1. In Memoriam: The Black Civil Rights Movement of 60-70 Years Ago

The Black Civil Rights movement of 70 and 60 years ago was one of the holiest, most righteous movements in human history. Today it is impossible to believe that, even in post-World War II America, there were wide swaths of the country where Blacks had to use separate restrooms, drink from separate water coolers, had to go to the back of the bus and even then give over their seats to Whites if the front was full. They could not stay in hotels or motels or eat at certain restaurants, and — as if that were not enough — Blacks could not even play in the major leagues of baseball until 1947. Three quarters of a century after the Civil War forced emancipation and Black slavery ended, even after Blacks had fought bravely alongside Whites and had died fighting Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese Emperor in World War II, a Black person still could not play in baseball’s major leagues. Today it is incomprehensible how such a situation could have existed and continued in this greatest of all countries, and that is part of America’s greatness — that America overcame a stain on its record and transitioned to become a country whose every institution now is systemically racism-free.

Part of what made the Black Civil Rights movement successful is that it gave birth to real heroes: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers. The movement was led by people of honor and dignity and pursued the goals of freedom and equal justice under the law with a focused commitment to effectuating peaceful change. And the movement won.

Today’s ersatz socialist-communist-anarchist call for tearing down America, defunding police and ICE, looting stores and pillaging and burning down neighborhoods is not that movement. What does it say about today’s ersatz movement of destruction and rampage that all their neo-heroes have criminal rap sheets that arise not from arrests at sit-ins or disrupted peaceful marches but from drug felonies, burglaries, and armed robbery?

2. A Story About a Car Accident

George sees Sally and asks her, “Did you hear about what happened to Mike’s new red Corvette? His mother-in-law drove it over a cliff!”

Sally responds, “First, it wasn’t Mike’s car; it was Steve’s. Second, it wasn’t a Corvette; it was a Jaguar. Third, it wasn’t red; it was blue. Fourth, it wasn’t his mother-in-law; it was his uncle. Fifth, it was not driven over a cliff but into the ocean. And sixth — the whole thing never happened.”

3. One Lie After Another — The Whole Thing Never Happened

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement took shape in the aftermath of the George Zimmerman incident in Florida and the subsequent Michael Brown incident in Ferguson, Missouri. In both cases, the media narrative that dominated America’s television airwaves and print journals proved to be one after another litany of pure lies. The whole thing never happened as reported. The sweet innocent 12-year-old boy in a hoodie whose photo was emblazoned everywhere was not the actual 17-year-old thug whom George Zimmerman encountered on the fateful day he was conducting neighborhood patrol. Rather, that 17-year-old had grown to be suspended from school several times, had been found during a drug check with women’s jewelry, silver wedding bands, earrings, and diamonds in his backpack, and had posed for some offensive photos that can be found online. George Zimmerman, meanwhile, who had been described by the media as a White supremacist, turned out to be Hispanic, with a Peruvian mother with African ancestry. Compounding the lies, a terrible police telephone recording of a George Zimmerman call about the incident, which initially sounded quite racist, was revealed to have been falsified and doctored by NBC to change its entire context and meaning. As for the Michael Brown incident that gave life to BLM, that also turned out to be one lie built on another. Brown turned out to be a bum who holds up convenience stores. Rather than telling police officer Darren Wilson “Hands up — don’t shoot!” he actually was wrestling Wilson for the officer’s gun when he got shot. A grand jury exonerated Wilson on everything and proffered no charges. Those are the birth pangs of BLM. Whole things made out of thin air, things that never happened.

A movement speaking of lives that matter but built on lies that matter is the exact opposite of what the Black Civil Rights movement was. And heroes who are villains have displaced Emmett Till, Rev. George Lee, Cpl. Roman Ducksworth Jr., Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Lt. Col. Lemuel Penn, James Earl Chaney, and so many others who truly were innocent and honorable martyrs for civil rights. It is criminal that future generations and textbooks will remove the old names so that children instead may learn new names like Michael Brown.

The first time anyone reasonable saw the video of Derek Chauvin on George Floyd’s neck, one had to be disgusted and furious. Likewise, it was disgusting that three cops stood by and watched, too scared and stupid to simply walk over to Chauvin and say, “OK, Derek. That’s enough.” For more than three years leading to that fateful day, the Minnesota police department was headed by a Black police chief. He should have been fired the day of the incident. That was the first head that should have rolled. What was he doing for three years to root out the bad apples of his department, to train cops properly, and to assure that his department was free of psychos?

George Floyd did not deserve to die that day. Rather, on that day he deserved, if convicted after a fair trial, to be sent to prison for passing counterfeit money — a federal crime. Under 18 U.S.C. § 471, counterfeiting can be punished by imprisonment up to 20 years. Floyd would have gone on such trial with the added problem of a rap sheet that included this history, as described by Wikipedia:

Between 1997 and 2005, Floyd was arrested eight times for drug possession, theft and trespass; he was incarcerated for periods totaling almost 41 months. Then, in 2009, he pleaded guilty to a 2007 aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon and was sentenced to five years in prison. He was paroled in January 2013 after almost four years at the Diboll Unit.

There has been talk since the terrible police killing of Floyd that his past should not be part of the discussion because he had rehabilitated. Yet his autopsy showed that, at the time of his cruel death, he had inside him fentanyl intoxication and methamphetamines, both inconsistent with rehabilitation. And the entire day unfolded as it did because he had passed counterfeit money, prompting a store owner to call the cops. Rehabilitation? Yet now he joins Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and other such among the pantheon of neo-heroes who are displacing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Park, Medgar Evers, and the other true heroes, greats, and martyrs of the Civil Rights movement. What does it say about a movement whose icons are such as these?

Yes, lives matter. All lives matter. And lies matter. All lies matter. Note these names of forgotten and disregarded Black lives murdered in Chicago, all since the May 25 death — perhaps murder — of George Floyd:

1. Ledell Randell – age 45
2. Darryl Greer – age 28
3.  Joseph Willis – age 19
4.  Dion Neil – age 37
5.  Derrick Mitchell – age 45
6.  Martell White – age 33
7.  Tajanay Samuels – age 19
8.  Antwainisha Bratcher – age 19
9.  Deonte Fleming – age 19
10. Joseph Smith – age 26
11. Rafael Simmons – age 31
12. Farrish Michael –age 28
13. David Green – age 39
14. Gregory Lewis – age 21
15. Danyal Jones – age 30
16. Kenneth McKinney – age 53
17. Jalieel Jackson – age 28
18. Victor Hudson – age 30
19. Kevin Applewhite – age 35
20. Denzail Gresham – age 27
21. Courtney Horton – age 32
22. Cincere Joiner – age 17
23. Jeremiah James – age 15
24. Johnathan Stanton – age 31
25. Pierre Johnson – age 30
26. Dante Denny – age 29
27. August Gills – age 18
28. Larita Kinley – age 37
29. Loren Johnson – age 42
30. Gerald Johnson – age 31
31. Andre Jackson – age 24
32. Alex Clark – age 21
33. Deshon Dillard – age 22
34. Andrew Crues – age 34
35. Darius Ferguson – age 26
36. Maurice Jelks – age 39
37. John Tiggs – age 32
38. Tommie Gatewood – age 27
39. Angelo Bronson – age 36
40. Lazarra Daniels – age 18
41. Jaquawn Newman – age 26
42. Tyrel Clark – age 25
43. Darius Jelks – age 31
44. Keishanay Bolden – age 18

If Black lives really matter, why does it take this columnist and opinion writer to memorialize their existence in the absence of a single word from “Black Lives Matter”? Where are the kneeling, groveling Democrat politicians in their culturally appropriated kente cloths? No one hears from them about these 44 snuffed-out Chicago Black lives— not from BLM, not from Pelosi, Schumer, and the rest of those phonies; not from Ocasio-Hyphen and Ilhan Omar and the rest of the Squad; and not from the media — because none of them care about Black lives. The politicians and anarchist street rioters and looters are phonies. Blacks in Chicago alone — not mention Detroit, St. Louis, Memphis, Baltimore, Minneapolis, and other such Democrat-controlled cities — are dying by the thousands in the prime of their lives every year, and absolutely none of the kneeling, groveling Democrats nor their anarchist allies who want to burn down the country, loot its assets, and suspend our Constitutional freedoms and the rule of law gives a damn about Black lives. More than 6,000 Blacks are murdered every year. That makes some 30,000 or more Black lives snuffed out prematurely since 2015. Juan Williams writes to remind that the No. 1 cause of death among Black males ages 15-34 is murder.

So if “Black Lives Matter” — if those lives truly mattered to Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and the rest of the Democrat Kneelers and Grovelers, the wasted human tragedy of more than 30,000 Black lives snuffed out would never have happened because the problem has been known long before that. They could have acted before Trump. What were they waiting for — knee guards and a new shipment of kente cloth?

The worst tragedy is that which regularly hits and pulverizes the Black community. People get sold on a narrative, fashioned and shaped by manipulators with political agendas, and they get suckered into joining the crowd. In the tragic case of George Floyd, he is being leveraged for political gain. It all is cynical politics. For three-plus years the Democrats have thrown everything they can at destroying Donald Trump, and they have failed to take him down. They illegally investigated his incoming nominees like Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, spent a fortune on a Mueller investigation that came up with nothing because there was nothing. They invited felon and disbarred lawyer Michael Cohen to be the first witness to testify before the newly elected Democrat Congress in 2018. In the end, Cohen did not lay a glove on Trump, and he ended up in prison. Same with Avenatti, whom they built into a presidential candidate and would not let a day go by on CNN or MSNBC without him. They tried the 25th Amendment. Tried subpoenaing everyone close to Trump. Tried pawing for Trump’s tax records. Accused him of colluding with Putin against his own intelligence services. Made a mockery of a telephone call Trump made to Ukraine and turned it into an impeachment circus before the Senate squashed the nonsense. For three-plus years they have stopped at nothing and have clutched at anything to take Trump down or at least to wound him by a thousand cuts. Along the way they have done their most evil to proffer and suborn lies and even perjury to destroy good people who have lived dignified lives, people like Brett M. Kavanaugh, who was clean as a whistle, drank some beer when in college, and is a most noble man of his church. Even kids like Nick Sandmann of Covington, Kentucky, a Catholic schoolboy who simply came to a rally in Washington to support life.

Blacks always come out on the short end of these manipulations. It is a darned shame, and somehow they keep getting snookered by the same carpetbaggers over and over again. Pelosi cares about Blacks? C’mon, her congressional district is 6 percent Black. After being enslaved for centuries by people associated with the political Right, American Blacks now are on their second century of being manipulated with equal disdain and contempt by the Left. Did the liberal progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson demand that Blacks be allowed to play major league baseball? To drink from water coolers or use the same restrooms as Whites? How could he — Wilson was an open racist himself. Did the liberal-progressive Franklin Roosevelt ever demand during his four terms in the presidency from 1932–45 that baseball or motels or segregated lunch counters integrate Blacks? Never. If the kneeling, groveling Democrats are so concerned about Black lives, why did they go three and a half years post-Obama, post-Ferguson, post-Baltimore, without kneeling or groveling or wearing kente cloths until the clock ticked: “Six Months Until the November Election”?

They don’t care about Black lives. The anarchists and looters do not care. It all is a modern-day manipulation, a return of the carpetbaggers seeing personal political opportunity to exploit for personal gain and power a long-exploited American community that tragically has allowed itself to be owned by the party whose standard-bearer, Joe Biden, tells them, “If you are not Democrat, then you ain’t Black.” It is so terrible. It is pathetic. I wonder how many more Black lives will be wasted and lost in Chicago between the time these words have been written and the time you read them, but I do not wonder whether “Black Lives Matter,” Pelosi, or Schumer will mourn for any of them. Because, for those carpetbagging cynics who regard Chicago as a lock for the November election, those Black lives simply do not matter.