republican voters who die often keep right on voting — as Democrats.

Conclusion: This is a pivotal moment for the A.G.'s office, and Bill Barr needs to consider the legacy that he will be leaving future generations.  The seven consequences listed merely scratch the surface in terms of how a progressive Democrat administration will wield the awesome powers of the DOJ as a transformative agent to terrorize and extinguish (conservative) political opponents and ensure permanent progressive Democrat hegemony.  Conservatives like Bill Barr, among many others, still naïvely believe in the equal and transparent application of the rule of law, a belief that is in no way reciprocated by their progressive Democrat colleagues at the DOJ.  To the progressive Democrat, using the awesome power of the law to target morally inferior conservatives is a solemn obligation and duty.  Expecting a progressive Democrat to adhere to the law and engage in fair play is a fool's errand, a fallacy, wishful thinking, hopes and prayers.  We are dealing not with reasonable liberals from several decades ago, but instead with power-crazed progressives who believe they have a mission and mandate to destroy the political opposition.

If Barr hoists the white flag in abject abeyance to the Deep State (as Jeff Sessions did), then the dirty cops will have won.  Conservatives like Bill Barr will then deserve what's coming to them, but our children and grandchildren don't, and they will be the ones who pay the price.  They will live forever in a political prison, under the boot of the progressive Democrat DOJ, which stands ready to strike against law-abiding conservatives — for being conservative, or being Caucasian, or attending a Christian church, or whatever pretext the progressive left can think of — while simultaneously protecting progressive Democrats who abuse conservatives.  Our grandchildren will curse our memory for the government and nation we bequeath to them and the vulnerable, weakened position in which we have left them. 

It has been said that fortune favors the bold, and the progressive Democrats at the DOJ, and other federal agencies, have been oh, so bold in recent years, wielding their awesome powers of terror against the political opposition.  If Barr's "answer" to this vast progressive offensive is Kevin Clinesmith, then the progressive Democrats will have won the final victory.  Conservatives had better begin thinking in terms of bending knee and tending sheep in servitude to the victorious progressive Democrats.

 

Feds Step in to Prosecute Criminal Rioters in Portland as Local DA Stands Down

PORTLAND, OR - AUGUST 22: Protesters and Portland police clash while dispersing a crowd gathered in front of the Portland Police Bureau North Precinct early in the morning on August 22, 2020 in Portland, Oregon. Friday marked the 86th night of protests in Portland following the death of George Floyd. …
Nathan Howard/Getty Images
5:24

The Department of Justice announced on Thursday that it will prosecute 74 people for crimes committed during violent protests that have occurred nightly in Portland, Oregon, since May 29.

The press release for the announcement said:

On many nights, after peaceful demonstrations end, various public and private buildings have been the target of vandalism and destructionLocal, state, and federal law enforcement working to protect these buildings and ensure the safety of peaceful demonstrators have been subjected to threats and assaults from violent agitators while performing their duties.

U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams said:

Violent agitators have hijacked any semblance of First Amendment protected activity, engaging in violent criminal acts and destruction of public safety. The U.S. Attorney’s Office and our federal law enforcement partners are expeditiously working with local and state law enforcement to identify, arrest, and prosecute these individuals that are disrupting the rule of law in our communities and physically attacking our law enforcement officers and destroying property.

“Violent agitators not only delay real reform, but make our community less safe by keeping law enforcement from responding to other critical calls for service,” Williams said.

ATF Special Agent in Charge Jonathan McPherson, said:

 As the nation’s primary source for fire investigative knowledge, [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] ATF remains committed to investigating those responsible for committing arsons in our communities and holding them responsible for their illegal actions. As a reminder, there is a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for arson. ATF takes these violent actions seriously and will work diligently to bring justice to the victims.

Acting Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations Seattle Eben Roberts said:

It is vitally important that all Americans have the ability to exercise their first amendment rights to freedom of speech.  Unfortunately, much of what we’re seeing in Portland is the antithesis of that. Instead tragic events are being used as excuses for individuals with ill intent disguising themselves as activists to commit violent crimes against their communities and law enforcement officers. Progress can only be made if community leaders, law enforcement and the public come together in the name of social change, justice and peace.

Renn Cannon, special agent in charge of the FBI in Orego, said:

While the FBI supports and safeguards Constitutionally-protected activity and civil rights, there is no permit for assault, arson or property damage and these are not victimless crimes. Among the victims of violent crime are business owners, residents and individuals exercising their First Amendment rights through protests or other legitimate forms of expression.

Meanwhile, the New York Times lauded the new Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt, who has refused to prosecute rioters in Portland.

He has not been slow to shake things up: Ten days after taking office, Mr. Schmidt effectively dismissed charges against more than half of about 600 people arrested since the protests began at the end of May.

Mr. Schmidt said his office would presumptively decline to prosecute demonstrators for minor offenses such as interfering with the police, disorderly conduct and trespassing — cases that did not involve deliberate violence, property damage or theft. And charges for assault on officers and resisting arrest will now require closer scrutiny, with prosecutors taking into account in filing charges whether the police fired tear gas into crowds.

The purpose, Mr. Schmidt said, is to balance “people’s righteous anger and grief and fury over a system that has not really been responsive enough for decades and centuries” with the need to prevent property damage and violence.

“At a time when legitimacy in our criminal justice system is probably at an all-time low, we can’t be seen to be using that very system to silence the speech that is being critical of it,” Schmidt said. “How do you design a policy with all of those competing goals? That’s really the line we tried to walk.”

Not so with federal law enforcement the DOJ press release said:

Since May 26, 2020, federal law enforcement authorities have arrested 100 people for crimes committed during local demonstrations. Seventy-four face federal charges, including felonies, misdemeanors, and citation violations. Crimes include assaults on federal officers, some resulting in serious injuries; arson and attempted arson; damaging federal government property; failing to obey lawful orders; and unlawful use of a drone; among others.

DOJ noted that punishment for these crimes can result in significant prison sentences.

“Several of the charges being used to prosecute violent agitators carry significant maximum prison sentences,” the press release said. “For example, felony assault of a federal officer with a dangerous weapon is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Arson is punishable by up to 20 years in prison with a mandatory minimum sentence of five years.”

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Pope Francis: Unequal Wealth Means ‘the Economy Is Sick’

Pope Francis celebrates Holy Mass for the imposition of the Pallium upon the new Metropolitan Archbishops, during the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul apostles, in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, on June 29, 2020. (Photo by ANGELO CARCONI / POOL / AFP) (Photo by ANGELO CARCONI/POOL/AFP via Getty …
ANGELO CARCONI/POOL/AFP via Getty
3:51

ROME — Pope Francis said Wednesday unequal wealth among nations and individuals reveals a sick economy, “an injustice that cries out to heaven.”

The coronavirus pandemic “has exposed and aggravated social problems, above all that of inequality,” the pontiff told those following his live-streamed remarks delivered from Library of the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.

“Some people can work from home, while this is impossible for many others,” he said. “Certain children, notwithstanding the difficulties involved, can continue to receive an academic education, while this has been abruptly interrupted for many, many others.”

“Some powerful nations can issue money to deal with the crisis, while this would mean mortgaging the future for others,” he added.

These economic differences are pathological, the pope suggested, signs of a “sick economy.”

“These symptoms of inequality reveal a social illness; it is a virus that comes from a sick economy,” Francis said. “And we must say it simply: the economy is sick. It has become ill. It is sick.”

This sickness “is the fruit of unequal economic growth – this is the illness: the fruit of unequal economic growth – that disregards fundamental human values,” he said.

“In today’s world, a few rich people possess more than all the rest of humanity. I will repeat this so that it makes us think: a few rich people, a small group, possess more than all the rest of humanity. This is pure statistics. This is an injustice that cries out to heaven!” he said.

The pope went on to suggest that such unequal economic growth is the fruit of greed and demands rectification.

“When the obsession to possess and dominate excludes millions of persons from having primary goods,” he said, “when economic and technological inequality are such that the social fabric is torn; and when dependence on unlimited material progress threatens our common home, then we cannot stand by and watch.”

It is unclear from the pope’s words how he believes equal economic growth among nations and individuals should be achieved, or whether it is merely a question of redistribution of all the world’s wealth equally among individuals.

Catholic social teaching has, however, consistently recognized the natural differences among persons and nations and insisted that economic homogeneity is an unworkable utopia.

In the first “social encyclical,” Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 text Rerum Novarum, the pontiff called for a healthy realism, bearing with “the condition of things inherent in human affairs” for “it is impossible to reduce civil society to one dead level,” as opposed to the Socialists’ utopian efforts toward perfect economic equality, since “all striving against nature is in vain.”

Leo called to mind that manifold differences naturally exist among persons: “people differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal condition.”

At the same time, Leo insisted that these natural inequalities are not necessarily evil, either for individuals or for the larger community. In fact, he wrote, social and public life “can only be maintained by means of various kinds of capacity for business and the playing of many parts; and each man, as a rule, chooses the part which suits his own peculiar domestic condition.”

While the Catholic Church teaches that there are, indeed, “sinful inequalities that affect millions of men and women,” which stand “in open contradiction of the Gospel,” it also recognizes that not all inequalities are evil and the campaign to impose perfect economic equality would cause more harm than it would alleviate.


“Peaceful” Riots Continue

Portland burns, while the media and the Democrats fiddle.August 24, 2020 
Public safety
The Social Order

Three months in, violent demonstrations in Portland show no sign of ending. Police have declared eight riots in the first half of August and a total of 17 since the protests began at the end of May. More than 100 arrests have been made in the past three weeks alone.

National media have been mostly silent on this story, showing interest only in the presence of federal protective agents in the city. The disparity in attention is not hard to figure. For a press so rigorously set on opposition to the Trump administration, the only story of interest in Portland was the authoritarian implications of the president’s executive order aimed at protecting federal property. Insofar as the presence of serious and sustained violence on the part of the protesters was acknowledged at all by left-leaning media and Democratic Party functionaries, it was described as a reaction to Department of Homeland Security officers supposedly provoking unrest in the midst of an otherwise peaceful event. But this narrative is getting harder to maintain as the destruction continues, since federal law-enforcement officers have mostly left.

The Left’s messaging on Portland has swung between valorization of protesters and outrage at instances of police misconduct. Responses from Democratic politicians tend toward a milquetoast condemnation of abstract “violence” paired with an insistence that the protests are “mostly peaceful,” with participants including “pregnant mothers,” as Senator Kamala Harris insisted to DHS Secretary Chad Wolf. But even if many or most protesters are nonviolent at any given moment—thus the “mostly peaceful” refrain—it’s a legalistic distinction when describing a city consumed by chaos.

It’s true that “peaceful protesters” make up a majority in the early hours of daily demonstrations. But clashes between police and demonstrators don’t begin in earnest until later in the night, when the pregnant mothers and other sympathetic characters have gone home, making way for a well-organized coalition of black-bloc-clad anarchists who arrive with the intent of perpetrating violence against a range of targets, including federal officers.

This violence, as its apologists like to emphasize, is predominantly property damage—setting fires to courthouse buildingsfirebombing police stations, smashing windows, and covering Portland buildings with graffiti—but it has not been confined to such crimes. Police officers have been sent to the hospital on multiple occasions as a result of street battles with mortar-wielding anarchists. In the past week, a disturbing new video surfaced showing a driver being pulled out of his pickup truck and brutally beaten by a mob.

Democratic leaders owe it to voters to be honest about their disposition toward this mayhem. A June poll showed that the majority of Americans—including 48 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Independents—supported sending in the military to “supplement police forces” struggling to respond to the recent uprisings in cities throughout the country. Though Arkansas senator Tom Cotton’s New York Times op-ed advocating such a move met with controversy, most Americans strongly oppose sustained public disorder.

But the Democratic Party has moved leftward on these questions. It was less than six years ago that Barack Obama made a point of stating that he had “no sympathy at all” for rioters in Ferguson, Missouri, sending 1,500 National Guard troops into the state to enforce a curfew in response to the violence that erupted after the death of Michael Brown at the hands of a local police officer. Then, as now, Obama’s sentiment reflects the views of a bipartisan majority. Yet today, the Democrats are too beholden to their activist base to give voice to such commonsense opinions.

If our national press were interested in upholding its nominally nonpartisan commitments, reporters would be pressing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to state their position on the disaster in Portland. Don’t hold your breath.

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