I was googling around for something the other day and ran across this provocatively titled blog post from a dozen years ago. Being unfamiliar with the blogger, I was expecting it to be a white nationalist/supremacist thing. Reading it, I could see that it was entirely fictitious, so I then thought it was some sort of gag. I read the rest and there was no payoff. I went to the front of the blog and saw that it is still an active site run by a guy who believes he is famous. Maybe he is famous, but I’ve never heard of him.
Anyway, the blog post in question was complete nonsense. It’s the sort of thing that liberal nutters imagine happens all the time when they are not around to see it, but it never happens. No black person would tolerate such a thing as described. No black person would have tolerated it fifty years ago, much less in 2005 when the post was written. It sure as hell would never happen in New York City. But, the demand for racial injustice vastly outstrips supply so they invent these tales to make up the difference.
One reason for this is the Left has always defined itself as standing between an imaginary bogeyman and some imaginary victim group. It’s why calling them “socialists” is a category error. The American Left’s attraction to socialist economics was always in the context of the struggle mythology at the heart of their thing. When the most profitable victims to defend were working class ethnics with actual jobs making stuff, defending them from the privations of capitalism fit the psyche of the Progressive Borg.
Defending the working class lost its value a long time ago which is why you never hear the Left do it these days. They still use the phrase “working families” but everyone knows that means non-working families. It’s single women on welfare with children from an array of strange men. Otherwise, economics no longer plays a role in Progressive ideology, other than as a defense of the globalist billionaires who bankroll the American Left. The working man is now an enemy of the faith and treated as such.
Race, however, has always been a reliable avenue to create the preferred narratives because blacks are easy to paint as noble victims in the glorious battle against the forces of evil. The people opposed to identity politics are almost always white men, the bad whites. They are more often than not living out in the suburbs, which Progressives imagine as being hotbeds of Klu Klux Klan activity and the home of the Nazi Party. Of course, blacks have lagged behind everyone else in every measure so they are ready and willing to sign onto the role as victim.
The trouble is the calendar. That post was a dozen years ago. Up until a decade ago, the skins game worked flawlessly for the Left because no one bothered to challenge them. In fact, it had become custom to leave the issue of race to Progressives. They got to define the morality and the required public policies to fit the moral framework. But then Barak Obama got himself elected and then re-elected. He also accomplished very little in his time in office. It’s hard to argue that America is a racist country when a black guy gets to be in charge, despite not being very good at anything.
What everyone has noticed over the last decade is that it is no longer 1968 and black people are no longer the victims of white racism. In fact, if you are black and have anything on the ball, being black is an advantage. The demand for competent black people at colleges and corporations vastly outstrips supply so the competition is fierce and prices have soared. This has been true for a long time with Obama being an obvious example. If you examine Obama’s college career, it can only be explained this way.
Most Americans seem to have figured this out. The cries of racism over Trump and the alt-right are falling on deaf ears. That’s why the Left is screaming even louder, causing a fuss and demanding our attention as they throw public tantrums. It’s not really about race or the condition of black America. It’s about the Messiah Complex that has always been at the root of the American Left. They are here to save society from sin. If there is no one that needs saving then there is no need for the Left. The whole thing comes unraveled.
Then there is the problem of science. The mounting evidence from genetics, the cognitive sciences and population statistics undermines the central claim of the Left with regards to race. They argue that racism is immoral because race is a fiction. If race is a biological fact then racism could also be a biological fact. Birds fly, fish swim and humans self-segregate along racial, linguistic and ethnic lines. That’s what you see going on in this article about the biology of race. How can we maintain anti-racism when race is real?
This brings up a related dilemma for Progressives. The Europeans Left embraced “scientific socialism” as its source of legitimacy in order to avoid calling itself a civic religion, as well as to distinguish itself from Christianity. The American Left was slow to do this, but eventually embraced the idea in the last fifty years. Science has replaced God in their rhetoric as the authority from which they get their legitimacy. After all, only primitives with their boomsticks and sky gods reject science.
As science undermines the central claims of the Left and relegates blank slate ideology to the same dustbin as phrenology and astrology, something else will have to provide legitimacy for the Left. If being mean to homosexuals is wrong because gays are born that way, how can it be wrong for black guys not to want to live neat Koreans. After all, science says people naturally self-segregate along racial lines. Why is one form of nature wrong and the other cerebrated?
Perhaps the Left will once again turn to the heavens as their source of inspiration. The fact that the mainline Christian churches are siding with the open borders people opens the door for all of those secular Progressives to rediscover the social gospel. How they incorporate Jews and Muslims is a mystery, but to the believer, all things are possible. If saving the struggle narrative means rewriting the Bible, then they will rewrite the Bible, just as they have rewritten history. If Lady Liberty can wear a hijab to defend open borders, the Left can go to church in order to nail themselves to the cross.
“What everyone has noticed over the last decade is that it is no longer 1968 and black people are no longer the victims of white racism.” This type of reasoning is flawed from the outset. The term “racism” is a lie to allow some douchebag the means to claim “virtue”. What is racism? Are there no differences between the races? Of course there are! Negroes can run, jump, and make noise much better than Whites. Or anyone else for that matter. Race is not a social construct. It is a biological fact. Somehow the rights of a productive citizenry took… Read more »
I must be a very superficial, non-deep-thinking person. As far as I can tell, lefties don’t give a fuck about anybody or anything or any ethnic / racial / gender / sexual orientation group. They are all about attaining absolute power and will latch onto, or more likely invent , “causes” to serve as vehicles to attain absolute power. I would look at the socialists “struggle mythology” as just another excuse, a scam , to jump onto to help attain absolute power. I say this because when you look at those unfortunate nations that have/had attained, or nearly so ,… Read more »
You forgot President in your litany.
I was sitting in church yesterday and they announced some program we were welcome to sign up for. I forget the exact wording – something to the effect of deprogramming all us racist whities to improve race relations. I leaned over and commented to my wife that race relations would probably improve most dramatically if we just stopped talking about them all the time.
I’m too lazy to find another church right now. When (not if) we escape New Jersey, I highly doubt the church we attend in the new place will be Presbyterian.
I’ve always thought that race relations would normalize if talking about race became a taboo. That could only work if you maintained a hard prohibition against state enforced discrimination and reinstated freedom of association. People would then be free to sort things on their own and be free from government meddling one way or the other.
But, I’ll never live to see it.
What would the Left do all day if the categorizing of people by race, gender, age, and weight were not done any more?
Z-man, don’t be do pessimistic. Freedom of association will ultimately prevail over coerced Caucasian cocooning with coons.
I guess I’m too old and played the game for too long…. I just don’t give a f@ck anymore, and like it better when we accept the differences and likenesses we all share ….AND bust each other’s balls about the well known stereotypical characteristics. It’s so much healthier . I work a union job that is composed of polocks, micks, chinks, blacks, homos, and a few women, etc…. Any faux pas, is fair game for belittlement ….and hence you’d better have, or grow, a thick skin ….. but an outsiders attack on one is an attack on all …. there… Read more »
It’s both a social taboo and enforced by law in Singapore, it works very well for them, given the population makeup of Chinese, Indian and Malay, mostly living together in high rise apartment blocks.
Presbyterians have lost their collective minds. Their church in my home town has been steadily losing membership. And deservedly so.
One of my sons went to a Presbyterian Church his first year in college. And boy did it live up to it’s name. Presbyter means old. He said he was the only young person there. But the congregation had this huge fixation with going along with the panoply of liberal dogma as if it would keep them young or something.
Hep cats and flappers! Put that in yer pipe and smoke it, by golly!
Presbys have to get in line behind the “Piskies” (Episcopalians) in the race to see which one ends up dead first. I give these two historic denominations about 20 years, so I’ll be 90, and hope for a pretty funeral venue. Our kids, raised being dragged to Sunday schools and forced to sit through years of not-very exciting Sunday services, don’t even bother signing up as members of these pretty little Gothic chapels anymore. They get the kids baptized and then . . . 20 years later someone needs a nice wedding venue. Sigh. My money’s on the Church of… Read more »
For completeness…there are 4 main Presbyterian denominations in the US. Most of these comments refer to PCUSA, the mainline leftist denomination most in the news for their Paly-love, Gay-love, Gaia-love, etc.. and as a result rapidly losing membership (in my Mom’s Presbytery here in the Soviet, Korean churches now outnumber Anglo churches). The others (from left to right) are Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Presbyterian Church in America, and Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Orthodox seem pretty safe (http://www.opc.org/historian.html).
Is it a PC(USA) church or one of the offshoots? Presbyterianism is always moving leftward.
It stands to reason that the excesses of the modern left will provoke and create its opposite.
There is a post over on Ace of Spades that defines the core ideology of the alt-right to be realism, which contrasts greatly with modern leftism and also distinguishes it from conservatism and classical liberalism. Cold, hard, pragmatic realism. Maybe even opportunistic realism.
Nothing will change until people realize that life is to be lived, rather than being a series of problems to be solved. Our house cat likes to attack my wife’s ankles. I think there is simply a need there to attack something, and there isn’t much else for a house cat to attack. Similarly, people seem to have a need to “solve” things and “make things better”. When chess and sudoku puzzles fail to satisfy, and actually rubbing shoulders with the poor and dispossessed in order to help them, without compensation or recognition in return doesn’t do it, then the… Read more »
On your house cat, a simple solution:
Tell your wife to play “kick the cat” good and hard. It’ll stop that shit pretty quickly.
The same should be done to Leftists, by any means necessary, legal, or otherwise.
You never have enough ammo.
Fuel Filter, let me put it this way, the cat tried that once on me, and we came to a quick “understanding”. It’s funny when she sees the ankle and goes in for the kill, then realizes it’s me–“abort-abort!”
Her liberal relatives have learned, too, they get back whatever they say twice over and immediately. Then, like a cat, I pretend it never happened once it is over. They can’t deal with me, and I like it that way.
If white racism was so terrible for blacks until 1960s, why is it that blacks are objectively worse off today than they were fifty years ago? The idea that whitey just gets more and more racist as times goes along belies the idea that the civil rights movement was a good thing. The leftist race narrative is so convoluted and self-contradictory that if left unchecked, it will inevitably lead to violence and race war. (((Cui bono)))?
Never underestimate the appeal of demanding something for nothing at the micro level, especially if others are doing it and it is “culturally approved”.
“Cui bono” indeed. Who benefits? Who, behind the scenes, is orchestrating this stuff? It seems to have something to do with the color purple. The media people sure love their purple neckties lately.
Dutch, here is you might an observation observation you would appreciate I think, by Dr. Jerry Pournelle, he penned it around 1984 sometime. It is from his early There Will Be War Series, volume IV: “The virtue of prudence is not much discussed today; yet it lies at the heart of one of the fundamental issues of our time, the conflict between ethics of intention and ethics of responsibility. The “intentionalists” argue thus: “what I intend is good, and I do what I intend; therefore my actions are good.” Their opponents say “what you intend is of little matter; it… Read more »
Yup. Right back to minding one’s own business versus telling everyone else what to do and what to think. The basics of all this stuff is not very complex at all.
Odd how the ‘civil rights icons’ all joined the Klan party.
the left should have seen that electing — and especially re-electing — obama was going to take away their best recruiting tool. hard not to notice that the progs are now talking about “people of color” as a way to paper over the fact that blacks are no longer the favored group within the coalition.
Worth reading is this exposure of the progs ruination of St Paul schools by blaming teachers as “racists” for punishing more blacks than whites or Asians for bad behavior.
https://www.city-journal.org/html/no-thug-left-behind-14951.html
VERY WELL worth reading! Thanks! More than once I found myself with my mouth open, muttering imprecations when not simply stunned. Even in Minnesota, it’s hard to believe anyone takes racism apologetics seriously, but what is described in the article is madness, pure and simple, taxpayer-funded to boot. One also takes note of the fact that St Paul, Minn., is now only 20% white.
My little South American village looks better and better with every passing article.
Yeah, right? 20%….How crazy is that…. I’m in semi rural Wisconsin, still good (read traditional) demographics here, butttt….. I’ve been looking into the Azores as a bug out lately…. LOL!
The City-Data.com website says St. Paul is 53% white and Mogadishu-on-the-Mississippi is 59% white (2015 data). Sure, it seems worse in certain neighborhoods and the trend is definitely unfavorable. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves shall we.
If that article was written as fiction, no one would believe it could be true. Madness, indeed.
I strongly recommend signing up for City Journal’s email alerts.
They won’t overwhelm with quantity but the quality is superb.
(Heather Mac Donald is one of their regulars.)
There’s a link at the top of the page in my original post.
Jamesg, thank you for sharing that City Journal article. A commenter at the bottom of the piece included this link:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2013/05/01/m-dspd-cover-up-the-curious-case-of-trayvon-martins-backpack-with-stolen-jewelry-and-burglary-tool/comment-page-2/#comments
This may be well known, but I never heard about it. Wow. Fruits of school policy based on lies.
“…Race, however, has always been a reliable avenue to create the preferred narratives because blacks are easy to paint as noble victims in the glorious battle against the forces of evil. The people opposed to identity politics are almost always white men, the bad whites…” The black victim shakedown has about used up it’s usefulness. Time for a new narrative to further divide and conquer more Americans; “white men, the bad whites”, a huh. White females are the newest collective member victim. See what they are doing here? It’s pretty damn cunning trick too. The vags are as a group… Read more »
Last night I was thinking about how our situation compares to that of ancient Greece. I’ve been fiddling around with the concepts at play back then in the various constitutions. One thing that stands out is that our idea of democracy was different than theirs. Our idea sees people voting on everything. In ancient Greece democracy meant having as much as possible in a polity being decided by lot. Voting was the mark of oligarchy, because voting could be easily manipulated and ends met by fraud. Looking at things this way can begin to turn preconceptions on their heads. Conservatives… Read more »
Boles is an idiot and nothing more than a self aggrandized narcissistic piece of literary flotsam. He should move in with shawn “whats his name”
Amen… A legend in his own mind…. Rupert Pupkin in reality….
Virtue signalling artiste.
It is an amusing idea that the left might return to traditional religion. But this cannot be. The point of dropping God for Science was not that science was better than God in providing victims to worship. It was that dropping God allowed the establishment of religion. Everyone wants to promote his religion. This is important in the nth degree because religion determines politics. But the problem here is that the religion of the masses — God and Jesus — is popular, and in democracy will tend to be what is taught. (And so it was in America just as… Read more »
I clicked through his website enough to read his biography. He’s a white boy from Nebraska living in Brooklyn and fancies himself a writer, artist, and a liberal. He’s on IMDB as a screenwriter. Never heard of him or any of his work. I suspect his first-person experience at the pharmacy may have happened. He clearly identified the relevant stores, the nature of the transaction, and why he was in that particular store. His level of detail about the counter clerk was appropriate (chubby, middle-aged, Latina). By contrast, the pizza story was transparent fiction. He doesn’t identify the pizza joint,… Read more »
@Guest. I was calling BOLEShit on his entire blog as I was reading it. It to me just didn’t have a natural fluidity to it. I’m pretty sure he was counting the backslap “atta boys” as he was perusing the comments. I lost interest after about 15 of those myself and I staunchly read ALL comments. Whether blog or video.
Monotheists forget that most of the world- the Orient, Amerindians, Africans, Pacific Islanders- never developed the concept of a God, yet they are very religious, even supersticious.
Same with the Left. Religion doesn’t need to have a God.
When I was a kid once in a while an African would go by two if he saw you killing a bug saying that the spirit of his uncle was living in it. Village headmen would leave talismans buried or in trees all over the place to protect the village. I guess you’d call it animism.
By two= nutso stupid autocorrect.
I have come to thoroughly enjoy your articles. I now make your blog a daily stop. I found this particular line spot on, “In fact, it had become custom to leave the issue of race to Progressives. They got to define the morality and the required public policies to fit the moral framework. But then Barak Obama got himself elected and then re-elected. He also accomplished very little in his time in office. It’s hard to argue that America is a racist country when a black guy gets to be in charge, despite not being very good at anything.” I… Read more »
It’s significant, and maybe a little hopeful, that the expression “virtue signaling” has entered the political lexicon. I can’t think of a better way to say what it says in so few words. Today I went into Washington, D.C. to have lunch with a friend and afterward walked through the National Zoo. Other than lunch, the day was like being in some Soviet-like Great Hall of Virtue Signaling. Poster in the Metro: You [photo of young woman] have a right not to be harassed! Report any transgressions! Poster: You can help us give this child a vaccine shot [photo of… Read more »
You mentioned you went “into” DC today. Did you see any men? In suits w/ neckties? I didn’t think so. It’s a city for the young, recently college-graduated, and there are hella more females there than men of any age (not including the Pentagon, I think). This has been true since JFK asked not what your country can do for you but what your c$%t ooops can do for your Congressman Young attractive women have been staffing the YUGE bureaucratic offices in a big way since 1963. Many of my college classmates (1967) took up the banner and charged off… Read more »
Doc; Second your point about Shaker Heights: Being overseas in the military in the early ’70’s rapidly readjusted my expectations about and appreciation for life in the US. So, I’ve often said that every US teenager should be forced to live two weeks as a third world non-aristocrat. They wouldn’t even have to live as a peasant (though it wouldn’t hurt): Middle class life would do. (The few aristo’s live a pretty 1st world life) Of course, this assumes they wouldn’t take the easy way out and blame the US for the conditions they experienced, so it couldn’t be a… Read more »
I’ve always wondered how the Left managed to “fucking love science.” I know, I know, if they could see the logical consequences of their positions they wouldn’t be liberals, but still: Math is racist, logic is patriarchal (or is it the other way around?), and there are no facts, only narratives. Kinda hard for science to work under those conditions, no? My guess is that they’ll go back to their “New Left” roots — psychobabble and dialectical materialism. It’s been a while since I skimmed a summary of The Wretched of the Earth, but I seem to remember it being… Read more »
When your a hammer, the world looks like a nail.
When your a cultural marxist the rest of the world is racist except you.
Which is fitting because a marxist invented the term.
Some kind of Unitarian is the probable end of liberal Christianity. Conservative churches will remain.
You’re in rare form today, Z. Thanks for this one.
It is clear to me that progressives have contorted “race” into a proxy for ideology. In progressive-speak “white” is the cultural remnant of what used to be called White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) values. These tend to be conservative values rooted in the teachings from the Bible. Some of those values are hard work, self-reliance, modesty, honesty, thrift. Progressives not only reject these values where they get in the way of advancing the progressive agenda, we now find that even the presence of a conservative person is enough to cause them to demand “safe spaces”. Progressives presume that people who are… Read more »
It is easy to draw a very short line between the eugenecists of the past and the progressives of today. That is the trump card of my argument against them. I have not pulled that card yet, as I am sure the discussion wil go full nuclear when I do.
I’ve been of the opinion for awhile now that as long as I am branded as a privileged white man who can’t help but be a racist by people who have no idea what I am thinking, I will just skip to the last stage of this biological imperative … acceptance.
Bullshit story. Lots of phonies make this shit up for some traffic on their sites. Even Sen. Corey Booker made up this 10 year tale about an imagined thug roaming the streets in Newark named T-Bone. Booker said he’s 1000% real. But it is a total lie. Maybe it gives them some sense of street cred and try to show some empathy.