Jack of Harts

Law and Order, not the TV show, is something that has divided America for some time. Leftists have long said that the various law enforcement agencies in America victimize people in general, and shoot harmless black people to death for the jollies of it. People on the right have had a collective belief that if you follow the law and don’t hurt people, you probably will never have a bad interaction with law enforcement. They would point to statistics that show the police treated everybody generally equally and did not victimize one group over another. Yes, there were bad cops, but they were the exception, not the rule.

That has changed in the last three years. First there were the government lockdowns in response to a new virus from China. People were arrested for going to open-air church services or the beach. We saw “nonessential” businesses shutdown, and people who just wanted to pursue their livelihoods arrested and charged for it. Then when other people rioted, burned down entire city blocks, and shot people dead, the left quickly moved to their defense. They were labeled “mostly peaceful protests,” and major leftist politicians organized campaigns to pay their bail to get them out so they could riot some more. And leftist prosecutors often did not charge them or released them without asking for bail at all.

Then we had the protest on January 6 at our nation’s Capitol. Four people died that day. One was shot by a police officer on camera. One beaten by police officers on camera until she collapsed on camera, and then the police dragged her around like a rag doll on camera, and she was later declared dead due to a medical emergency. Two others who did not die on camera suffered life-ending medical emergencies unknown of their own. Whatever you think of the protest or the protestors, there needs to be a careful investigation aimed at any police officer that kills or is otherwise involved in the death of anyone to confirm whether or not they acted appropriately. Every officer who interacted with the dead protestors were instead cleared of any wrongdoing within days, with no major investigation into their actions.

And we have all seen the high-profile arrests of various people on the right since that day. Some were J6 protestors. Some were members of the former President’s administration. Some we saw on live TV courtesy of reporters told beforehand. They sent swat teams to arrest Abortion protestors. We’ve seen them raid the former President’s home over Presidential documents. They’ve declared parents who go to education board meetings domestic terrorists. They’ve investigated Catholics as domestic terrorists. But they have remained as silent about a rash of firebombs targeting Pro Life clinics as they did about the riots of 2020.

All my life, the vast majority of the people on the right have had a default trust setting when it comes to law enforcement officials. The last three years have broken that default trust. The right now deeply distrusts the law enforcement agencies of this nation, and that is not good. That is very bad in fact. A civilization that cannot trust the most basic of the civil servants who are supposed to protect it is not going to have a healthy future.