Barack Obama is against it. Joe Biden is against it. Two-thirds of the American people are against it.
What is “it”? Defunding the police—surely the stupidest, most damaging political slogan in recent American history.
No one is sure where the slogan originated. According to one version, it started in Minneapolis, after the George Floyd murder, when a group called “Defund MPD” [Minneapolis Police Department] was formed. The group describes itself as “a Black-led multi-racial coalition of people and organizations in DC who share a common vision of a city without prisons and police.”
No more prisons and police! Imagine that. This swords-into-plowshares vision surely is as old as human aspiration itself. Isaiah prophesized, “And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.” But he also based this prayer on a proviso: it would not happen until a time when “a king will reign in righteousness, and rulers will rule with justice…[and] My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes.”
Have we reached that point, here in America? Are we living “in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes”? Far from it. “Violent crime is rising in American cities,” The Economist wrote just two days ago. Here in Oakland, we know all too well that “The city of Oakland is in the midst of a violent crime wave,” as the Oakland Police Officers’ Association reported last week. We can debate the causes of this spike in violent crime, which is happening across the country, but what is not debatable is the public’s alarm. “78% of Oakland residents want more police officers,” according to a poll cited by Mayor Libby Schaaf when she presented her 2021-2022 budget, which would largely protect Oakland Police Department funding.
In modern American politics, nothing ever gets 78% support, so for Oaklanders to want a fully-staffed police department is historic. But the will of the people apparently counts for nothing among the defund crowd on the City Council, on the Police Commission, and in radical cults like the Anti Police-Terror Project. In those bastions of woke-ness, an attitude of “We know better” prevails. Damn the public’s desire for safety! Damn the public! We elites of the Left know better. Leave everything to us, and the lamb shall lie down with the lion.
Sorry. We, the public, aren’t buying it. The defund crowd is on the run, and they know it; but, ironically, that makes them all the more dangerous. Like a cornered rat, they bare their teeth and make snarling noises, threatening anyone who comes near with a mauling. We know that the defunders have already cost Democrats scores of seats at the local and Congressional level in the November, 2021 elections. We know, also, that “Democratic operatives are warning lawmakers to steer clear of any defund-the-police rhetoric since it could hurt them in the midterms.”
Is that what the defunders want—a Republican wave that destroys the fragile Democratic majority in Congress and leads, frighteningly, to a Trump restoration? The defunders claim to be liberals, but honestly, what they sound like is nothing less than crypto-fascists.
Steve Heimoff