The mayor of Portland and the governor of Oregon might not like it, but President Trump has a winning issue with his federal law enforcement deployments.
The simple truth, one that Democratic politicians such as Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot need to grasp quickly, is that most people don’t want to get shot dead. Their ignorance of that reality, willful or otherwise, reflects a quite stunning failure of political leadership.
The facts are clear. The chaos in Portland is a direct consequence of Mayor Ted Wheeler’s appeasement of roving criminals. But rather than confront the destruction of private property and attacks on police officers and city residents, Wheeler is playing to the idiotic Twitter meme that the federal law enforcement officers are actually the Gestapo. In Chicago, Lightfoot is playing the same game.
Apparently, trying to woo the far left of the Democratic Party, Lightfoot tweeted on Tuesday, “Under no circumstances will I allow Donald Trump’s troops to come to Chicago and terrorize our residents.” The timing of that tweet gave it an almost Shakespearean tragic irony. After all, just 30 minutes before Lightfoot warned against a Gestapo invasion, 15 people were shot outside a Chicago funeral home. As Shakespeare put it, this “jest will savour but of shallow wit, when thousands weep more than did laugh at it.”
We must note that this shooting is an atrocity reflective not of poverty but rather of criminal gangs who have no regard for life. Gang violence motivated by the perception of offended honor and control over the drug trade source most of this violence.
For Chicagoans, however, it’s just another day in the Windy City. Similar tales apply to other cities, such as New York City and Baltimore. Emboldened by the understandable reluctance of police officers to confront criminals, understandable in that Democratic mayors and prosecutors are out for badges, gangs are taking advantage of a security vacuum. Like the culprits, the victims are predominantly young black men. We are told that black lives matter, but only, it seems, when those lives are ended by police officers.
As I say, Trump has a winning issue. Confronted by the images of mourners gunned down in broad daylight and children shot with impunity, the public wants and deserves action, black parents likely most of all. Yes, they want a society that offers better education and opportunity to all its citizens. But where the metal meets the meat, people want the police to protect them. It may not look nice and often isn’t, but the deployment of federal law enforcement officers accomplishes two things. It shows that the federal government takes its duty of public security seriously, and it draws a striking contrast with politicians who would take the very opposite approach, defunding those who are needed to keep us safe.
Mayors and governors around the nation are going to have to wake up to the reality that professional policing, sometimes aggressive policing, is necessary. Until they do, Trump will find a growing benefit here.
