When the hapless former Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, was going through his trials and tribulations a few years ago, the state and national media and their Democratic Party lackeys scoured every square inch of Virginia for every grimy detail and every tidbit of gossip from every possible source, up to and including the man’s trash. The drama and the investigations went on and on for months.
However, whatever Bob McDonnell was guilty of doing, no one died. No one suffered bodily injury. No families in restaurants were terrorized, and no city in Virginia suffered a complete meltdown of law and order.
Not so two weeks ago in Charlottesville. One young Charlottesville resident was killed, at least 19 others were hurt, and local families with children were put in harm’s way. In addition, two members of the Virginia State Police died in a tangentially related helicopter accident.
And for all intents and purposes the corporate media and Democratic Party narrative is setting like concrete and there seems to be little appetite to dig deep into the events of August 12th that, frankly, stink to high heaven.
Where’s the truth? Where are the political demands for public accountability, if nothing else, by Republicans, who control both the House of Delegates and the Virginia Senate?
One dead, scores hurt, law and order abandoned, in what increasingly appears to be deliberate political theater gone awry, or colossal mismanagement, or both – and Virginia Republicans are nowhere to be found, as usual.
This is not hard. It’s binary really. There are five individuals right at the heart of the catastrophe in Charlottesville: Governor Terry McAuliffe, his Secretary of Public Safety, Brian Moran, the Superintendent of the Virginia State Police, Colonel W. Steven Flaherty, and both the Mayor and Chief of Police of Charlottesville, Michael Singer and Al S. Thomas Jr.
Between (as I wrote here on Tuesday) these five individuals the permitting, planning and management for the demonstrations at Emancipation Park and the counter-demonstrations were executed. Who did what? Who approved what? Who gave orders, and who followed orders? Who stood down the police? Who ordered two violent groups two disperse without a police buffer?
This just scratches the surface of the open questions surrounding the meltdown in Charlottesville. Where did the violent rioters come from, and how many were actually hired? Was this demonstration in whole or in part a staged political event and who paid for it? Who of the five responsible individuals knew this, and was there any coordination by outside groups with any of the five?
Already there are printed reports of food fights developing between the five responsible parties as at least several of them are disclaiming responsibility and pointing fingers at others.
But, in truth, all five are culpable; at the worst of cynical political maneuvering and calculations that ended tragically for the victims, or in the least for incredible incompetence and mismanagement – or perhaps some combination of both.
In Virginia, both the House of Delegates and the Virginia Senate are capable and empowered to form an investigative committee to subpoena at least four of the five potentially culpable individuals and get answers – and to demand accountability – to demand justice for a young woman who lost her life for want, at the very least, of basic common sense.
Where are the elected representatives of the people and where is the corporate media? Both groups seem to have plenty of time to rant about President Trump and his comments, who, of course, was in no way involved in the incident. Yet they are strangely silent on getting to the truth of what happened in Charlottesville on August 12th from the five men who were directly involved.
