The Death of Tyre Nichols Seen Through the Progressives' Pol Pot Gleam

Another victim of white supremacy? At the hands of black cops?

CNN talking head Van Jones and Congresswoman Cori Bush have led the progressives in blaming white supremacy for the death of Tyre Nichols, not the five black police officers who beat this young man to death in Memphis. With the help of news outlets like MSNBC and The New York Times, their upside-down world reminds me of the creation of Year Zero by Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. His new calendar airbrushed away all previous human history to make way for paradise on earth, once both native Cambodian and Western traditions had been destroyed.

Van Jones and fellow progressives have their own Year Zero, where common sense, the law, and what’s in front of one’s nose is denied, allowing the vacuum to be filled daily by some Big Brother version of Bill Maher’s New Rules, but without the laughs, irony, and sarcasm. Here in America there’ll be no need to kill people, only take their souls. Progressives in the West have learned that you don’t want to kill off the people that make the everyday world run on “greased grooves”— butcher, baker, candlestick maker and, of course, plumbers, though their availability is spotty since they often head out of town with their girlfriend or second wife to Vegas or the Bahamas. A few years ago, Michael Moore talked about the necessity of keeping around your white conservative brother-in-law since he’s the guy who can work on your car.

For the Van Joneses and Cori Bushes of America, power and control intensifies that Pol Pot gleam, a gleam that announces a new day of forced happiness, better living through eating insects, public transportation, and telling their audiences that systemic racism accounted for the death of Mr. Nichols, not the black cops who brutalized him after they allegedly stopped Tyre for reckless driving.

The congresswoman said in a press release: “It is abundantly clear that rogue, militarized policing has never and will never keep us safe. Following a year of record-breaking police killings, prevention is the best path forward.” Leave it to a radical democrat to unwittingly compare American policing to the actions of the Haiti’s Tonton Macoute, who terrorized the citizens of Haiti for decades, utilizing torture, rape and murder.

Before making outrageous statements, both Jones and Bush should apply basic math to their fable: a dozen unarmed blacks were killed last year against 10 million arrests and 300 million encounters with police. And this data is set against the reality that the great majority of black homicides are committed by other blacks, approximately 7000 annually, minus the unarmed dozen by police. Really, Congresswoman, record-breaking police killings?

The real solution is to place blame where it belongs--punish the thugs in Memphis, and fix the problems within police departments, especially the lowering of standards in hiring and an officer’s fear of prosecution once he steps out of the cruiser. The progressive’s attempt to try and drag Tyre Nichols into their Year Zero won’t work. Mr. Nichols was following his own star, not the Left’s Death Star.

From the AP:

On most weekends, Tyre Nichols would head to the city park, train his camera on the sky and wait for the sun to set… “Photography helps me look at the world in a more creative way. It expresses me in ways I cannot write down for people,” he wrote on his website. He preferred landscapes and loved the glow of sunsets most, his family has said. He wrote on Facebook that he wanted his photography seen by a larger audience, and in death he has that audience, and then some.

Will the public understand that Tyre was his own man, making his own decisions, day by day, just the like the black cops who made their evil, split-second decisions that led to his murder? Or will the progressives succeed in calling Tyre Nichols another victim of white supremacy?

I’ve heard it said that since the black police officers are victims too, their lawyers can simply make the argument that whitey (or the devil) made them do it. For American progressives, that Pol Pot gleam will brighten when the black cops receive a light sentence or are acquitted—a good verdict, the right verdict someone on MSNBC will say, adding around the clock: “we know who’s really at fault here...”

Evil works quickly at times, sizes up its prey, and then pounces. Maybe the cops’ sadistic side was aroused by a man who seemed sensitive, artistic, gentle, different from them, a threat, and a reminder of what they could have become, and had lost. Perhaps they’ve never stood breathless before a setting sun, sensing the mystery of those last rays, and what it meant to a good soul named Tyre Nichols.