There’s a crude but vivid expression. People who are overly accepting of sexual immorality have been known to use it. They say they don’t care what anyone else does so long as it “doesn’t frighten the horses.”

Well, the decision of Cook County prosecutors not to prosecute Jussie Smollett for his hate crime hoax? That’s so perverse, it does frighten the horses. In fact, it might give them a heart attack, as in the infamous scene from Animal House.

The point of that jaded expression? That you don’t mind it when sinners flout God. But you don’t want them to shock people. Or to be so indiscreet that they disgust large numbers of people, and provoke them to a reaction. Because when folks see the prospect of total chaos, they sometimes do ugly things. They might throw out their own standards, deciding “all bets are off.” Or contrary-wise, they might demand a crackdown, or even take the moral law into their own hands. So we hope for some discretion, maybe even hypocrisy — the tribute vice pays to virtue, or at least to social order.

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Rubbing Our Noses in Their Privilege

We were offered none of that here. This miscarriage of justice is so in your face, it seems designed to rub our noses in the muck. Or else to show off just how powerful certain elite groups in America really are. They don’t even have to pretend to play by the same rules as the rest of us rubes. And that is profoundly dangerous, if the law lets it slide. It’s the kind of outrage that gives rise to violent vigilantes, or goads people to join hate groups.

Even people who are jaded about politics and justice in America seem shocked at the Smollett case. His lies were so outrageous and malicious. They tapped into so many tragic things from our past, and cynically cheapened them. From the lynching of innocent black men to street attacks on homosexuals, Smollett left no gravestone not overturned.

A Fraud So Cynical, So Crass

He tapped into the violent political division in our country, by claiming that his “two white attackers” claimed that the mostly-black South Side of Chicago was “MAGA country.” He made it seem that gay, black actors in America couldn’t even go out for a sandwich, without racist, fascist thugs pouncing on them, putting nooses around their necks. As The Stream pointed out, for the attack to have possibly happened, the attackers would have needed to be prowling the streets, looking for targets. So no one like Smullett is safe, even in largely black neighborhoods in cities where blacks are the voting majority.

This miscarriage of justice is so in your face, it seems designed to rub our noses in the muck. Or else to show off just how powerful certain elite groups in America really are. They don’t even have to pretend to play by the same rules as the rest of us rubes. And that is profoundly dangerous, if the law lets it slide. It’s the kind of outrage that gives rise to violent vigilantes, or goads people to join hate groups.

If Smollett’s attack had been real, it would have cast an ugly stain on all of Chicago. It would helped the leftist case that Donald Trump is not a legitimate politician, but a demagogue who taps into a stream of bitter, white hatred that runs just below the surface. And that’s why it was such a tempting story for people who are already paranoid about politics in America. It helped them to sell that paranoia to the masses. Which is why the MSM lapped the story up like a cat at a tasty pool of antifreeze.

Smollett Lied, Black Kids Died

Of course, the tale was an outrageous lie. So everyone in America except Jussie Smollett and his PR flacks now admit. That makes the decision of Chicago-area prosecutors to drop the case against him all the more shocking. Smollett consciously tried to sell to our whole nation a lie designed to divide people, and goad them to rage. He urged the police to make arrests, and said he was pleased when they targeted some (totally innocent) suspects. He forced the cops in a crime-ridden city to neglect real assaults, rapes and murders — mostly of black people who aren’t rich or on TV — in pursuit of his fairy-tale monsters. That’s why so many black people (especially the heavily black Chicago police force) are also outraged at Smollett. His constituency isn’t blacks in crime-ridden Chicago, but Hollywood privilegistas. As I noted on Twitter:



Let’s not forget that it was mostly black cops who exposed the Smollett hoax, who are infuriated today that black kids died while Smollett had them hunting snipe for weeks. — John Zmirak (@JZmirak) March 26, 2019





And now a Democratic machine-linked prosecutor has dropped a long list of felony charges against Smollett. Nor did the prosecutor even bother to come up with a half-way convincing excuse. Instead we got the crassly cynical story: at worst, Smollett would ever get sentenced to doing community service. And he had already done that, by volunteering for Jesse Jackson, so we might as well call it even.

What? A leftist homosexual Democrat can count on a slap on the wrist for slandering all whites, all straights, and all supporters of Donald Trump. So let’s just skip the rigmarole and consider his wrist pre-slapped, because he did some work for … a leftist pro-gay Democrat!

Not Even the Courtesy of a Decent Lie

Maybe the people who came up with that story really are just stupid. That’s perfectly possible. We are talking about government employees in a Democrat-run city. But the other explanation is worse. The left has grown so blatantly cynical and self-confident in the past two years of orchestrated hate for Trump and his voters, they aren’t even willing to make up a decent lie. They won’t deign to do it. Instead, they want us to realize that their witch-hunt against Donald Trump, however outrageous, will go unpunished. That General Michael Flynn will languish in prison, while Jussie Smollett goes free. That’s just how privileged they are, and we had better get used to it. Or else.

Such was the message Jim Crow laws sent to millions of black Americans. And it gave rise to violence and race riots. If the left expects white Americans, or conservatives, or Christians, to roll over and accept a reversal of roles, it really is laying the groundwork for something like civil war.

Smollett Must Do Prison Time

The Trump administration would be politically smart not to tolerate this. More importantly, it owes America this debt of statesmanship. It can’t permit such a blatant, divisive outrage to stand. The FBI must prosecute Smollett’s federal charges, including mail fraud, to the full extent of the law. Smollett must do prison time. There is no other way to make it clear that a single system of justice prevails in our country. That we won’t tolerate race hustlers breaking the law to sow division, no matter their skin color or their politics.