Dave Chapelle gave a political, ranting performance in his new Netflix special.  He was in full outrage mode and resorted to a cheap trick I am tired of hearing from progressive talking heads.  They talk about a string of incidents that match their narrative, and even though these incidents were years apart, they act as though they had all happened in the last week.

He mentioned:

Trayvon Martin (2/26/2012).
Dylann Roof (6/17/2015), who was not a police officer, but is white.
John Crawford II (8/5/2014).
Philando Castile (7/6/2016).
Alton Sterling (7/5/2016).
Michael Brown (8/9/2014).

And he said, "It's not for a single life, it's for all of it."  My sympathies lie with the families of these people, not with the über-rich, virtue-signaling, hostile Mr. Chappelle.  If you listened to him, and did not know or recall any of these incidents, you would swear they happened last week, and this is what sent the self possessed Dave over the edge.  Really?  There have been weeks of riots, ruining people's lives — did this get you going, Dave?

On this very subject, how about the 18 black men murdered in Chicago last weekend?  Does that get the juices flowing, Dave?

At least he stayed in this century.  I have heard progressive pundits rattle off four or five incidents, some of which were in the 1960s.  They never say, "Over the last 60 years, these five guys were killed by cops."  That certainly would drain the punch out of the point.  They too wanted to talk about "all of it" by connecting far-apart dots.

The fact is, all these commentators of one stripe or another will forget these people when the news moves on, then drag them out again when they think it will make them sound better.  They will again dance on the graves of the dead by lumping them all together to make a little point.

Statistics are dry and boring but plentiful on this subject.  Even a little research makes clear the cops are not the biggest problem.  I wish these self-professed spokesmen for black people would try putting down the gangs instead of putting down the police.  The stats there are truly horrifying, and it wouldn't take long for them to get informed.

A complex set of circumstances from a lot of sources are causing the slaughter of black men.  Gangs, lifestyle, education, and more are a big part of "all of it."  To trivialize this existential cultural problem with glib sound-bite rosters of names just so you can demand your favorite solution is beneath a caring citizen of any color.  This makes all these sad families no more than "leverage."

The families of fallen victims of violence are not the only ones being used; Dave Chappelle has joined the elitist ranks of ignorant "celebrities" who virtue-signal as loudly as they can while playing the role of useful idiot.

Image: John Bauld via Flickr (cropped).