Donald Glover is enjoying his five minutes of fame.  The actor-writer-rapper, gaining national attention for playing Lando Calrissian in the upcoming Solo edition of Star Wars, released a rap music video where he portrays black people as being violent, impulsive, animalistic, and victims of America and the "gun culture," all at the same time.  Glover's video, entitled "This is America," which has gotten over 44 million views on YouTube as of this writing, features a topless Glover dancing to horrendously bad music with other black people while, from time to time, murdering his fellow dancers with different kinds of firearms.

If white people made such a video of blacks, they would be roundly criticized.  But the liberal media are giving Glover cover, calling his video a brilliant commentary on racism and the need for gun control, as if the guns Glover fires in the video are animating themselves.

From a CNN piece:

"The fact that Childish Gambino's 'This is America' tackles police brutality, gun violence, media misdirection, and the use of African Americans as a brand shield, all while dancing in Jim Crow-style caricature, shows a transcendence or mere performance and demands attention," one person tweeted.

Yeah, that's just what I was thinking.  Not.

They lyrics for the video include lines such as:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
We just wanna party
Party just for you
We just want the money
Look at how I'm livin' now
Police be trippin' now (woo)
Yeah, this is America (woo, ayy)

Grandma told me
Get your money, Black man (get your money)
Get your money, Black man (get your money)
Contraband, contraband, contraband (contraband)
You [m---------] owe me
You just a Black man in this world
You just a barcode, ayy

What is the message here?  Blacks are violent.  Blacks are criminals.  But it's all America's fault!

Glover's video is actually the worst sort of racism.  He is saying black people are the way they are because America has somehow made them so, that they have no will to resist the unexplainable American force that turns them into savage animals.  What a slap in the face to the black middle class, which has successfully resisted the dysfunctional culture!

It used to be that the left portrayed minorities in only the most virtuous terms.  They are all brilliant, all well mannered, all living in intact families.  Leftist propaganda was so effective that many well-intentioned white liberals expressed a longing to live next to "Cosby blacks," a fictional representation of a small fraction of minorities.  It was propaganda that covered up the ills of the black culture, but it was aspirational propaganda (at least before "Cosby blacks" took on its most recent meaning).

Now the goal posts have shifted.  Now it is permissible to portray blacks as violent and out of control, as long as the cause – the availability of guns, white racism, income inequality, or fill in the blank with something else – does not point back to personal responsibility or a failed culture.

Unfortunately, too many black people (and white liberals) admire this kind of culture.  I have to wonder if Glover's video got 42 million views not for his "racism message," which is subtle, but rather his overt message, of an over-the-top, wild gyrating black man running around, wiggling to the music and shooting people.  A cynic might even wonder if Glover secretly approves of this portrayal of black people and used the "racism message" as cover to give the audience exactly what it wanted.

That's where the left has taken us: a celebration of the worst dysfunctional aspects of black culture while claiming to deny it by blaming the "cause" on white people and the Second Amendment.

Welcome to America.

One final note: If you click through to watch the video, you will get a totally different impression if you mute the music (which is horrendous).  On mute, without the social commentary, it looks very much as if Glover is ridiculing black stereotypes and trying to shame the black community into getting its act together.

Could it be...?

Probably not.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at Newsmachete.com.