Medary.com

Well? All you "blacks can't be racists because blacks don't have power" people. Guess what? People with enhanced skin melanin levels are in positions of power, now. And guess what? Turns out that people with high melanin skin content are just as prone to be bigoted--RACIST--as anybody else.

Turns out that the "racism is power" bullshit was just that--bullshit, intended to obfuscate and confuse the issue, intended to make "whitey" guilty, because everybody knew that the "crackers" would always be the ones with the power.

Oops. A bunch of white folk up and voted for the black man, didn't they?

Quite a few of them did it because they thought that then--then--they might shed just a bit of that horrible guilt that's been laid on them for what happened a century and a half ago, if not longer. They did it because they were supposed to. It was a kind of reparation. An offering of peace between the races.

Peace offering not accepted, apparently, at least by some.

Now we know. Now we know that if you're walking around judging people by nothing but their skin color, then you are a racist. Regardless of what color skin you happen to have, you are a racist.

Period.

"Power" ain't got nothing to do with it. It's all about simple, tribalist bigotry--"us" versus "them," on the most basic level. It's about getting some for "us," and taking it from "them."

Isn't it, Ms. Sherrod?

The Aristocracy Of The Left -- They want nothing more or less than to re-establish a kind of feudalism--with them as the lords and masters, and you and me as the peasants. That's the game. That's why they're so upset at the Tea Parties. They see it as simply a revolt of the peasants. At some point, they will put it down--probably with the traditional tactics used throughout history with unruly serfs and peasants--all the while loudly claiming that it's all the peasant's fault, and we had it coming, for daring to challenge our "betters." Unless, that is, the peasants can manage to "storm the castle" via the ballot box in the next couple of national elections. If not, it will be a future of either resignation to feudalism, or revolution. Seems to me like voting the bums out is by far the preferable strategy and outcome for everybody concerned--even for the neo-feudalists themselves, who in that scenario will not be at any risk of being lined up against a wall should they actually provoke a popular revolution which and succeeds in overthrowing them in the USA (which is, as always, the "last hope of Man on Earth.")

Everybody's got skin in this game. It's all a matter of understanding what the game actually is.

TARP audit claims Obama admin destroyed “tens of thousands” of jobs in dealer closures -- But, see, this is a good thing, because all of those car dealership employees were probably rich Republican fat-cats who had it coming for being racists, anyway . . .

One of the most irritating of Obama's rhetorical traits is the straw man. The latest one: on the top-of-the-hour radio news, he was talking about extending unemployment benefits, and comparing that (unfavorably) to extending tax cuts "to the richest."

Well, first of all, let's talk about who all that money belongs to in the first place: taxpayers. Now, because of how the federal tax system is set up, most payers of federal taxes are "rich." Or at the very least, they are not the poor.

The poor do not pay federal income taxes.

Now, what Obama wants is to take money from the rich and give it to the unemployed. This is not charity. It is not a virtue to be "charitable" with other people's money. This is--pure and simple--Marxist-style redistribution of wealth. There is no virtue attached to this act. This is plain, blatant, naked political pandering.

If Obama was really serious about extending unemployment benefits, he would ask Congress to end a government program--close some government agency--decide between competing interests. You know, actually make the "hard choices" that all of those Washington politicians claim that they make all the time when all they're actually doing is deciding to take more money from the people who earned it, and give it to people who didn't.

Put your money where your mouth is, Obama. Propose to close some government agency, in order to fund the more-important government work of extending unemployment benefits.

Or, IS EXTENDING UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS NOT AS IMPORTANT AS ANYTHING ELSE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DOES right now? Because that is exactly, precisely what Obama is saying. If you're one of those current unemployed whose benefits have or are about to run out, how do you NOW feel about Obama's naked political pandering, instead of his actually making tough decisions on your behalf?

This one collects a lot of threads flying around the past couple of days and weaves them into . . . well, I don't exactly know. Probably that I don't trust Obama and the Democrats in Washington (or most of the Republicans there, for that matter) half as far as I could throw them.

I've thought for some time that the liberty community has been marginalized from the various avenues and expressions of political power, to the extent that the tactics that they--we--must apply have a great similarity to those of an insurgency--in this case, a political (no, not yet a military) insurgency against totalitarian, neo-feudalist "progressivism." In 2010, the "progressive" neo-feudalists hold all of the traditional avenues of communications and levers of power. The goal of the insurgency against the neo-feudalists is nothingn less than insure that they do not succeed in (re-)creating their favored, class-stratified society of lords and peasants. The tactic is--should be--to re-take as many of those traditional avenues of communications and levers of power--and to build alternatives to those avenues and levers--so that the neo-feudalists do not succeed. Richard Fernandez goes down a similar intellectual road: Pawn to King Four, Pawn to King Four.

But a secure base does not have to be defined by geography. It can be built on human terrain and augmented, subject to some constraints, as a meme in cyberspace. Therefore a conservative strategist who is concerned that Charles Krauthammer’s dire prognosis will happen cannot go far wrong building up a widespread, grassroots organization with extensions into the online world. This is separate and distinct from building up the ordinary party machinery. In that way even if the traditional political forms of conservatism are scattered, defeated or machined out of existence in 2010 and 2012 there may survive a core of opposition that can organize a series of coalitions against the men who would be permanent leaders. But more importantly it will remove the temptation to go for the whole hog. By strengthening the grassroots on terms not bound to the party affiliation but independent of the leftist infrastructure, conservatism can create a defense in depth. This has a stabilizing effect. The further complete and total victory is placed from the grasp of even the most ambitious activists of the Democratic Party the less likely they are to persuade their more moderate colleagues to roll the dice. And that’s good. Because all realistic worry about one side completely dominating the other can be effectively dismissed to the probable benefit of everyone. Politics was never meant to be winner-take-all.

Now, it's my fervent hope that the political insurgency stays 100% completely peaceful--fought through votes, words, and persuasion. But, honestly, I don't think that decision is in entirely the hands of liberty-community of insurgents--I think it's in the hands of the neo-feudalist "progressives" in power, who intend to just keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing, and pushing in full knowledge that at some point, somebody, somewhere, will push back. That will then give them an excuse to really crack down--on people like me who want everybody in this country to pursue their dreams to the best of their abilities without government or anybody else really getting in the way any more than is absolutely necessary. In these days, thoughts like mine qualify as dangerous, fringe radicalism, I'm afraid. And, I'm not the only one who's starting to think rather dark thoughts, actually. See America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution -- which begins thus:

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors' "toxic assets" was the only alternative to the U.S. economy's "systemic collapse." In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets' nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.

When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term "political class" came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public's understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the "ruling class." And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.

Essential reading for anyone who cares about what happens to this country, what happens to this world, or what happens to themselves.

The main, pre-eminent reason why I'm registered Republican is not that I think Republicans are wonderful and amazing--I don't, and they're not. But I think they're somewhat better than Democrats, who are a toxic and dangerous combination of utterly clueless about economics and utterly arrogant about being Right About Everything All Of The Time despite overwhelming objective evidence in the real world to the contrary. When Democrat policies fail, it is inevitably because We Have Not Tried Hard Enough. But as Einstein said, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is a good definition of insanity. The Republicans are the Stupid Party. The Democrats are the Insane Party.

I think the "progressives" (aka the "ruling class" aka the "neo-feudalists") that dominate the Democratic Party but are also entrenched as the "moderate" wing of the Republican Party, are courting a popular rebellion right now. An actual, real, live, bullets-flying-in-the-air and angry crowds throwing Molotov cocktails at riot police kind of popular rebellion. And they have absolutely no clue how close they are to it, right now. There are an awful lot of people all over this country who have Just About Had Enough of the "ruling class." If that "ruling class" doesn't pull their collective heads out of their collective asses, then the people will at some point do it for them. The former will be much the preferable road to go down--for everyone. I am not advocating this--far from it--in fact the very thought that it could get this bad scares the hell out of me.

An armed revolt is never, never, NEVER the first, second, third, fourth, or even fifth option to bring a "ruling class" into alignment with the larger population. But that larger population is starting to find its options being limited by that "ruling class." This is an exceptionally stupid thing for the "ruling class" to do, but that's what they're hell-bent on doing right now. The people of this country are much, much angrier than the "ruling class" seems to want to realize. That situation is extremely unstable and untenable. It will change. The change will begin--peacefully--this November, when the "ruling class" begins to be expunged from Congress.

One of my fears is that the "ruling class," in an attempt to hold onto power and further disenfranchise the greater population, will choose to affect the November elections with massive vote fraud and voter intimidation. If that should happen--if that sort of thing should even be widely suspected by the people, then we will have turned the corner into an even more dangerous phase, and it will truly be time to begin to batten down the hatches for what could be a very, very ugly few years in this country. I do not predict. I do not advocate. I'm just afraid of the continuing, persistent stupidity of the "ruling class."

Related: What To Do?
You Say You Want A Revolution?

But let's say that they want to try something just a little more subtle than the baton-wielding-thug approach to stealing the election. What about some kind of October Surprise? Is something really scary coming in October? -- I'm inclined to believe that something quite nasty, financially, might very well happen in October. There is something of a pattern--a previous history--which is a bit ominous . . . the article itself is a bit rocket-sciencey to me, but the implication that October might not be a lot of fun for investors is one that I'm quite receptive to . . . one of the questions that suspicious and cynical people like me insist on asking is: will whatever happens happen in spite of or because of this current government's policies? Are they planning on some kind of October economic disruption? Or is even bigger game than that afoot?

Why Obama Just Might Fight Iran -- Michael Totten, a subtle and astute observer of things Middle Eastern, weighs in . . .

Nuking Westphalia: Obama’s Deep Convictions Point to War With Iran -- Which brings to my mind this dark, wild, conspiracy-theory thought: Is a war with Iran this year's October Surprise to ensure Democrat (or at least, "progressive") control of Congress? Would you put it past Obama and "never let a crisis go to waste" Rahm Emmanuel? Really? Really-really? Governments in trouble throughout history have often turned to external enemies to suppress internal dissent. And what country wears a black hat (or turban?) for Americans--those common Americans who are coming to despise Obama and everything he stands for--more than the mullahs of Iran?

Final thought: In a time of declared war, don't Presidents assume additional "emergency" powers? Do you really think that Obama wouldn't jump at the chance to seize additional power under pretext of "saving the world from a nuclear Iran."

Yeah, I do think he, and the Democrats, could be that cynically power-mad.

Serious Human Beings -- Doctor Zero writes:

We are about to conduct an election about the very philosophy of our government. It is our last chance to avoid the Great Crash which Obama has brought to our doorsteps… but which would have lurked twenty or thirty years in the future even without him. The Obama presidency has begun a fundamental transformation of the relationship between Americans and their government. The groundwork for this transformation was laid over many years, by politicians from both parties. Government bloat has accumulated for decades. The State isn’t really changing all that much under Barack Obama. It’s working to change us.

Without really thinking about it very much, the American people have basically repealed the entire Constitution--at least, they continue to elect both Democrats and Republicans who continually pass laws, enforce those laws, and judge those laws with little or no regard to the actual, easily understood (to a NORMAL person) text of the Constitution. Some people have decided that this is, perhaps, not such a good idea any more. Those people are called, collectively, The Tea Party.

For the NAACP and their allies and apologists: Note the total lack of any kind of racial statement or implication in the above statement. "A Nation of Laws, Not Of Men" mean that the laws--starting with the Constitution, are actually understood and rigorously, aggressively enforced on EVERYBODY.

The Next Great Wave -- Featuring this, which brings into sharp focus the fact that the "progressive" agenda is now, in the 21st Century, actually quite backward-looking. You might almost say . . . "conservative" . . .

The Progressive ideology much of the western world has labored under for a century or so is a product of the industrial revolution. It will die and be replaced by something else as the technological revolution sweeps all before it. Political wonks live in the sort of bubble where they give primacy to politics over everything else, little understanding that politics grow from more basic factors, and those factors are currently being rearranged, rebuilt, newly created or destroyed by forces far more powerful than politics or ideology. Even the oldest ideology of all - religion - sways and teeters in the face of the oncoming storms.

The fact is, if you hold "progressive" political views, you're not anywhere near the cutting edge of political thought. In fact, what you believe is largely a return--not a return to the Progressive days of the late 19th and early 20th century, the days of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, but a return to a kind of feudalism last ascendent in European culture after the fall of Rome. Let's call it neo-feudalism. Consider the society of the early European Middle Ages, where those few who, by wisdom and intellect are chosen as the Wise (that would be them) lead the many, the poor, the ignorant. That would be you. The last time around, the few, wise people represented the Catholic Church. Now, they represent "progressive, compassionate policies." But in operation, there is very little difference. The rulers, and the ruled. It is this system against which the American Revolution was a decisive--if momentary--defeat, and ever since, the rulers have been seeking another path to unlimited power. They think they've found it. Are they right?

If you really want a better life for the poor, but are voting for Democrats, you are on the wrong side. Period.

The truth on domestic violence just isn’t sexy enough -- Including this gem of a final paragraph, which could well apply to most "issues of the day" raised by Old Media:

Why do these myths persist? Because they make great copy and because there is something mesmerizing about a statistic that freezes journalistic brains, especially when the statistics bolster common cultural biases or trends. And one especially pejorative but persisting cultural trend is the impunity with which all men can be demonized. The moral of these hoaxes is to view statistics that paint a negative picture of unusually high numbers of men with deep suspicion.

Emphasis mine. What you hear from the Old Media is, more often than not, a carefully selected subset of what happened, presented in an astonishingly slanted, biased way to favor one set of policy prescriptions (generally "progressive") and breathlessly presented with a desperate "the sky is falling!" breathlessness. (Sometimes it's not even necessary for something to happen--it's enough for somebody, somewhere to say that something happened--like for instance Congressmen being verbally abused or intentionally spit on, on the Capitol Steps) . . .

The Charge of Racism: It’s Time to Bury the Divisive Politics of the Past -- This was part of what "Hope and Change" was all about, wasn't it? Wasn't it?

I am saddened by the NAACP’s claim that patriotic Americans who stand up for the United States of America’s Constitutional rights are somehow “racists.” The charge that Tea Party Americans judge people by the color of their skin is false, appalling, and is a regressive and diversionary tactic to change the subject at hand.

President Reagan called America’s past racism “a legacy of evil” against which we have seen the long struggle of minority citizens for equal rights. He condemned any sort of racism, as all good and decent people do today. He also called it a “point of pride for all Americans” that as a nation, we have successfully struggled to overcome this evil. Reagan rightly declared that “there is no room for racism, anti-Semitism, or other forms of ethnic and racial hatred in this country,” and he warned that we must never go back to the racism of our past.
. . .
On this subject, I can recommend the statement issued by a man I was proud to endorse, Tim Scott, the GOP candidate from South Carolina’s First Congressional District. Tim, poised to become the first African-American Republican Congressman from the former Confederacy since Reconstruction, is himself a sign of a hopeful, truly post-racial future for our country. It gives added meaning to his warning that “the NAACP is making a grave mistake in stereotyping a diverse group of Americans who care deeply about their country and who contribute their time, energy and resources to make a difference.”

The only purpose of such an unfair accusation of racism is to dissuade good Americans from joining the Tea Party movement or listening to the common sense message of Tea Party Americans who simply want government to abide by our Constitution, live within its means, and not borrow and spend away our children’s futures. Red and yellow, black and white, this message is precious in all our sights. All decent Americans abhor racism. No one wants to be associated with any organization that is in any way racist in sentiment or origin. I certainly don’t want to be. Thankfully, the Tea Party movement is not racist or motivated by racism. It is motivated by love of country and all that is good and honest about our proud and diverse nation.

Like President Reagan, Tea Party Americans believe that “the glory of this land has been its capacity for transcending the moral evils of our past.” Isn’t it time we put aside the divisive politics of the past once and for all and celebrate the fact that neither race nor gender is any longer a barrier to achieving success in America – even in achieving the highest office in the land?

Why is it that Sarah Palin consistently--consistently makes more sense, and sounds more unifying and--dare I say--Presidential--than the current occupant of that office, who seems to be daily shrinking in stature as the cold, implacable force of reality continues to impose itself on his lofty dreams of Hope and Change?

There are those on the right who are--with some justification--outraged by the broad-brush dismissal of the Tea Party movement of the NAACP as "racist." (And no, don't try to quibble that the NAACP was accusing "some elements" of racism. This was intended to smear the entire pro-liberty, small-government movement, and in many circles it has done so.)

I can think of few strategies that would be more effective in creating actual racism among white Americans than falsely accusing them of racism. How would you feel if, in some public meeting, someone in the corner stood up and accused you of something both false and vile--and many in the room actually believed the accusation? A natural human reaction is anger--anger at the person accusing you. From there, it is a short step from being angry at an individual to being angry at the group to which the individual belongs. The urge to form tribal groups is very strong in human beings, and this tribal urge is the source of so much hatred, envy, anger, tragedy and misery in the world. And no person--no one-- on this Earth, regardless of skin melanin content or political views, is immune to this tribal urge.

I am outraged by what the NAACP has done. But after the first flush of anger, my sentiment after even a moment's consideration changed to sorrow--which I posted yesterday. I deeply regret that there are so many in the black communities of this country who believe--because that's what they're told, over and over and over and over again--that a major reason they can't get ahead in life is an overwhelming, pervasive racism within the white communities of this country.

I have lived in several of those majority-white communities. I know some level of racism exists, but it is not rampant, and it is generally rather vigorously opposed--by other whites in the community when it occurs. But racism exists in every community. The attempts by minorities to place a veneer of "power-wielding" over the simple concept of racism demeans and diminishes the serious and ultimately undesirable, if not self-destructive nature of the tribal impulse.

Over the past forty years, race has become a marginal issue--or not an issue at all--for most whites. It is difficult (given the subculture in which they live) for blacks to believe, but most white people go through their entire day without once giving a second thought to the race of the people they deal with--blacks, Asians, whatever. The main reason race in this country remains as big an issue as it is, is there is a prominent and vocal segment of the minority black community who along with their other leftist allies and enablers, insist on ripping open the old wounds--loudly claiming all the while that they're doing it to speed the healing process between the races.

The reason why it is impossible to hold a serious conversation with blacks about the problems of tribalism (Or, according to Attorney General Holder, why we are a "Nation of Cowards") is exactly, precisely, because many blacks insist that it is impossible for a black person to be racist--and some of those same people insist that it is impossible for a white person to not be racist.

This of course is mere sophistry. (That's a word that means "bullshit" but sounds a lot more erudite and polite.) And it is dangerous, perilous sophistry for a minority to engage in, because it presumes that the target population will react with equanimity, calm, and grace to the continued slanders and insinuations--if not actively agree with them, bow their collective heads, and vow to be better.

This is a hand that has now been quite overplayed. Where the accusation of "racist" does not evoke a positive "giggle factor" among those that blacks and their leftist allies accuse, it simply makes people angry. The word "racist" has simply become as unproductive in discussion of racial issues as the word "nigger" has become--and for many of the same reasons. It is no longer a descriptive term. It is merely an epithet.

If the NAACP, the President, other prominent black individuals and organizations, and their leftist allies persist in these reckless characterizations of widespread, rampant white racism in the political right, they will re-ignite the tribal instinct of white Americans that has--to a great extent--been suppressed since the early 1960's.

Do they really, really want to go there? I don't. I want a world where we have better things to do than worry about how much melanin people have in their skin.

I was a young boy when Martin Luther King gave his speech where he implored people to judge others by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. I listened, and I thought that was a good idea. I didn't care how much melanin he had in his skin, I cared about the quality of ideas in his head.

It seems that all too many leftists and blacks have decided that skin color should be more important than character.

Only the most naive person would dare to say that racism does not exist, and only a fool would say that racism is a good thing. Racism is a terrible waste of people's time--people's energy--people's lives. We have better things to do than to engage in racism, and we have better things to do than accuse people (if not directly, than by association) of racism.

Moving forward on this issue requires a general agreement on several points:
1: Anyone can succumb to tribal prejudice--call it "racism" if you want, but we all know what it is, and there is no amount of melanin in your skin which can make you immune to it;
2: It's a bad thing to judge people merely by their appearance;
3: It will be a better world if we judge people by what they do, not what they look like.

There. That wasn't hard, was it?

UPDATE: Edited for clarity and coherence.

I note, with more sadness than anger, the myopic resolution of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People at their national convention just down the road in Kansas City, tagging the Tea Party movement with the once-dreaded RAAAAACIST! label.

This is what happens when you actually uncritically believe what people tell you, just because what you've been told feeds your prejudices, fits with your own preconceptions, and bolsters your own self-image and sense of entitlement and righteousness, without regard to the actual truth of what you have been told, and without regard to whether or not that self-image and those senses are true or warranted.

I feel sorry for those in the NAACP who voted for this.

Continuing to foment racial hatred and class envy is not a path to civic peace, prosperity, and order. Yet through hateful and divisive actions such as this, it is the path that the NAACP continues to walk.

The people whom the NAACP purport to represent would be far, far better off--both now and into the future--to join with the Tea Party movement of individual freedom, liberty, and responsibility under a government of limited and enumerated powers.

Which makes me wonder what the leaders of the NAACP really want. Of course, I suspect I already know that answer. Which makes me even more sad--sad for their victims, who they have convinced are their beneficiaries.

Why, after each big government social program, does the lot of the urban black population always seem to be somehow just a little bit worse than it was before? Why don't those who supposedly benefit from these programs begin to ask that question?

UPDATE: It comes to my attention that the current president of the NAACP is a gentleman with the name of Jealous.

You can't make this stuff up.

Seen at NRO:



There is so much about this world that "progressives" simply don't understand. It actually does make me sad that they so single-mindedly seek such salvation in political power. I'm not smart enough (believe it or not!) to know where salvation comes from, or even if it's possible, but I do know from studying humanity's painful, tragic history that salvation has not, will not, can not come from government power.

It's something that each person must somehow find for themselves.