KEN: We are in the thick of something right now, and it’s the result of myth and lies and narratives and propaganda. That’s where we are, and I don’t know how many more times we can say it. You in this audience, you know it. If the news media, if journalism did its job — and journalism pretty much died, I don’t know, forties, maybe, in the fifties. Hard to say.
I think there was still some left in the sixties and seventies. I remember Mike Wallace breaking a few big cases wide open. But if they did their job, when there was a myth… Like right now, one of the most toxic environments right now is this law enforcement-civil rights dynamic, because it’s riddled with myth and fantasy and lies designed to move certain agendas forward. Rush explained it beautifully. Here he is.
RUSH: Okay. I want you all to listen to this, and particularly those of you in the audience who are African-American. It struck me when I ran across the story. The story is actually… I found it at Power Line, the great blog. It was written by Paul Mirengoff in this case, but what he’s done, is he found a couple of polls of black people and has analyzed them and reported on them.
So it’s assumed that blacks believe whatever Democrats believe, and then — I know I’ve heard it a number of times; so have you — usually a white liberal will get in your face. “You don’t even know what it’s like! You don’t even know what it’s like to be African-American. Go talk to them! They don’t think they’re gonna see their 21st birthday. They think cops are gonna shoot ’em for a bad taillight or something.”
So you end up believing that the African-American population really is that… (sigh) Their outlook is that bleak. People just believe it. You’ll be sad about it, but you accept it. Well, apparently none of that is true because somebody actually has gone out and taken a poll exclusively with black respondents. Now, the title of Mirengoff’s blog post here is, “What Do Blacks Say About the Police?”
A couple pull quotes from the piece: “[B]ut for African-Americans, Bernie Sanders probably would be the Democratic nominee for president. African-Americans saved Joe Biden’s campaign, even though, as some of his opponents liked to point out, he collaborated with Dixiecrats, he opposed school busing, and he led the charge for stiff sentencing of drug offenders.
“Michael Javen Fortner, author of Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment focuses on black attitudes about the police. Do blacks in America really believe that ‘they can be killed anywhere at any time by anyone, but especially by [cops]’? Well, Michael Javen Fortner argues that they don’t” believe this.
“When asked, ‘How satisfied are you…'”? Remember, this is a poll of black respondents. ‘How satisfied are you with the job your local police department does,’ 21% said ‘very satisfied,’ 51% said somewhat satisfied, 12% said somewhat dissatisfied, and only 5% said that they were ‘very’ dissatisfied. These results do not suggest a complete endorsement of contemporary policing, as many blacks report negative interactions.
“Yet nearly 75% of surveyed African-Americans report themselves satisfied with their local police departments.” What? Who would believe that? I mean, isn’t virtually everything happening here under the guise of social justice, isn’t it happening because we’re told that African-Americans…? We gotta defund the police departments because African-Americans think that police departments exist only to harm them.
We’re told this. We don’t dare argue it or refute it. “The Washington, D.C. area has a large number of black immigrants from Africa.” Paul Mirengoff writing here. “My impression (and it’s only an impression) is that these immigrants make up a considerable percentage of people who care for the elderly in this area, and are well represented among local taxi drivers.
“I gather they are well represented in certain other job categories too, but it is in these capacities that I encounter them. Do blacks from Africa view America as a racist nation? No, not likely. They wouldn’t have come here if they did. My impression (and again, it’s only that) is that these immigrants find America a relatively congenial place.
“But then,” he says, “I doubt that many native African-Americans want this either. Keep in mind that, but for African-Americans, Bernie Sanders probably would be the Democratic nominee,” then he writes about the, “Michael Javen Fortner, author of Black Silent Majority, and black attitudes toward the cops. Says This: “‘Polling data suggest that most African-Americans do not share the bleak view of their experiences'” that you think they do.
“‘In a 2019 Pew survey, 44% of blacks reported being “unfairly stopped by police” because of their race; 54% said, “No, has not happened to them.” In a Monmouth poll taken after Floyd’s death, 44% of African-Americans reported that they or an immediate family member felt “harassed by police,” but a majority did not share this experience.
“‘When asked, “How satisfied are you with the job your local police department does,” just to repeat, this is Pew and Monmouth, “‘21% said “very satisfied,” 51% said somewhat satisfied…” Folks, that’s a total of 75% somewhat satisfied with the job of local police departments, African-Americans, in 2019. Things could have changed, obviously, but I don’t think that dramatically.
“‘These results do not suggest a complete endorsement of contemporary policing… Yet nearly three-quarters of surveyed African-Americans report themselves satisfied.'” And then it says that, “These results shouldn’t come as a surprise. But polling data present at least one counter-intuitive result:
“‘A 2015 Gallup poll found that black adults who believed police treated black people unfairly were also more likely to want a larger police presence in their local area than those who thought police treated black people fairly.'” That is stunning. Now, admittedly, it’s 2015. But to me, it doesn’t matter. This runs counter to everything we’ve been told.
Again, it’s a survey — two surveys — of exclusively black respondents. “[B]lack adults who” think the cops treat them unfairly “were also more likely to want a larger police presence…” Stop and think about. You know, the color of one’s skin doesn’t change one’s humanity, doesn’t change the desire you have for your kids to do well, to want a good education. It doesn’t mean anything.
Why would the color of your skin somehow make you not want a police department where you live? It makes no sense. And yet this is what we’re being asked to believe, that a majority of African-Americans do not want police departments. And this effort to defund police departments in Democrat cities and states is being run in the name of African-Americans, and it isn’t true. But because there’s never any polling data exclusively of black Americans there’s never any refutation of it.
Here’s the conclusion from Mr. Fortner, who did the poll and analyzed it: “‘Elite institutions have committed themselves to a theory, a program, and performance increasingly detached from the aspirations, the worldviews, and the everyday concerns of millions of blacks. Activists have secured pledges to “defund” or “dismantle” police departments, but black Americans have not received concrete, alternative public-safety plans to curb violence.'”
KEN: The most amazing thing about that — and it’s another great segment from Rush. You would not hear a segment like that in a newsroom across America today. What that setting points out, as you just heard, Americans have more in common with each other than not. All of us, regardless of color, gender, et cetera, as Americans have more in common with each other.
If that were known to more people, it would be much harder for the politicians and the news media to divide us. That’s why they teach all that radical garbage to elementary school kids, that race theory stuff and they’ve got to get people indoctrinated before they get into high school and start driving and start voting.
Because if people knew the truth, that this is the greatest country to be in if you look different than someone else, because of our Americanism… They cannot let that seep through, the news media, because then the entire foundation of the left falls apart, which is division.
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