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Glenn Loury and the comments in the <i>NY Times</i>: on Sharpton and the Democrats — 28 Comments

1. What I care about is an American president who is doing his best to sow racial discord for his own advantage.

   Says the Obama voter.

2. The routine acceptance of the “racist” accusation against Trump is infuriating. The final comment you cite, by the possible switcher, shows he’s almost there — but he needs to read Trump’s actual comment and tweets, not what the leftist media say Trump said. I don’t know how to get through to such people.

3. “… American president who is doing his best to sow racial discord …”
   Trump is reaping the discord, the true racists are sowing it.
   That’s why they hate Trump.

4. It is very obvious from the comments posted by Neo that there is a great deal of hate among Democrats.
   Hate that trumps reason (!). The hate shown is unreasoning and vicious. They are saying Yes, Sharpton is a lying SOB, but he is our SOB, so we will stand with him against a man we hate. Never mind that Trump is doing his level best to restore America back from the bulldozing leveling of the Dems and RINOs, the free traders and the Chicomm lovers, the Open Borders wimps, the people that despise Walmart but use economics to force the Deplorables to shop there because they cannot afford a pricier alternative like Target.

5. OT: This article was linked by Powerline. It is about Tulsi Gabbard.
   https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/tulsi-gabbard-2020-presidential-campaign.html

   Weird.

6. It is the people who voted for Trump, however reluctantly, that the left hates. Yes, they hate Trump, but they hate the ‘deplorables’ even more. They actually wish us dead, or at a minimum in concentration camps.

7. Tulsi Gabbard is a relatively sane leftist person. Thus, she must be banished from the cult.

8. What’s important is that even the Democrats who balk at all-socialism-all-the-time can’t or won’t say anything about the insane Trump hate. They think they will ride that tiger back to the White House but the GOP can tell you how that game ultimately ends.

   Mike

9. The Weather Underground is going to get the war they wanted and we didn’t believe enough in to stop…

   heck… same thing can be said of a lot of the stuff they got away with!

   how do you make people believe the population is collapsing before its perceived, which by that time, its way too late to do anything (even less under hostile circumstances)

   even when the plan they were given blows up in their face, they dont get they were had, and they run to ground and work the plan!!!!!

   the people who can believe the Dems of the south would punish a white person for loving or helping a black person, but do not see why western civ would suffer the same for helping prevent the final solutions finality.

   it was “not my experience” that the future president was a White supremacist sympathizer — Kara Young

   why doesnt that count? i said, go into the stuff on this, and it explains why blacks cant be racist even if they are more racist… why the above doesn’t count… why my wife not being white, proves i am a racist of the worst stripe…

   and a whole freaking lot more – most of it i learned in the late 70s and 80s its so old and UNCHALLENGED so long its TRUTH that has stood the test of time!!!

   “I never heard him say a disparaging comment towards any race” — Kara Young

   this whole get rid of the men who saved whom was always baked in…
   from day one the modern feminist movement hated their mates and they were mostly monolithic ally (and monotonically) white women of privilege.

   They learned what to think and how to be impenetrable from school
   the school who took over? the school now dominated by and catering to who?

   Although the circumstances of why Sharpton became a federal informant are in dispute, he has long acknowledged that he secretly recorded mobsters for the FBI in the 1980s.

   But he has always denied allegations that his cooperation with the feds included trying to obtain information on black revolutionaries, as one law enforcement source told Newsday in 1988.

   Sharpton’s attempt to contact Chesimard — a left-wing militant who goes by the African name Assata Shakur and has been a fugitive since a 1979 prison break — began when he ran into New York photographer and activist Kwame Brathwaite, Brathwaite said last week.

   Sharpton said he would give $50,000 to Chesimard if she could be located, Brathwaite recalled, adding that Sharpton claimed the cash came from sympathizers who wanted to help Chesimard and other underground radicals.

   Chesimard… you know the aunt of deceased rap legend Tupac Shakur who put rap on the map
   [how if the distributors wouldnt distribute?]
   Mumia Abu-Jamal? Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin?
   Chesimard a former member of the Black Liberation Army, who was convicted of the first-degree murder of State Trooper Werner Foerster during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973.
   Oh, the Nanuet Mall Brinks job with the members of weather underground and automatic weapons?
   Now, why would they think that music would get the message out… you know, the message Chesimard and Jamil Al-Amin wanted to get heard.. the poetry of Jamil!!!
   Now what was Jamil’s name before he became Muslim? (that too? roots that far back?)
   ah.. that was H Rap Brown… friend of Stoaky!! not Smokey!!
   H rap brown was party leader.. it was his poetry that inspired RAP music (not bebop)
   One of the crew was named Odinga after their hero in Kenya.. Guess who’s uncle?

   Funny when you know the details…

   I feel that “man-hating” is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.
   And although there are exceptions (as in everything), i.e., men who are trying to be traitors to their own male class, most men cheerfully affirm their deadly class privileges and power.
   And I hate that class. – Robin Morgan

   Critical Race Feminism by Theodorea Regina Berry
   In: Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies
   Critical race feminism is a feminist perspective of critical race theory. As an outgrowth of critical legal studies and critical race theory, critical race feminism acknowledges, accepts, and addresses Black experiences as different from those of critical race theory and feminist theory. Critical race feminism focuses on the issues of power, oppression, and conflict centralized in feminist theory.

   How Slavery, Capitalism, and White Supremacy gave rise to…..
   White Supremacy + Capitalism = Climate Change
   Capitalism spurs white supremacy
   White Supremacy and Capitalism: The Two-Headed Dragon

   and just so you know where sharpton, and they are taking this…
   Imperialist White supremacist capitalist patriarchy Bell Hooks..

   Understanding Patriarchy – Bell Hooks
   https://imaginenoborders.org/pdf/zines/UnderstandingPatriarchy.pdf

   Nothing discounts the old antifeminist projection of men as all-powerful more than their basic ignorance of a major facet of the political system that shapes and informs male identity and sense of self from birth until death.
   I often use the phrase “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” to describe the interlocking political systems that are the foundation of our nation’s politics. Of these systems the one that we all learn the most about growing up is the system of patriarchy, even if we never know the word, because patriarchal gender roles are assigned to us as children and we are given continual guidance about the ways we can best fulfill these roles

   you guys are decades behind the curve.. like the musicians in that Danny Kaye movie who were inside so long they didnt know how music changed while they were discussing it..

10. Collapse of the black family: Wasn’t that because the Dems changed the welfare regs, and only paid child support if there was no husband, which was an incentive for men to leave?

11. American Jews are always rationalizing the people that want them dead.

12. One can be a Democrat and dislike Sharpton. One can be a Republican and dislike Trump. There is no reason to think that one’s particular political beliefs are tied to one politician or pundit. One could argue that Trump is far more tied to what Republicans believe way more than Sharpton because Trump is president while Sharpton is one man with a megaphone. But Republicans can still steer a conservative course and begrudgingly support Trump.

    The tiny blip you speak of applies just as well for Trump supporters who tend to overlook some of the very misleading [or false] things Trump says. Every politician lies, true. It’s not endemic to Democrats or Republicans. [I know I’ll get push back on this but I’m trying to be balanced here]. I can’t even listen to politicians or pundits anymore. None of them. They all toe the party line, rarely question their own and demonize the other side with generalizations that I have really grown tired of. Bring back the reasonable moderates.

13. Words and deeds, montage. Do we see correspondence between the two? What are the deeds advocated by one political actor vs another? Do these proposed actions make sense? Are they then taken as proposed? Are they good, or are they making things worse?

    This is where our political judgement must be engaged. Rhetoric matters, to be sure. Yet rhetoric isn’t the point in the end, is it? The point is what is done; what is changed for the better; what good things are preserved from ruinous change?

    Deeds, these. This are where we look to answer the test.

14. Trump does not need the black vote which Democrats always know is theirs and it should never be challenged. However, if more black people have good jobs in the current economy and they feel as if the ‘black leadership’ has used them for their own benefit that might change. Calling out the hucksters and failures of ‘black leadership’ has no downside but it does control the conversation.

15. It is always relative: your bad guy is worse than our bad guy. Circle the wagons. They simply won’t admit what they know: Sharpton is a bad guy that harms them and their “community”, not least of which is by race baiting and race hustling. Admitting that doesn’t say anything about Trump.

16. As if on cue Instapundit posts (at 9:00pm) a link to a Conrad Black article precisely on point regarding Pres. Trump. The link: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad-black-the-inconvenient-truth-about-trump-hes-doing-what-he-said-he-would

    And a (generous) quote from the piece:

    The most glaring example of a dolt-in-chief is Donald Trump. He is averaging a dozen false or misleading claims a day, according to a tally compiled by the Washington Post.”

    The Washington Post abandoned that nonsensical claim to count the president’s liberties with the truth 18 months ago, and it was counting every instance of Trump’s casual hyperbole as if it were a direct violation of his Constitutional oath. In fact, by the ultimate litmus test of the integrity of holders of high political office, the extent to which his record in office conforms to pre-electoral promises, Trump’s record has been the best of any U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929), who promised, and did, nothing, in the piping days of American isolationism, Prohibition and complete absence of requirements for collateral in borrowing to buy equities. (This was a bi-partisan policy trifecta that eventually gave us Al Capone, Hitler, the Great Depression and the Second World War.)

    Trump promised prosperity, tax cuts, renegotiation of disadvantageous trade deals, the annihilation of ISIL, the establishment of a southern border that would control entry to the country, the shaping up of the military, revival of the concept of nuclear non-proliferation regarding Iran and North Korea, withdrawal from the inane and self-punitive Paris Climate accord, a resuscitation of education through non-unionized schools and incentives to the reintroduction of free speech in academia and the end of NATO’s condition as a gang of defenceless freeloaders (such as Canada), generously accepting a military guaranty of their territory by the United States without paying for it.

17. Neo,

    Thanks for this post. I hadn’t heard from Glenn Loury in a long time (couldn’t bring up the linked Times article, though). I remember back in the day when Dr. Loury was writing (not infrequently) for Commentary and First Things. Back then, Norman Podhoretz (sp?) was editing Commentary and Fr. Neuhaus, First Things. Dr. Loury was on the masthead at FT for years, and Fr. Neuhaus seemed quite fond of him. I have a vague recollection of Dr. Loury making a go of mending things with Jesse Jackson and his minions, and in the process breaking with his old (neo)-conservative allies, whereupon Mr. Podhoretz bluntly took him to task in one of his rambling, spirited essays (published in Commentary, I believe; maybe NR). Either way, Dr. Loury is a man with a spine.

    (Perhaps Dr. Lowry mentioned some of the above in his Times piece. If so, my bad.)

    Leftism is, among many other things, a religion—indeed, a fundamentalist religion—and HateTrump groupthink is currently one of its non-negotiable articles of faith (if not THE litmus test as to whether a believer is truly practicing the True Faith, or not. Or maybe it’s the sanctitiy of Planned Parenthood. Whatever.)

    Sort of reminds me of when Rolling Stone magazine started publishing album reviews. Wannabe hipsters—all twenty zillion of them, by my count– would follow the tastes of the Stone’s “rock critics” over a cliff, if it came to that. After one or two unflattering RS reviews, a gifted artist might be effectively marginalized for years, if not decades. But the inspired Word was out, and etched in stone (pun not intended).

18. I will vigorously disagree with sdferr’s approval of Black’s remarks, viz., “Trump’s record has been the best of any U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929), who promised, and did, nothing, in the piping days of American isolationism, Prohibition and complete absence of requirements for collateral in borrowing to buy equities. (This was a bi-partisan policy trifecta that eventually gave us Al Capone, Hitler, the Great Depression and the Second World War.).”

    Seldom have I read a statement so unfactual. OK, so Black says we, not he, gave us Capone aka bootleggers, but that was the people’s will by Amendment. He surely did not give us Hitler; the Treaty of Versailles did that. He surely cannot be given sole blame for the Depression, any more than Trump should get sole credit for making American life better, and Coolidge had zip to do with the genesis of WWII, which was birthed by WWI, the Russian Bolshevik revolution and its global communist ambitions.

19. artfldgr
    And I hate that class. – Robin Morgan

    I recently read Mark Rudd’s memoir [Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen]. To refresh memories, Mark Rudd got his 15 minutes of fame by being the spokesman for the Columbia students occupying President Grayson Kirk’s office in the spring of 1968. Rudd wrote that he suspected fellow weather person Jane Alpert of fingering him to the FBI when he was on the run. BTW, Rudd also wrote that Jane Alpert was, for a time, Robin Morgan’s lover.

    Rudd writes from the perspective of four decades later.

    I never get to explain what I’m guilty and ashamed of, but it’s implied: Much of what the Weathermen did had the opposite effect of what we intended. We deorganized SDS while we claimed we were making it stronger; we isolated ourselves from our friends and allies as we helped split the larger antiwar movement around the issue of violence. In general, we played into the hands of the FBI— our sworn enemies. We might as well have been on their payroll. As if all this weren’t enough, three of my friends died in an accidental explosion while assembling bombs. This is not a heroic story; if anything, it’s antiheroic.

    Having made such disastrous mistakes on such a big level—even granted that I was twenty years old at the time—I spent decades doubting my judgment. It took me a long time to sort out what was right from what was wrong in my own history.

    According to Rudd, SDS had great goals- we just didn’t do it right.

    As a result of this ongoing dialogue, I’ve shifted my opinion some about my own past, and in doing so I’ve rediscovered a voice that I bottled up for two and a half decades— longer than most of the people I was speaking to have been alive. I’ve also reclaimed what I can be proud of: Along with millions of other people, I was part of a movement of history—that’s what a “movement” is, after all, a shift of history caused by millions—that helped end the war in Vietnam. Combined with the civil-rights movement, the period was American democracy’s finest hour.

    Anyone who opposed the Vietnam War who doesn’t also feel at least some ambivalence for that opposition stemming from the genocide in Cambodia is,in my opinion at least, rather blind.

20. Sharpton has been Dem kingmaker in NYC politics for a long time. In 2000 Joe Leibermann had to go kiss his boots to get the VP nomination. If the Dems were going to noominate a Jew, their leading antisemite had to give him a pass. I remember thinking “It profiteth a man not Joseph to sell his soul for the world, but for the Vice-Presidency?”

21. Given the harm done to blacks by charlatans like Sharpton and other black “leaders,” they really should be given honorary titles and membership into the KKK (how about Honorary Grand Klaxons ?).

    In terms of destroying the black family (multi-generational destruction) and ensuring that inner city blacks have educational opportunities that are probably the worst of any place on earth, the policies and antics promoted by Sharpton and other black “leaders,” make the racist KKK policies look inept, incompetent and ineffective.

    A good example of anti-black policies promoted by Sharpton, the NAACP (National Assoc. Against Colored People), other black “leaders,” and white liberal progressive elites is their opposition to charter schools.

    They are happy to guarantee that inner city black high school “graduates,” remain, for all intents and purposes, functionally illiterate and mathematically ignorant and totally lacking in any skills; all to placate the leftist radical teacher’s union.
    Incredible as it seems, many of the top teacher’s union official are black. Their actions are analogous with that of the Jewish Kapos in Hitler’s death camps.

    Malcolm X warned blacks about white liberal elites and how their policies were harmful to blacks. His warned that their policies required that blacks become subservient to their white “benefactors,” and it discouraged blacks from taking appropriate initiatives to improve their own circumstances.
    Unfortunately his warning was not heeded.

    The reaction to Trump’s comments about Baltimore and Elijah Cummings, you will note, allows Trump’s critics to totally avoid the subject matter and target of Trump’s comments; the horrible conditions extant in Baltimore and the total incompetence and/or purposeful negligence of Cummings.
    Really, what has he actually ACCOMPLISHED for his district during his 24 years of Congressional “attendance?(yea, he shows up to job but does ZERO other than collect a paycheck).

    As long as blacks repeatedly vote to return total incompetents like Cummings (and Sheila Jackson, Maxine Waters, et. al.) to office, things will just further deteriorate.

    Black “leaders” and black members of Congress are for the most part nothing more than house n*****s for white, elitist, multi-millionaire liberal progressives and/or white progressive politicians.

    Unfortunately, the average black citizen is the one paying the price for the selfish, self-serving policies of their leaders.
    What a shame.

22. Collapse of the black family: Wasn’t that because the Dems changed the welfare regs, and only paid child support if there was no husband, which was an incentive for men to leave?

    Originally, the program was aid for widows and orphans. It was later called “AFDC” and also implied the father was dead or gone, leaving the mother and child at risk. The explosion of black out of wedlock birth took off after 1965. Soon young black girls figured out (or were told) that having a baby was a ticket to their own apartment and income. The rest is history,

    A good example of anti-black policies promoted by Sharpton, the NAACP (National Assoc. Against Colored People), other black “leaders,” and white liberal progressive elites is their opposition to charter schools.

    The teachers ‘ unions have become a cash cow for Democrats as trade unions have declined. “I will care about children when they begin to pay union dues.” Albert Shanker AFT peresident.

23. I’m a huge fan of Glenn Loury and I recommend that everyone listen to his sophisticated and illuminating podcasts on Bloggingheads — especially the dialogues with John McWhorter. You might have noticed that one of the NYT comments links stories about Loury’s own earlier behavior, and it’s true, he was a troubled, sinful man in earlier years. The difference between him and the disgusting Al Sharpton is that he has honestly acknowledged his failings and struggled to come to terms with them. His intellectual history is full of twists and turns — a testimony to how he’s kept his mind alive over many years. An honest, thoughtful man with a deep, soulful charm. He’s in the process of writing a memoir that I’m looking forward very much to reading. Look out for it!

24. On blacks voting for the likes of Cummings/Waters decade after decade . . .

    Why wouldn’t they? They’re basically voting for freebies and not having to take much responsibility except to collect said freebies.

    Their vote is only part of the whole picture , , , white guilt, black grievance hucksters who milk that guilt, black voters who vote them in to keep the gravy train rolling. If only they were happy with that. But unearned handouts never make for a proud recipient, but only enrage him/her.

    We can see the violent response when that whole paradigm is challenged.

25. A supply chain auditor has her say.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSJgnKcXVLE&t

26. DNW, wow. That is one smart, well-informed and impassioned lady. Thanks for the link.

27. Love Patricia Dickson. Everyone of her videos is worth listening to.
    And what a complexion! On my best day I never had that glow.

28. Gringo,

    Thanks for calling attention to the New Rudd, basically same as the Old Rudd. It wasn’t that the goal was wrong, it’s just that they went about it wrong.

    I guess he wavered on the road to Damascus, and then turned around and went back.

    David Horowitz has told us that Rudd, Gitlin, Hayden are not being as open and honest about their pasts and presents as could be wished.

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