Michael Goodwin

Michael Goodwin

Metro

Thought those anti-cop protesters were peaceful? Think again

’Tis the season of magic, so let’s play pretend. Let’s make believe that only an itsy-bitsy handful of those anti-police protesters disrupting the city are hell-bent on mayhem.

To get there, you have to ignore the hundreds if not thousands in Manhattan caught on tape chanting, “What do we want?” and answering: “Dead cops.” They must have been in some other city.

You have to overlook those “shoot back” chants as well. As for that nut from CUNY caught trying to throw a garbage can onto the Brooklyn Bridge roadway and punching a cop — blame your lying eyes!

And pretend you didn’t see those “peaceful” protesters who were taped helping him escape, and kicked one cop when he was on the ground. Hey, the camera lies, too!

Video credit: Chris Nooney

Now that we’re in full fiction mode, let’s pick up the rabble’s battle cry that the police are an occupying army of racist white brutes and that the five officers assaulted had it coming. Let’s ignore reality to pretend Mayor Bill de Blasio is on solid ground when he stokes the flames by saying police are a threat to his biracial son.

To believe that, you now have to erase two sets of facts. One, the fact that violent crime in New York is overwhelmingly the province of nonwhite males, both as victims and perpetrators. Two, you have to disregard that police shot at only 40 suspects last year, reaching, like crime, a historic low.

Cops fired their guns in just 81 incidents in 2013 — including 19 times at dogs. The incidents include six police suicides, as against eight armed suspects the police shot and killed.

There is more, but you get the point. The list of facts you have to ignore to defend the violent and disruptive crowds is so long that something else is going on here, something far more sinister.

It’s only by peeling back the layers of pretend that we get to the naked truth: The whole narrative of widespread police brutality is a big fat lie.

It’s a lie that turns truth on its head, meaning the movement the mayor praises as “organic” and says is raising legitimate concerns is a scam foisted on the public for the sole purpose of advancing a far-left political agenda.

The NYPD saved the city from killers, rapists and muggers and most New Yorkers know it. They showed their appreciation by trusting cops and giving former commissioner Ray Kelly sky-high approval ratings all through his 12 years — higher, in fact, than any politician, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Mayor Bill de BlasioGetty Images

To de Blasio, that wall of trust is a barrier to his agenda of class and race warfare. He harped on a “tale of two cities” and “income inequality” not to fix problems, but as a revolutionary whistle for those radicals who want to smash Wall Street, capitalism and American norms.

Tearing down trust for the cops is essential to opening the door for an erosion of law enforcement. “Broken windows” policing will be shattered, meaning a lower quality of life in most neighborhoods.

Acting like a candidate trying to define his opponent, the mayor is dirtying up the police so he can diminish the public’s trust in them. He’s running against the NYPD.

That explains the trumped-up accusations of racism against Kelly and the whole department and the flood of laws and overseers aimed at handcuffing cops.

Whipping up the crowds to fool the public into thinking there is a serious police problem that must be fixed opens a new phase in the campaign. His son was just another tool in de Blasio’s bag of dirty tricks. He’s even trying to use Cardinal Timothy Dolan to isolate the cops’ union.

The mayor pooh-poohs the $23 million police overtime cost by trotting out a straw man.

“Do we tell people they’re not allowed to raise their voice,” de Blasio said in rejecting cost concerns. “Do we tell people they’re not allowed to march.”

Nobody suggested that, but deception is par for the course for Mayor Putz. Any lie will do in a storm.

How about that fence around Gracie Mansion? As The Post reported, he requested it for privacy. When asked, he blamed police, saying they wanted it for security. A wooden fence for security isn’t even a good lie.

Naturally, his office also gave out a phony figure for the cost, low-balling it at $4,250. Finally embarrassed into seeking permits, the cost suddenly jumped to $30,000.

Trust him? Don’t even bother pretending.

Times smug rolls in

Sometimes, a word is not just a word, as when The New York Times can’t let go of “torture” to describe CIA interrogations after 9/11. It uses the word repeatedly in news headlines, and editor Dean Baquet cited coverage of the “torture report” in a memo to colleagues to argue the paper isn’t distracted by a large round of employee layoffs.

But calling the harsh interrogations “torture” is an opinion, one not shared by US officials who approved them. Moreover, many in the intelligence community are convinced the methods produced information that saved American lives and led commandos to Osama bin Laden. The public agrees, with several polls showing a clear majority favors the techniques, even now.

But the Times always knows best, so labeling the Democratic partisan hit job the “torture report” touches all its erogenous zones of moral superiority.

Torture, torture, torture. There, doesn’t that feel good?

O is setting a Bibi trap

There’s much chatter about how President Obama will handle a new Palestinian push for statehood at the United Nations, including whether he will veto a Security Council resolution.

This is mistaking the trees for the forest. The president’s real aim is to make sure Benjamin Netanyahu loses the upcoming Israeli election, making way for a government more compliant with Obama’s demand that Israel pull back its borders.

A possible veto and everything else are mere tactics in achieving that goal.

Sony geniuses, what the flick?

The Sony story is downright bizarre — and I don’t just mean the hacking. I include the decision to make the stupid movie in the first place.

The plot of “The Interview” sounds like something cooked up in a Third World fantasy factory: The CIA recruits two American journalists to assassinate North Korean madman Kim Jong-un.

Hilarity ensues.

Yes, it’s a comedy, allegedly. But it’s a stretch to believe there are yuks to be had in a movie about the illegal assassination of a living person, reportedly complete with his melting face and exploding flesh. Sony execs who were troubled by the project should have pulled the plug.

The film also offers a strange confirmation for suspicion in much of the world that American journalists actually are government spies. That distrust has gotten more than a few heroic journalists killed.

None of this is to excuse the cybertheft of Sony secrets. But it is to wonder if the company wasn’t in deep disarray long before the hackers struck.