Barely a week went by before the justified protest over the murder of George Floyd devolved into a frenzied demand for defunding the police coupled with crazy-talk over COVID-19.

NYC councilman Mark Levine, tweeted, “If you see an increase in corornavirus cases, don’t blame the protestors, blame racism” and this guy chairs a council for city health. It’s not just him. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, “Now some public-health progressives [say], ‘COVID-19 among Black patients is yet another lethal manifestation of white supremacy.'”

I watched a black woman lamenting in the street over her neighborhood being destroyed bereft of law and order. Do you tell her that “law and order” is just code language for white supremacy?

When several women were washing off BLM graffiti from a federal building, a driver pulled up and took offense. Driving off in disgust, the driver contemptuously accused them of “white privilege.” This type of divisive speech racially charges everything.

Black lives matter without Black Lives Matter. They matter apart from any racial group-think, but matter as image-bearers of God (Genesis 1: 26). Professing such a diverse view ironically ignites the ire of those who say they’re for diversity. The guilt of offending them requires mandatory apologies. Just ask Drew Brees.

Buck Sexton, former intelligence officer, tweeted, “No matter how decent, conscientious, and upstanding you are, once you bend the knee to the mob, they will never stop. They will not accept an apology, only submission. They do not offer forgiveness, but demand humiliation. Never, ever, bend the knee. Yet the NFL bends the knee joined by other corporations offering commandeered confessions of systemic racism.

Is racism really systemic or sporadic? Are a few “bad apples” in a bushel being conflated with the entire bunch?

A headline about the Minneapolis council taking steps to disband police includes a protester’s sign saying, “The whole [expletive] system is guilty.” Apply the same “guilt-by-association” standard to the protesters and the murder of police officers, small businessmen and hundreds of millions in property damage perpetrated by rioters, looters and vandals makes protesters and Black Lives Matter guilty. The guilt-by-association, however, doesn’t apply to them, only the police.

Watching the indiscriminate destruction of minority neighborhoods, Dennis Prager, an Orthodox Jew, remarked that if a racist had a plan to attack black neighborhoods, he would do it exactly the way it’s being done now. Prager added, “The biggest lie of Black Lives Matter is that black lives matter.” Unborn black lives prove that overwhelmingly at a rate of 900 abortions per day. All black lives matter. Defund Planned Parenthood, not the police.

David Dorn, a retired police chief murdered while guarding a store during the rioting, looks more like a no-name to BLM than a black life that mattered. Commentator Mark Levin says “Only certain black lives who fit the narrative matter.” Dorn, mentoring youth to be police officers, didn’t fit the narrative.

Recently, the president of the Minneapolis City Council Lisa Bender was asked by CNN’s Allison Cammerota: “What if … my home [at night] is broken into? Who do I call?”

Bender: “Yes, I hear that… from a lot of my neighbors. I know that [it] comes from a place of privilege.” To her, calling 911 is just a call of privilege. Besides defunding the police, she’s all-aboard for gun control as well. That leaves city crime control to Batman with Paw Patrol as back up.

“If Black Lives Matter,” said author and attorney Heather MacDonald, “you fund the police.” Declining to bend the knee at a BLM rally in Georgia, trooper O’Neal Saddler explained, “I have much respect, but I only kneel for one person, and that’s God.” Saddler is a black American. I kneel with him and stand with officers like him serving communities, cities and our nation honorably.

Sowing into peace and reconciliation, let’s meet the aggrieved on a two-way street of civil and frank conversation realizing that Eve, being the “mother of all the living,” makes all lives matter making us one human race.

Mel McGinnis is a Frewsburg resident.