As might be expected, the huge nationwide wave of racial rioting and looting sparked by the death of a black man at the hands of Minneapolis police fully dominated our most popular featured articles this last week, capturing five of the top six spots.

Ranking first by a wide margin was John Derbyshire’s piece arguing that the total dishonesty and cowardice of our citizenry and media has been responsible for this racial disaster, noting that since blacks commit such an enormous fraction of our crimes it is hardly surprising that they are disproportionately subjects of police action or public fear, with the widespread refusal to publicly acknowledge the former leaving the latter open to accusations of “racism.”  Over 650 comments totaling more than 70,000 words responded to this thesis.

The next two pieces by Fred Reed and C.J. Hopkins adopted a somewhat different perspective, with the former focusing on the long-standing mistreatment of individual blacks by our police as shown proven on video being the provocation for the rioting, and the latter arguing that the efforts of the media to foment racial division in order to undermine Donald Trump’s public standing played a crucial role.  These two pieces provoked nearly 700 comments between them, amounting to over 75,000 words.

Placing fourth was James Kirkpatrick’s take on events, arguing that Trump’s unwillingness to take decisive action against the massive wave of criminal violence that swept across some 140 American cities demonstrates the feebleness of his presidency, now reduced to angry Tweets, some of them censored by Twitter.  His voters believed they were electing a law-and-order president and unless he swiftly suppresses our greatest outbreak of racial looting in two generations, he will have forfeited any hope of his reelection.

Our sixth most popular piece by Guillaume Durocher noted that a wave of copycat protest marches, including some outbreaks of racial violence, had spread throughout much of Western Europe, demonstrating that American media power had now reduced those countries to almost being cultural and political appendages of American society.

Finally, placing fifth was the Saker’s focus on the Trump Administration’s decision ultimately not to take military action against a flotilla of Iranian oil tankers headed to Venezuela despite warnings to the contrary, thereby avoiding what seemed like a possible war with both those countries.