Surely there will be consequences in Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, New York, Los Angeles, and other cities where leaders have refused to push back against these forces of disorder parading as moral righteousness. The mayors’ inaction devastates the very communities they are sworn to protect and defend.
And what about the Democratic party, to which these mayors and governors belong? The party has moved significantly to the left, and, whatever their personal views, its leaders understand that shift. They know how strong the activist left is. They’ve seen long-term incumbents defeated by unknown socialist candidates backed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It’s not surprising that Democratic party leaders have kept quiet.
Americans will listen to reasonable calls to reform policing and they certainly want color-blind law enforcement. But they won’t tolerate frontal assaults on law enforcement or the collapse of public safety. They won’t accept the specious claim that hoodlums tossing firebombs are ‘freedom fighters.’
Citizens will respond at the ballot box, the gun store (where sales have sky rocketed), and the U-Haul counter, where they are renting vans to move to safer places. Polls show that across all racial and ethnic groups, people want more, not less, police presence in their neighborhoods. And they will want political leaders who understand this.
– Charles Lipson in Playing with fire
