Comments

For perilous times — 34 Comments

1. Michael Tracey, with impeccable left-wing credentials, has also been posting very rational thoughts about the current collective hysteria and the nearly universal flight from reason and civility towards witch-hunting vengefulness, incessant accusatory moralizing, as well as self-congratulatory virtue-signaling and preening (celebrities, actors, and athletes being among the worst and most consistent offenders). Also of interest is the recent shift of Matt Walsh (Daily Wire) towards a more vigorous defense of Western civilization, while National Review (like most of the GOP) equivocates and dithers.

2. Times aren’t so perilous in my neck of the woods. We had a couple of nights of peaceful protests last week and some more energetic, though still peaceful, protests in the nearest “big city.” And I’m sure if some local politician or businessperson went on an anti-BLM rant on social media, they’d be in a little hot water.

   Maybe I’m wrong but what scares me is that all this is the best thing to ever happen to white supremacy. There is nothing quite so dangerous as a group that is demographically, economically, and politically dominant which honestly feels itself coming under attack. There are much worse people out there than Donald Trump and this stuff is just moving them closer and closer to actual power.

   Mike

3. (1) This Democratic data analyst got fired for retweeting this study:

   Which tells you that the firm is in the messaging business, just like the ‘Fact Checkers’ Jeff Bezos employs.

   (The incident also tells you that the people who employed him have made themselves the bitc* of the world’s stupid and histrionic people).

4. I read somewhere that donations to BLM are being funneled to the Biden campaign coffers…

5. Maybe I’m wrong but what scares me is that all this is the best thing to ever happen to white supremacy.

   MBunge: Agreed. However, IMO real white supremacy got busted so bad in the 60s, 70s, 80s that I didn’t think they are ever coming back from beyond the fringe. (I grew up in the south and knew people in the KKK.)

   I do believe there is a substantial silent majority building of those regular Americans who resent being called white supremacists. I’m not sure what form that will take.

6. This sort of panic and hysteria has occurred in S. Florida over the last decade or so everytime a hurricane threatens to make landfall. It has no political or racial component, of course, but as soon as the media notices the hurricane offshore, usually two to three days ahead of the predicted landfall, suddenly the governor is saying, in effect, “Evacuate the entire coast!!!” gas stations shut down or have no gas, and grocery stores are cleaned out of all the traditional hurricane supplies. By the time the average person learns what’s up, it’s already too late to prepare — the stores are all closed or out of what you need.

   This is not the way communities reacted to the approach of a hurricane twenty or thirty years ago.

   These days the elected officials participate in the media panic about the hurricane, perhaps because then no blame comes their way if it causes great damage, and the media forget about their panic if it doesn’t. The service workers are probably just as happy to have an unscheduled three to four day holiday (with no danger of losing their jobs when they take off — they have to follow instructions and evacuate, you see, because the media said so.)

   This corona virus episode feels very much like the same sort of panic, only now on a nationwide scale instead of just where the hurricane is predicted to make landfall, and it goes on and on instead of passing by in a few days. Probably these bouts of hysteria will happen again and again until we put in place some sort of “anti-panic” mechanism in the way our media and government interact. Who would have thought we could be destroyed by “too much” communication?

7. MBunge, I think the people you are talking about are more or less content to support Trump. As I mentioned in a previous thread, if the coming election turns out badly; or if there is a concerted effort to nullify it, then KT bar the door.

   What worries me now is that this situation is energizing the young “woke” crowd. They may even vote. I have an email dialogue going with my Darling Grand daughter, a recent graduate of a private university near Portland, Or.
   It started when I learned that she was going to protest peacefully for justice. I cautioned her for her safety to be sure that she was not caught up in one of the “peaceful protests” that become fronts for violent people. I specifically warned her about false labels and slogans by reviewing the antecedents of the ANTFA movement in Germany; and cautioning her to observe the actions and ignore the rhetoric of such groups. I mentioned how misleading benign sounding labels can be, citing the People’s Republic of China as one glaring example. She assured me that she was cautious; then went on to justify the need for the protests. She is an intelligent young woman who has been sold the whole bill of goods.

   I am posting my response to her. It is long; and it is personal. Most people may not care to read it; a few may find some talking points of use in their own discussions.

   Quote:
   The best way to fight racism is to treat each and every individual with dignity and respect. Most of us do that, and have our entire lives, even in the “bad old days”; and ask for no more than the same in return.

   The best way to exacerbate racism is to rub people’s noses in it; and call people you don’t even know racist for some innocuous reason, or no reason at all. Surprisingly, people resent that.

   Some people also resent constantly being accused of white privilege by people who know nothing about their history. Looking back, I don’t think I was too privileged when Mom and the three kids were sleeping in one room while Dad was away at war for three years fighting Fascists. (After he returned we all slept in the same room for a time until they could make different arrangements.) I guess we were privileged to live with my grandparents because their home had one of the few indoor toilets in our all-white neighborhood. My Grandfather had built it himself. The street in front of the house was actually paved after the war.

   True, we were privileged in that we had more opportunities to break out compared to the Blacks of that day. Some of us did; some of my childhood playmates never made it. That disparity in opportunity has not really existed for several decades now.

   I am sorry if your friends had unpleasant experiences. I am also a bit surprised that young people who could attend an expensive private university would feel underprivileged–if those are the friends you refer to. Ironically, I should think that it is the white kid on a college campus who quietly suffers indignity; I mean those who are incessantly accused of transgressions they did not commit. It is also ironic that after major efforts to end segregation throughout the country, often by forced busing of little white kids to remote and hostile schools, many Black students are demanding separate spaces on campus.

   Martin Luther King asserted that the color of a person’s skin should not matter. He was right. It should not matter if you are Black; and if you are white you should not be blamed for bad things that happened 150 years ago, or even 40 or 50 years ago. Those debts were paid.

   It is true that we have a large under-class in this country. It is also true that the country has made a great effort over the past 30 or 40 years to correct that with many accommodations and expenditure of a great deal of money. Progress has been evident in some ways, but there are clearly pockets, primarily in cities, in which a culture of dependence prevails; and this contributes to destructive life styles in swaths of our cities. Ironically, some of the worst pockets are governed or policed by Black people. The Chief of Police of Minneapolis is Black. The Attorney General of Minnesota is a Black Muslim. The Chief of Police of Seattle is Black. The Police Commissioner and the Mayor of Baltimore (where more Black people are killed by other Black people than any other city) are Black; as is the Mayor of Chicago (which is vying for the title) and its present and former Superintendent of Police. You now have a Black police chief in Portland. The white woman who was the previous Chief stepped aside for the Black man in hopes of fostering racial peace. In fact, the leadership of nearly every major city is in whole, or in part, Black. And, of course, the U.S. not only had a Black President for eight years, he appointed Black Attorneys General.

   So, it might be fair to ask, “who exactly is responsible for the situations that you are protesting against? And what are the remedies that you seek? Clearly, the remedy is not more Black power in municipal governments.”.

   As I inferred at the beginning, maybe the answer is to just settle down, quit stigmatizing, and treat people as individuals and not as members of a race or class.
   (I wish that I had phrased the last sentence, “…treat people as individuals and also insist that people represent themselves as individuals, and not as members of a race or class”).

8. , IMO real white supremacy got busted so bad in the 60s,

   “White supremacy” is a nonsense term in an American context, outside of some black belt counties in the South. The black population was abused in various ways. That dissipated by about 1971. It’s been neglected in various ways since, but black politicians take little interest in that and neither do gentry liberals.

9. Oldflyer — how patient and loving of you! However, I would not restrain myself to add this irony or sarcasm.

   The past fifty years to ameliorate racism has been so successful that unconscious racism, etc, had to be invented to “explain” gaps in racial differences.

   This fact is itself a critical commentary on utopian wishes and hard truths. Maybe racism, since unconsciousness or indirect or systemic hidden and even “institutionalised” claims must now be invoked, is not really so important? Or less important than other matters?

   Finally, from six or eight years ago, Glenn Reynolds had an unforgettable comment from his “instadaughter” about her taught knowledge of history upon graduation from public high school in Knoxville, Tenn: “Slavery ended yesterday, but the Cold War happened a million years ago.”

   Now, why would any “teacher” want to leave students so horrifyingly ignorant?

   I’m sure not even your granddaughter can fathom an answer to that question.

10. Oldflyer,

    Wow! That is excellent. You are grandfather of the year! What a thoughtful epistle. That ought to be published widely.

11. Some people also resent constantly being accused of white privilege by people who know nothing about their history.

    Because it’s a nonsense term. “Privilege” or “private law” – benefits conferred contrary to regular practice – is something of which well-connected people can avail themselves. People with influence aren’t very numerous. Affluent and even wealthy people generally have only modest quanta of privilege – enough for an edge in a job search, or to cadge an office position for a family member, or to land a club membership. And it’s not difficult to find examples of prominent people who came from quite ordinary backgrounds. See, for example, the CEOs of General Motors, Home Depot, AIG, Kroger, Lockheed. How it’s commonly used today is that a professional person (or pseudo-professional person) of indeterminate race berates a white person of indeterminate class (whose family likely have few chits they can call in with anyone).

12. The lockdown is a big factor in the size and scope of the protests/riots. If you lock up a bunch of young people and take their jobs while at the same time giving them generous unemployment checks it is going to lead to bad things eventually. Not all those people were Antifa a lot were just bored, empty people with no direction in their current situation.

    Example 4,307 why the lockdown was the biggest mistake in US history.

13. Martin Luther King asserted that the color of a person’s skin should not matter. He was right.

    Other than Bayard Rustin, I’m not aware of anyone in King’s entourage ca. 1963 who was a known public opponent of racial preference schemes after 1968. I’m not aware of anyone who ran parallel organization who was a notable opponent later. It wouldn’t surprise me to discover Ralph David Abernathy or James Farmer were skeptical of racial preference schemes, but I can’t say as I’ve seen it in cold print. Abernathy was not a figure of influence after 1977. Farmer landed a teaching position in 1973 for which he was arguably qualified and worked at that college until he retired 25 years later. Rustin landed a position on the research staff of the AFL-CIO in 1964 and worked there until he retired. These two published articles and gave talks from time to time, but were for the most part out of public life. (Rustin was hardly truly in it; he’d always been a behind-the-scences sort). The members of the black political class after King’s death differed in their places of employment, in their personal histories, in their skill sets, in their personalities. Differences over policy and program were in the details, if there.

14. The tweet from Obama about Dreamers I find almost amusing. As President, he had the power to give the Dreamers amnesty, just like President Reagan did for the Dreamers and a whole lot more.

    So much for hope and change. Very weak indeed.

15. Griffin —

    Agreed about the lockdown fueling the riots. In fact, just prior to the George Floyd incident, there was a witch hunt going on among my extended friends group, taking the form of dozens of people posting “I can’t believe I have $NUMBER mutual friends with $BAD_PERSON”, plus I received at least ten direct messages saying “have you seen this post by $BAD_PERSON? Why are you still FB friends with them?” (repeated almost verbatim each time).

    It seemed most likely to me that people were getting testy and volatile from too long without normal social contact. When the riots started there was a new shiny thing and the witch hunt evaporated instantly.

    (The $BAD_PERSON was alternately a guy who used to be uber-goth but red-pilled a few years ago and has been shading over into white nationalism, and another guy who is high-functioning autistic and therefore contrarian and not empathetic and was calling people out on Covid hypocrisy. Somehow that led to the laughable accusation that he was a Proud Boy. Go figure.)

16. “White supremacy” is a nonsense term in an American context, outside of some black belt counties in the South.

    Art Deco: What do you mean by nonsense term? Most people know what it means and most know it applies to the KKK, neo-nazis and other racist splinter groups.

    Like it or not, such groups and people exist. They have greatly diminished over the years. Their last hurrah was in the 1980s, when the federal government brought down the KKK and the White Patriot Party.

    Since then they have been strictly fringe. I don’t see white supremacy making a comeback. America and the South really have changed. Which was my point.

17. The Art Deco dictionary is a fantastic thing, it contains a multitude of what are thought by many to be clearly understood words and phrases but which according to Art Deco are actually statistically incorrect when not used by Art Deco. .

18. Huxley: There are approximately one thousand “white supremacists” in the United States at this time, half of which are FBI informants.

19. non servator: Your point?

    Like Art Deco you seem to be disagreeing with me by agreeing with me.

20. Oldflyer, what a masterpiece of patient, lucid explanation of your views of the situation. Too bad your sweet grand daughter cannot possibly imagine your childhood. I can, it was much like mine. And like your friends, some of mine were unable to get very far ahead of where they started. Life is not fair, even for Caucasians, unless they apply themselves and develop fiscal responsibility. It’s painful to see people you know and care about who can’t seem to make good decisions when it comes to school, jobs, money, love relationships, family, sobriety, etc. Society doesn’t require you to be a certain ethnicity to succeed……….or fail.

    Starting from an economically deprived situation is a handicap, but it can also be a spur. My childhood of genteel poverty (Yes, I was the poorest child in my class from K-12 and in college.) was always a motivator to escape from that. Thankfully, no one ever told me I couldn’t change my life for the better. That, unfortunately, is what apparently happens today. Many minority children are told that the system is racist and they can’t get ahead. The prophecy becomes self fulfilling. Yet, we see multitudes of examples of minority success in our society. Why don’t they tell their communities how they did it? Why aren’t they role models?

    Whenever I feel morose about the present situation, I look back and recall the bad old days of the1960s/70s. Those were perilous days as well. I was convinced that the nation would fall apart. In 1972 we moved to a house in the mountains of Colorado and stockpiled food, ammo, and silver bullion coins – safe from the madness of the cities and ready for the worst. Thankfully, the worst didn’t happen. In fact, the violence and lawlessness gradually subsided. Eventually, we moved back to town and life became normal again.

    History has eras of turmoil and relative tranquility. IMO, this era will also pass eventually. In times like these I always think about the advice of the Desiderata (by Max Ehrmann 1927):
    “And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”

21. Art Deco: What do you mean by nonsense term? Most people know what it means and most know it applies to the KKK, neo-nazis and other racist splinter groups.

    Actually, terminology is a political weapon in this country. I’m using it literally. You have handsome Swiss institutions in this country, and you will have White Supremacy, because that’s who lives here. The problem in the Southern United States, ca. 1925, was not that you had ‘White Supremacy’. It was that you had crappy political institutions, crappy attitudes, and chronic abuse of the black population. Some of the abuse consisted of petty spite and some was severely injurious. Take all that abuse away, you still have White Supremacy in Louisiana, and you have it because 2/3 of the residents and 3/4 of the human capital are located outside the black population.

    ‘White supremacy’ is actually code for the complaint that lower status people (that would be police officers, like us) are enforcing community standards (which roughly reflect the ordinary person’s sense of right, not a clinical psychologist’s sense) on higher status people (slum black) without the permission of gentry liberals (who fancy they assign status).

    There is not one honest word spoken by the opposition on this issue. Ever.

22. Their last hurrah was in the 1980s, when the federal government brought down the KKK and the White Patriot Party.

    I’ve never heard of the ‘White Patriots Party’. I guess I should stay more current. The membership of the 2d incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan imploded after 1924. It had a five digit membership in 1918, a seven digit membership in 1922, and a five digit membership in 1940. It formally dissolved in 1944. Two years later, a man named Green refounded it, but it fell to pieces after he died in 1949. What you had after 1949 was several dozen klanlets. About three had a multi-state organization, perhaps 7-8 at any one time a state organization, and 30 or so at any one time that consisted of an unaffiliated klavern. (The most grisly thing a klanlet’s done in the last 70 years was the Greensboro massacre in 1979; the perpetrators were an unaffiliated local klavern). The FBI offered in 1975 an estimate that the sum of membership of all klans was about 2,200. In 1983, the Anti-Defamation League offered an estimate of 8,500. Then Bill Wilkinson’s outfit, thought to be the equal in membership of David Duke’s outfit and to account for more than 1/3 of all klavern membership in the country declared bankruptcy. Their filing admitted to a membership 40% lower than the ADL had estimated. (The usual number trotted out for skinhead membership ca. 1988 was around 3,000-5,000). The $PLC around that time filed a wrongful death suit contra the United Klans of America over the kidnapping an murder of a black youth in 1981. They won the assets of the United Klans in a settlement: a quonset hut appraised at $51,000. These people are inconsequential LARPers.

23. “I read somewhere that donations to BLM are being funneled to the Biden campaign coffers…”

    Yes, the charge I’ve read is that donations to BLM go through “ActBlue”. There is some sort of shenanigans that if you don’t specify a black charity, then ActBlue can apportion the donation as it pleases. The top 8 or 10 recipients for ActBlue are white, Democrat politicians.
    Foreign donations can also come along this path.

    1) I don’t know if the charges are true
    2) I don’t know how people would be allowed to deduct for political donations
    3) I don’t know how it could be legal for contributions to be passed along to political campaigns.

    Just now, I clicked on BlackLivesMatter.com and selected Donate.
    It opened this website: https://secure.actblue.com/donate

    So, that part of the charge is true.

    A left wing fact check org says the charges are overblown. The money doesn’t “directly” go straight to the DNC, they say.
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donations-to-black-lives-matter-group-don-e2-80-99t-go-to-dnc/ar-BB15pBtu

24. I am gong to post this on several threads here. I apologize in advance, and I hope this does not upset our gracious, vivacious and perspicacious hostess, Neo. I’m posting it on multiple threads in hopes it gets seen by many, but if you want to comment on the topic, please do so on the “Musical Interlude” post, so we can keep our thoughts in one place.

    Yesterday (two days ago?) in one of the threads about our current political situation one of you (MBunge?) made a statement that cutting off funding to companies working to eliminate our rights is critical to fighting this scourge. I wholeheartedly agree, and there was some continued discussion in the comments on how to coordinate the effort.

    Since it’s such an obvious and good idea (no offense to MBunge{?}, but I’ve had the thought myself, many times, as I’m certain we all have), I was fairly certain several organizations must already be doing this on the web. With a bit of research today I found this site, https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=C2200

    This seems to be a very good start. The link goes to their page on Cable & Satellite TV Production, but you’ll notice the search boxes in the right margin. Choose a drop down there and hit the magnifying glass and research any industry you prefer.

    Does anyone know anything about this organization, and whether they are fair? Their mission statement on their “About” page sounds good, and the data I looked at seems to be in-line with what I’ve seen in other publications. If this is a reliable resource, let’s spread the word and start taking action.

    Higgelty, piggelty,
    Edward M. Kennedy,
    Quite unaccountably drove in a stream.
    Please of amnesia,
    Incomprehensible!
    Possible shattered political dreams.

25. Cancelled? Join the club. It could be worse, he could have been “robbed” (i.e. “planned”).

26. There are many people in deep blue states and institutions who don’t agree with the hysteria that is gripping the land. The cancel culture has to be resisted because it’s keeping voices within these deep blue environs from being heard.

    Well, here’s the voice of one Cal Berkeley prof who is speaking out anonymously. Makes you realize that the deep blue institutions are not necessarily monolithic.

    “I hope you appreciate the frustration behind this message. I do not support BLM

    I do not support the Democrat grievance agenda and the Party’s uncontested capture of our department. I do not support the Party co-opting my race, as Biden recently did in his disturbing interview, claiming that voting Democrat and being black are isomorphic.

    I condemn the manner of George Floyd’s death and join you in calling for greater police accountability and police reform. However, I will not pretend that George Floyd was anything other than a violent misogynist, a brutal man who met a predictably brutal end.”

    It’s long, but well worth the read.
    https://threader.app/thread/1271219776606687233

27. “Why don’t they tell their communities how they did it? Why aren’t they role models?” – J J

    Because the ones who do speak out and counsel their compatriots to follow their example are derided as Uncle Toms (ironically, the literary character whose story persuaded many northern whites to join the abolitionist cause), vilified as Oreos, and literally demonized as tools of the White Oppressors.

    Kind of puts a damper on their personal outreach.

28. The Federalist is compiling a list of people thrown off the sled to the wolves.
    So far they list 15 known cases.

    https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/11/heres-a-growing-list-of-people-who-lost-their-jobs-to-racial-comments-or-lack-thereof/
    “Whether fired, forced into resignation or on leave, here’s a list of the high-profile people who won’t be returning to their jobs because of either something they said or something they didn’t say.”

    For those who are getting fired for relatively mild mis-speaking (other than Nigel Farage, who was characteristically blunt and unapologetic), then why not go all out and take a stand, a la Jordan Peterson, instead of apologizing.
    For those still hoping not to get fired (such as the anonymous UCB professor whose letter was linked by JJ) — how long do they think that they will remain anonymous?

    Cue the frequently quoted Solzhenitzyn paragraph — if we had only known in the beginning how many of us there were.

    Maybe we need “refugee camps” in the Red domains for the employment of people fired in the Blue ones (can’t really say Red and Blue states, because of the urban enclaves of PC supremacy).

29. A literary allusion for perilous times.

    https://babylonbee.com/news/uh-oh-war-breaks-out-in-chaz-over-who-gets-to-hold-the-conch-shell

    And keeping up with the times.
    https://babylonbee.com/news/black-sabbath-changes-name-to-person-of-color-sabbath

30. Firing someone for exercising their free speech rights has got to be illegal. How about high powered conservative law firms that will take on cases of improper firing for exercising free speech? The progs use lawfare to get their way. Why not do the same?

    We need some conservative billionaires to start conservative media and fund more colleges like Hillsdale College and Liberty University. We need to construct a competing cultural presence, – entertainment, sports, retail, education, etc. – not just a competing political presence. The conservative message should be front and center in every corner of the culture. Today it is confined to politics, Fox News, conservative talk radio, and conservative blogs. Movies, comic books, and TV shows (Tim Allen’s “Last Man Standing” is an example.) with conservative messages would be a good place to start.

    I’ve got a lot of ideas, but no money to put them into action.

31. “Firing someone for exercising their free speech rights has got to be illegal.”

    My apolitical wife gives me a quite modest budget for political contributions. After some consideration, I’m tending to donate to orgs like EIP (Election Integrity Project) and Harmeet Singh’s group (forget the name) which sued CA for giving illegals free stuff from taxpayer money due to Covid depressing the economy.
    I’m picking them instead of GOP candidates, although I will donate to Trump himself.

    I’m thinking that Judicial Watch could be an appropriate group as well.

    I would love to depend on “conservative billionaires” but I’m thinking we’re going to need to do the heavy lifting ourselves.
    It’s a bit shocking to see various entities that have been savagely attacked by the Left caving to them instead of the people who backed them in times of trouble.
    Examples: former Pres Bush.
    WalMart. Chick-Fil-A’s charity donation group. NFL which used to be a mainstream pro-American sport. Nascar which is now dubbed “NasKaren” due to banning confederate flags and gun advertising.

    On another blog, someone made an insightful comment that this is not a pre-Civil War. This is ethnic cleansing.

32. Nascar which is now dubbed “NasKaren” due to banning confederate flags and gun advertising.

    Another indication that people in gatekeeper positions don’t like their customers and want to replace them with new and improved customers.

33. JimNorCal, I donate what I can to Judicial Watch and Project Veritas. They both do good work but get scant publicity – except on Fox. I also give what I can to Devin Nunes, a proven fighter for conservative causes. There’s no Republican in Washington state that I want to send money to. They’re all a lost cause.

34. Thanks, J.J.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>