Charles Hurt, who is the opinion editor of the Washington Times, thinks he discovered a species of “Sewer Rats,” which lives in Washington, and exploits human catastrophes for personal political gains. (Democrats led by a whole Squad of ghoulish opportunists, April 15, 2021)
Well, let's be fair to Charles
Hurt by acknowledging that he was speaking metaphorically because there really
isn't a species of rats that would exploit human catastrophes for whatever
reason. Not even Hilary Clinton's basket of deplorables, who consistently vote
for the wrong candidates, would be as bad as that.
So then, what is it that
Charles Hurt is talking about? Well, he's talking about three members of the US
House of Representatives who spoke metaphorically like he did. Also, in the
same way that people are prompted to talk about reconsidering the Second
Amendment every time there is a mass shooting in America, the three members,
Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talked about
reconsidering the funding of police departments out of which comes an
inordinate amount of police shootings, and the killing of innocent Black men.
Aside from Hurt's confusion
pertaining to the technicalities linking the reality and the metaphor, what
else is there that's notable about his presentation? Well, what's notable is
that he accused the three members of Congress of trying to score political
gains. He did not define what this is, but there has only been one definition
for it since there has been politics. It says that the politicians whom Charles
Hurt mentioned, stand to increase their popularity among their constituents by
calling for a review of police conduct. And this leads to the obvious question:
Did Charles Hurt discover another basket of voting deplorables that escaped the
attention of Hilary Clinton?
Next, Charles Hurt did
something that shows his schooling is incomplete. In fact, he has shown himself
to be at best, a half-baked intellectual. What happened is that, speaking of
the fatal shooting of Duante Wright who is a Black young man, the following
mini-debate ensued between Ilhan Omar and Charles Hurt:
OMAR: Violence is a basic part
of police interactions with communities of color.
HURT: Really? The killing of
Duante Wright was a basic part of policing in Minnesota?
Hurt then turned to the
audience and asked these questions: What does that say about a murderously
racist state that it would elect someone like Omar? How much blood is on Ms.
Omar's racist hands?
It is obvious that Hurt's lack
of sophistication caused him to take Omar's metaphoric words at face value.
This is what led him to think she was accusing every policeman and policewoman
in Minnesota of being a killer of Black men. Badly confused, Hurt proceeded to
pin the crime of murder on everyone in Minnesota, including Ilhan Omar herself.
In so doing, he turned his argument into an exercise in absurdity.
Charles Hurt went on to
display another deficiency in his schooling. To see how he did that, imagine
two adults talking in the presence of a 6-year-old. One adult says to the
other: “The whole world seems to be going mad.” Upon this, the child runs to
the nearest closet and shuts himself in. The adults pull him out, and ask why
he did this. The child says he must hide from a world that's going mad. They
explain to him they were speaking metaphorically. Here is what Charles Hurt
actually did:
“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
(AOC) of New York said the following, 'Duante Wright's killing was the outcome
of an indefensible system that grants impunity for state violence.' Like Omar,
how much blood is on her hands? Impunity for state violence? What part of
impunity includes charging Officer Kim Potter with manslaughter? Charging Derek
Chauvin with murder in the death of George Floyd? This is not impunity. It is
the opposite of impunity”.
It is obvious to anyone who is
not a child, that AOC did not mean to say no killer-cop in America gets to be
prosecuted. They do, and she is not denying it. The problem is that the vast
majority of the cops and many non-cops get acquitted by jury nullification, a
purely American phenomenon that's becoming a stain on the criminal justice
system. Just ask O.J. Simpson and George Zimmerman how they got acquitted.
Finally, Charles Hurt took on
Rashida Tlaib, whom he said joined the other two in attacking the police,
because she craved being in the limelight. In so doing he committed what you’d
expect from someone at his low level of mental cogency: he shot himself in the
foot. Here is how he did it:
“There is no doubt that
officer Potter made a mistake. But there were a great many mistakes that led to
that tragic moment. Blame for those mistakes does not lie with Officer Potter.
She was simply enforcing the laws made by other people –– lawmakers such as
Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. Far more blame for the
situation lies with the people who now exploit the situation for personal
political gain”.
As you can see, Charles Hurt
used almost the entire article to paint Omar, Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib as odd
and different from other legislators, if not from other Americans. But then, in
trying to pin on them the mistake committed by Officer Potter, he lumped them
together with all the other legislators.
He did so, knowing that they take their job so seriously, they decided to fix what's wrong regardless as to who broke the system: other legislators or a feeble-minded alley cat that knows not what he is doing, having assumed the job of opinion editor at a preposterous rag.