White Lives Matter

It occurred to me yesterday that what we're seeing online and in the streets in reaction to the shooting of Renee Good is very familiar. And then it occurred to me why. What we're seeing is the Black Lives Matter playbook. AP Photo/Ryan Murphy Think about it for a moment. Going back years to the start of Black Lives Matter the organization established a particular way of operating. They would identify a shooting, usually involving a white police officer and a black suspect, and they would quickly nationalize the outrage and demand justice for this individual. Activists would rush to television cameras demanding everyone say his name (or her name) and then there would be organized street protests against law enforcement, often making some demands. Frequently, the specifics of the incidents BLM chose to highlight were false or badly misleading. This was true of the stories that circulated after the shooting of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown. Almost always the story that initially made the news turned out to be skewed in such a way as to make the shooter look worse and make the victim look innocent. Trayvon Martin was just walking home with skittles when a racist neighborhood watch person killed him. Mike Brown was just walking home with a friend when he was murdered by a racist police officer while surrendering (Hands up, don't shoot). The stories are outrageous and these serve their purpose by creating nationwide outrage. And then weeks or months later we learn that many of the details weren't accurate or complete. Trayvon confronted his shooter and was pounding his head into the concrete when he was killed. Mike Brown had committed a robbery when he was confronted. He tried to take a cop's gun and after briefly running, had turned and charged at the officer when he was shot. The real story is always one that legitimately puts some or all of the blame on the person who was shot. But because we don't get that story right away, the outrage has time to build. And once it does, people never let it go. They stick with the narrative they like, even if it wasn't true. They get angry all over again that someone is questioning that narrative. So here we are and just a few days ago a protester was shot an killed by a federal law enforcement agent working for ICE. Immediately, people started claiming this was murder or even "cold-blooded murder." Activists have taken to the streets and Democrats have taken to the airwaves. We've seen it all before. This is the BLM playbook. The only real difference here is that the victim was white. It's White Lives Matter. As always the goal is to generate outrage by any means necessary. So we get a story based on claims from her ex-husband that a) she's not an activist and b) she was just dropping of her daughter at school. There were stuffed animals in her car. She's just a mom....

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