Somehow the Wall Street Journal found the refreshing open-mindedness to publish an op-ed by Ted Van Dyk, a 40-year veteran of Democratic politics. There's just one teeny-weeny little issue that should be pointed out, however: Van Dyk's essay, titled "Why Do Democrats Defend Disorder?," reads more like a polemic from Ted Cruz or Louie Gohmert than any Democratic strategist. You think maybe, just maybe, that's how the Journal found its impartiality?
"After President Trump’s dispatch of federal officers to protect federal facilities in Portland, Ore.," writes Van Dyk, "some Democratic politicians characterized the officers as 'storm troopers' or 'secret agents' bent on sending 'peaceful protesters' to concentration camps. I watched attacks on the Portland federal
building on television as they were happening. The officers were uniformed and clearly identified. The perpetrators weren’t peaceful protesters but black-clad thugs using hammers and baseball bats to damage the building. Others attempted to set fire to it….
"It seems incredible that elected Democrats are supporting initiatives to defund the police, releasing prisoners from local jails, and even removing law-enforcement officers from schools."
Mr. Van Dyk must have heard about Trump's "concentration camps" on some obscure, far-left radio talk show dominated by paranoid dimwits who have studied the tactic of Alex Jones' invented hysterics. Most of the shanghaied protesters had committed no crime. And below are 28 seconds of friendly, peace-securing "federal officers" greeting a courageous Navy veteran — who had the audacity to violently, aggressively stand there — with swinging batons and tear gas.
Van Dyk also promotes the popular fallacy of "elected Democrats … supporting initiatives to defund the police." Though it's true that that slogan contains the most harebrained phrase in the history of political propaganda, it's also profoundly "in-credible that elected Democrats" are supporting its literal initiative. Some relatively minor reappropriation of municipal funds to starving social services rather than the increasingly militarized police is what these pols are now advocating.
The author also charges that Democratic mayors and governors are simply "releasing prisoners from local jails" as though the incarcerated had drawn a lucky card in a monopoly game — rather then even mentioning that the covid crisis is hitting correctional institutions the hardest. Being forced to contract a deadly case of coronavirus is scarcely proportional in punishment for having ignored a dozen parking tickets. Van Dyk continues his sweaty handwringing with panic over "removing law-enforcement officers from schools" — even though we have witnessed how useless they've been in cases of school shootings.
Van Dyk concludes his more-Republican-than-Democratic screed by observing that "many of Mr. Trump’s policies deserve criticism, but this isn’t one of them. Democrats are presenting a pro-chaos caricature of themselves, which will discredit them with the public if they maintain it."
In op-eds, short essays and blogs the use of generalizations is, however regrettable, necessary. There is simply not space enough to scribble politically as though one is writing in grueling detail an ironclad legal contract. But Mr. Van Dyk's use of generalizations — "[presumably all?] Democrats are presenting a pro-chaos caricature of themselves" — is far more than a loose summation. It's vacuous. (And therefore worthy of the WSJ's opinion page.)