Who is on watch?

Jim Geraghty writing in National Review's Morning Jolt newsletter:

For Obama, we’re about to enter the seventh year of an eight-year presidency. It’s getting late. Walking into America’s poorer minority neighborhoods, are things significantly better or worse than they were on January 19, 2009, the day before Obama took office? Are the schools performing any better? Are there more job opportunities? Are there fewer people struggling with addiction? Are there paths to success? Have the crime rates changed dramatically? Is the relationship between the citizens and the police forces any better?

Think about it. The Rodney King riots occurred in 1992, sharing a lot of similar elements of the Garner case -- a group of white cops in a big city accused of violently mistreating a black man accused of a crime, caught on videotape. And other than wearable video cameras, a lot of the recommended solutions discussed today are the same ones discussed 22 years ago: more community outreach by police forces, recruitment of minority police officers, a review of police tactics and the amount of force appropriate when dealing with suspects... How long until we’re told it’s time for another “national conversation on race”?

We’ve seen it all before. Very little changes. At least in 1992, progressives could blame the problems on whites and conservatives in positions of authority. Progressivism, at least in the realm of electoral politics, tells the electorate, “You need us in charge so that outrages like this don’t happen.” Except that right now, the progressives are already in charge.

In other words, Utopia is burning and the leftoids have no one to blame but themselves. Civil disobedience is only useful if it has a focused goal. Blocking freeways and torching businesses while in the throes of a juvenile temper tantrum accomplishes nothing but impeding the average working Joe; that makes him less, not more, sympathetic to your "protest". Disagreement over a grand jury decision is something which civilized people discuss in the smoking room after dinner. Burning down the local liquor store is the behavior of illiterate savages, and obstructing freeways full of rush-hour commuters is something which only spoiled children of privilege could concoct.

The complicit media outlets in all of this bedlam would do well to remember this truth: these thugs and brats are vanishingly small minorities within the overall population of the country. The vast majority of Americans are the honest, hardworking middle-class -- and ultimately it is they who hold the purse strings of the Republic. So send in the clowns if you must, but only the clowns and the children will actually believe they're in charge of anything.