Sunday, September 25, 2022

Black Lives Apparently Don't Matter to Democrats Who Use Them As Cannon Fodder in Pursuit of Power

America is being destroyed from within.  The Republic is being demolished by the Swamp, the borg of pernicious politicians, entrenched, politicized bureaucrats, media elites and academics who wield environmentalism and equity as truncheons to obliterate individual freedom, economic opportunity and the rule of law.  The recent episode of hypocrisy onMartha’s Vineyard demonstrates with crystal clarity the universe the elites of the Swamp create as they make laws that apply to peasants but no to the aristocracy.

Columns documenting the machinations of the Swamp are legion, but this is not one of them.  No, this piece is specifically about the destruction of the rule of law that the those elites have unleashed on said peasants, specifically as it relates to violent crime.

This past week New Orleans reclaimed the title of America’s deadliest city after seeing murders jump 141% over the last couple of years.  In New Orleans the murder rate is a staggering 52 per 100,000 people.  That compares to the national average of 6.9, the highest it’s been in a quarter century and the 50 per 100,000 of Venezuela, the most dangerous country in the world.

If New Orleans were an outlier it would be a shame, the fact that it’s not is a tragedy:  New York, Chicago, Portland, LA, San Francisco, Philadelphia and more. Big cities and small, crime is up across the country over the last two years, in most cases, dramatically.

We’ve always had crime in America.  Such is the price of freedom.  But what we are experiencing today is something altogether different.  It’s not just crime.  America can sometimes be a dangerous place.  Everyone knows working the midnight shift at a convenience store carries more risk than working the 9 AM shift at your local library, just as common sense tells you the odds of getting into a fight in a bar on a Saturday night are far higher than they are at church on Sunday morning.   

And just to be clear, this is not Antifa thugs and BLM cultists burning down cities.  Protest, even violent protest has been part of American history since its founding and largely is event driven like Shay’s Rebellion, the Vietnam War protests, or the riots after the killing of MLK or the acquittal of the police in the Rodney King video.

No, this is something different.  It’s one thing to rage against the machine, it’s another to commit violence against citizens, particularly when they are unsuspecting innocents or compliant victims.  And this is the issue today and we see it taking place across the county, from urban jungles like New York City to Midwestern communities like Salt Lake City.

What America’s experiencing today is exponentially worse than the typical crime that America is used to, and the truth is, most of it – but far from all of it – is being perpetuated by young black men, although increasingly, by young black women as well. 

Violence is being taken not only to a new level in terms of its frequency, but in the application as well. It’s not taking place in dark corners or deserted parking lots, but rather right in the middle of regular hustle and bustle of American’s daily lives.  It’s taking place in broad daylight, in full view of video cameras – often with others videoing the carnage to share on social media.  Violent, brutal crime is taking place on main street USA, in schools, drugstores, fast food restaurants, subway platforms, high end retail stores, and of course homes. 

We see large groups of young people blitzing stores and grabbing merchandise off shelves and running out with smiles on their faces.  We see “shoplifters” methodically clear store shelves of merchandise and simply stroll out the door, unconcerned about getting stopped or arrested and often assaulting employees along the way. 

What’s more, there’s an element of violence that seems unprecedented in its scale.  Almost daily we see random innocent people on subways or on stairs or in restaurants getting shoved or kicked or punched. We see fast food workers attacked as customers come over or around counters and spark mayhem.  We see bus drivers attacked and shop owners beaten and cops spit on. Indeed we see countless instances where robbers beat or shoot victims even after they have taken whatever they were after.  We also read daily of innocents of all ages killed in the crossfire while sleeping in their beds, standing in a bar or sitting in their cars. 

There also seems to be a racial element to this new crime wave with black perpetrators targeting a disproportionate number of white or Asian victims… but make no mistake, the single largest group of victims of this crime wave are black citizens. 

The question is, why is all of this this happening?  What is it that has caused an increasing number of black Americans to believe that they can rob and beat and even kill their fellow citizens with impunity? There are no doubt countless contributing factors, from missing fathers to failing schools to social media, but those problems (at least the first two) have existed for quite some time. No, the reason for the sharp jump in violent crime and unhinged behavior on the part of large numbers of primarily young black Americans is the Democrat proposition that everything bad that happens to blacks is a consequence of racism and as such, they’re not responsible for their choices and therefore they should not be held accountable for their actions.

Ronald Reagan once said, “If you want more of something, subsidize it…” and that is exactly what the Democrats have been doing with violent crime.  While they are not yet directly paying criminals to attack their fellow citizens and rob local businesses, they are subsidizing crime nonetheless.   

On the one hand George Soros backed Democrat prosecutors from coast to coast are demonstrating their pro criminal empowerment bonafides by refusing to seek bail for most arrestees, refusing to prosecute countless misdemeanors and simultaneously undercharging countless violent crimes as said misdemeanors. While on the other hand you have Democrats effectively decriminalizing an entire swath of crimes or eliminating bail for almost every offense.  Indeed, the lunatics running Illinois have just passed a law that eliminates bail for virtually every offense below 1st degree murder and prohibits police from arresting or removing trespassers caught in the act of burglarizing a home or business.  That means that if someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night and you call the police, if you’re lucky enough given the Democrat “Defund the police movement” that they respond while the trespasser is still there, they are literally not allowed to remove them from your home

All of this is happening exactly when America’s cultural and political elites are telling young black Americans that the system is rigged against them, that they’re incapable of succeeding when playing by the rules, that most white people hate them and if they break the law there are no consequences to be had.  That is literally a recipe for the collapse of society. 

Today in Democrat run America, it’s only the rights of criminals that matter, never the victims… and the fact is that most of the victims of this American renaissance of violence are, in fact, black Americans, the very people Democrats pretend to care about.  Democrats have leveraged the fictions of “systemic racism” and millions of “white supremacists” running around to accumulate power, and Americans of all races are paying the price.  But this is exactly what happens when politicians pursue policies of balkanization and victimization, setting groups of Americans against one another for the purposes of gaining power.  The Democrats thrive, their grifter partners thrive and America’s citizens suffer. 

America was founded on the principle that all men were created equal in the eyes of God and in the laws of man. While the execution of those truths have been imperfect from the beginning, it has consistently improved for over 200 years, bringing Americans freedom and prosperity unmatched in human history, and that includes black Americans, who make up fully 8% of American millionaires.  Democrats, in half a generation have undone 200 years of progress and created a violent cage match between demographics in the public square, and the result has been a body blow to civil society, mayhem in cities, and blood on the streets, and most of it black.  But somehow black America continues to vote Democrat in Stalin like numbers. Perhaps they should reconsider…

Thursday, September 8, 2022

Joe Biden Has Picked Up the Nazi's Handbook, and He's Not Trying to Burn It...

Most people know about the Nazis and WWII and the Jews. A century later however what many people don’t realize is that the Nazis didn’t start out as the merchants of death they became.  They started out as anti-big business, anti-middle class, anti-capitalist and anti-Communist with only a relatively tangential focus on anti-Semitism.  For all of their efforts in the first decade of their existence the Nazi party attracted few adherents.  It was only in the early 30’s when they began to gain real traction, using the economic ruin brought on by the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression to gain power. While nationalism and anti-Semitism were always part of their agenda, it was the post war economic disaster that was the golden ticket for a party who argued the Germans were suffering under the boot of oppression.  The Nazis promised to remove the shackles of Versailles, reenergize the German economy and as a result in 1932 they won the largest number of seats in the Parliament.  Leveraging this position Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933. 

Once in power, the gloves came off.  The Reichstag fire in February 1933 was used as a premise to target political opponents and curtail civil liberties.  A month later Parliament passed the Enabling Act which allowed the cabinet to make laws with no parliamentary oversight.  In June of that year opposition parties were outlawed and in December the lines between party and government were erased.  In January of 1934 the last vestiges of opposition was eliminated when states lost their voice in government.  So in a period of less than two years the Nazi party went from a fringe party to having a stranglehold on the government and the people of Germany.  It was then that they unleashed their heretofore relatively subdued anti-Semitism.  From boycotts to book burnings to de facto discrimination to de jure separation via the Nuremberg laws and finally, the Final Solution.

We can be almost sure that if we asked any German in 1932 would it be OK to gas and murder Jews, they would most certainly have said no. But within two years Jews would officially be defined as a different, inferior race, had their political and economic freedoms curtailed and within a decade millions would be dead. 

As Martin Niemöller suggests in his 1946 poem “First they came…” the Nazis were able to accomplish their goals by taking baby steps of oppression with little discernible pushback from a willfully gullible public. 

And so it is that we find ourselves in America in 2022 with fascism ascendant. And unlike what the media would like you to believe, it’s not Donald Trump who’s leading the parade.  For just over two years we’ve seen the evil of fascism take hold in the United States like it’s never held sway before.

Consider the following: 

In the summer of 2020 Democrats rained hell down on American cities and citizens, by allowing and encouraging and funding urban terrorists to destroy private and public property, attack citizens and the police and kill dozens of innocent victims. 

In 2020 and beyond, after years of watching Democrats assail our election system, when anyone questioned the highly unlikely outcome of the 2020 election they were branded as anti democratic conspiracy nuts and accused of supporting insurrection.

The relatively small riot that occurred on January 6th 2021– primarily involving those who questioned the 2020 election outcome – was labeled an insurrection and hundreds of citizens who had been welcomed into the US Capital or standing on its grounds were arrested, labeled as terrorists and thrown in solitary confinement for months without charge or bail.  At the same time there are a number of provocateurs who seem to have been involved about whom the FBI is stunningly disinterested.   

Illegally politicizing the Department of Justice, for the following 18 months the Biden administration and Democrats used the pretense of the “insurrection” to harass, intimidate, arrest and jail members of the former president’s administration, legal team and supporters.  This harassment eventually led to the unprecedented step of the Justice Department and the FBI raiding the home of the former president and future presidential contender. 

Beginning in 2020, in response to the Corona virus, states and municipalities across the country (mostly run by Democrats) instituted draconian lockdown edicts that eviscerated individual rights, destroyed small businesses and ostracized or arrested individuals who resisted. Simultaneously teachers’ unions nationwide forced the shutdown of schools, leading to extraordinary declines in student learning and dramatic increases in youth depression. Those seen questioning the efficacy of or the damage from such lockdowns and shutdowns were seen as enemies of the regime and were subsequently silenced as the administration covertly worked with social media companies to silence and deplatform them.  

The Biden administration issued mandates for rapidly developed vaccines of dubious efficacy and unknown danger and then proceeded to coerce private enterprises to enforce said mandates.   Questioning that policy or non acquiesce with it was seen as a proxy for opposition to the regime and livelihoods were threatened and destroyed.

Inserting themselves into the localist of government activities, school boards, Americans who stood up and voiced their opposition to their children being exposed to sexualization in schools or accused of being racists because of the color of their skin have been branded as terrorists by the Justice Department.

All of this threatening, intimidating and jailing of the opposition set the backdrop for Joe Biden’s extraordinary speech last week where he stated:  Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic. This was not a campaign speech, this was the President of the United States addressing American citizens… and he called 71 million of them terrorists.

Which brings us back to Germany in 1932.  Just as the Nazis used their toehold on power to take total control of the government and methodically use that government to first slander then marginalize then cleave from society the hated Jews who were said to be less than human, the Democrats have used their control over the media, local governments and federal agencies to take over the federal government and are now using that government to slander and marginalize and cleave from society the millions of Americans who disagree with their leftist agenda. 

And these are not just idle words, Joe Biden is the head of the United States government, with all of its resources at disposal, telling 71 million Americans they are a threat to the nation. And in case anyone missed the point, after having just passed a law to hire 87,000 new armed IRS agents, the administration hired Nikole Flax, who worked with Lois Lerner at the IRS when it was targeting conservatives during the Obama administration, to run the new division.   So Joe Biden and the Democrats have just created the largest armed police force in the nation and set as its leader someone associated with the targeting of their political opponents.  Joe Biden’s words are not just words… they are threats. He paints his political opponents as extremists and then exhorts his supporters to “confront” them.  “We’re all called by duty and conscience to confront extremists who put their own pursuit of power above all else.”

None of this means that by 2025 we’ll have concentration camps filled with emaciated conservatives, but it’s not like there’s no precedent.  But unlike the Germans after 1932, Americans still have the opportunity to do something about this, to make their voices heard, to change the course of history.  This November in all 50 states there will be elections, and in most there will be a Democrat on one side and a Republican on the other.  In every single case, whether for dog catcher, governor, senator or any office in between, they should pull the GOP lever.  The GOP is far from perfect and their candidates and representatives are at times questionable, but at the end of the day, they are not Democrats.  They are not the party that is taking the country down the totalitarian path that wrought so much damage and spilled so much blood in the last century.  No, Republicans may be flawed, but voting for them will likely not be fatal to the Republic.  The same can’t be said about Democrats.