Directed by President Trump, Law Enforcement Quickly Returned Order to D.C. Streets

Despite extensive protests over the weekend, the streets of Washington, D.C., have been free of mass vandalism and violence for nearly a week thanks to an infusion of federal law enforcement by the White House.

Last Monday, President Trump ordered agents and officers from a number of federal government agencies, in addition to the National Guard, to descend on the chaotic city. Within 24 hours and through extensive coordination, the streets were in order.

Because of this action, peaceful protestors have been able to exercise their First Amendment rights in a safe and orderly manner.

Across the country and in places where leftist mayors and governors have refused to call on the National Guard for assistance, violence against law enforcement and other crime has been out of control. According to the Department of Justice, over 700 local and federal officers have been injured by rioters. Nearly 200 federal buildings have been damaged with graffiti and arson.

During the last weekend in May, just before President Trump's directive, 60 U.S. Secret Service agents were injured by rioters attempting to breach the White House fence. They set fire to St. John's Episcopal Church. Forty National Park Police were also hurt.

"The streets of America didn't spontaneously become peaceful last week. It was a direct result of President Trump calling on Governors and Mayors to surge the National Guard in their states and restore law and order on America's streets so that peaceful protestors could demonstrate safely," White House Communications Director Alyssa Farrah tells Townhall.

"Juxtapose Washington, D.C., two weekends ago, when there was widespread vandalism, property damage, and arson with this past weekend – it was night and day. That is precisely because President Trump took decisive action to secure the streets of our Nation's Capital and restore law and order."

"I have just given an order for our National Guard to start the process of withdrawing from Washington, D.C., now that everything is under perfect control. They will be going home, but can quickly return, if needed," President Trump said Monday morning.

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What Turkey got right about the pandemic

In early march, before Turkey had formally registered its first case of covid-19, Sabah, a pro-government newspaper, praised the country for setting a “leading example” in the fight against the novel coronavirus. Some 160,000 confirmed cases later, the fanfare is rather quieter. Still, as the country emerges from lockdown, there is some cause for cheer. Turkey’s government has a reputation for throttling dissent and picking fights with its European and American allies. But it has handled the pandemic better than many.

Turkey has defied lockdown orthodoxy.

Rather than place the whole economy in a coma, the authorities ordered the young and the elderly to stay at home and asked everyone else, aside from those in consum-er-facing businesses, to show up for work. The biggest cities were placed under a blanket curfew on weekends and holidays. Some domestic flights resumed on June 1st, and cafés, restaurants, beaches and parks reopened, but children and people 65 and over are still not allowed outdoors for more than a few hours a week.

The strategy seems to have worked. The most vulnerable escaped the worst of the pandemic, while those infected, mostly working-age adults, generally recovered. Despite a high number of cases, the death count (under 4,600 as of June 2nd) has been low, even given the likelihood of serious underreporting. New cases have plateaued at around 1,000 a day since mid- May, down from a high of over 5,000 a month earlier. Deaths have never topped more than 127 in a single day. Turkey has ended up with roughly the same testing rate as France and a death rate ten times lower than Britain’s. Demography mattered. Among oecd countries, only Mexico and Colombia have a lower proportion of people aged 65 and over than Turkey does. Few elderly Turks live in nursing homes, which became breeding grounds for the virus in Europe and America.

Any country that keeps its factories open during a pandemic had better make sure its health system can cope with the consequences. Turkey’s rose to the challenge. Over the past couple of decades, Mr Erdogan and his governments have poured tens of billions of dollars into health care, most recently by building a network of hospitals the size of international airports. The latest of these opened on May 21st, boasting nearly 2,700 beds, about a sixth of them in intensive-care units. Some of the contracts were awarded to cronies, and the hospitals may end up bleeding cash. But the extra capacity has helped. The wave of covid-19 infections never came close to overwhelming the health system and medical supplies never ran out. Credit is due not just to Mr Erdogan and his impressive health minister, Fahrettin Koca, but also to opposition mayors, especially in Istanbul and Ankara, who have raised funds and organised the distribution of masks.

Mr Erdogan muzzles the media, locks up critics and flouts some of the most basic norms of democracy. But there is another reason why he and his ruling ak party have not lost a general election in almost two decades. As even its critics acknowledge, ak works hard and gets things done. If opposition parties were ever to take power—and whether Mr Erdogan would allow such a thing is the biggest unspoken question in Turkish politics—they would have to prove they can work just as hard.

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The Clear Differences Between the Left and the Right
 
The crisis of the coronavirus-induced economic lockdown and now the violent protests in the streets have unleashed a depression-level financial crisis and unprecedented human suffering — especially in our inner cities. These events have also exposed a Grand Canyon-sized chasm that now separates how the left and the right see America today. To wit:

No. 1: The right believes that stay-at-home orders and social distancing requirements are counterproductive and should be repealed safely and immediately. The left believes that those orders must stay in place but should only apply to those on the right, not to liberal protesters.

No. 2: The right engages in nonviolence. The left shows tacit support for mob violence.

No. 3: The right believes the best way to revive the economy is to incentivize a dormant workforce to get back on the job. The left believes that the best way to revive the economy is to pay people more money not to work than to work.

No. 4: When the right protests against injustice, such as 40 million people losing their jobs due to lockdowns, it is always during the light of day so they can be seen and heard. The left protests in the dark so people can’t see what crimes some of the protestors are committing.

No. 5: When the right attends rallies, they carry the American flag. When the left protests (and riots), the only American flags you see are burned.

No. 6: The right believes there are limits to how much governments can spend and borrow to avoid national bankruptcy and financial ruin. The left believes that trillions of dollars of added spending and debt are advisable and benign.

No. 7: When the right holds rallies, the protesters clean up after themselves. When the left protests, they ransack and burn their neighborhoods, spray-paint obscene graffiti and leave a mess of litter and trash everywhere for someone else to clean up. Yet leftists say they are the environmentalists.

No. 8: The right stands in support of small-business people’s rights and has been asking businesses like hardware stores, run by immigrants or other minority owners, to open up. The left’s rallies lead to looting and burning down the hardware stores.

No. 9: The right believes the best way to get people back to work is by getting money straight to people’s paychecks through a payroll tax cut. The left thinks the best course is to give money to mayors, governors and other politicians.

No. 10: The right wants to help prevent racism in urban police forces by firing incompetent and bigoted police officers. The left stands by the unions, which prevent police from being fired.

No. 11: The right wants to make America look like Florida and Texas. The left wants the rest of the nation to look like New York and Illinois – which are crumbling from rioting, lockdowns, high taxes and an accelerating stampede of businesses leaving the state.

Those are the monumentally important choices America faces. This is what the 2020 elections are all about on Nov. 3.

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The wrong saint

The Associated Press captured the moment in all its regal splendor: "The funeral capped six days of mourning ... in three cities. ... After the service, [his] golden casket was taken by hearse to the cemetery. ... A mile from the graveyard, the casket was transferred to a glass-sided carriage drawn by a pair of white horses. A brass band played as his casket was taken inside the mausoleum."

JFK? Churchill? Ronald Reagan?

Nope. George Floyd.

The past two weeks have been nothing short of tumultuous, so perhaps it was unsurprising that such an unaccomplished man with such a violent and lawless past would command such a stunning send-off. It was a funeral attended by hundreds of people at a time when, thanks to the pandemic shutdown, countless other Americans were unable to attend or even have funerals for their loved ones. But this is the country we live in. "Everybody is going to remember him around the world," said George's brother Rodney. "He is going to change the world."

Indeed, he already has changed the world. But for the better?

"I do not support George Floyd and the media depiction of him as a martyr for black America," declared Candace Owens in a viral video she shared just days after Floyd's death. Owens, whose 18-minute missive has since been seen more than 60 million times, also made an observation that she credits to conservative thinker and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Shelby Steele — an observation that would seem to explain the near-deification of George Floyd: "We [blacks] are unique in that we are the only people that fight and scream and demand support and justice for the people in our community that are up to no good."

The media, for its part, is clearly complicit here. After all, were it not for the exhaustive and over-the-top coverage, we'd never have heard of Michael Brown or Eric Garner or Freddie Gray. In a July 2000 speech at the NAACP National Convention in Baltimore, then-Texas Governor George W. Bush was making a point about education when he referred to "the soft bigotry of low expectations." But he might just as well have been making Candace Owens's point.

Let's be clear and unequivocal: George Floyd didn't deserve to die. But just think: Had he not (allegedly) tried to pass counterfeit money to a local merchant, he'd still be alive today. Perhaps had he not had fentanyl and methamphetamines in his system at the time of his arrest, he'd still be alive. But beyond that, at least 17 other Americans who died during the ensuing looting and rioting would also be alive. And untold storefronts and small businesses serving inner-city communities would still be intact. And ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News could've aired their regularly scheduled programming yesterday afternoon.

Another funeral will be held today, but the deceased man won't command nearly the attention afforded George Floyd. His name was David Dorn, he was 77, and he served 38 years with the St. Louis Police before retiring as a captain. During the early morning hours of June 2, he was gunned down as he tried to protect a friend's pawn shop from looters.

"The fact that he was protecting and serving," said Dorn's son Brian, "this is the way, I feel in my heart of hearts, that he would have liked to leave this earth."

David Dorn leaves behind a wife and five children, a life and legacy worth celebrating, and — forgive us — a case for martyrdom far stronger than that of George Floyd.

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IN BRIEF

Long lines, voting-machine malfunctions, ballot hiccups... Messy Georgia primary raises alarms for November (Fox News)

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell taps black Senator Tim Scott to head up GOP police-reform efforts (Washington Examiner)

Christopher Columbus statue at Richmond's Byrd Park torn down, thrown into lake (WRIC)

Inevitably, NYPD officers are retiring in droves over leadership's mishandling of riots (The Daily Wire)

HBO Max pulls "Gone With the Wind Outrage Mob" from library amid racial tensions (Fox News)

"Cops" defunded: Police reality show is canceled after 33 seasons due to George Floyd protests as fate of hit series "Live PD" hangs in the balance (UK Daily Mail)

Air Force Gen. Charles Brown becomes first black service chief (Stars and Stripes)

Baltic nations brace for U.S. troop withdrawal as Russia waits and watches (Washington Examiner)

Decades of lax oversight allow Chinese telecoms to conduct espionage in U.S. (The Washington Free Beacon)

Attorney General William Barr on John Durham investigation: "I'm very troubled by" what "has been called to my attention so far" (The Daily Wire)

The COVID pandemic aside, Nasdaq hits 10,000 for the first time ever, up nearly 11% year-to-date (Business Insider)

Policy: Basing troops in Europe is about U.S. security. A pullout would be unwise. (The Daily Signal)

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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