theamericanconservative--2020-06-08--What is ‘Systemic Racism,’ Really?

What is ‘Systemic Racism,’ Really?

A white protester in the large crowd that gathered in Foley Square in NYC , June 02 , 2020 , USA .
( Photo by Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images ) Sometimes big political developments arrive in the country like Sandburg ’ s fog , on little cat feet , silent and unnoticed until they envelop the nation .
The emergence of Donald Trump four years ago is an example .
Though a loud and clamorous candidate , he seemed to many like a kind of political clown destined for defeat .
Establishment politicians believed almost to a person @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democratic electoral dominance would hold against this guy .
The Midwest would stay solid , and Hillary Clinton would win the presidency .
But a silent fog was moving in .
It was a growing sense among middle-class voters in heartland America that something was seriously wrong with the country , that the nation ’ s leaders were transforming America in bad ways and unraveling their future in the process .
But there was no street protest or fiery rhetoric , no coalescence of civic activism or public demands .
Certainly the mainstream @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s elites , didn ’ t detect anything of consequence bubbling up from within the polity .
Why would they ?
Everything seemed fine to them .
Meanwhile , the disaffected merely bided their time , silently waiting for their opportunity to express themselves in the quiet sanctity of the voting booth .
After they did , Donald Trump was the next president .
Hardly anyone saw it coming .
Something similar is likely to happen in the wake of the widespread street demonstrations–with attendant riots , looting , destruction , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of a brutal police officer who pressed his knee against Floyd ’ s neck for nearly nine minutes .
That a black man could have his life snuffed out by a white cop in such a manner is just cause for a national outpouring of grief and soul-searching .
Not surprisingly , public-opinion surveys showed widespread popular support for the peaceful demonstrations that were organized to honor the life and condemn the senseless death of George Floyd .
But the polls also demonstrated widespread indignation toward the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ civic drama that followed Floyd ’ s death , including the sprees of destruction and increasingly aggressive rhetoric from the left , intensified some ongoing political tensions that lie at the heart of the country ’ s current distemper .
It accentuated the extent to which America is becoming two nations with two narratives about the times we live in and the problems we face .
One narrative , call it the liberal one , has been projected with increasing force in recent years and particularly since George Floyd ’ s death .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ racist country , infected with something called “ systemic racism.
” You can ’ t always see it ; often it is hidden behind a facade of phony white benignity .
But it lurks in the hearts of whites nonetheless and is activated in subtle ways to keep down minorities , particularly blacks , and make them feel inferior .
This systemic civic virus , according to the narrative , is particularly problematic in police departments throughout the land , in which rampant racism poses serious dangers to blacks , particularly young black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emanates from this narrative would have us believe that innocent blacks are killed in accumulating numbers across the country in a surge of uncontrolled law enforcement bigotry and brutality .
There ’ s a corollary to this narrative of systemic racism and ongoing violence against black Americans .
It is that whites , based on the sins of their forebears and today ’ s lingering bigotry , need to be put in their place .
In this regard , a certain abasement and humiliation is prescribed .
This part of the narrative has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The other narrative , the conservative one , is largely defensive .
In this view , there is no doubt that racism lingers in the body politic and must be addressed when it can be seen .
Racial profiling by police also must be dealt with whenever and wherever it appears .
But the country has made tremendous progress since the Civil Rights era of the 1960s in addressing overt racism , eliminating barriers to equal opportunity , and recognizing the racial sensibilities of minorities .
The problem with the allegation of systemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be discerned clearly and hence can ’ t really be effectively addressed even if it exists , which many dispute .
As for police racism leading to the killing of blacks in telling numbers , the statistics simply don ’ t bear that out .
Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute notes that , based on a Washington Post database , police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks in 2019 ( and 19 unarmed whites ) .
Based on the numbers of black homicide victims generally ( 7,407 in 2018 ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of unarmed blacks represents about 0.1 percent of all African-Americans killed in 2019 .
She bolsters her position by citing studies by the National Academy of Sciences , a Justice Department survey of Philadelphia police practices , and research by a Harvard economist .
The Academy of Sciences study found “ no significant evidence of antiblack disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police.
” In the wake of the Floyd killing , the liberal narrative soon dominated the country ’ s political discourse .
It is seen everywhere–in most of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from agitated civic groups , in the ravings of the celebrity culture , in mass street demonstrations , and , yes , even in the rioting and looting that destroyed businesses , livelihoods , and neighborhoods .
The rhetoric of the liberal narrative these days is delivered vociferously , with defiance and a forcefulness that brooks no dissent or even passivity .
Consider the experience of Drew Brees , the heralded quarterback for the New Orleans Saints , who responded to a question about whether the George Floyd fallout would include a revival @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taking a knee during the playing of the National Anthem before games .
He would not participate in such a protest , said Brees , because “ I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country.
” He followed that with a plainly heartfelt and eloquent expression of patriotism , harking back to the memory of his war-veteran grandfathers and the courage of Civil Rights activists who struggled to improve the nation .
The result : an explosion of opprobrium , vicious attacks , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a Washington Post piece by a black sports columnist for the paper named Jerry Brewer .
First he praised Brees as “ among the most exceptional human beings in sports , ” a man who “ epitomizes the character , benevolence and grace that people seek in a sports role model.
” But just because he ’ s a good guy and exemplary human being , snarled Brewer , that doesn ’ t mean he should get away with distancing himself from the Colin Kaepernick brand of protest .
Brees , wrote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ misguided , insensitive dolt….a sometimes ignorant , lazy thinker in desperate need of a broadened perspective.
” It was journalistic thought control in action , and it worked .
Brees abjectly apologized–twice–for his transgression against humanity .
Jerry Brewer was serving as enforcer for the proposition that the liberal narrative is sacrosanct , and you can ’ t say or do anything that calls it into question in any way .
You see the same motivation behind the recent fate of the University of Washington women ’ s basketball coach , Jody @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s death , she issued a sincere statement of concern that read in part that “ we must stand with our Black Amerians & seek justice !
Black , brown , yellow…ALL lives matter.
” Oops .
You can ’ t say that !
Systemic racism in action .
We ’ re talking about black lives here , and to confuse that with expressions of concern about other racial groups is absolutely unacceptable .
Her Twitter account was deactivated , according to the Seattle Times , and Wynn quickly issued a replacement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ black lives .
“ I would like to sincerely apologize , ” she wrote in a gesture of self-abasement , adding that she understood that her words were “ hurtful to people of color….I ’ ve learned a hard and important lesson in this moment and am committed to educating myself…on how we can best create change.
” She vowed to be part of change that is aimed at ending racism .
But it isn ’ t enough for those of the liberal narrative to bully and humiliate genuine heroic figures like Drew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ patriotism .
They also refuse to condemn the riots and looting that unfolded on the nation ’ s television screens , as local police officials hovered out of the way .
Why ?
Because , it seems clear , they want to preserve the narrative that animates the left and gives it propulsion in the fiery discourse of American politics .
The underlying essence of the narrative is an increasingly brutal and incendiary polemical assault on a demographic segment of the nation–white people .
They are guilty , it is said with increasing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forebears , for the racism of the past .
And they must confess their guilt and seek absolution through self-abasement .
This was captured in stark reality in a video segment aired on Tucker Carlson ’ s Fox News program the other day .
A young white woman on the street during the New York protests is approached by a man who identifies himself as working for Black Lives Matter .
“ Since I work for that company , ” says the man ( who is white ) , “ my CEO has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bring you on your knees because you have white privilege .
So if they see that a white person is getting on their knees , that shows solidarity for the situation.
” She slowly , without saying anything , gets down on her knees on the sidewalk .
“ And could you just please apologize , ” says the guy , “ for , you know , your white privilege ?
” She doesn ’ t seem to know what to say .
“ Just apologize ?
” he persists , ever so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she says .
“ I ’ m trying to think of the words to thank you.
” No doubt many within the nation ’ s elites would view that scene as touching , perhaps even inspiring–a young white woman getting to her knees and apologizing for….what exactly ?
Certainly not anything she did , as far as we know .
No , she was placed into humiliation because of her race , and she accepted it , apparently , as a normal consequence of her heritage .
But a lot of Americans aren @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way .
They will see it as a racial assault and a huge power grab .
The cry of “ systemic racism ” constitutes a threat to white people .
We all know that racism is the country ’ s most potent social taboo .
Even innocent slips of the tongue or benign observations can bring severe opprobrium , societal and professional sanctions , ostracism .
Thus does the allegation constitute a serious threat to millions of Americans .
And it constitutes also great political leverage for those tossing around the allegation .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ systemic racism , who are the systemic racists ?
Certainly not , in the view of those pushing the liberal narrative , themselves .
Not the cable news liberals who toss out the allegation with abandon .
Not the mandarins of Hollywood who spout out about it constantly .
Not the think tank mavens with their phony studies and charts .
Not the Democratic establishment persistently leveraging identity politics .
Not the professional celebs whose household recognition qualify them , in their view , as authority figures .
Not those in the top @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pristine lives in gated communities .
And certainly not the nation ’ s minorities , spoon-fed the liberal narrative day by day .
Who ’ s left ?
Middle-class and working-class whites , already beleaguered economically by the hollowing out of the nation ’ s industrial base and struggling to survive in the new service and high-tech environment .
And now they have to worry about becoming the next Exhibit A in the elites ’ persistent search for evidence of systemic racism .
Deplorables again .
This is scary stuff to people who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feeling vulnerable to being singled out as specimens of systemic racism and called to account for slipping into some hazardous lapse such as thinking that all lives matter or any other innocuous racial observation that never would have raised eyebrows among whites or blacks just a few years ago .
When the political reaction comes , as it inevitably will , it will come on little cat feet .
And the nation ’ s elites , secure in the thought that the systemic racism charge has worked brilliantly in intimidating any lingering dissenters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it coming .
It ’ s an open question whether this can help Donald Trump in November .
His is a failed presidency , and the collective electorate seldom rewards failed presidencies with retention in office .
But down the road , as the issue intensifies and as white Americans feel increasingly beleaguered by the left ’ s identity politics and disdain for Middle America , as more demonstrations and riots ensue with more destructive force , a counter-movement will emerge .
It likely will approach the body politic as quietly as Sandberg @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it arrives , it won ’ t stay quiet for long .
Robert W. Merry , former Wall Street Journal Washington correspondent and Congressional Quarterly CEO , is the author most recently of President McKinley : Architect of the American Century ( Simon & Schuster ) .

Sometimes big political developments arrive in the country like Sandburg’s fog, on little cat feet, silent and unnoticed until they envelop the nation. The emergence of Donald Trump four years ago is an example. Though a loud and clamorous candidate, he seemed to many like a kind of political clown destined for defeat. Establishment politicians believed almost to a person that the “blue wall” of Democratic electoral dominance would hold against this guy. The Midwest would stay solid, and Hillary Clinton would win the presidency.
But a silent fog was moving in. It was a growing sense among middle-class voters in heartland America that something was seriously wrong with the country, that the nation’s leaders were transforming America in bad ways and unraveling their future in the process. But there was no street protest or fiery rhetoric, no coalescence of civic activism or public demands. Certainly the mainstream media, so aligned with the country’s elites, didn’t detect anything of consequence bubbling up from within the polity. Why would they? Everything seemed fine to them.
Meanwhile, the disaffected merely bided their time, silently waiting for their opportunity to express themselves in the quiet sanctity of the voting booth. After they did, Donald Trump was the next president. Hardly anyone saw it coming.
Something similar is likely to happen in the wake of the widespread street demonstrations–with attendant riots, looting, destruction, and violence–that followed the awful death of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of a brutal police officer who pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes. That a black man could have his life snuffed out by a white cop in such a manner is just cause for a national outpouring of grief and soul-searching. Not surprisingly, public-opinion surveys showed widespread popular support for the peaceful demonstrations that were organized to honor the life and condemn the senseless death of George Floyd.
But the polls also demonstrated widespread indignation toward the rioting and looting. Thus, the civic drama that followed Floyd’s death, including the sprees of destruction and increasingly aggressive rhetoric from the left, intensified some ongoing political tensions that lie at the heart of the country’s current distemper. It accentuated the extent to which America is becoming two nations with two narratives about the times we live in and the problems we face.
One narrative, call it the liberal one, has been projected with increasing force in recent years and particularly since George Floyd’s death. It is that America is an inherently racist country, infected with something called “systemic racism.” You can’t always see it; often it is hidden behind a facade of phony white benignity. But it lurks in the hearts of whites nonetheless and is activated in subtle ways to keep down minorities, particularly blacks, and make them feel inferior.
This systemic civic virus, according to the narrative, is particularly problematic in police departments throughout the land, in which rampant racism poses serious dangers to blacks, particularly young black males. Much of the rhetoric that emanates from this narrative would have us believe that innocent blacks are killed in accumulating numbers across the country in a surge of uncontrolled law enforcement bigotry and brutality.
There’s a corollary to this narrative of systemic racism and ongoing violence against black Americans. It is that whites, based on the sins of their forebears and today’s lingering bigotry, need to be put in their place. In this regard, a certain abasement and humiliation is prescribed. This part of the narrative has become increasingly brazen in recent years.
The other narrative, the conservative one, is largely defensive. In this view, there is no doubt that racism lingers in the body politic and must be addressed when it can be seen. Racial profiling by police also must be dealt with whenever and wherever it appears. But the country has made tremendous progress since the Civil Rights era of the 1960s in addressing overt racism, eliminating barriers to equal opportunity, and recognizing the racial sensibilities of minorities. The problem with the allegation of systemic racism is that it is too vague to be discerned clearly and hence can’t really be effectively addressed even if it exists, which many dispute.
As for police racism leading to the killing of blacks in telling numbers, the statistics simply don’t bear that out. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute notes that, based on a Washington Post database, police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks in 2019 (and 19 unarmed whites). Based on the numbers of black homicide victims generally (7,407 in 2018), Mac Donald calculates that the fatal shooting of unarmed blacks represents about 0.1 percent of all African-Americans killed in 2019. She bolsters her position by citing studies by the National Academy of Sciences, a Justice Department survey of Philadelphia police practices, and research by a Harvard economist. The Academy of Sciences study found “no significant evidence of antiblack disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police.”
In the wake of the Floyd killing, the liberal narrative soon dominated the country’s political discourse. It is seen everywhere–in most of the mainstream media, in stark expressions from agitated civic groups, in the ravings of the celebrity culture, in mass street demonstrations, and, yes, even in the rioting and looting that destroyed businesses, livelihoods, and neighborhoods.
The rhetoric of the liberal narrative these days is delivered vociferously, with defiance and a forcefulness that brooks no dissent or even passivity. Consider the experience of Drew Brees, the heralded quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, who responded to a question about whether the George Floyd fallout would include a revival of NFL players protesting racial injustice by taking a knee during the playing of the National Anthem before games. He would not participate in such a protest, said Brees, because “I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country.” He followed that with a plainly heartfelt and eloquent expression of patriotism, harking back to the memory of his war-veteran grandfathers and the courage of Civil Rights activists who struggled to improve the nation.
The result: an explosion of opprobrium, vicious attacks, and mean-spirited vitriol. An telling example was a Washington Post piece by a black sports columnist for the paper named Jerry Brewer. First he praised Brees as “among the most exceptional human beings in sports,” a man who “epitomizes the character, benevolence and grace that people seek in a sports role model.” But just because he’s a good guy and exemplary human being, snarled Brewer, that doesn’t mean he should get away with distancing himself from the Colin Kaepernick brand of protest.
Brees, wrote Brewer, showed himself to be a “misguided, insensitive dolt….a sometimes ignorant, lazy thinker in desperate need of a broadened perspective.” It was journalistic thought control in action, and it worked. Brees abjectly apologized–twice–for his transgression against humanity.
Jerry Brewer was serving as enforcer for the proposition that the liberal narrative is sacrosanct, and you can’t say or do anything that calls it into question in any way. You see the same motivation behind the recent fate of the University of Washington women’s basketball coach, Jody Wynn. In response to George Floyd’s death, she issued a sincere statement of concern that read in part that “we must stand with our Black Amerians & seek justice! Black, brown, yellow…ALL lives matter.”
Oops. You can’t say that! Systemic racism in action. We’re talking about black lives here, and to confuse that with expressions of concern about other racial groups is absolutely unacceptable. Her Twitter account was deactivated, according to the Seattle Times, and Wynn quickly issued a replacement statement saying she was talking only about black lives. “I would like to sincerely apologize,” she wrote in a gesture of self-abasement, adding that she understood that her words were “hurtful to people of color….I’ve learned a hard and important lesson in this moment and am committed to educating myself…on how we can best create change.” She vowed to be part of change that is aimed at ending racism.
But it isn’t enough for those of the liberal narrative to bully and humiliate genuine heroic figures like Drew Brees into recanting their expressions of genuine patriotism. They also refuse to condemn the riots and looting that unfolded on the nation’s television screens, as local police officials hovered out of the way. Why? Because, it seems clear, they want to preserve the narrative that animates the left and gives it propulsion in the fiery discourse of American politics.
The underlying essence of the narrative is an increasingly brutal and incendiary polemical assault on a demographic segment of the nation–white people. They are guilty, it is said with increasing aggressiveness, for the sins of their forebears, for the racism of the past. And they must confess their guilt and seek absolution through self-abasement.
This was captured in stark reality in a video segment aired on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program the other day. A young white woman on the street during the New York protests is approached by a man who identifies himself as working for Black Lives Matter. “Since I work for that company,” says the man (who is white), “my CEO has told me to come out today and bring you on your knees because you have white privilege. So if they see that a white person is getting on their knees, that shows solidarity for the situation.”
She slowly, without saying anything, gets down on her knees on the sidewalk.
“And could you just please apologize,” says the guy, “for, you know, your white privilege?”
She doesn’t seem to know what to say.
“Just apologize?” he persists, ever so politely.
“I am,” she says. “I’m trying to think of the words to thank you.”
No doubt many within the nation’s elites would view that scene as touching, perhaps even inspiring–a young white woman getting to her knees and apologizing for….what exactly? Certainly not anything she did, as far as we know. No, she was placed into humiliation because of her race, and she accepted it, apparently, as a normal consequence of her heritage.
But a lot of Americans aren’t going to view it that way. They will see it as a racial assault and a huge power grab. The cry of “systemic racism” constitutes a threat to white people. We all know that racism is the country’s most potent social taboo. Even innocent slips of the tongue or benign observations can bring severe opprobrium, societal and professional sanctions, ostracism. Thus does the allegation constitute a serious threat to millions of Americans. And it constitutes also great political leverage for those tossing around the allegation.
But, if America is infected with systemic racism, who are the systemic racists? Certainly not, in the view of those pushing the liberal narrative, themselves. Not the cable news liberals who toss out the allegation with abandon. Not the mandarins of Hollywood who spout out about it constantly. Not the think tank mavens with their phony studies and charts. Not the Democratic establishment persistently leveraging identity politics. Not the professional celebs whose household recognition qualify them, in their view, as authority figures. Not those in the top level of the meritocratic elite living their pristine lives in gated communities. And certainly not the nation’s minorities, spoon-fed the liberal narrative day by day.
Who’s left? Middle-class and working-class whites, already beleaguered economically by the hollowing out of the nation’s industrial base and struggling to survive in the new service and high-tech environment. And now they have to worry about becoming the next Exhibit A in the elites’ persistent search for evidence of systemic racism. Deplorables again.
This is scary stuff to people who just want to live their lives without feeling vulnerable to being singled out as specimens of systemic racism and called to account for slipping into some hazardous lapse such as thinking that all lives matter or any other innocuous racial observation that never would have raised eyebrows among whites or blacks just a few years ago.
When the political reaction comes, as it inevitably will, it will come on little cat feet. And the nation’s elites, secure in the thought that the systemic racism charge has worked brilliantly in intimidating any lingering dissenters into submission, won’t see it coming.
It’s an open question whether this can help Donald Trump in November. His is a failed presidency, and the collective electorate seldom rewards failed presidencies with retention in office. But down the road, as the issue intensifies and as white Americans feel increasingly beleaguered by the left’s identity politics and disdain for Middle America, as more demonstrations and riots ensue with more destructive force, a counter-movement will emerge. It likely will approach the body politic as quietly as Sandberg’s fog. But, once it arrives, it won’t stay quiet for long.
Robert W. Merry, former Wall Street Journal Washington correspondent and Congressional Quarterly CEO, is the author most recently of President McKinley: Architect of the American Century (Simon & Schuster).


theamericanconservative--2020-06-08--The Fires Foretold: Willmoore Kendall and the Burning of America

The protests and riots roiling our nation would come as no surprise to one of our most brilliant and overlooked political philosophers , Willmoore Kendall .
He predicted them sixty years ago , as well as their antecedent : an elite conviction that no loudmouth should be driven from a lectern on American soil , no matter how specious his research or misled his students .
Far from bringing us ever closer to truth and shared understanding , Kendall claimed , a society invested in the notion that every statement should be given a hearing will become the equivalent of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” he wrote , “ that the society in question will descend ineluctably into ever-deepening differences of opinion , into progressive breakdown of those common premises upon which alone a society can conduct its affairs by discussion , and so into the abandonment of the discussion process and the arbitrament of public questions by violence and civil war.
” That certainly sounds like America in 2020 .
What ’ s more , Kendall predicted that this suicide pact with relativism will generate the bitterest of ironies , because as it approaches its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ society will take upon itself to censor one kind of speech only .
Not speech that calls for dismantling the society ’ s institutional foundations or moral presuppositions , nor even speech that calls for spilling blood in the streets .
No , the doyens of the suicidal society will instead feel an irresistible compulsion to silence the voices insisting that there is truth , even Truth , and that therefore many other beliefs are in error .
This is the single unpardonable sin in the Church of Cacophony : a belief that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America where every citizen and non-citizen alike has equal claim to the stage , we ’ ll tolerate all manner of intolerable performances , but what we can not abide is a Simon Cowell scowling in the wings .
Lacking any unifying principles by which to judge opinions and thereby train up the young , the completely open society , Kendall argued , will be afflicted by proliferating schisms .
“ As time passes , moreover , the extremes of opinion will—as they did in Weimar—get further and further apart , so that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tolerate even the thought of one another , still less one another ’ s presence in society.
” From Bernie Bros shooting at congressmen to the ephemeral social media posse eager to hound a store clerk out of job and home for expressing retrograde views , we have reached the place Kendall foretold , where the instinct of too many Americans is to neither discuss nor even ignore , but to punish , to cancel , to kill .
Kendall also predicted that as the rifts deepen between political tribes , governing elites @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cast out , will embrace armfuls of sticky platitudes chosen precisely for their lack of clarity .
Anyone who ’ s read the soporific tweet threads of city councilmen and mayors as their cities burn knows exactly what Kendall meant when he wrote that the fragmenting society , having stuffed cotton into the mouth of the boy shouting about the emperor ’ s lack of clothes , will “ look on helplessly as within its own bosom patterns of opinion about the important things deteriorate into an ever greater conforming dullness.
” Thus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Twitter hellscape , where loons on left and right yodel for clicks and retweets , while above the fray , Respectable Public Figures pontificate their condemnations of what we all condemn , and call for dialogue , understanding , reconciliation , and other big soft words from the Handbook of Inoffensive Concern .
It ’ s little wonder that Kendall has receded from memory ; his views are scarcely more tolerable to modern conservative intellectuals than they were to the academics of his day .
While Democrats , Republicans , and even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ power to enforce their worldviews , Kendall was a man who trusted the people .
Calling himself an “ Appalachians-to-the-Rockies patriot , ” Kendall believed that deliberative majorities in flyover country , constrained by the American system of checks and balances from acting too rashly in the heat of immediate passion , could conjure wisdom and morality far superior to the visions of majority-cobbling presidents , and certainly to diktats issued by a cabal of judges emanating almost exclusively from Harvard and Yale .
Though he hailed from the dusty plains of Oklahoma @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He worked his way onto the faculty of Yale , where he profoundly influenced Bill Buckley among others .
But while he had the intellect to work at the highest academic levels , he had neither the temperament nor the platitudinal capacity .
Yale eventually paid him to forfeit his tenure .
Rooted in the Midwest but familiar with the coastal academic mindset , Kendall deployed a fierce wit that was as irreverent as Mencken , yet as folksy as Will Rogers .
Writing at a time when the field of American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of survey research , Kendall gleefully watched his fellow academics get mugged by the realities of American public opinion .
Commenting on the release of “ alarming ” survey evidence that everyday Americans believed Communists and atheists should have their speech curtailed , Kendall tweaked his colleagues for imagining that the penumbral discoveries of the Supreme Court approximated natural law .
Average Americans , he wrote , are not “ much disturbed to learn that the Supreme Court says the Fourteenth Amendment says the First Amendment says they can ’ t do anything @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Contesting the modern conviction that the chief purpose of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights was to safeguard individual freedoms , Kendall argued that Americans embrace a commitment to community and common good within which freedoms are both contextualized and necessarily tempered .
The counter to the “ let freedom ring ” refashioning of the American Founding , Kendall said , could be found in the instincts of the people his colleagues studied like so many bugs .
“ One begins to suspect that the true American tradition is less that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our constitutional law textbooks , with their cluck-clucking over the so-called preferred freedoms , than , quite simply , that of riding somebody out of town on a rail.
” And not surprisingly , Kendall agreed with that inclination .
To tolerate those who advocate destruction of Constitution and community was tantamount to slitting the throats of one ’ s great grandchildren .
“ My own instinct would be to let [ American Communist Party Chairman ] Gus Hall speak freely pretty much anywhere—until such time as the American people have the good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Union.
” It ’ s stern stuff for all we conservatives and libertarians raised to revere Karl Popper ’ s open society .
But another bit of folk wisdom gives one pause : The proof is in the pudding .
While most of us , like former Atlantic literary editor Benjamin Schwarz , are surprised to see academic free-speech bastion University of Chicago descend into cancel culture , Kendall would say it was foreordained .
And he cautioned grimly that if we don ’ t curtail the tendency of the open society to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ruined .
This is , he claimed , “ the issue that—make no mistake about it—bears most heavily on the very destiny of America.
” We must summon the fortitude , he believed , to cast the barbarians from our academies and classrooms .
And just how does one spot a modern American barbarian ?
By his stripes .
“ The stigmata by which he is to be recognized are the various forms of the wish to live off our Civilization and benefit from the commitments it imposes upon others , but not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , expecting to be allowed to destroy entire city blocks without being molested by police .
To upload videos of one ’ s crimes without having them censored .
To teach young people to burn , burn , burn , without fear of them one day coming for your family , in your home , in your privileged neighborhood .
Tony Woodlief is Executive Vice President at the State Policy Network .

The protests and riots roiling our nation would come as no surprise to one of our most brilliant and overlooked political philosophers, Willmoore Kendall. He predicted them sixty years ago, as well as their antecedent: an elite conviction that no loudmouth should be driven from a lectern on American soil, no matter how specious his research or misled his students.
Far from bringing us ever closer to truth and shared understanding, Kendall claimed, a society invested in the notion that every statement should be given a hearing will become the equivalent of a madhouse.
“I now contend,” he wrote, “that the society in question will descend ineluctably into ever-deepening differences of opinion, into progressive breakdown of those common premises upon which alone a society can conduct its affairs by discussion, and so into the abandonment of the discussion process and the arbitrament of public questions by violence and civil war.”
That certainly sounds like America in 2020.
What’s more, Kendall predicted that this suicide pact with relativism will generate the bitterest of ironies, because as it approaches its death throes, the open and non-judgmental society will take upon itself to censor one kind of speech only. Not speech that calls for dismantling the society’s institutional foundations or moral presuppositions, nor even speech that calls for spilling blood in the streets. No, the doyens of the suicidal society will instead feel an irresistible compulsion to silence the voices insisting that there is truth, even Truth, and that therefore many other beliefs are in error.
This is the single unpardonable sin in the Church of Cacophony: a belief that some voices are pitchy. In the America where every citizen and non-citizen alike has equal claim to the stage, we’ll tolerate all manner of intolerable performances, but what we cannot abide is a Simon Cowell scowling in the wings.
Lacking any unifying principles by which to judge opinions and thereby train up the young, the completely open society, Kendall argued, will be afflicted by proliferating schisms. “As time passes, moreover, the extremes of opinion will—as they did in Weimar—get further and further apart, so that … their bearers can less and less tolerate even the thought of one another, still less one another’s presence in society.”
From Bernie Bros shooting at congressmen to the ephemeral social media posse eager to hound a store clerk out of job and home for expressing retrograde views, we have reached the place Kendall foretold, where the instinct of too many Americans is to neither discuss nor even ignore, but to punish, to cancel, to kill.
Kendall also predicted that as the rifts deepen between political tribes, governing elites, in order to avoid being themselves cast out, will embrace armfuls of sticky platitudes chosen precisely for their lack of clarity. Anyone who’s read the soporific tweet threads of city councilmen and mayors as their cities burn knows exactly what Kendall meant when he wrote that the fragmenting society, having stuffed cotton into the mouth of the boy shouting about the emperor’s lack of clothes, will “look on helplessly as within its own bosom patterns of opinion about the important things deteriorate into an ever greater conforming dullness.”
Thus society comes to resemble more and more the Twitter hellscape, where loons on left and right yodel for clicks and retweets, while above the fray, Respectable Public Figures pontificate their condemnations of what we all condemn, and call for dialogue, understanding, reconciliation, and other big soft words from the Handbook of Inoffensive Concern.
It’s little wonder that Kendall has receded from memory; his views are scarcely more tolerable to modern conservative intellectuals than they were to the academics of his day. While Democrats, Republicans, and even libertarians increasingly look to executive or judicial power to enforce their worldviews, Kendall was a man who trusted the people. Calling himself an “Appalachians-to-the-Rockies patriot,” Kendall believed that deliberative majorities in flyover country, constrained by the American system of checks and balances from acting too rashly in the heat of immediate passion, could conjure wisdom and morality far superior to the visions of majority-cobbling presidents, and certainly to diktats issued by a cabal of judges emanating almost exclusively from Harvard and Yale.
Though he hailed from the dusty plains of Oklahoma, Kendall himself was certainly no rube. He worked his way onto the faculty of Yale, where he profoundly influenced Bill Buckley among others. But while he had the intellect to work at the highest academic levels, he had neither the temperament nor the platitudinal capacity. Yale eventually paid him to forfeit his tenure.
Rooted in the Midwest but familiar with the coastal academic mindset, Kendall deployed a fierce wit that was as irreverent as Mencken, yet as folksy as Will Rogers. Writing at a time when the field of American political science had begun to deploy instruments of survey research, Kendall gleefully watched his fellow academics get mugged by the realities of American public opinion. Commenting on the release of “alarming” survey evidence that everyday Americans believed Communists and atheists should have their speech curtailed, Kendall tweaked his colleagues for imagining that the penumbral discoveries of the Supreme Court approximated natural law. Average Americans, he wrote, are not “much disturbed to learn that the Supreme Court says the Fourteenth Amendment says the First Amendment says they can’t do anything legally to prevent the Communist from speaking.”
Contesting the modern conviction that the chief purpose of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights was to safeguard individual freedoms, Kendall argued that Americans embrace a commitment to community and common good within which freedoms are both contextualized and necessarily tempered. The counter to the “let freedom ring” refashioning of the American Founding, Kendall said, could be found in the instincts of the people his colleagues studied like so many bugs. “One begins to suspect that the true American tradition is less that of our Fourth of July orations and our constitutional law textbooks, with their cluck-clucking over the so-called preferred freedoms, than, quite simply, that of riding somebody out of town on a rail.”
And not surprisingly, Kendall agreed with that inclination. To tolerate those who advocate destruction of Constitution and community was tantamount to slitting the throats of one’s great grandchildren. “My own instinct would be to let [American Communist Party Chairman] Gus Hall speak freely pretty much anywhere—until such time as the American people have the good sense to deport him to the Soviet Union.”
It’s stern stuff for all we conservatives and libertarians raised to revere Karl Popper’s open society. But another bit of folk wisdom gives one pause: The proof is in the pudding. While most of us, like former Atlantic literary editor Benjamin Schwarz, are surprised to see academic free-speech bastion University of Chicago descend into cancel culture, Kendall would say it was foreordained.
And he cautioned grimly that if we don’t curtail the tendency of the open society to devour itself, we’ll be ruined. This is, he claimed, “the issue that—make no mistake about it—bears most heavily on the very destiny of America.” We must summon the fortitude, he believed, to cast the barbarians from our academies and classrooms. And just how does one spot a modern American barbarian? By his stripes. “The stigmata by which he is to be recognized are the various forms of the wish to live off our Civilization and benefit from the commitments it imposes upon others, but not live within them.”
Like, say, expecting to be allowed to destroy entire city blocks without being molested by police. To upload videos of one’s crimes without having them censored. To teach young people to burn, burn, burn, without fear of them one day coming for your family, in your home, in your privileged neighborhood.
Tony Woodlief is a writer who lives in North Carolina.


theamericanconservative--2020-06-09--The Left’s New War on Police

The Left’s New War on Police

The idea of defunding police has caught fire , and liberal pols are scrambling to get in front of their radical constituents .
Newly painted in huge yellow letters on 16th Street , just north of the White House , is the slogan : “ Defund the Police.
” That new message sits beside the “ Black Lives Matter ” slogan , also in huge letters , painted there at the direction of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser .
She renamed that section of 16th Street “ Black Lives Matter Plaza.
” Still , the messages are less ominous than the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the takedown that resulted in the death of Eric Garner .
Protesters then chanted of the NYPD : “ What do we want ?
Dead cops .
When do we want it ?
Now !
” While this sudden campaign to defund and dismantle city police forces seems an absurdity , it is actually part of a thought-out radical program that has gained momentum since the sadistic public execution of George Floyd in Minneapolis two weeks ago .
Consider .
On Sunday , nine members of the city council , a veto-proof majority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ department .
Asked if he would support the council decision , Mayor Jacob Frey hedged , “ I do not support the full abolition of the police.
” As the crowd jeered and booed , the mayor walked away alone .
The idea of defunding police departments has caught fire , and liberal politicians are scrambling to get in front of their radical constituents .
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has announced that he will reallocate up to $ 150 million from the LAPD budget to social programs .
New York Mayor Bill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 1 billion : “ We will be moving funding from the NYPD to youth initiatives and social services.
” In two weeks , there has been a sea change in attitudes toward police , with not a few coming to share the hard left ’ s hatred .
While the criminal elements burned cop cars and showered police with bottles , rocks and bricks , even “ peaceful protesters ” were calling the police fascists and racists .
Two decades ago , the NYPD were celebrated “ first responders ” who ran @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never to come back .
Funerals of the cop heroes were televised .
Those days are gone .
Indeed , after two weeks of seeing police decried on nightly TV as racist oppressors of African Americans , cops must realize that they are reviled and detested by some of the countrymen they have sworn to protect .
What will happen now is predictable , as it has happened before .
To pander to the militants on the left , liberal politicians will devise new restrictions on cops and more severe punishments for infractions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to civil and constitutional rights .
The “ Ferguson Effect ” will take hold .
Cops will back off from confronting the lawless and violent .
Criminals will see an opening to seize opportunities .
The urban poor who look to the police as their only protection will stay inside and lock their doors .
And small businesses , realizing the cops may not be there , will sell and move out .
Where is this leading ?
According to former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik , not only did New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the riots , hundreds of cops , seeing how they are regarded and were treated by many whom they protect , are preparing to leave the NYPD .
As the Democrats ’ “ police reform ” bill is debated on the Hill , Republicans will largely stand with the police and Attorney General William Barr , who said Sunday that while there is racism in America , there is no “ systemic racism ” in the nation ’ s police departments .
If there were , it would be an indictment of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of our great cities for decades .
As it rises in prominence , the issue of defunding police will divide the Democratic Party more than the GOP .
For while the hard left sees cops in ideological and class terms as racist and fascist , the right , by and large , sees the police as the last line of defense again the anarchy we saw erupt when there were not enough cops in New York and D.C. to control the mobs looting Fifth Avenue and Georgetown .
And this , too , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in America .
For it is almost inevitable that we are going to see more violent collisions between white cops and black suspects , collisions that result in deaths .
For every large urban police force has daily encounters with black male criminals , who commit a disproportionate number of violent crimes .
Some will end with dead cops , and the others with dead criminals .
President Donald Trump has taken his stand with the police .
It is Joe Biden who has the problem .
For while Democratic mayors are unlikely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police forces , Biden is going to have to tell his Bernie Bro and socialist constituents that their ideas for getting rid of police departments are ridiculous .
Monday , Joe made a start .
He said that defunding cops is off the table .
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon ’ s White House Wars : The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever .

Newly painted in huge yellow letters on 16th Street, just north of the White House, is the slogan: “Defund the Police.”
That new message sits beside the “Black Lives Matter” slogan, also in huge letters, painted there at the direction of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.
She renamed that section of 16th Street “Black Lives Matter Plaza.”
Still, the messages are less ominous than the chants of protesters in New York after the takedown that resulted in the death of Eric Garner.
Protesters then chanted of the NYPD: “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now!”
While this sudden campaign to defund and dismantle city police forces seems an absurdity, it is actually part of a thought-out radical program that has gained momentum since the sadistic public execution of George Floyd in Minneapolis two weeks ago.
Consider. On Sunday, nine members of the city council, a veto-proof majority, voted to disband the Minneapolis police department. Asked if he would support the council decision, Mayor Jacob Frey hedged, “I do not support the full abolition of the police.”
As the crowd jeered and booed, the mayor walked away alone.
The idea of defunding police departments has caught fire, and liberal politicians are scrambling to get in front of their radical constituents. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has announced that he will reallocate up to $150 million from the LAPD budget to social programs.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio says he will be transferring $1 billion: “We will be moving funding from the NYPD to youth initiatives and social services.”
In two weeks, there has been a sea change in attitudes toward police, with not a few coming to share the hard left’s hatred. While the criminal elements burned cop cars and showered police with bottles, rocks and bricks, even “peaceful protesters” were calling the police fascists and racists.
Two decades ago, the NYPD were celebrated “first responders” who ran toward the collapsing twin towers, many never to come back. Funerals of the cop heroes were televised. Those days are gone.
Indeed, after two weeks of seeing police decried on nightly TV as racist oppressors of African Americans, cops must realize that they are reviled and detested by some of the countrymen they have sworn to protect.
What will happen now is predictable, as it has happened before.
To pander to the militants on the left, liberal politicians will devise new restrictions on cops and more severe punishments for infractions, treating the police as potential threats to civil and constitutional rights.
The “Ferguson Effect” will take hold. Cops will back off from confronting the lawless and violent. Criminals will see an opening to seize opportunities. The urban poor who look to the police as their only protection will stay inside and lock their doors. And small businesses, realizing the cops may not be there, will sell and move out.
Where is this leading?
According to former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, not only did New York law enforcement officers suffer many injuries in the riots, hundreds of cops, seeing how they are regarded and were treated by many whom they protect, are preparing to leave the NYPD.
As the Democrats’ “police reform” bill is debated on the Hill, Republicans will largely stand with the police and Attorney General William Barr, who said Sunday that while there is racism in America, there is no “systemic racism” in the nation’s police departments.
If there were, it would be an indictment of the Democrats, who have run most of our great cities for decades.
As it rises in prominence, the issue of defunding police will divide the Democratic Party more than the GOP.
For while the hard left sees cops in ideological and class terms as racist and fascist, the right, by and large, sees the police as the last line of defense again the anarchy we saw erupt when there were not enough cops in New York and D.C. to control the mobs looting Fifth Avenue and Georgetown.
And this, too, is likely to become a forever war in America. For it is almost inevitable that we are going to see more violent collisions between white cops and black suspects, collisions that result in deaths.
For every large urban police force has daily encounters with black male criminals, who commit a disproportionate number of violent crimes. Some will end with dead cops, and the others with dead criminals.
President Donald Trump has taken his stand with the police.
It is Joe Biden who has the problem. For while Democratic mayors are unlikely to join a campaign to abolish their police forces, Biden is going to have to tell his Bernie Bro and socialist constituents that their ideas for getting rid of police departments are ridiculous.
Monday, Joe made a start. He said that defunding cops is off the table.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.


theamericanconservative--2020-06-10--A Glimpse Into Lawlessness

A Glimpse Into Lawlessness

Police officers clash with protestors near the White House on June 1 , 2020 as demonstrations against George Floyd 's death continued .
Photo by JOSE LUIS MAGANA/AFP via Getty Images ) Tom Cotton is a man who ’ s run out of surprises .
You just can ’ t be shocked anymore that the same senator who wanted to bomb Iran and imprison the families of sanctions violators is now demanding that the military be deployed to American cities .
Cotton stands at the vanguard of a certain quarter of the political right , which cares for little except @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strike up that military parade !
Spend that money !
Own those libs !
Everything else—prudence , practicality , the law—gets subordinated to the thrill of the flexed muscle , regardless of what it ’ s actually doing .
In this case , what it would have meant doing is sending the armed forces into neighborhoods that already feel oppressed by the police .
As a policy to restore peace , it was harebrained , and thankfully it ’ s already obsolete .
The same day that Cotton ’ s op-ed calling for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York Times , that paper reported that arrests were down and the unrest was calming .
By this past weekend , about the only rioters left were Times staffers , who ( babyishly ) cashiered their opinion editor for running the Cotton op-ed in the first place .
The unrest wasn ’ t the end of America as we know it .
It wasn ’ t even 1968 .
But it was a very stark and very grievous episode of political violence .
Now , as the debris is swept up , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support from Americans and even Republicans , it ’ s worth asking what lessons we should take away .
For some , answering that question will mean instinctively siding with law enforcement .
For others , it will mean the opposite , standing in solidarity with Black Lives Matter .
I don ’ t think it ’ s mushy bothsidesism to say that both have a point .
The anarchy of last week saw acts of violence against police and protesters .
In Oakland , two federal officers were shot and one died @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was shoved roughly by a policeman , leaving him bleeding on the ground with a head injury .
In St. Louis , four officers were shot as riots raged across downtown .
In New York , two police SUVs were caught on video plowing into a crowd of demonstrators .
In Minneapolis , a police station was torched .
And of course , in Washington , officers from a plethora of agencies forcefully cleared Lafayette Park of protesters , resulting in , among other things , an attack on an Australian cameraman .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ perfectly reasonable to yearn for both order and restraints on those who do the ordering .
James Madison ’ s famous dictum comes to mind here .
Madison said , “ If men were angels , no government would be necessary.
” And certainly that much was proven by the notably un-angelic actions of rioters , assaulting the innocent and burning shops .
A world without law enforcement , where dialogue and community development dollars heal all ills while rainbows arc and dip , is a fantasy , one that would leave the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the criminal and nihilistic .
Yet we also can ’ t forget that Madison added , “ If angels were to govern men , neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
” This part is less popular among the dopamine-addled right and the social engineering left .
But it ’ s true : government isn ’ t the philosophical “ state , ” an abstract force that can commune seamlessly with the good .
It ’ s a collection of men , entrusted with power and badges , prone to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It took a government thug only eight minutes and a knee to touch off the worst civil unrest that America has seen in decades .
And that ’ s the trouble of it : neglect one side of the Madisonian formula and you ’ re likely to negate the other .
The common denominator is lawlessness .
If the police act outside the law , that gives cause and license to rioters , which then elicits a more aggressive police response , and so on down the spiral .
Violence feeds off of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ change get lost in the smoke .
And therein lies an important lesson out of Minneapolis .
A community might not be a social contract per se , but it does require a certain amount of buy-in from , and integration of , both the government and the governed .
Lacking that , the two pieces drift apart and grow alien to each other .
They become different entities , more likely to see the other as the enemy whenever there ’ s friction .
The federal government , giant and remote , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ local policeman should never be .
There ’ s been a lot of loose talk lately about whether America is careening towards another civil war .
The takeaway from last week should be : we ’ d damn well better hope not .
The riots , of course , did not amount to a war , but they did provide a glimpse into the kind of might-makes-right anarchy that characterizes internecine conflicts .
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said , “ A civil war is not a war but a sickness .
The enemy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ oneself.
” Hence why civil wars—from the Union and the Confederacy to the Republicans and Franco to Salva Kiir and Riek Machar—have so often been so brutal .
The body politic itself becomes dysfunctional , turning its own people against each other , its mediating institutions having broken down .
Such wars , as Saint-Exupéry said , stem from deeper pathogens within .
And having now peeked into that darkness ourselves , we would be wise to ask what illnesses of our own enabled it .
One answer is surely that Americans have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ too detached from one another , epistemically closed off in our own bubbles , social media and otherwise .
The dissolution of those bonds have dehumanized us , which in turn makes it easier to favor loosing the military on each other or torching another ’ s property .
Zoom in on the killing of George Floyd and you see this problem in miniature : cops utterly blind to the common humanity and citizenship of another man .
This is why a good place to start so far as reforms go is with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ admittedly a broad term and one that ’ s been criticized as too abstract .
But at base , it means better integrating police officers into the neighborhoods they patrol , making them familiar faces rather than distant fighters of atomized crimes .
There are obstacles to this approach , including underfunded city departments , which have driven away talent to the suburbs .
Yet there are also success stories .
Among them is the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police , which in recent years has shifted away from a so-called zone policing model , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the areas that officers are expected to cover .
Camden , New Jersey , undertook an even more radical community policing overhaul eight years ago—rebuilding their department from scratch to circumvent union inflexibility—and saw their city ’ s violent crime rate fall by close to half .
Such measures aren ’ t a panacea .
They certainly don ’ t provide the lizard-brained exhilaration of rolling tanks through city streets , per the heavy-breathing Senator Cotton .
But given a chance , they just might help increase social trust , put human faces @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shrink one of our more perilous and widening divides .
America will never be fully “ united , ” as the hoary and slightly sinister trope goes .
But surely the common national roof over our heads can be stronger than this .

Tom Cotton is a man who’s run out of surprises. You just can’t be shocked anymore that the same senator who wanted to bomb Iran and imprison the families of sanctions violators is now demanding that the military be deployed to American cities. Cotton stands at the vanguard of a certain quarter of the political right, which cares for little except cathartic demonstrations of visceral strength. So strike up that military parade! Spend that money! Own those libs! Everything else—prudence, practicality, the law—gets subordinated to the thrill of the flexed muscle, regardless of what it’s actually doing.
In this case, what it would have meant doing is sending the armed forces into neighborhoods that already feel oppressed by the police. As a policy to restore peace, it was harebrained, and thankfully it’s already obsolete. The same day that Cotton’s op-ed calling for boots in the Bronx appeared in the New York Times, that paper reported that arrests were down and the unrest was calming. By this past weekend, about the only rioters left were Times staffers, who (babyishly) cashiered their opinion editor for running the Cotton op-ed in the first place.
The unrest wasn’t the end of America as we know it. It wasn’t even 1968. But it was a very stark and very grievous episode of political violence. Now, as the debris is swept up, as more peaceful protests mobilize with overwhelming support from Americans and even Republicans, it’s worth asking what lessons we should take away.
For some, answering that question will mean instinctively siding with law enforcement. For others, it will mean the opposite, standing in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. I don’t think it’s mushy bothsidesism to say that both have a point. The anarchy of last week saw acts of violence against police and protesters. In Oakland, two federal officers were shot and one died. In Buffalo, a 75-year-old man was shoved roughly by a policeman, leaving him bleeding on the ground with a head injury. In St. Louis, four officers were shot as riots raged across downtown. In New York, two police SUVs were caught on video plowing into a crowd of demonstrators. In Minneapolis, a police station was torched. And of course, in Washington, officers from a plethora of agencies forcefully cleared Lafayette Park of protesters, resulting in, among other things, an attack on an Australian cameraman.
Amid such chaos, it’s perfectly reasonable to yearn for both order and restraints on those who do the ordering. James Madison’s famous dictum comes to mind here. Madison said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” And certainly that much was proven by the notably un-angelic actions of rioters, assaulting the innocent and burning shops. A world without law enforcement, where dialogue and community development dollars heal all ills while rainbows arc and dip, is a fantasy, one that would leave the poor and vulnerable at the mercy of the criminal and nihilistic. Yet we also can’t forget that Madison added, “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” This part is less popular among the dopamine-addled right and the social engineering left. But it’s true: government isn’t the philosophical “state,” an abstract force that can commune seamlessly with the good. It’s a collection of men, entrusted with power and badges, prone to abuse the same as anyone else.
It took a government thug only eight minutes and a knee to touch off the worst civil unrest that America has seen in decades. And that’s the trouble of it: neglect one side of the Madisonian formula and you’re likely to negate the other. The common denominator is lawlessness. If the police act outside the law, that gives cause and license to rioters, which then elicits a more aggressive police response, and so on down the spiral. Violence feeds off of a vacuum. Those who seek peaceful change get lost in the smoke. And therein lies an important lesson out of Minneapolis. A community might not be a social contract per se, but it does require a certain amount of buy-in from, and integration of, both the government and the governed. Lacking that, the two pieces drift apart and grow alien to each other. They become different entities, more likely to see the other as the enemy whenever there’s friction. The federal government, giant and remote, is understandably viewed this way; the local policeman should never be.
There’s been a lot of loose talk lately about whether America is careening towards another civil war. The takeaway from last week should be: we’d damn well better hope not. The riots, of course, did not amount to a war, but they did provide a glimpse into the kind of might-makes-right anarchy that characterizes internecine conflicts. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said, “A civil war is not a war but a sickness. The enemy is within. One fights almost against oneself.” Hence why civil wars—from the Union and the Confederacy to the Republicans and Franco to Salva Kiir and Riek Machar—have so often been so brutal. The body politic itself becomes dysfunctional, turning its own people against each other, its mediating institutions having broken down.
Such wars, as Saint-Exupéry said, stem from deeper pathogens within. And having now peeked into that darkness ourselves, we would be wise to ask what illnesses of our own enabled it. One answer is surely that Americans have become too foreign to each other, too detached from one another, epistemically closed off in our own bubbles, social media and otherwise. The dissolution of those bonds have dehumanized us, which in turn makes it easier to favor loosing the military on each other or torching another’s property.
Zoom in on the killing of George Floyd and you see this problem in miniature: cops utterly blind to the common humanity and citizenship of another man. This is why a good place to start so far as reforms go is with more community policing. That’s admittedly a broad term and one that’s been criticized as too abstract. But at base, it means better integrating police officers into the neighborhoods they patrol, making them familiar faces rather than distant fighters of atomized crimes. There are obstacles to this approach, including underfunded city departments, which have driven away talent to the suburbs. Yet there are also success stories. Among them is the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police, which in recent years has shifted away from a so-called zone policing model, increasing the number of beats and shrinking the areas that officers are expected to cover. Camden, New Jersey, undertook an even more radical community policing overhaul eight years ago—rebuilding their department from scratch to circumvent union inflexibility—and saw their city’s violent crime rate fall by close to half.
Such measures aren’t a panacea. They certainly don’t provide the lizard-brained exhilaration of rolling tanks through city streets, per the heavy-breathing Senator Cotton. But given a chance, they just might help increase social trust, put human faces on officers and civilians alike, help shrink one of our more perilous and widening divides. America will never be fully “united,” as the hoary and slightly sinister trope goes. But surely the common national roof over our heads can be stronger than this.


theamericanconservative--2020-06-10--They Really Are Lying To You

They Really Are Lying To You

The most effective kind of propaganda is by omission .
Walter Duranty didn ’ t cook up accounts from smiling Ukrainian farmers , he simply said there was no evidence for a famine , much like the media tells us today that there is no evidence antifa has a role in the current protests .
It is much harder to do this today than it was back then—there are photographs and video that show they have been—which is the proximate cause for greater media concern about conspiracy theories and disinformation .
For all the hyperventilating over the admittedly creepy 2008 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule , it was a serious attempt to deal with the problem of an informational center being lost in American public life , at a time when the problem was not nearly as bad as it is today .
It proposed a number of strategies to reduce the credibility of conspiracy theorists , including seeding them with false information .
Whether such strategies have been employed , perhaps with QAnon , which has a remarkable ability to absorb all other conspiracy theories that came before it , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Books will one day be written about the many failures of the media during the Trump presidency , but much of the Russiagate narrative-shaping was related to the broader problem of decentralization and declining authority of establishment media .
One of the more egregious examples is the Washington Post ’ sreport that relied upon a blacklist created by an anonymous group , PropOrNot , that found more than 200 sites carried water for the Russians in some way , and not all on the right either .
In fact , if the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ news sources that were carrying water for Saddam Hussein in 2006 , it would have looked almost the same as the PropOrNot list , except here it was , recast as an effort to defend democratic integrity .
On the list was Naked Capitalism , Antiwar.com , and Truthdig .
This should have been a bigger scandal , very good evidence that the war on disinformation was not that but a campaign against officially unapproved information .
But virtually nobody except Glenn Greenwald objected .
There is some evidence that this style of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ architecture of search engines .
My reporting on Google search last year found that one of the “ fringe domain ” blacklists included Robert Parry ’ s Consortium News .
In other words , if Google had been around in the 1980s , Parry ’ s exposes on Iran-Contra would have been excluded from Google News results .
The criteria for inclusion on any of these lists are much more amorphous than a more traditional one : taking money from a foreign power .
As of this week , we now have a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the Wall Street Journal have taken from China Daily , a state-run newspaper , since 2016 .
It ’ s $ 4.6 million , and $ 6 million , respectively .
This is more than an order of magnitude greater than Russia is thought to have spent on Facebook advertising prior to the 2016 election .
There are other specific Russiagate disgraces one would be remiss to overlook , like star reporter Natasha Bertrand , who was hired at MSNBC after several appearances in which she repeatedly defended the accuracy of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tainted by Russian disinformation .
The newspaper that published the Pentagon Papers defended the outing of a source to the FBI .
How David Ignatius , considered America ’ s top reporter on the intelligence community , can show his face in public after he was allegedly told by James Clapper to “ take the kill shot on Flynn , ” and then two days later doing just that , is disturbing ( Clapper ’ s spokesman disputes this account , but Ignatius has not ) .
The scoop , that Flynn , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the Russian ambassador , is in no way suspicious , but for weeks was treated as if Flynn was making contact with his handler .
What Russiagate amounts to , as Matt Taibbi among others have written , is the use of federal investigative resources to criminalize or persecute dissenters from the foreign policy line of what we here at TAC call the Blob , in the same way that the PropOrNot list amounts to an attempt to suppress unapproved sources of news .
Many of the same figures involved in prolonging @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the Bush and Obama wars .
Before Russiagate , there was the Pentagon military analysts scandal , in which it was revealed that dozens of media commentators on military affairs were doing so without disclosing their connections to the Pentagon or defense contractors .
It implicated Barry McCaffrey , Bill Clinton ’ s drug war czar , who is now an MSNBC contributor who helped to provide color for the narrative of General Flynn ’ s decline , suggesting he was mentally ill after he had initially been supportive of him getting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Trump provides journalists who have disturbingly cozy relationships with powerful people a way of looking like they are holding the powerful accountable , without alienating any of their previous friends .
Trump is in fact one of the weakest executives in presidential history , partly because of the massive resistance to him in the federal workforce , but also because his White House seems powerless to actually do anything about that .
That people actually think the dark cloud of fascism has descended upon the land when Trump can ’ t even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of power just shows how obsessed with symbolic matters— “ representation , ” they call it—our politics has become .
The subsequent failures of the American information landscape have only served to reinforce this dynamic .
Both the self-inflicted economic catastrophe of the coronavirus shutdowns , and the recent civil unrest , will serve to concentrate wealth away from the hated red-state bourgeoise and into the hands of the oligarchs in blue states , including Jeff Bezos , the owner of the Washington Post .
This bears repeating : COVID and the protests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wealth from a reliably Republican demographic—small business owners—to one that is at best split , which is why you saw Jamie Dimon kneeling in front of a bank vault this week .
Untangling the question of intent is difficult in the best of circumstances , and the same is true here .
The contrast between news networks ominously reporting on Florida beachgoers a month ago now cheering on mass gatherings in large cities may not in fact be due to the fact that the large consortiums that own the networks stand to benefit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country .
They may sincerely believe , along with public health officials , that balancing the risks of institutional racism and getting COVID-19 is worth discussing in relation to protests , but balancing the same risks when it comes to going to church or burying a family member is not .
Or it may just be studied naivety , like the kind exhibited a few weeks ago when the whole New York media scene rushed to the defense of the New Yorker ‘ s Jia Tolentino , who played the victim after people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was involved in what certainly appears to be an exploitative immigration scam .
The rise of the first-person essay and subjectivity in journalism may turn out to be a perfectly congenial development for the powerful people in America ; Tolentino is great at writing about herself .
For one thing , this is a lot cheaper than reporting ; it probably isn ’ t a coincidence that this development has coincided with a huge decline in newsroom budgets .
But at the same time blaming this on economics feels like it misses the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who are convinced this trend is good .
But the way it intersects with official corruption has me rather nervous .
To give one example , it seems clear that # MeToo degenerated after the Kavanaugh hearings and Biden ’ s nomination .
And given the apparent loyalties of someone like David Ignatius , he isn ’ t going to be the one to unravel the intelligence connections involved in the great sexual violence story of our generation , the Jeffrey Epstein scandal .
So we are left with the Netflix version , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in which the Epstein story looks fundamentally the same as most other stories of sexual coercion , involving a powerful man and less powerful woman , only with an exceptionally powerful man .
And yet there are so many indications it was not typical .
So it is today with George Floyd as well .
It seems like there are perfectly reasonable questions to be asked about the acquaintance between him and Derek Chauvin , and the fact that the rather shady bar they both worked at conveniently burned down .
But by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ highly invested in not seeing anything other than a statistic , another incident in a long history of police brutality , and the search for facts has been replaced by narratives .
This is a shame , because it is perfectly possible to think that police have a history of poor treatment toward black people and there might be corruption involved in the George Floyd case , which is something Ben Crump , the lawyer for Floyd ’ s family , seems to suggest in his interview on Face the Nation this weekend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the freakout among young New York Times staffers over their publication of an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton that has now led to the resignation of the editorial page editor , and the report by Cockburn that Andrew Sullivan has been barred from writing about the protests by New York magazine , are a good indication that all of this is going to get worse .
As for the class of people who actually own these media properties , they will probably find that building a padded room for woke staffers , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ safety ” -related demands they ’ re making , will suit their interests just fine .

The most effective kind of propaganda is by omission. Walter Duranty didn’t cook up accounts from smiling Ukrainian farmers, he simply said there was no evidence for a famine, much like the media tells us today that there is no evidence antifa has a role in the current protest-adjacent violence. It is much harder to do this today than it was back then—there are photographs and video that show they have been—which is the proximate cause for greater media concern about conspiracy theories and disinformation.
For all the hyperventilating over the admittedly creepy 2008 article about “cognitive infiltration,” by Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, it was a serious attempt to deal with the problem of an informational center being lost in American public life, at a time when the problem was not nearly as bad as it is today. It proposed a number of strategies to reduce the credibility of conspiracy theorists, including seeding them with false information. Whether such strategies have been employed, perhaps with QAnon, which has a remarkable ability to absorb all other conspiracy theories that came before it, is up to the reader’s speculation.
Books will one day be written about the many failures of the media during the Trump presidency, but much of the Russiagate narrative-shaping was related to the broader problem of decentralization and declining authority of establishment media. One of the more egregious examples is the Washington Post’s report that relied upon a blacklist created by an anonymous group, PropOrNot, that found more than 200 sites carried water for the Russians in some way, and not all on the right either. In fact, if the Bush administration had commissioned a list of news sources that were carrying water for Saddam Hussein in 2006, it would have looked almost the same as the PropOrNot list, except here it was, recast as an effort to defend democratic integrity. On the list was Naked Capitalism, Antiwar.com, and Truthdig.
This should have been a bigger scandal, very good evidence that the war on disinformation was not that but a campaign against officially unapproved information. But virtually nobody except Glenn Greenwald objected. There is some evidence that this style of blacklisting went even further, into the architecture of search engines. My reporting on Google search last year found that one of the “fringe domain” blacklists included Robert Parry’s Consortium News. In other words, if Google had been around in the 1980s, Parry’s exposes on Iran-Contra would have been excluded from Google News results.
The criteria for inclusion on any of these lists are much more amorphous than a more traditional one: taking money from a foreign power. As of this week, we now have a figure for how much the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have taken from China Daily, a state-run newspaper, since 2016. It’s $4.6 million, and $6 million, respectively. This is more than an order of magnitude greater than the amount Russia is thought to have spent on Facebook advertising prior to the 2016 election.
There are other specific Russiagate disgraces one would be remiss to overlook, like star reporter Natasha Bertrand, who was hired at MSNBC after several appearances in which she repeatedly defended the accuracy of the Steele Dossier, which itself was likely tainted by Russian disinformation. The newspaper that published the Pentagon Papers defended the outing of a source to the FBI. How David Ignatius, considered America’s top reporter on the intelligence community, can show his face in public after he was allegedly told by James Clapper to “take the kill shot on Flynn,” and then two days later doing just that, is disturbing (Clapper’s spokesman disputes this account, but Ignatius has not). The scoop, that Flynn, the incoming national security advisor had spoken to the Russian ambassador, is in no way suspicious, but for weeks was treated as if Flynn was making contact with his handler.
What Russiagate amounts to, as Matt Taibbi among others have written, is the use of federal investigative resources to criminalize or persecute dissenters from the foreign policy line of what we here at TAC call the Blob, in the same way that the PropOrNot list amounts to an attempt to suppress unapproved sources of news.
Many of the same figures involved in prolonging the Russiagate hysteria were also big cheerleaders for the Bush and Obama wars. Before Russiagate, there was the Pentagon military analysts scandal, in which it was revealed that dozens of media commentators on military affairs were doing so without disclosing their connections to the Pentagon or defense contractors. It implicated Barry McCaffrey, Bill Clinton’s drug war czar, who is now an MSNBC contributor who helped to provide color for the narrative of General Flynn’s decline, suggesting he was mentally ill after he had initially been supportive of him getting the job.
In a certain sense, Trump provides journalists who have disturbingly cozy relationships with powerful people a way of looking like they are holding the powerful accountable, without alienating any of their previous friends. Trump is in fact one of the weakest executives in presidential history, partly because of the massive resistance to him in the federal workforce, but also because his White House seems powerless to actually do anything about that. That people actually think the dark cloud of fascism has descended upon the land when Trump can’t even figure out how to work those levers of power just shows how obsessed with symbolic matters—“representation,” they call it—our politics has become.
The subsequent failures of the American information landscape have only served to reinforce this dynamic. Both the self-inflicted economic catastrophe of the coronavirus shutdowns, and the recent civil unrest, will serve to concentrate wealth away from the hated red-state bourgeoise and into the hands of the oligarchs in blue states, including Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post. This bears repeating: COVID and the protests will lead to a large transfer of wealth from a reliably Republican demographic—small business owners—to one that is at best split, which is why you saw Jamie Dimon kneeling in front of a bank vault this week.
Intent is difficult to disentangle in the best of circumstances. The contrast between news networks ominously reporting on Florida beachgoers a month ago now cheering on mass gatherings in large cities may not in fact be due to the fact that the large consortiums that own the networks stand to benefit financially from the continued shutdown of the country. They may sincerely believe, along with public health officials, that balancing the risks of institutional racism and getting COVID-19 is worth discussing in relation to protests, but balancing the same risks when it comes to going to church or burying a family member is not. Or it may just be studied naivety, like the kind exhibited a few weeks ago when the whole New York media scene rushed to the defense of the New Yorker‘s Jia Tolentino, who played the victim after people on social media revealed that her family was involved in what certainly appears to be an exploitative immigration scam.
The rise of the first-person essay and subjectivity in journalism may turn out to be a perfectly congenial development for the powerful people in America; Tolentino is great at writing about herself. For one thing, this is a lot cheaper than reporting; it probably isn’t a coincidence that this development has coincided with a huge decline in newsroom budgets. But at the same time blaming this on economics feels like it misses the point, because there are many people who are convinced this trend is good.
But the way it intersects with official corruption has me rather nervous. To give one example, it seems clear that #MeToo degenerated after the Kavanaugh hearings and Biden’s nomination. And given the apparent loyalties of someone like David Ignatius, he isn’t going to be the one to unravel the intelligence connections involved in the great sexual violence story of our generation, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. So we are left with the Netflix version, slotted right into the typical narrative, in which the Epstein story looks fundamentally the same as most other stories of sexual coercion, involving a powerful man and less powerful woman, only with an exceptionally powerful man. And yet there are so many indications it was not typical.
So it is today with George Floyd as well. It seems like there are perfectly reasonable questions to be asked about the acquaintance between him and Derek Chauvin, and the fact that the rather shady bar they both worked at conveniently burned down. But by now most of the media is now highly invested in not seeing anything other than a statistic, another incident in a long history of police brutality, and the search for facts has been replaced by narratives. This is a shame, because it is perfectly possible to think that police have a history of poor treatment toward black people and there might be corruption involved in the George Floyd case, which is something Ben Crump, the lawyer for Floyd’s family, seems to suggest in his interview on Face the Nation this weekend.
Two incidents in the last week, the freakout among young New York Times staffers over their publication of an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton that has now led to the resignation of the editorial page editor, and the report by Cockburn that Andrew Sullivan has been barred from writing about the protests by New York magazine, are a good indication that all of this is going to get worse. As for the class of people who actually own these media properties, they will probably find that building a padded room for woke staffers, in the form of whatever HR and “safety”-related demands they’re making, will suit their interests just fine.