Progressives can’t seem to fathom that crimes are almost always committed wholly detached from racism and white supremacy. It’s because they’re obsessed with identity and loyal to a dangerous ideology.

January saw two mass shootings where the victims were Asian and a brutal and ultimately deadly assault against Tyre Nichols. For most of us, we saw these as tragedies. We were shocked, disgusted, and maybe angry, but we saw them for what they were without needing a deeper meaning behind why they occurred. We do not instinctively desire to invent some systemic issue to explain the tragedy because our lives aren’t defined by fighting for an ideological cause.

Progressive activists had different responses, rushing to politicize whatever they could. When it became clear that Asian men committed the mass murders, some of the loudest activist voices and TV talking heads stopped talking about them almost entirely (that is, after needlessly and baselessly suggesting a white supremacist was involved). Activists generally do not seem to care about the Asian community unless they can exploit them for political gain. It’s why progressive activists have normalized discrimination against Asians, particularly when it comes to issues around education.

When it came to Nichols, progressive activists bent over backward to make this about white supremacy because the police were involved. Sure, it was five black officers responsible (two apparently hired after the department relaxed its requirements, giving in to progressive activist demands that the police force “look more like the community.”) Still, progressive activists view the world through a lens of social justice and critical race theory. They believe policing is “systemically racist,” which is why they seek to abolish the police, prisons, and criminal justice system.

Progressive activities pretend everything is about racism

Especially in the Nichols case, blaming white supremacy is a losing argument that exposes how fringe these voices have become. Reasonable people look at this as five bad cops, and we only note their race in that we know if they were white, activists would be burning down police departments across the country in what CNN and MSNBC would call “peaceful protests.” Over the weekend, despite hoping otherwise, Antifa thugs and radical activists couldn’t get people to shop up to their rallies en masse because racism wasn’t at play and the cops were immediately fired and charged with murder. Most of America doesn’t support protests against the entire criminal justice system.

The Seattle Times’ identity-obsessed columnist Naomi Ishisaka published another set of progressive activist talking points masquerading as thoughtful analysis.

“That two Asian Americans could do something so horrific to their own communities is hard to fathom. But in truth, it really shouldn’t be,” she states as if she’s stumbled upon a truth no one has yet recognized.

Though Ishisaka blames guns and gun culture, neither of which she understands but goes on to blame because that’s what progressive activists are supposed to do to stay in their club, it didn’t take long before she unknowingly exposed the defect of progressive activist beliefs.

More from Jason Rantz: Democrats sue to kill WA’s one election security feature, which makes fraud easier

“No race or ethnic group has a monopoly on violence. No group is immune to our society’s obsession and love affair with guns. No group is exempt from mental health challenges or despair,” she wrote. “We are struggling with this complexity in the Tyre Nichols killing as well, with some having trouble understanding how Black cops could beat another Black man so brutally.” (emphasis mine.)

She even goes on to say that she hopes we can understand “that like all humans, [Asian Americans] can cause terrible harm as well as be harmed.”

This isn’t a revelation. Only Ishisaka and like-minded partisans are “struggling” with understanding the shootings and beating.

Activists can’t process crime without politicizing it

Those of us not taught to view everything through an ideological lens know that Black people kill Black people the same way as Asians kill Asians, Latinos kill Latinos, and whites kill whites. Sometimes whites kill Blacks, Latinos kill whites, and Asians kill Latinos.

Bad people do bad things, and they’re not running through an intersectional checklist or exploring systemic -isms before committing a crime. Some are motivated by unhinged, seething rage, a sense of being wronged, a learned belief that violence is okay to settle scores, and sometimes, it’s a momentary lapse of judgment or even a mistake. Sometimes we don’t know why they committed a crime. They just do it.

Are some crimes motivated by bigotry? Of course. But progressive activists make that assumption by default based solely on the identities of all those who are involved. Likewise, they’ll lose interest in discussing crimes based on identities. They’re not interested in the victims. They’re interested in politics. They turn victims into props for progressives to campaign off of, diminishing the very people they claim to support. But to the rest of us, these are crimes that can be addressed without blind adherence to some ideological demand, and the people who claim otherwise just look like out-of-touch fools.

Listen to the Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3 p.m. – 6 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast. Follow @JasonRantz on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Check back frequently for more news and analysis.

Follow @https://twitter.com/jasonrantz