We’re in the middle of a chicken game

F.H. Buckley writes in part in the American Spectator,

We’ve gone to the next level, with the looting and rioting. In the last month major cities have become unsafe, as rioters work out the logic of what “resistance” means. American stores lost hundreds of millions of dollars, and merchants boarded up their stores for protection. Nothing to see here, folks, said the liberal media, which gaslighted the looting and the boarded-up storefronts, and portrayed the riots as peaceful protests against an illegitimate president.

…We’re in the middle of a chicken game, where the Left tells us they’ll let this go on as long as Trump is president. The liberal media will ignore the riots, the liberal mayors will tell the local police to stand down, the liberal prosecutors will promptly release anyone arrested. Try to defend yourself, and you’ll find yourself prosecuted.

What would help black Americans, concretely, is a reversal of Democratic policies. Our inner-city public schools would benefit from the competition that state supported private and parochial schools would offer. After last week’s Espinoza decision in the Supreme Court, that’s constitutionally permissible. Democrats won’t touch this, however, for fear of upsetting the teachers’ unions that are one of its core supporters.

Our immigration policies take jobs from black Americans. Other countries admit high-skilled immigrants who compete jobs away from high-skilled natives. We admit low-skilled immigrants who compete jobs away from the most fragile of Americans, especially blacks. A 10 percent increase in immigrant workers in a particular skill group was reported to reduce black wages by 2.5 percent and lower their employment rate by 5.9 percentage points. If Black Lives Matter, that should be an issue, but for Democrats Hispanic votes count for more than black ones on immigration issues.

The Left talks a good line about helping black Americans. What it forgets to mention is that it’s their policies that harm them. One might think this stupid, were it not so hypocritical.

Read more here.