Here Come The Demagogues

Yesterday's horrific murder of two New York City policemen by a gang member purporting to take revenge for the killings of Michael Brown in Herderson, MO, and Eric Garner on Staten Island, NY, earlier this year, has brought out some of the most loathsome, partisan demagoguery we've seen in a long time.  Rather than repeat some of the slander here, Nancy LeTourneau at Washington Monthly has captured some of the more egregious comments being made by people who barely missed a beat before they started blaming someone other than the shooter for the tragedy (one addition to Nancy's list of shame would be frozen food heir "Mother" Tucker Carlson, whose crocodile tear ducts went into overload.)  Naturally, Fox "News" has been providing a rage platform for many of those demagogues.

You'll note beyond the predictable slimers like Rudy "Noun, Verb, 9/11" Giuliani (yes him, again) are several current or former police officials.  It's particularly sad and unfortunate that they're using the deaths of two of their own to push their agenda, that being to silence critics of police militarization and the growing rift between police and the communities they're sworn to serve.  If their interest was truly to help their brothers and sisters in blue by defusing a dangerous police/community environment, they wouldn't be trying to further inflame people just to score political points.  Keep that in mind as you watch this story unfold.