Body Bags on the Left

Rham Emanuel, heir apparent to Democrat Party fortunes in Chicago, once said that “you never want a crisis to go to waste.” Emanuel’s cynicism was a paraphrase of a maxim coined by a Stanford University economist. Nonetheless, in light of recent events in Tucson, Emanuel’s axiom seems to have taken root on the west side of the political spectrum.

Indeed, the recent murders in Arizona seem to be a political shill’s wet dream. Without evidence or trail, a liberal cop has come forward to politicize what, in another time, might be just another random, murderous tragedy. Complicit Media and venal politicians are giving political mayhem a megaphone.

Before the shell casings hit the ground, PBS claimed Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona) had been killed when in fact she was gravely wounded. Press reports on Arizona were similar to those on Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina when casualties were reported to reach 10,000. The actual casualties were a fraction of that number.

With the Arizona shootings, a small town cop, like then Mayor Nagin of New Orleans, shamed his profession and rose to instant prominence by rushing to judgment. Before the smoke cleared in the Safeway parking lot, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, a Tucson Democrat, told all comers that Republican rhetoric was to blame for the shootings. Without judging the actual shooter, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik indicted conservative politicians and talk show hosts by name. No liberals or Democrats appeared on Dupnik’s hit list. President Obama called Dupnik to thank him for his help.

Sheriff Dupnik denied political motivation; yet continued to blast those he had wounded. Bigots, racists, gun control opponents, conservative politicians, and talk radio hosts took direct hits as the sheriff fired from the lip. Yet, Dupnik failed to speculate on the motives of the real gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, a dropout living with his parents. The hirsute killer was known to be a fan of Karl Marx, National Socialism, and marijuana – a liberal triptych.

A close reading of Clarence Dupnik’s interviews suggest that he and Loughner may suffer from similar delusions. The sheriff has leveled charges of racism, bias, and conspiracy without evidence or argument. Indeed, the entire state of Arizona was indicted by the Tucson Sheriff as a “Mecca (sic) for prejudice and bigotry.”

Clearly, political operatives and a sympathetic media would like to stem the recent Democratic electoral hemorrhage by laying the criminal violence in Phoenix at the feet of conservatives and Republicans. By any historical or contemporary measure, any attempt to link Republican politics to violent crime is bound to blowback.

From the end of the Civil War (1865) to the end of the Johnson administration (1968), the Democratic Party was the institutional support system for Jim Crow law, state sponsored segregation, and much of the depredations, including lynching and violent property confiscation, that plagued rural America for a hundred years. The Republican Party, in contrast, was a distinct product of the abolitionist movement. When Jim Crow lost its chokehold on Dixie, the Democrat plantation migrated to big cities.

Today, urban constituencies are mostly registered Democrats. The vast majority of big city mayors and legislators are Democrats also. Violent crime rates, in many of these liberal sinecures, are multiples of the numbers in flyover country. Two of the “most dangerous cities in the world,” Detroit and New Orleans, have been run by Democrats for generations. Some cities such as Miami and El Paso have never had a Republican mayor. Understandably, Chicago, the “most corrupt city in America,” does not submit crime statistics for national comparison.

The poverty and bankruptcy rates of Democrat cities show similar numbers. And large urban public schools are violent prep schools for large violent rural prisons where might makes right. Even a Democrat President does not consign his daughters to the hazards of “public” schooling in the nation’s capital. Of 51 state schools systems rated countrywide, the District of Columbia ranks next to last. If there is a link between violence, social pathology and any political party, the overwhelming statistical evidence points left.

Contemporary anecdotal evidence is also overwhelming. The Puerto Rican nationalists who tried to assassinate President Truman, a Democrat, were leftists. They were pardoned by a Democrat president. The man who successfully assassinated President Kennedy was a communist. The city of Chicago was besieged by violent leftists during the Democratic National Convention in 1968. The violent police response was authorized by a Democrat mayor. Almost all of the arson, violence, and urban riots of the 1960’s and 1970’s, including the District of Columbia, were sponsored by the professional left. Indeed, recreational arson may still be a Halloween tradition in long suffering Democrat bastions like Detroit.

The vast majority of apologists for Islamic terror and violence also hail from the academic and political left. Indeed, President Obama and Army Chief of Staff, George Casey, took to the airways to caution against any rush to judgment when a Muslim officer, Nidal Malik Hassan, massacred fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009. No similar cautions have been offered in the wake of the Arizona tragedy.

On a personal level, the evidence is even more disturbing. Take the Michael Vick case where the President publicly commended the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles for giving Vick a second chance. Recall that Vick, Virginia Tech dropout, when not chucking a football, used to amuse himself by raising fighting dogs. When the dogs wouldn’t kill, Vick would kill the dogs – often with his bare hands. Obama’s favorite quarterback was convicted of several felonies before migrating to the “city of brotherly love” for millions. Vick gets second chances, while Sarah Palin gets torched.

Indeed, Palin has become ground zero for the metaphorical war. Sandra Bernhard says that Govenor Palin should be “gang raped by my big black brothers” when she comes to Manhattan. It’s not difficult to understand Palin’s gun metaphors or “reload” rhetoric when confronted with such threats. Loose cannons like Rahm Emanuel, John Kerry, Democrat members of Congress, and the president himself are also guilty of violent hyperbole.

Emanuel recently referred to ObamaCare opponents as “f--king retards”. Only an expert in rhetorical excess could mix two metaphors in two words and offend three liberal constituencies. Assuming the first term applies to men and women; surely the second word captures a portion of both sexes.

Democrat John Kerry joked on television about shooting Republican George Bush. Hard to believe Boston Democrats think assassination jokes are funny. A Democrat Senate candidate from West Virginia recently ran a political ad where he literally used a rifle to shoot an odious bill. And the President, never one to miss a teaching moment, uses violent metaphors like “bringing knives to gunfights.”

So we are left with several questions for the head of the free world. If that psycho pathetic animal abuser were some cracker quarterback from Wisconsin, would he merit the President’s public concern? And if judgments should be reserved on serial killers like Nidal Malik Hassan, shouldn’t Mrs. Palin be given the benefit of a doubt? And if we are to be concerned with virtual rhetoric on the right, shouldn’t the president show similar concern about actual violence among his constituents?

Three of the ten most dangerous Democrat cities in America are clustered in the President’s back yard; Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. In 2009, the District of Columbia alone had 150 rapes, 144 homicides, 8,071 violent crimes, and 28,456 crimes against property. 5, 623 citizens have been murdered in the District in the past two decades according to Metro Police statistics. For perspective, in DC alone, this number nearly exceeds the number of US casualties in two wars during the same period. Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, none of the DC victims are volunteers – yet, many are children.

In the last election, 90% of DC votes were cast for Democrats. The District is yet another city that has never had a Republican mayor or legislature. While rhetoric on the right may be subject to interpretation, the body bags on the left speak for themselves

When local and national Democrats try to attribute criminal mayhem to their opposite numbers, they breathe life into yet another violent metaphor – the circular firing squad.

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The author was born into the Democrat Party in the Bronx and retained that affiliation until he became an adult. He also writes at Agnotology in Journalism and G. Murphy Donovan. A version of this essay appeared in American Thinker