#Wrong takes on Chauvin verdict and other commentary

Iconoclast: Wrong Takes on Chauvin Verdict

The verdict against Derek Chauvin in George Floyd’s death “should ­increase confidence” in the justice system, writes Sean Collins at Spiked Online. Yet “those are not the conclusions being reached by liberal politicians” and activists. As the judge and jurors had to “conduct a trial amid an atmosphere of fear,” major figures not only failed to denounce the possibility of violence after an acquittal, they sent the message that we would “deserve” to have protesters “burn things down.” Post-verdict, President Biden “struck a negative tone,” pushing the narrative that the United States “has been, for hundreds of years, a racist, dystopian nightmare.” This is “not only inaccurate, but divisive.”

Neocon: Dems’s New Elite Loyalties

For a sign of “how the Democratic Party has left its working-class roots behind and become the party of the elite,” writes John Steele Gordon at Commentary, look no further than various student-loan-forgiveness proposals. Debt “forgiveness,” of course, is really debt transfer: Declining to collect from upper-middle-income college grads, whose degrees on average earn them $1 million more over a lifetime, would shift the burden to others, including working- and middle-class Americans. By contrast, “no progressive is proposing that if a high school graduate borrows $50,000 to finance a truck that will allow him to increase his future income, the federal government should take over that loan. People who make a living . . . driving a truck don’t get much attention from progressives these days.”

Portlander: How Anarchists Captured My Town

A sign at Petunia’s bakery pleads: “We are a small, women- and locally owned business. . . . We are struggling like so many of us in this hard time and love our community. Please don’t cause us any damage.” It’s part of the “now-widespread attempt by local business owners to make anarchists think twice before vandalizing their shop or café,” fumes Portland resident Bret Weinstein at UnHerd. “Residents know they cannot depend on the police to either prevent crimes or arrest those who commit them,” and “no neighborhood is secure from the current wave of terror; the breaking of shop fronts, arson and harassment of sleeping citizens in their homes are all commonplace.” Sadly, “voices of reason on the left” have given up in the face of “extremists who deliberately conflate a ­demand for racial justice with a desire to burn civilization to the ground.” The civic impotence “is sealing the city’s fate.”

Foreign desk: Biden’s Incoherence on Russia

By “bluntly and accurately” calling Vladmir Putin “a killer,” President Biden “brought a dramatic change in America’s tone toward Russia,” showing that “he saw no need to be diplomatic about the leader of a regime that has repeatedly attacked US interests,” notes Garry Kasparov at The Wall Street Journal. But Biden ruined that last week by inviting Putin to a summit meeting, signaling that the Russian strongman is “still worthy of the support of the oligarchs and elites whose fortunes he guarantees.” It’s back to the same old cycle: “Putin attacks; the West retaliates weakly, then offers concessions for dialogue until Mr. Putin attacks again.” Yet Washington “has the ability to threaten an overwhelming response to Mr. Putin’s invasions, hacking, election meddling and assassinations” — if Biden would just find the will.

From the right: China’s Empty Climate Promises

Team Biden weather envoy John Kerry returned from talks in China suggesting he had “achieved some sort of climate-change breakthrough,” but any “progress at all in Shanghai this month . . . was entirely rhetorical,” concludes the Washington Examiner’s Hugo Gurdon. “Beijing is an infamously effective negotiator willing to say whatever is expedient,” while pocketing “any concessions it can extract from whichever hopeful interlocutor comes begging, then ratchet up its demands in exchange for more nonbinding promises.” All Kerry really got was “smiling vagueness.” President “Biden and Kerry are bent [on] weakening the US and strengthening its enemies” without achieving meaningful climate gains.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board