Protest beat: The Twin Cities in Ruins
The media “might have ‘moved on’ from the riots in Minneapolis, but residents have nowhere to go,” reports Michael Tracey at The Wall Street Journal. “Much of the Twin Cities is still in ruins. Boarded-up storefronts still display makeshift notices that read ‘black-owned’ or ‘minority-owned’ to ward off further destruction.” Long Her, an immigrant whose clothing store had much of its inventory looted, says he still hasn’t heard from authorities. Flora Westbrooks, whose hair salon was burned to the ground, is waiting for officials to update her on what, if anything, can be done. Meanwhile, notes Tracey, “ ‘Black Lives Matter’ signs dot the yards of countless leafy homes across the area.” Westbrook’s neighbor, a white woman, displays one in her window. “Westbrooks, who is black, does not.”
Urban desk: How To Destroy Cities
“On the surface, progressive ‘blue America’ ” seems strong, with President Trump polling poorly and Joe Biden placating his party’s “activist and identitarian wings” — but, Joel Kotkin notes at Tablet, “woke progressives” are “undermining their own urban base” through “crushingly high taxes, regulatory burdens and dysfunctional schools.” That’s why “New York, Los Angeles and Chicago have lost population” over the last few years, while “the suburbs, exurbs and sprawling cities of the interior” have grown. Instead of trying to reverse the “exodus,” big-city mayors have “conceded enormous credibility” to radicals who believe in “unleashing violence and disorder as an intimidation tactic” — a “riot ideology” that will “accelerate urban feudalism, driving out middle-class families and businesses” and “leaving only the lords and the peasants.”
Conservative: Kanye and the ‘Uncancellables’
“Rapper, producer and sneaker salesman Kanye West is almost certainly not running for president,” but just upping his profile in advance of dropping his next album, argues Ben Sixsmith at Spectator USA. But whatever he does, the left can’t destroy him, because he is one of the “people who somehow transcend cancellation” — like Elon Musk or J.K. Rowling. That doesn’t mean they merit “hero worship,” as some on the right opted for after West praised President Trump. Still, you “have to respect someone who gets rich and starts to say whatever they want. What is the point of f-you money if you never say f-you?” Plus, their ability to “take heat without apology or ruin . . . exposes the pack dogs of political correctness as being something less formidable than one might have imagined.”
Media watch: Another Bald-Faced Lie
According to The New York Times, President Trump stoked “racial fears to pit a white voting base against nationwide calls for social justice” in his Mount Rushmore speech — a claim, The Washington Post’s Marc Thiessen points out, that isn’t remotely true. In reality, Trump praised “great black Americans” and “the righteous movement for civil rights.” Because he also criticized radicals who “burn buildings and tear down statues,” though, the media repeated its “insidious habit” of twisting his words to make it seem he was sowing racial animosity. He didn’t; he “declared that no one would cancel the American Founding on his watch.” If such “celebrating and defending of our founding principles” is divisive, it “tells us less about Trump” than about “the sad state of our country.”
Libertarian: A Perilous Redefinition of Violence
Progressives are waging a “socially corrosive” effort to “radically redefine ‘violence,’ ” warns Reason’s Billy Binion. Current Affairs’ Nathan Robinson and The New York Times’ Nikole Hannah-Jones, for example, argue that “violence” refers only to harming a person, not property. “Human lives are more intrinsically valuable than inanimate objects,” of course, but destroying property is still violence, and redefining the word just trivializes the struggles of minority business owners now trying to recover from that destruction. And other left-wingers are expanding the definition with slogans like “Silence Is Violence,” as well as widespread claims that speech (unwelcome ideas, or the wrong pronouns) can be an act of violence. Alas, the left’s “incoherent” redefinition effort will only slow down progress on combatting real violence.
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board