What a riot! Minnesota requesting White House aid is like kid calling Dad after wrecking family car while driving drunk

The White House has rejected the state of Minnesota’s request for emergency funds to help rebuild the city of Minneapolis. The decision was harsh, but right: taxpayers should never be required to bail out bad leadership.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz last week made what must have been the most uncomfortable call of his political career. Having just witnessed on his watch a large swath of Minneapolis – the largest city in his state – reduced to rubble and ash amid ‘peaceful’ Black Lives Matter protests, Walz was in desperate need of cash to start the rebuilding process. Had the Democratic leader been surprised by Donald Trump’s rejection of the $500-million request, he probably should never have gotten into politics in the first place.

The reason for Trump’s rejection, however, cannot be explained away as just another example of bitter partisan politics. Minnesota’s handling of the protests following George Floyd’s death on May 25 provided a classic textbook example of how not to appease the mob, which can never be appeased.

As peaceful demonstrations against police abuse were quickly hijacked by malcontents with mass destruction on the brain, one thing became clear: the local and state authorities had no strategy whatsoever, unless allowing vandals to run wild through the city center can be considered a viable strategy.

It’s spelt R, I, O, T, S

Two days after Floyd’s death, the US media, for reasons known only to them, showed themselves incapable of pronouncing or writing the four-letter word known as “RIOT” to describe the ensuing mayhem. That lack of media candidness, deeply connected to political correctness, may have encouraged the bad actors to continue with their own, customized trail of tears.

In any case, the situation got so bad that firefighters refused to respond to emergencies without the police, who weren’t much help anyways since it was the police that the mob was hunting for. Business owners, meanwhile, not relishing the idea of losing a lifetime of labor, were forced to guard their establishments with rifles in hand, Wild West-style. The crowning cherry on this cake baked in hell’s kitchen came with the destruction of the Third Precinct, after Mayor Jason Frey ordered police officers to vacate their headquarters.

Amid this stunning breakdown of law and order, Trump said he would be willing to supply Minneapolis with “troops on the ground very quickly if they ever want our military.” All things considered, it was nice of him to offer. Nevertheless, the possibility of a Republican leader helping to put down a racially motivated uprising in a major Democratic state, naturally did not sit well with the Left, least of all in a major election year.

In any case, Governor Walz had already placed an order with the Minnesota National Guard to address the emergency. As it turned out, however, the members of the militia would not see much action because, as The New York Times reported, Walz “expressed surprise that city leaders did not seem to have a plan for where they wanted the soldiers to go.”

It’s just a wild hunch, but I’m guessing the set pieces should have gone wherever the looters were looting and the buildings were burning, for starters. Does it make any sense to call soldiers away from their day jobs if nobody has a clue where to send them? How does one begin to explain such political incompetence?

‘PC’ gone mad or just plain stupidity?

Perhaps local leaders imagined that by letting their city’s police precinct and dozens of other buildings burn to the ground, the anger and frustration of the mob would simply evaporate with the smoke. If that was the strategy, it proved to be disastrously wrongheaded.

In fact, some of the more radical protesters, of which there seemed to be no shortage, felt confident enough to forward the outrageous demand that the city fathers begin defunding and even disbanding its police force. That sounds about as smart as shutting down pharmacies at the height of the flu season.

There is a very strong temptation here to argue that the Minnesota authorities, as well as authorities in other cities across the nation, failed to take the necessary action against the troublemakers for fear of further enraging the mob.

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Indeed, the desire to comply with the controversial demands advanced by a number of organizations, not least of all BLM and Antifa, has actually motivated some metropolitan areas, like New York City, to decorate their streets with huge ‘Black Lives Matter’ slogans.

Although few people would disagree with the statement, it seems that too many political leaders have lost all sense of balance, proportion and even duty when it comes to their decision-making process. Too many are afraid of being branded ‘haters’ when the question of enforcing the law is at hand.

Minnesota’s tepid response to civil discord seems to prove the point – from the media refusing to call a spade a spade, to the authorities refusing to take necessary action against outright criminal behavior – that the mob mentality is gradually winning out over law and order.

Although the question of police abuse deserves a serious public debate, the final response must be an intelligent one, as opposed to one that destroys the same streets where George Floyd once lived, as the police watch from the sidelines.

Eventually, whether they want it or not, political leaders must accept personal responsibility for their actions. Had Trump caved in and forked over hundreds of millions of dollars to Minnesota for nothing more than an appalling response to criminality, other cities and states would be taking the same lax approach.

Now they will be forced to think twice about their actions. US taxpayers should not be required to reward incompetence any more than our political leaders should make their decisions based on what they believe to be politically expedient. The law is the law, and nobody should be considered above it.

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