When Leftist Worlds Collide ... Again

There were two Edwin Jacksons in professional sports until this weekend, barring yet another I'm not familiar with.  One is the pitcher in the Washington Nationals organization, who has been in and around major league baseball for quite a while.  He is still with us.

The other, unfortunately, is not.

That Edwin Jackson was a linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts of the NFL, and he sadly died over the weekend, along with another man (who might have been his own Uber driver or who had pulled over to help Jackson) after having been hit by an unlicensed hit-and-run drunk driver in a truck.  The driver was later arrested and identified as Manuel Orrega-Savala of Guatemala after giving authorities an alias.  That incident, and the reporting thereof, left us with all that is wrong about leftists and the media (but I .... ah, you know).

Here are the first three headlines on the first news feed I went to and searched on "Edwin Jackson":

1. "Indianapolis Colts' Edwin Jackson Killed by Suspected Drunk Driver"

2. "Colts Player Edwin Jackson, Avon Man Killed by Suspected Drunk Driver on I-70"

3. "Edwin Jackson, Indianapolis Colts Linebacker, Was Killed by an Illegal Immigrant, Police Say"

The first headline was in the far-leftist Huffington Post.  The second was in the leftist USA Today, the newspaper you find outside your hotel room in the morning, at least the last time I stayed in a hotel.  And the third, the only one noting that critical attribute of the drunk driver, was on Fox News.  The HuffPost and USA Today articles did not mention the driver being an illegal, at all.

Now, Orrega-Savala was not just in the country illegally; he had been deported before, in 2009.  By the way, he had been deported before that, also, in 2007.  So he was in the country illegally, had been deported twice before, was driving an F-150 truck on an interstate highway without a license, and was drunk, having a blood-alcohol level of .13 according to the police report.  And he had an Immigration Service warrant out on him.

I can't speak for you, but if you have a pulse and mourn the loss of Kate Steinle, all that extra detail that you found only in the last of the three referenced stories, is pretty important.  That it was a pretty well-known figure, certainly in the Indiana sports scene and the NFL, I think that absolutely means that all of the related details are of great interest -- including the fact that this young man (along with another man, of course) is dead, because of someone who should not have been in the country in the first place (and the second, and the third).

Edwin Jackson has 50 or so teammates who, we assume, really are upset that they have now lost a valued friend and fellow Colt (he had missed this past season with injuries).  There are 1,500 or so NFL players, many of whom would have known Jackson, who are now mourning a fellow player at the highest levels.

These same NFL players, many of whom have made virulent anti-Donald Trump statements during this past season, and knelt when the National Anthem was played, are going to have to deal with the loss of one of their own at the hands of the very enemy that President Trump has been trying to rid the nation of.

Whatever do they do now?

The media have tried to make heroes out of the "resisting" NFL players, and it is clear to everyone that they are doing so because of their own dislike of the current president and their utter lack of support for his agenda.  Or whatever they're complaining about; it isn't always clear.

But as always happens in leftist-world, two things eventually rise up and cause the left problems.  The first is the Thatcherian axiom that socialism doesn't work "because eventually you run out of other people's money."  That one doesn't apply here.  The second, however, does.  That is the principle that "everyone can't be a victim, because then you have to prioritize my victimhood over yours."

The mainstream (i.e., non-Fox) media have chosen to spin this story as simply a poor tragedy that a celebrity was killed.  Maybe alcohol can play in there somewhere, because Republicans also drink alcohol, I don't know.  But by omitting the fact that if we had the big, beautiful wall at our southern border, Edwin Jackson would be alive today -- well, they would seem to have abrogated their role as journalists.  That's exactly what they did in failing to press the scandal of the FBI corruption in seeking a FISA warrant based on a Hillary-paid-for dossier.

This is what happens when too many people have too many victimizations and, well, someone dies.  It's a pretty sad case, and at the center of it an innocent man is dead.  He would not have been killed, had the Obama administration properly enforced the law, and if we had fewer "sanctuary cities", and if local law enforcement were not prevented from working with Federal immigration enforcement.

And if we had a wall.  But I'm pretty sure we're going to have that soon.

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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