The Patriot Post® · Minneapolis, USA

By Burt Prelutsky ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/71049-minneapolis-usa-2020-06-08

After three days of rioting in the Twin Cities, the buffoonish governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, typically pandering to the thugs, said: “I don’t know what it is like to live the black experience.”

In response, I say: “So what?”

The black punks who torched Minneapolis don’t know what it is to live the white experience, what it’s like to attend school for 12 years or 16 or even longer in pursuit of a profession. They obviously don’t know what it is to get a job, to get married and support a decent, law-abiding family.

On the first chaotic night of the riots, I would have called in the fire trucks to turn their high-pressure hoses on the looters and arsonists. I would then have swept up the soggy mess of humanity and indicted them for arson and theft. I would have done it even though I knew the usual suspects at CNN and MSNBC would conjure up the decades-old images of Southern sheriffs turning hoses on blacks demonstrating for their civil rights. But it would have been a false comparison.

In the 60s, those people were peacefully demonstrating, trying to appeal to the consciences of honorable people in the South and elsewhere. In Minneapolis, they were thuggish opportunists looking to create mayhem and just maybe go home with a new TV set, like contestants on “The Price is Right."
Two things can seem alike but be entirely different. For instance, I recall when Mexico’s President Vicente Fox compared a wall at the U.S. border to the Berlin Wall, intentionally conflating a wall built to imprison people with one built to keep people out.

He wasn’t a stupid man. He didn’t believe the two walls were the same, but he was corrupt enough to know that stupid people in both countries would parrot his lie.

In Minneapolis, the police who had been emasculated by their chief and the mayor vacated the police station in cars and on foot so that the rioters could vandalize and then burn down the building.

The obvious question is why exactly are the working stiffs in that city still paying taxes earmarked for the cops, their chief and the mayor, if their attitude is to step aside and allow the barbarians to destroy the city with no fear of consequences? But, then, if the cops aren’t even willing to protect their own offices, why would anyone really expect them to protect the homes and businesses of the poor slobs who pay their salaries?

By the fourth night of rioting, most of the thugs had already forgotten George Floyd’s name. Therefore, even the arrest of the cop, Derek Chauvin, didn’t cool things down. Race riots always have a life of their own that has nothing to do with the tiny fuse that got it started.

I kept hearing self-serving politicians jabbering away on cable news networks about systemic racism in America. And I agree it exists, but the racists happen to be black.

I’m not saying there aren’t occasional black bigots like the father and son in Georgia or the cop in Minneapolis. But for each of them, there are thousands of young blacks in Atlanta, New York, L.A., Denver and Phoenix, as we saw, just looking for an excuse to take to the streets and create chaos and violence, using the mere existence of Whitey or Honky or the Man or whatever epithet is currently in fashion as an excuse.

Perhaps, considering the venom with which they say the word, "Whitey” should henceforth be referred to as the “W-word” in polite society, if such a thing still exists.

Just for the record, over the weekend, 10 black people were killed in Chicago. But their deaths were generally ignored because they were murdered by other blacks and not by Officer Derek Chauvin, who had an alibi because he was busy elsewhere murdering someone else.

CNN’s favorite civil rights leader Al Sharpton, who has started a riot or two in the past, took the Minneapolis mob to task; not for their criminality, but for their lack of discernment. What annoyed him about the Minneapolis mob was that the black barbarians were burning down black-owned stores and not just those owned by whites and Asians.

You would think by now that city leaders would know what a stupid tactic it is to sit back and let riots simply play out for fear that a pushback by the cops would merely incite further violence. It’s fortunate that the folks at the Pentagon don’t adopt that practice at time of war.

What made New York the safest city in America during Rudy Giuliani’s tenure as mayor was that he adopted what he called the broken window syndrome.

He realized that if one building on a block had a broken window and nobody bothered to repair it, soon there would be a lot more broken windows. He knew that nihilism was the predictable next step when people stopped caring enough to fix a window or report a crime or began to lose respect for authority.

When he then adopted a policy called “Stop and Search,” minority politicians raised objections to New York cops stopping and questioning suspicious-looking characters because most of them happened to be either black or Hispanic.

The fact that the cops took thousands of weapons off these characters as a result of asking just a few questions no doubt saved thousands of New York lives, but for the folks pandering for votes that didn’t matter. Neither did the fact that most of the decent people of color approved of the thugs being disarmed cut no mustard with the liberal politicians or their cohorts at the NY Times. To them, Giuliani was a Nazi and the cops were the Gestapo.

Not that it really matters, but officer Chauvin, who was used as an excuse by the rioters, is probably not even a racist. After all, in the past he had been cited on more than a dozen occasions for using excessive force while making an arrest and his victims were both black and white. In short, he was an equal opportunity thug who should have been kicked off the force years ago.


Another victim of the Coronavirus has just been reported. It’s Hertz-Rent-a-Car. The company has announced bankruptcy, which means that C-19 has added thousands of people to the unemployment rolls. These were people who were gainfully employed before this nation, formerly known as the land of the free and the home of the brave, turned into a place I barely recognize. It has become a nation of whimpering cowards who are afraid to shake hands with their friends and hug their children.

The so-called medical experts point to 100,000 deaths as proof of how lethal these past four months have been. I’m not impressed.

For one thing, a large percentage of the fatalities took place in old age facilities, where death shows up a lot more frequently than visiting relatives.

For another, these days if anyone dies of anything but a gun shot, it’s automatically credited to the virus.

If I’m not as frightened as so many others are, it’s not that I’m particularly courageous or that I’m not aware of the fact that at my age, I’m among the likeliest targets of the disease. Rather, it’s because I know that there are slightly more than 10 million people in Los Angeles County and there have only been 2,717 deaths attributed to C-19.

Some years ago, there were a number of freeway shootings reported on the news. So, my wife would worry whenever I’d drive on the 405 or the 101. I would point out to her that although there had been three or four shootings, there were 10 million of us, not counting tourists, driving on the freeway every day and I liked my odds.

Eventually, she began to calm down. I’d suggest that everyone else should do the same. I mean, there are 325,000,000 of us and only 100,000 people have died. Those are 3250-1 odds. If that’s keeping you up nights, you should take something for it.