The Pied Piper of Washington

I don't watch every news network.  For one, life is too short; for another, you tend to watch one network over time for your news because you get used to its take on things.  Then you can factor the relative accuracy or slant on an issue when you hear a piece.

So I can't tell you how most networks presented the shooting of a police officer in Philadelphia over the past weekend.  I hope, though, at the very least, that the presentation of the story on all the networks included three items:

(1) The video of the shooter, running to the police car and firing while in Islamic garb
(2) The Philly police chief stating unequivocally that the gunman said he did it "because he wanted to attack police officers, because they support and defend laws that are not compatible with the Koran and Islamic law"
(3) The mayor of Philadelphia, Jim Kenney, immediately thereafter contradicting his police chief, saying that the shooting had nothing to do with Islam or its teachings (note: the mayor is not a Muslim).

I'll spare a lot of time describing my own initial response to all that, because Fox News's contributing judge, Jeanine Pirro, outdid anything I could write when she said this: 

"[Mayor Kenney's remark was] one of the most astounding, asinine statements that I’ve heard since the last time I listened to a White House press conference.  How dare you, [Mr. Mayor], take the sympathy away from the victim -- Officer Hartnett -- and the men and women in blue under siege every day by the haters, and turn it into sympathy and understanding for a different group?  I don't need you to tell me or lecture me what I should be thinking because you want to suck up to the commander-in-chief.  So how about you drop your liberal ideological nonsense and stop apologizing, and start focusing on the threats to kill those in your department?"

There you go.

So here is my question for this column.  Common sense tells us that when you have the fomenting, armed hatred of the USA in Syria and Iraq that created ISIS; that when their stated aim is to create a worldwide Islamic caliphate; and that when they are already killing innocents in the USA including the attempt on the officer in Philadelphia; you don't, you know, encourage them.

You certainly don't apologize for them or defend them.  And you don't bring 10,000 people to resettle in the USA with no way to know what percentage of them are not refugees, but Islamic terrorists.  We know you don't do that.

But there is Barack Hussein Obama, speechifying that we should do just that, in defiance of logic and love of our country.  Logic, in fact, would tell you that everyone from the citizenry to the political class, to the White House staff, to Obama's wife and kids should be looking at him as if he had three heads.  They would have to; the idea of supporting Muslim radicals rather than eradicating them is that bizarre.

And yet ... and yet ... here are leading Democrats -- Mayor Kenney is just the latest -- mouthing the same "defend-Islam-at-all-costs" garbage that Obama keeps trying to peddle.  Do they really believe it?  They can't; they just can't.  But they seem to.

Look at it this way: let's say the exact same thing had happened in 2006 -- a cop attacked by a Muslim in full garb, who tells his captors that he tried to kill the cop because he defended laws at odds with Islamic law.  Let's say that happened in Philly and Jim Kenney were the mayor.  It's 2006 and no one has heard of Barack Obama.  What are the odds that Kenney, in the face of his police chief seconds earlier quoting the shooter's Muslim motivation, then turning around and saying it had nothing to do with Islam?

You and I know that Kenney would have called out the dogs, and decried the act and sworn to do better at rooting out these terrorists.

The difference?  Barack Obama is president now, and Democrat orthodoxy apparently states that he is to be slavishly followed by all, no matter how bizarre the teaching, no matter how counterproductive for the USA the policy is, no matter how foolish it looks to go along with Obama's teachings.  There is no countenancing of any opposition.

Barack Obama has become the Pied Piper of Washington in the eyes of the Democrats.  The brain's reason switch is to be turned off, in favor of following his teachings as the all-knowing savant.  He simply pipes, and the Democrat follows.  It is simple duty.  Self-interest is no longer primary; the good of the country is subordinate to the good of whatever Barack Obama says is right.

How can these people follow so mindlessly?  How does Jim Kenney, a leftist, sure, but at least astute enough to get elected mayor, stand there a few seconds after his police chief states what the shooter himself said and then simply deny it?  Are the pipes of Barack Obama that strong that he thought he could do that and not get laughed off the stage or, since the situation was dramatic and not comical, not get shouted into silence by Officer Hartnett's fellow police?

They are strong pipes, apparently.  But I do not hear them.  I pity the fools who do.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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