The Patriot Post® · Hardly a Hero

By Burt Prelutsky ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/71419-hardly-a-hero-2020-06-22

I have grown quite tired of people tossing around the word “hero” quite as casually as they do. It’s bad enough referring to people who hit a ball, kick a ball or dunk a ball, for millions of dollars a year “heroes,” but I’d also say that those who referred to the people, aside from the first responders, who died in New York on 9/11 as anything but victims were carried away by their emotions.

Now, I’m hearing a lot of people referring to George Floyd as a hero. He was anything but. He never did anything in his crime-riddled life for another person. He was killed by a corrupt cop and his own violent death has led to the violent deaths of a lot of innocent people, including a number of blacks, including retired police captain David Dorn.

It’s one thing to say that what happened to Mr. Floyd should never have occurred, and if I had my way Officer Chauvin would be executed in the same way that he killed Floyd, but it’s quite another thing to say that the riots dishonor the victim’s memory. His own life did that.

The guy was a street thug. If some other thug had had his life choked out of him by Derek Chauvin, you can bet that Floyd would have been out looting with the rest of the bums.

In fact, considering his size, he probably would have brought home more than a pair of sneakers or a case of beer. The big moose probably would have carted home a side of beef and a freezer for storing it.


According to most of the news coverage, the majority of riots have not been riots; instead, they’ve been peaceful demonstrations by concerned citizens. We are told this lie because when George Soros created the BLM Foundation, he did a better job of it than when he put Antifa together. The advantage that the BLM has is that it’s black, while Antifa is full of snot-nosed, middle-class white kids.

India has its sacred cows, but so do we. Theirs give milk; ours burn down buildings and loot stores. Ours also have an agenda, which includes creating chaos in the nation; destroying the nuclear family so that whites can better reflect the worst aspect of black life; and bringing about a race war.

One thing both sets of cows have in common is that they make a mess in the street.


Britain can blame China for the virus, but for the riots currently riling the island nation, we have to take the credit.

It seems that the Black Lives Matter movement has gained a toehold over there. And thanks to the BBC, their answer to our PBS, the news coverage of the rioting is equally biased in favor of the mob.

The other day, the BBC reported a demonstration as “peaceful” in which 27 people were hospitalized, including a policewoman who was knocked off her horse and wound up with broken ribs and a punctured lung.

In retaliation, like a lot of their American colleagues, the bobbies took a knee.

The mob also decided, like their American cousins, to take out their anger on statuary. Over here, a Texas Ranger rendered in brass was removed because it represented law enforcement. In England, the imbeciles defaced a statue of Winston Churchill because they claimed he represented racism. Which, the mob, being a mob, naturally confused with guts, rationality and patriotism.


After every race riot, we hear that we need additional police training and we need review boards that will crack down on bad cops. I can certainly agree that a lot of people in Minneapolis fell down on the job. With a record that included 18 citations for the use of excessive force used on both black and white suspects, Chauvin should have been booted off the force years ago.

But, by and large, America’s cops do a very good job under extremely difficult circumstances.

It seems to me that the folks who require re-training are the voters who define insanity every time they cast a ballot for a Democrat. They keep repeating the same stupid action and apparently expect different results.

For years, I’ve begged Socialists to go live in places like Cuba, China, Ethiopia and Venezuela, and see if they still like Socialism after a year or two.

These days, if Minneapolis goes through with its plan to get rid of the police, I’d like to invite all the George Floyd protesters to move there and see how they like being protected from thieves and rapists by their pure souls and good intentions.


A reader was dismayed because so many of our young people are unable to do cursive writing. Apparently, along with math skills and the ability to write a coherent sentence, the kids are barely able to sign their own names.

That’s bad enough. But in my neighborhood, a great many of them, especially those of Hispanic descent, have proven themselves proficient in spray can writing, which is the modern equivalent of cave drawings. Some of the white elitists dare refer to these acts of vandalism as a native art form. That’s until it’s one of their walls that is turned into an objet d'art.


I don’t have the same reverence for the military brass that other Conservatives seem to have. That’s why when I hear that generals and admirals, including those named Mattis, Mullin and now Colin Powell, aren’t planning to vote for Donald Trump in five months, it’s as irrelevant to me as hearing that Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski and Jonah Goldberg, aren’t supporting his re-election.


The media made a big deal of the protesters being moved out of the way when President Trump walked from the White House to St. John’s Church. They carried on as if was evil and unprecedented.

For one thing, these allegedly peaceful demonstrators had been asked politely to move out of Lafayette Park on three different occasions over the course of 20 minutes and refused.

The truth is, it was anything but unprecedented. Whenever this president or any president goes anywhere, large numbers of people are cleared out. When a president flies anywhere, other people’s flight plans are rearranged. When a president is driven anywhere, all surrounding traffic stops.

So when President Trump decided to walk a few hundred yards and there are a thousand people lurking in the area who have not been frisked for weapons, those people can expect to be removed one way or another.

Plus, it could have provided the mob with a little quiet time away from the infantile chanting so they could try to figure out what exactly they were supposed to be protesting against.


Among the holier-than-thou celebrities who are virtue-signaling by bailing out the looters are Steve Carrel, Seth Rogen, Don Cheadle, Cynthia Nixon, Ryan Reynolds and Colin Kaepernick.

Although I have on rare occasion enjoyed Carrel and Reynolds in a couple of things, I am relieved to say that I’m not a fan of those other people.

One of the most difficult things for me is to appreciate the talent of people I have reason to despise.

That’s why I was always happy to be unconflicted when it came to people like Vanessa Redgrave, Mark Ruffalo, Jane Fonda, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rob Reiner, Rosie O'Donnell and Madonna.

I have at times been forced to overcome my bias because I admired their talent so much. Two who spring to mind are Emma Thompson and the late Alan Rickman, a pair of typical English elitists who would have fit right in with the Hollywood climate change, Cuba-loving, Trump-hating, hypocrites.

In the case of Gary Sinise, it gets a little trickier because it’s not his talent I admire but his good works on behalf of veterans. So even though my personal encounters with the man have left a bad taste in my mouth, I still have to salute him.


For the sin of headlining an article that, oddly enough soft-soaped the rioters, “Buildings Matter Too,” the longtime managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer was fired after 20 years on the job.

It seems the paper’s owner couldn’t stand up to the mob within the building itself after several black staffers complained “We’re tired of hearing there are two sides to an issue. Sometimes there aren’t two sides.”

Right, there’s only their side. The side of ignorance, the side of black bigotry, the side that’s only too happy to nullify the First Amendment.


A couple of lies really annoy me. The first is that this nation’s wealth was built on the backs of slaves and that’s why their descendants deserve reparations.

The Confederacy was only one part of America. Slavery didn’t exist in most states, most of which did quite well financially.

Another more recent lie was promulgated by the black Pinocchio, Barack Obama, when he not only insisted that Arabs and Muslims had played a significant role in our space missions but then, carried away by the cheers from his brethren in the Middle East, declared that they had also played a major role in the creation of this republic.

That one was really a head-scratcher. The best I could come up with was if the Barbary pirates hadn’t made a practice of capturing our merchant ships and ransoming our seamen, the Marine Hymn probably wouldn’t mention the shores of Tripoli.