RUTHFULLY YOURS

If George Wallace had stood in the schoolhouse door and received the rapturous applause of thousands, slobbery encomiums from the mainstream media, and the blessings of one of the two major party nominees for president of the United States, you would have had something approximating what occurred in Philadelphia over the first two days of the Democratic convention.

Because, like Democrat Wallace’s dangerous rhetoric in 1963, the Democratic Party Convention of 2016 has, at times been a celebration of lawlessness and racial mythology that has led to violence – but the 2016 Democrats lack a President Kennedy to come in to restore order and demand the rule of law be followed. Instead, they’ve got Hillary Clinton, who is perfectly willing to take a blowtorch to truth and to light brushfires of racial conflict at a tense time if that will help her return to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Witness what we have just seen: One candidate for president has been the first-ever candidate for president endorsed by the union of Border Patrol agents. The other candidate proudly features, on the first night of her convention, illegal aliens up on the main stage, while Democrats nationwide cheer. On the next night, we heard from “Mothers of the Movement” a sort of Black Lives Matter placeholder group that offers a fundamentally false racial narrative, which may do for racial tensions in 2016 what Wallace’s did in 1963.

If you wanted to understand the hold that Donald Trump has on a large swathe of conservatives and even fed-up Democrats and independents, the Democratic convention is pretty much a living explanation.

At this point, we’ve become so accustomed to the Democrats’ immigration lawlessness that too many of us accept it. We think there is simply nothing strange about one of our two political parties happily parading lawbreakers in a forum where they are celebrated for their law-breaking. To be fair, there’s nothing new with the Democrats celebrating lawbreakers – after all, they nearly nominated Ted Kennedy in 1980 just eleven years after Chappaquiddick – but to be honoring the lawbreakers specifically for their illegal conduct is something else entirely. One almost expected Bill Clinton to receive an award from Elizabeth Banks for perjury and sexual misconduct. I would have liked to see that acceptance speech rather than his tedious tribute to his longtime partner-in-crime.

But, of course, the Democrats have an advantage. They know that the media is so in the tank for them that their delusional fantasy narratives on racism and immigration will not be seriously challenged no matter what they do. Hillary Clinton could be escorted onstage by an armed contingent of the Fruit of Islam with a just-released illegal-immigrant murderer leading the way and the media would find a way to show that it means that Trump=Hitler. As the Geico commercial says: It’s what they do.

Even more breathtaking is the fact that the GOP, in response to this assault on both law and reason, will only whimper in response, because too many of them, even in the wake of a full-on populist revolt, are in the tank for Paul Ryan–style open borders and for accommodating the racial arsonists of the Black Lives Matter movement. One can only suppose they fear that otherwise they might be called “racists” by the media and have to sit in the corner wearing their collective dunce caps.

These blatant racialist plays by the Democrats are put out in hopes of getting a massive turnout of bloc-voting African Americans and Hispanics that they believe they will need if they are going to overcome Trump’s populist army. Given the media’s penchant for calling anything the GOP does that might serve the legitimate interests of its white base voters “white nationalist,” one might expect them to call the presence of some of the speakers “black nationalist” or “Hispanic nationalist” dog whistles – but that would assume we had a mainstream media more interested in equal treatment than leftist agitprop.

Last night audiences were treated to a standing ovation for Mothers of the Movement, a collection of women who, in the wake of admittedly tragic personal losses, have often been busy consorting with the likes of Al Sharpton in order to turn personal tragedies into national ones. With the camera spotlight on brightly, and in the wake of recent shootings of police officers, Mothers of the Movement were on their best behavior all week, one even giving a shout-out to police. But their polite rhetoric yesterday doesn’t dissolve their records of incitement. And the frequent chants of “Black Lives Matter” by the audience, left no doubt where the audience’s sympathies lay.

Michael Brown’s mother was there on stage. Brown was the Ferguson, Mo., man who robbed a store and then assaulted a police officer and attempted to take his weapon before eventually being shot and killed. The imaginary “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative that occurred around this led to some of the most violent protests of the Black Lives Matter movement, including possibly racially-motivated killings of area whites by blacks that received almost no media attention. The officer, Darren Wilson, who did nothing wrong other than “policing while white,” lost his job, now lives in an undisclosed location for his own safety, and is reportedly stocking shelves at Walmart. If the Democrats had any real interest in racial reconciliation, they would have had Darren Wilson speak at their convention.

Lucy McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, who was murdered by a white man, (who was subsequently convicted and is serving a life term in prison) was one of three Mothers of the Movement chosen to speak. But as Heather Mac Donald has shown, on a per capita basis African Americans are more than 25 times more likely to have committed violence against whites than vice versa. If the Democrats were really interested in racial reconciliation, they could have had one of the many white victims of violent crimes by African Americans tell his or her story as a way of encouraging everyone to look for peace and understanding that tragedies can affect all of our communities. But they are instead interested in feeding false racial grievances and creating an illusory reality in which blacks must live in constant fear of white violence, to keep their voters, angry, marching, and voting Democrat, facts-be-damned.

Of course, the Democrats’ choices of who to honor didn’t go unnoticed: “They’re giving voice to people who attacked police officers without allowing us a chance to tell our side,” said the president of the Philadelphia police union, John McNesby.

The Democrats may not realize it, but they are playing a dangerous game, not just on immigration, where each terror attack by a “refugee” worldwide plays into a narrative about their fecklessness, but also in assuming their open-borders and anti-police rhetoric will play well outside their base. Like so much else in Democratic politics, their mindset is trapped in a 1960s Bull Connor scenario where victims and villains were, quite literally, black and white. But it’s not clear that yesterday’s celebration of Black Lives Matter will work as well in a world that has not just blacks and whites but also large numbers of Asians and Hispanics, who may also be receptive to Trump’s law-and-order message if they feel the Democrats are fundamentally undermining it. The same may be true of many African Americans who, while not having Al Sharpton’s megaphone, appreciate how the more intensive policing techniques of recent years have kept them and their neighborhoods safer. Nor will Democratic attacks on Trump’s immigration plans prove fruitful if a Syrian refugee decides to slit the throat of an American priest.

If it is fair to look for elements of white-identity politics in the rise of Trump, fairness also demands that the Democrats lawless anti-white identity politics gets similar treatment. It is on full display in Philadelphia this week, for anyone who has eyes to see it.

— Jeremy Carl is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.