July 24, 2015

Jeb Bush certainly thinks white lives matter, but black ones are just a slogan, intended to force people into politically correct speech.

"We're so uptight and so politically correct now that we apologize for saying 'lives matter?'" asked Bush. "Life is precious. It's a gift from God. I frankly think that it's one of the most important values that we have. I know in the political context it's a slogan, I guess. Should he have apologized? No. If he believes that white lives matter, which I hope he does, then he shouldn't have apologized to a group that seemed to disagree with it. Gosh."

Proving Jeb doesn't have a clue what the Black Lives Matter movement is about.

Everyone already knows white lives matter. But black lives? Not so much. Those lives are not respected by the police, or the government, or by Jeb Bush and the party he represents. That's their point, and Jeb just proved it.

On the right, the booing of the phrase "all lives matter" has been read as proofthat Democrats no longer value the lives of white people. Ben Shapiro, a writer and editor at Breitbart News, argued that the heckle proved that "whatever forwards the narrative of racial injustice against black Americans takes precedence; other lives, whether white, brown, or blue, take a back seat."

But #BlackLivesMatter protesters who occupied the Netroots presidential forum explained, from the stage, that they wanted to "center" a discussion on race. To them, "white lives matter" was not objectionable because whites did not deserve to live. It was objectionable because some people (though not O'Malley) intentionally used it to diminish their cause. A popular Reddit post by a member called GeekAesthete has gone viral, seen as one of best summaries of the argument. Read on...

At least O'Malley had the sense to figure out why he was booed when he said what he did. Jebbie seems to be a little slow on that score.

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