The disturbing sight of team after team in the NFL “taking a knee” during the playing of the National Anthem is a direct result of incitement by former president Obama, his attorney general, Eric Holder and Democrats during the Obama years. Democrat incitement of blacks over alleged rampant racism has continued and intensified since Donald Trump was elected president.

It was no surprise that an epidemic of attacks on police ensued, during Obama’s term.

On July 7, 2016, five police officers were shot dead by Micah X Johnson in Dallas and nine more were injured. The next morning, a police officer was shot “from behind and critically injured” in the St. Louis suburb of Ballwin, MO, reported the LA Times.

Another officer in Valdosta, Georgia was lured by the report of a damaged vehicle when a man opened fire. “The suspect called 911 to report a break-in,” said the Associated Press, “then ambushed and shot the officer.” The officer was shot “multiple times,” Police Chief Brian Childress told the AP.

Also that day, in Georgia, “Another officer on patrol became a target when a motorist pulled up and fired at him in Roswell, north of Atlanta,” said the LA Times, “A black Army veteran, Lakeem Keon Scott, targeted police in a shooting Thursday along a highway in Bristol, Tenn., authorities said.”

“Preliminarily, the investigation reveals Scott targeted individuals and officers after being troubled by recent incidents involving African Americans and law enforcement officers,” authorities from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.

On Sunday, July 17, 2016, Fox News reported:

At least three law enforcement officers were killed and three others injured in a shooting Sunday in Baton Rouge, officials said. A suspect was also dead in a gun battle with police. Two other suspects may also be at large, according to authorities. The shooting—which happened just before 9 a.m., less than 1 mile from police headquarters—comes amid spiraling tensions across the city, Louisiana’s capital—and the country—between the black community and police.

On Tuesday, the 19th, a plot was uncovered in Baton Rouge involving young black men who stole eight handguns from a pawnshop and were looking for bullets, to shoot cops. One was only thirteen.

Radical black groups call for the murder of cops

The [New Black Panther] group,” Adams said, “is a violent, anti-Semitic, anti-white group that has been calling for the murder of cops for years. “We brought to the attention of top Justice Department officials [New Black Panther] … threats to kill police officers.”

In a July 8, 2016, article, Adams said:

“Both top DOJ officials, including [then] Labor Secretary Tom Perez, as well as rank and file employees in the Civil Rights Division, were warned but did not take the New Black Panther threat seriously.” [Perez now heads the Democratic National Committee.]

Part of the warning was a New Black Panther video, of which Adams wrote:

“Field Marshal” Najee Muhammad … is seen in a Panther video called “Training Day” in which he encourages blacks in DeKalb County, Georgia, to don ski masks, lie in wait behind shrubs, and kill police officers with AK-47s. Following that exhortation, he mocks the hypothetical victims’ grieving widows.”

The Obama Administration’s apparent soft spot for radical black groups was not unique to the New Black Panthers.

Obama hosted Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors on February 20, 2015; he hosted BLM leader DeRay McKesson on February 18, 2016, and again on May 17, 2016.

Systematic incitement of black Americans against police

What touched off the murders of police?

Police shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling brought a stream of comments from Democrats that could certainly incite and appeared to be systematic. Castile’s shooting elicited an almost immediate conclusion, with virtually no evidence, from the Democratic governor, Mark Dayton, who had divined the cause in only one day. The Daily Wire, on July 7, 2016, reported:

“Early this afternoon, without waiting to hear any of the evidence, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton called the shooting of Castile racist: ‘Would this have happened if the driver and the passengers where white? I don’t think it would have. This kind of racism exists and it’s incumbent on all of us to vow and ensure that it doesn’t continue to happen.’”

He said this in spite of the fact that the officer had radioed in a report that he was stopping a car because the driver resembled an armed robbery suspect. A Star Tribune report includes audio of the radio call. One would imagine the police department had informed the governor of this.

July 7, 2016, was a busy day for Democratic incitement.

The same day, Hillary Clinton told CNN: “From Staten Island to Baltimore, Ferguson to Baton Rouge, too many African-American families mourn the loss of a loved one from a police-involved incident,” Clinton said. “Something is profoundly wrong when so many Americans have reason to believe that our country doesn’t consider them as precious as others because of the color of their skin.”

Elizabeth Warren tweeted: “We’ve seen the sickening videos of black Americans killed in traffic stops. Lives ended by those sworn to protect them. #blacklivesmatter

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota: “The situation down in Baton Rouge. Eric Garner. Mike Brown. Tamir Rice. Sandra Bland. There is a systematic targeting of African-Americans and a systematic lack of accountability when police use excessive force. This is a national problem.”

White House race-baiting

President Obama posted this on his Facebook page, on that day:

“These fatal shootings are not isolated incidents. They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve.”

The next day, and only hours before the Dallas attack, Obama enlarged on the post in an extended speech on the racism of police and our justice system, in response to the shootings. Notably, did not know exactly what had happened in both cases, yet he concluded that racism was behind them. Just after arriving in Poland, he felt compelled to share these remarks:

“I want to begin by expressing my condolences for the families of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile…. As I said in the statement that I posted on Facebook, we have seen tragedies like this too many times. But what I can say is that all of us as Americans should be troubled by the shootings. These are not isolated incidents. They’re symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.”

He then delivered a salvo of deceptive, racially charged statistics:

“African Americans are 30 percent more likely than whites to be pulled over. After being pulled over, African Americans and Hispanics are three times more likely to be searched. Last year African Americans were shot by police at more than twice the rate of whites. African Americans are arrested at twice the rate of whites; African American defendants are 75 percent more likely to be charged with offenses carrying mandatory minimums. They receive sentences that are almost ten percent longer than comparable whites arrested for the same crime.”

Luckily, we have Thomas Sowell, who has a genius for framing issues in simple terms. Here he is, writing in National Review:

One of the most popular arguments used in many different contexts is to show that blacks have been disproportionately represented among people stopped by police, arrested, or imprisoned Although many people regard these “disparate-impact” statistics as evidence, or virtually proof, of racial discrimination, suppose that I should tell you that black basketball players are penalized by NBA referees out of all proportion to the 13 percent that blacks are in the American population.

Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder have consistently issued inflammatory comments. These two government officials, in effect, told black people to look at America through the eyes of Emmett Till’s mother in January 1956, after her son’s murderers had been acquitted and bragged about their act in a Look Magazine interview. They repeatedly told Black America the same vicious racism lives on today — particularly in the police.

The former attorney general even added that the racist cops don’t know they’re racist; they discriminate “subconsciously,” because of their “perceptions,” using things like “disproportionate” traffic stops.

At Dallas, at a memorial service for the five murdered police officers, Obama gave a moving tribute to the officers, for a bit. Then he added this, which has been abridged, to save space:

“But, America, we know that bias remains. We know it. Whether you are black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or of Middle Eastern descent, we have all seen this bigotry in our own lives at some point. We’ve heard it at times in our own homes. If we’re honest, perhaps we’ve heard prejudice in our own heads and felt it in our own hearts. We know that…. None of us is entirely innocent. No institution is entirely immune. And that includes our police departments. And so … when study after study shows that whites and people of color experience the criminal justice system differently, so that if you’re black you’re more likely to be pulled over or searched or arrested, more likely to get longer sentences, more likely to get the death penalty for the same crime.”

Here are but a few examples of earlier racially charged remarks from the Obama Regime:

CBS News, March 23, 2012: “You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” —President Obama Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2013: Speech before the NAACP, on what his father taught him: “…what to say and how to conduct myself if I was ever stopped or confronted in a way I thought was unwarranted…I’m sure my father felt certain at the time that my parents’ generation would be the last that had to worry about such things for their children.”—then-AG Eric Holder Levin TV, video from April 28, 2015: Address to the nation about the Baltimore protests: Since Ferguson, and the task force that we put together, we have seen too many instances of what appears to be police officers interacting with individuals – primarily African-American, often poor – in ways that raise troubling questions. And it comes up, it seems like, once a week now. —President Obama WTF with Marc Maron, June 22, 2015: “The legacy of slavery—Jim Crow, discrimination—exists in institutions and casts “a long shadow and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on.” —President Obama

The unmistakable message, from Obama and Democrats to Black America is: “The White-controlled system is rigged against you; if a cop murders a black man, he will not be held to account, for a reason you cannot overcome: your skin color.”

Many black Americans are exquisitely sensitive to any hint of racism. If the president of the United States—who was also black—repeatedly told them that racist cops are gunning for them, that added considerable weight to an assertion that made no sense at all.

Those who are mentally on the edge, like Micah X Johnson, the Dallas shooter, or Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who slaughtered two NYPD cops in December of 2014, could be nudged over the edge into murder.

Those who are uninformed and easily swayed by racialist rhetoric—like the protesting NFL players—are likely to act out without checking the facts.