Do Black Lives Really Matter?

A jarring, bracing question certainly, but let’s cut through the contagious melodrama that jerks up your blood whenever someone questions the BLM movement–in other words, try, if you will, to remain grounded in reason and logic…..We have Gabriel Johnson, a retired 48-year old Marine, who, tired of the endless nightly protests in Portland, brings the American Flag into the chaos of insurrectionist would-be revolutionaries, strictly to offer a different way to protest–as he tells the seething crowd, ”
If you stand for justice, come here and stand with me. Stand with me because I’m here for justice. I’m not here to tear down this fucking fence; I’m not here to spray paint. It’s going on every day. If you don’t want to get gassed, stop! If you don’t want to get gassed, stop! It has to stop! None of you guys represent black lives. Sit and protest. Sit and protest.”

Naturally the mob savagely attacked him, beating him with baseball bats and ripping the American flag from his hands to burn it–which incidentally enough, another black man tried to stop and was repeatedly punched in the face for doing so by other black men. A woman, dressed in Black Lives Matter garb but carrying an Antifa pen and shouting commands into a walkie-talkie, then informed Mr. Johnson that BLM was keeping tabs on him and showed him footage of protesters following him home.

Yes, Black Lives Matter–but how much? Because right now, they certainly don’t seem to matter to black people. Has the desire to eradicate overwhelmed the aspiration to empower?

Of course, Gabriel Johnson’s story appears nowhere on CNN.