Facts Don’t Matter, Not Even To The President

So, we had the Chauvin verdict.  Rather than seeing that verdict as justice served – a trial, a jury, a verdict – and time for healing, the President continued racial divisiveness by asserting that this is not over, and again proclaiming systemic racism and making other statements that sound more like anti-American propaganda than what should be coming from America’s President and from someone who continues to say he wants unity.

The Chauvin trial was not about race.   The prosecution did not mention race.  It was a murder trial plain and simple.  Yet, led by the President, the country ignores that fact and makes it about race and the Left’s current favorite cause:  eradicating the illusive systemic racism.

Now we have a police shooting in Ohio.  The 911 call included the words, “It's these grown girls over here trying to fight us, trying to stab us, get here now!"   A large teen girl holding a knife and attacking another teen was shot by police, thus saving the life of the teenager being attacked.  Sounds to me like it might be a police officer doing his job, protecting and serving.

What do we hear from the media, from the Left, and sadly from our President?    We first ignore the fact that the person shot was armed with a deadly weapon and in the process of using it against another human being.  NBC omitted the above words from the 911 call.   We ignore the fact that the officer saved someone from a violent and quite possibly deadly attack. 

What do we focus on?  The attacker whom the officer shot was Black.  So, that apparently makes it a racist and unjustifiable shooting no matter what the circumstances, proof of the alleged systemic racism that seems to now be the cause of any and everything that displeases the Left.

Did I (and others) not say that the Chauvin verdict was only the beginning?  The fact that, again led by our President, America misunderstood what a trial is and made the murder trial of Derek Chauvin instead some sort of trial of all of America has empowered the anti-police oratory.  The verdict which addressed the actions of one man is proclaimed by the President and others to be a verdict on America itself. 

Led by the President, much of America seems to think that verdict justifies anti-police rhetoric if not violence, as well as any number of statutes, rules, and regulations creating any number of actions that will allegedly rectify the “systemic racism” that they assert the Chauvin verdict proclaimed. 

This allows any member of the public to second guess a police officer’s actions in the heat of a violent and dangerous situation.  It allows the public to take bits and pieces of information about police action and use it to justify their narrative, even if the full factual picture does not support that narrative.  It means that any police officer who takes action that the mob, led by the President, does not like, is subject to condemnation by both the President and the mob. 

It means that any police officer now must not only be thinking about protecting the people he serves, but also be fearful that if the action he takes, even if justified, may result in threats and charges of murder against him.  And, led by the President, if that officer is charged with murder simply for doing his job it will be perfectly OK to threaten the jury via protests and rioting.

Contrary to the President and the mob beliefs, every action in this country is not about race.  It may be convenient to say that it is because it allows the President, the Left, and certain interest groups to push through their agendas claiming they are all about correcting systemic racism.  Anyone who opposes those agendas is simply disregarded as racist. 

The fact that there are more Whites than Blacks killed by police (both numerically and proportionately) or that some Black criminal offenders are killed by Black police officers are facts that don’t seem to matter.   The fact that some killing of Blacks by police are justifiable and happen in the course of the police officer carrying out his duties are facts that don’t matter.  The fact that many police shootings of Blacks have nothing to do with race but rather simply involve violations of criminal statutes or failure to obey police commands during a criminal stop are facts that don’t matter.  

We used to be a country that cared about Truth.  Facts are a part of Truth.  But now it seems we care not about Truth but Narrative.  Facts that do not fit a narrative are simply dismissed.   Any thought that is different from that approved by the President’s administration and the mob is dismissed.

Here is an apt description of our country today: “It is a system without an independent press; a system without an independent judiciary; where the people have no influence either on external or internal policy; where any thought which is different from the state is crushed.” 

Both sad and chilling is that the above quote comes from Alexander Solzhenitsyn describing Soviet Russia.   And so now you know where we are headed as we become a nation of narrative rather than facts.  

Another quote of relevance comes from Aldous Huxley: “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”  You will recall that amongst the books authored by Huxley is Brave New World, another prescient view of where our elevation of narrative over fact is leading us.

Facts do matter.  Truth does matter.  And a President who is willing to ignore them, to choose to push a narrative even when that narrative is proven to be false, certainly does not have in mind or heart the best interests of the Country and Constitution he has sworn to protect.  And a country that allows this to happen, that simply falls into place as told, is in the process of destroying itself.