As the country sees the spectacle of anti-cop rants and total disrespect for the badge, I am reminded of the 1925 piece by William Faulkner titled "The Cop."  It is way past due to hearken back to the time when, as a young lad, he would desire to

... be a patrolman; in a blue coat and swinging a casual stick and with a silver shield on my breast, I would pace the streets away with the measured beat of my footsteps.  What to compare with this grandeur?  To be the idol and fear of the lads, to be looked upon with respect by even grown people; to be the personification of bravery and the despair of criminals.

What a different time and place.  Almost a century ago, most folks understood the danger that police faced and had a respect for the thin blue line that protected them from criminals and murderers.

Fast-forward, and can we really be surprised at the anger and dismay expressed by New York police boss Michael O'Meara as he declares, "Nobody talks about all the police officers that were killed in the last week in the United States of America and there were a number of them."

O'Meara also cites the 375 million interactions between officers and the public that were "overwhelmingly positive."

We roundly reject what happened in Minneapolis.  Our legislators abandoned us.  The press is vilifying us.  Stop treating us like animals and thugs and start treating us with some respect.

When he says the media praise violent left-wing rioters, looters, and arsonists while denigrating police officers who are putting their lives on the line every day, he is absolutely correct.  Here is a sampling of what Americans are seeing on a daily basis.

• "Protesters and rioters have been allowed into Seattle’s City Hall after Councilwoman Kshama Sawant used her key to unlock the building and allow them inside.  Sawant has been calling on Mayor Jenny Durkan to resign over 'violence and brutality' by police."
• The wake for the murder of retired Police Captain David Dorn, who was gunned down during the leftist riots and looting in St. Louis, did not make any media headlines.
• ·"A Minnesota representative who describes herself as 'radical' in her Twitter bio tweeted a fundraising link for rioters who commandeered a Minneapolis hotel. Rep. Aisha Gomez, who represents Minneapolis, has been tweeting ... tons of support for rioters since the chaos began."
• "Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender on Monday told CNN's Chris Cuomo that a 'police free future' is 'the goal.'"
• De Blasio will rename prominent streets in each New York borough to 'Black Lives Matter.'
• "After Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced he would cut $150 million from the city's police budget — despite California Governor Gavin Newsom's need to deploy the National Guard to help curb violence and looting in LA — Kamala Harris  said, 'I applaud Eric Garcetti for doing what he's done.'"

Kenneth Timmerman highlights what Antifa represents as he asserts:

What we have witnessed since the unwarranted and illegal killing of George Floyd on May 25 is the Democrat playbook for 2020, exposed for all the world to see.

We have the mass demonstrations. We have the demonization of the police. We have the media's outrageous lies and misrepresentations. We have the heroism of so many individuals standing up for their communities and their property, brutally murdered by the Antifa thugs and their cohorts.

As if that were not enough, in perfect leftist/Democrat lockstep, celebrities bail out rioters and looters.  And the madness does not stop as the long-running reality television series Cops has been permanently pulled off the air and competitor Live PD has gone on hiatus amid protests.

It is a small sampling of the myriad acts sanctioned by the Democratic party.  Why might this be?  My momma always told me to "follow the money," so here goes.

Joe Hoft explains that "BlackLives Matter.com appears to be an international money laundering scheme used by the Democrats to raise money from any international audience."  It is vital to remember that the Democrat Party has now gone all in for the radical left-wing agenda.

At influencewatch.org, one learns that "[t]he BLM Movement founders have connections to large 'radical Left organizations.'"

The connection to the left has provided the BLM Movement with massive influence as a social movement.  Daily we see echoes of Orwell's 1984, wherein "[e]very record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.  And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.  History has stopped.  Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."

Furthermore,  "[i]t is estimated that groups associated with the BLM Movement have taken in $133 million since 2013.  Organizations associated with liberal billionaire George Soros are said to have provided at least $33 million to various BLM movement groups since 2016.  In 2015, the fundraising club Democracy Alliance, led by liberal donors like George Soros and Taco Bell heir Rob McKay, recommended 'its donors step up check writing to a handful of endorsed groups that have supported the Black Lives Matter movement.'  BLM Movement groups which received support from the Democracy Alliance were the Black Youth Project 100, the Center for Popular Democracy, the Black Civic Engagement Fund, Color of Change [an online organizing organization created by the Obama administration's former 'green jobs czar' Van Jones] and the Advancement Project."

Additionally, the Ford Foundation and the Borealis Philanthropy created the Black-led Movement Fund, a funding vehicle for the Movement for Black Lives, the coalition of groups responsible for the extremist 'Vision 4 Black Lives.'  The fund has received 'pledges of more than 100 million dollars from liberal foundations and others eager to contribute.'

To add fuel to the fire, Amazon supports Black Lives Matter.  But as Greenfield points out:

The Amazon/Washington Post boss has announced that [it] will be funneling $10 million into a variety of organizations, including Black Lives Matter.  [Ergo], any customers who don't like it can go to hell.  Amazon has made out like a bandit as the pandemic lockdowns further decimated local retail.

The riots obviously boost Amazon's monopoly by decimating more local retail.  That may be bad news for its small business and big box competitors, but really good news for Bezos.  So sure.  Pay BLM a few million more to wreck what's left of the local retail sector and ensure Amazon's supremacy.

Momma was right.  And the money trail has quite a stench.

What is also factually true is that "[t]he authors of the most comprehensive study to date on the subject of police brutality and race have concluded that white police officers are no more likely than black and Hispanic officers to shoot minority civilians. Up to this juncture (2015), databases of fatal officer-involved shootings (FOIS) [have] lack[ed] details about officers [emphasis added].  Yet this information is critical, for without it, the conventional wisdom that 'racism' is to blame for fatal police shootings involving non-white suspects is unsustainable."  As Jack Kerwick emphasizes, "[s]o, when measured according to race-specific violent crime, there are not only no 'anti-Black disparities;' whites of the same description are fatally shot by police at a disproportionately higher rate.  White police officers are most emphatically not roaming the countryside in search of unassuming black people to kill."

As William Faulkner wrote, "I prefer to believe that this creature fronting the world bravely in a blue coat and a silver shield is quite a fellow, after all."  When will there be a March to Support Law-Abiding Police Officers?

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.