Throughout the summer, following the May 25 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, a false narrative began to grow in the country.
The United States and its president were racist, the country was shot full of systemic racism, all police were killers, and woke millions were grabbing the hearts and minds of Americans with those charges.
To emphasize their point, the woke illegally tore down monuments of Confederate leaders, toppled statues of figures they deemed part of a patriarchal, white supremacist society, burned buildings, blocked streets and protested for months on end.
The national media, desirous of a chaotic summer that would temper votes for a president they detested, played up the protests and accusations of a racist nation.
Though the country can’t, and doesn’t, deny its slave past, we never bought the then-spreading rhetoric that the country is one big racist basket of deplorables.