By Geoffrey Ingersoll

Copyright dailycaller

Greetings, Dear Reader,

I hate to leave you with a heavy one at the end of the week, but I’ve had this in the chamber for a couple of days now and I gotta get it off my chest.

Reminder: I will be off tomorrow, so try not to miss me too much. I’ll see you back in the breach Monday morning.

With that, I have just one question …

DO ALL MURDERED WHITE GIRLS LOOK THE SAME?

Democratic Rep. Deb Ross was in the middle of expressing her condolences when she really stepped in it.

The House was conducting a field hearing on “Victims of Violent Crime” in Charlotte on Monday. The topic of discussion was “Iryna’s Law,” which would, if signed, put restrictions on “cashless bail” for violent crimes and repeat offenders, enhance sentencing, and boost mental health screening requirements.

The bill is named after Iryna Zarutska, who was slaughtered in plain view of the public during her train ride home from work by a man with a long history of violent crime.

(You can read my take on her murder here.)

In her opening statement on “Iryna’s Law,” Rep. Ross gestured to a photo displayed in the committee room.

“I’m thrilled we have a picture of her in that state right in front of us,” Ross said.

You know who wasn’t thrilled? Steve Federico, father of Logan Federico, the murdered girl depicted in the image Ross had just misidentified.

Federico exploded. Ross apologized profusely.

“Her name is Logan Federico, not Iryna, and you will not forget her!” he said later. “I promise you. You will be sick and tired of my face.”

The cases before the committee at the time were both Zarutska and Federico, as well as Mary Collins, who had been stabbed almost 150 times and stuffed into a plastic bag in an apartment in Charlotte.

I don’t intend to be hyper-racial with the title of this piece. I’m not trying to make a joke either.

There are more of them. Vanessa Marcotte. Wendy Karina Martinez. Ally Brueger. Eliza Fletcher. Lauren McCluskey. Mollie Tibbetts. Sydney Sutherland. Laken Riley.

They don’t look the same because of their racial makeup. They do because they’re all dead.

Their cases are endemic to inverted liberal policy goals. Innocent, productive young women, killed just as the door to adult life sprang open. Repeat offenders. Out on parole. Awaiting trial for other crimes, maybe. Clearly mentally unwell. Career violent criminals.

Like Iryna, the dangerous results of liberal policy victories are literally sitting behind you on the commuter train. They’re standing in listless groups outside the 7-Eleven. They’re drinking and smoking marijuana at the bus stop down the street from the kindergarten.

The amazing thing about Ross’s mix-up is that it comes from a party that has no trouble finding one girl in Ohio with an ectopic pregnancy when Roe gets overturned. They promptly turn her into a poster child for the continued slaughter of the unborn.

But remember the names of young women killed because of lax immigration and law enforcement? Now, Dear Reader, that would be a step too far.

Lately I’ve been on one about local jurisdictions, universities and DAs giving a pass to violent assaults on conservatives. Giving a pass to Antifa militants and black supremacists who commit crimes in public.

That’s really just one side of the cube. These women were not political. Most of them were commuting, jogging, going about their days when the system failed them.

That system, especially post-George Floyd, has been corrupted by the idea that justice for antisocial, criminal behavior is actually injustice. That it must be watered down or dissolved outright simply because the racial statistics aren’t exactly proportionate.

Nor are the gender statistics. Ninety-eight percent of violent crime is male-perpetrated, but you don’t hear much about being nice to violent men, eh?

The political inversion is one thing, but this racial inversion of justice is quite another. The victims deserve to be remembered. The problem with the liberal, bureaucracy-centric world order is almost nobody is regarded as an individual (again, outside particular policy goals, like abortion). We have POCs and BIPOCs and LGBTs. Policy needs to revolve around marginalized blocs. No one is judged on the merit or demerit of their actions.

How many blacks have been arrested in Charlotte? Too many!

You see this policy paradigm elsewhere as well. 250,000 missing minors who streamed across the border are just a number.

I have just two children. They are irreplaceable. I can’t imagine what just one missing child means. Even one is an inconceivable tragedy.

Again, I’ll hearken back to the definition the Manhattan Institute’s Rob Henderson gave for such woke policymaking: “Luxury beliefs.”

“Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes,” he says.

It makes you popular at Georgetown dinner parties to talk about all you’re doing in “equity and criminal justice,” a euphemism for lax policing of low-income black communities. You don’t have to talk to the grandma who gets her groceries stolen, or the single mother who has to ride the train at night. You don’t even ride the train. You ride in Uber Black!

Just like it makes you popular to discuss how hard you’re working to provide free healthcare and housing to illegals. Never mind that it acts as a magnet for third-world families to literally give their children to ruthless trafficking coyotes. You don’t have to investigate the traffickers. You don’t have to go on the raid busting their flophouses, filled with drugged-up children.

You don’t have to face any of the consequences of your policies.

How do you like the mini crab cakes? Aren’t they delicious!

We shouldn’t be surprised we all look the same to them. Except for the occasional case breaking through the ether, the rapid creation of a sprawling domestic third world has basically gone unnoticed by the elites. In the meantime, just as sprawling, is the creation of hundreds of NGOs and 501(c) organizations dedicated to “righting historic whatevers” but that actually extract gobs of wealth from the taxpayer.

Here, have another spritzer; the catering is on the company card!

They never really have to deal with the guts of their beliefs. “Empathy,” “compassion,” “humanity.” These are just words. Punchlines.

The closest they come to it is when the lawn care guys or cleaning ladies show up, and even then, they make sure not to be home.

Try one of our Buffalo sliders! They’re excellent!

WHAT I’M READING

Should have happened years ago.

Did not expect that.