The rioting in Milwaukee by angry African-Americans following the police shooting of an armed, fleeing African-American male brought the usual commentary about a growing racial divide and discrimination in law enforcement as the root causes of the problem. This despite the fact that the police officer involved is African-American as is the Milwaukee County sheriff, David Clarke.
Speaking of Sheriff Clarke, he delivered a remarkable analysis of the tensions between police officers and segments of the African-American community. It makes for worthwhile reading in full:
The Milwaukee riots should be the last time the policies of liberal Democrats are held up as anything other than misery-inducing, divisive, exploitative, and racist manipulation of the urban populations. Unfortunately they won’t.
As sheriff of Milwaukee County, I am furious that the progressive left has put my citizens in harm’s way and that I had to send my officers into cauldrons of anarchy and hatred that were created by the left.
As an elected public servant I am livid that Milwaukee’s pathetic, kowtowing city officials and aldermen take this opportunity to abandon their citizens and preen before the Black Lives Matter-enabling media.
As a leader who understands that freedom and earned success are the pathways out of the ghetto, I’m disappointed, too, in any Republicans who feel they need to tiptoe around the patently obvious issue at hand: we are folding our society of freedom ensured through law-and- order over to bullies of the left. The politicians and talking heads on both sides of the aisle who offer little resistance and total cowardice.
The failed progressive urban policy causes anger and resentment in people that simmers below the surface. The officer-involved-shooting was simply a catalyst that ignited the already volatile mixture of inescapable poverty, failing K-12 public schools, dysfunctional lifestyle choices like father absent homes, gang involvement, drug/alcohol abuse and massive unemployment.
Here are the facts: Milwaukee is run by progressive Democrats. Their decades-long Democrat regime has done nothing to reduce these urban pathologies; in fact, their strategies have exacerbated the situation by expanding the welfare state.
That things have not improved and in fact worsened in the American ghetto after eight years of Barack Obama is remarkable only to those who have not been paying attention to our nation’s cities.
There’s only one answer, which is for the citizens of America to expose and heap scorn on this lying and dangerous triad of big government, liberal mainstream media, and the lost souls of the urban ghettos both these institutions feed upon for their power.
A self-examination and self-criticism by the underclass is in order as well – as is an admission by progressive Democrats that they have failed Milwaukee would be the first step in reversing this urban decay and reversing the growth of the underclass and their accompanying cultural rot.
What happened Saturday night and again Sunday night had little to do with police use of force – it was a collapse of the social order where tribal behavior leads to reacting to circumstances instead of waiting for facts to emerge. The law of the jungle replaced the rule of law in Milwaukee Saturday night over an armed career criminal suspect who confronted police. Four other people were murdered in Milwaukee in separate incidents before the cop shooting and no riots ensued.
The actions were the manifestation of a population with no hope, no stake in the American dream that could provide advancement and purpose and pride of self. They are the ones lied to, exploited by, and ultimately manipulated by the Democrats who claim to care. They are victims of the left, but they are not without blame. It’s time for them to remember their own humanity, their own dignity, and to fight for that return to the American Dream that the left would withhold from them.