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 1^st 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…

Rigged and More: A Chronicle of The Most Successful Coup d'état in Human History... Or At Least American History

The debate is over. After a year investigating claims of election fraud the media has determined that any fraud in the 2020 election was far too small to have changed the outcome and Joe Biden legitimately won.  Now we can get back to our normal lives, or whatever passes for normal now… Except it’s fiction.   

In 44 BC Julius Caesar was murdered by Roman senators who claimed to be acting to protect the Republic but were in fact, simply seeking power. Their coup d'état put the final nail in the coffin of a Republic that had been dead in deed if not name for decades. 

Coup d'états differ from revolutions in that they’re generally orchestrated by or include people within government who seize power – often with a narrow use of or threat of violence – that results in a rapid transition of power. Revolutions are often longer affairs that include much of a country’s population and exponentially more bloodshed. 

A common goal of a coup is to keep much of the society and government apparatus intact, but change who’s in charge.  This illusion of continuity is intended to gain the acquiescence of the population so they don’t think they’ve been plunged into a civil war.

And that’s exactly what we got. While Donald Trump does not lay in a bloody toga on the floor of the Senate, America witnessed a coup d’état equally as viscous. Many will deny one took place because their guy won, but make no mistake, virtually every American knows one did, even if only 56% admit it.

The moment the coup began to reveal itself Americans knew something was amiss.  Many went to bed November 3^rd believing Trump won, leading in enough states to secure an electoral victory, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and Wisconsin.  Strangely however, while much of America slept, densely populated Democrat counties like Fulton in Georgia (Atlanta) and Allegheny in Pennsylvania (Pittsburg) “stopped counting” votes only to “restart” later with Joe Biden having a sufficient number of votes to swing the state blue. Similarly Philadelphia stopped “reporting” at 1 AM and later reported Biden numbers sufficient to take the state.    

The morning of the 4th, as cries of fraud came from red areas across the country, the side that had spent years crying “election fraud” suddenly fell silent.  Apparently 2020 had become the “most legitimate election in American history”.

Joseph Stalin who said “Those who vote decide nothing.  Those who count the vote decide everything.”  That’s exactly how we went from being a Constitutional Republic to a banana republic, but rather than the United Fruit Company or the CIA running the coup, it was Mark Zuckerberg, Democrats, the FBI and the media.

Just after Biden was sworn into office Molly Ball of TIME Magazine wrote a glowing paean to the coup:  “Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction.”

And as with any good coup, violence was threatened:  “The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country.”  In this context “protests” is a metaphor for Democrat approved violence unleashed by BLM and Antifa across the country.  Ball points out that following Biden’s victory the threatened violence was called off. “There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs.”

While Ball’s homage may be insightful, the definitive account of the coup comes from Mollie Hemingway in “Rigged”.  Unlike Ball, who couches everything about the coup in the fiction of patriots seeking to “protect” America from the fascist Donald Trump, Hemingway exposes exactly how the leftist cabal set the table for the coup, and upon its execution unleashed a propaganda machine to pretend the coup never happened.

Hemingway showcases incompetent GOP functionaries like Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger empowering Democrats led by the treacherous Marc Elias and Stacy Abrams to make unconstitutional voting rule changes. From corrupt jurists ignoring legislation and others explicitly ignoring the Constitution and allowing arbitrary election rulemaking that favored Democrats to the FBI and the media spending years attacking Trump, Hemingway exposes the coup step by step.  She demonstrates how Mark Zuckerberg wrote a $400 million check and financed the coup d'état that undermined our Republic.  

In perhaps the single most telling line in Rigged, on page 221 Hemingway quotes a reporter for the Wisconsin Spotlight:  “The City of Green Bay literally gave the keys to the election to a Democrat Party operative from New York.” Similar dynamics played out across the country.

The model was simple. Red counties in half a dozen states gave their counts while blue counties stopped counting or reporting.  Once the red totals were in Democrats knew exactly how many votes they needed to “produce” and those numbers magically started coming in. Fulton County (Atlanta) gave Biden a 250,000 margin of victory, enough to win the state by 12,000 votes of 5 million cast. Allegheny Pennsylvania (Pittsburg) gave Biden a 150,000 vote margin, enough to take Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes out of 6.8 million. 

When the dust settled, Biden was declared the 46^th President with “81 million votes” to Trump’s 74 million.  But Presidential elections come down to the Electoral College.  Joe Biden won there because of three states and 103,000 votes:  Pennsylvania, 20 Electors, by 80,000 votes, Georgia, 16 by 12,000, and Arizona, 11 by 11,000 votes. 

After two months of being caricatured and called conspiracy nuts or white nationalists, almost a million frustrated Trump voters went to Washington on January 6^th to demand Congress investigate the election.  After a rally where President Trump explicitly said to “peacefullyand patriotically make your voices heard” a riot with a few thousand people broke out at the Capital and suddenly an “Insurrection” worse than anything “since the Civil War” occurred, and anyone questioning the election was a guilty participant.  That riot, which may have been planned or empowered by the FBI suddenly changed the national conversation from investigating November’s coup to the impeachment of Trump for "incitement of insurrection".  And that was it. End of debate. Biden won and Trump tried to incite a coup and any ideas to the contrary were verboten…

But of course Americans know a lie when they see it and the debate isn’t really over.  When the propagandists say there was no way fraud could have impacted an election with 150 million voters, that’s a red herring.  The cabal behind the coup didn’t have to impact 150 million votes.  All they had to do was impact (or create) 100,000 well placed votes, which is exactly what they did, with the help a a Covid driven hysteria and a "bit" of money.  Mark Zuckerberg funded Democrats in a few states merely had to wait until the red areas reported their totals and then magically produce more votes from their stopped or paused machines. And that’s how it’s done, a real life enactment of Stalin’s adage, and it’s just another day at the office for Democrats. 

Mark Anthony could only eulogize Caesar after the Ides of March, but Donald Trump is still very much with us. We still have an opportunity to reverse this treachery and avert the disaster that naturally follows when the Rule of Man subverts the Rule of Law.  But will we seize it before it’s too late?

Do Black Lives Really Matter? It Depends on Who You Ask...

Do black lives really matter? Apparently it depends on who you're asking. In what seems counter intuitive in 2021, the answer from conservatives is generally yes, in that they believe all lives matter, regardless of color.  They will tell you that society and government should strive to be colorblind and that someone should never get less or more based on the color of their skin. The goal is to get government out of the way and let all citizens pursue freedom and opportunity equally, regardless of color.

For liberals however, the answer is quite different.  They say “Yes! Black Lives Matter!” But like the man who kisses his wife goodbye and tells her he loves her before he flies off to Miami for a “business meeting” that’s really just a premise for a romp with his mistress, it’s a lie. And it’s not even close.  Liberals don’t care about black Americans – other than their votes.  Three issues demonstrate it clearly.

First:  Murders.  The “Defund the Police” movement took center stage last summer.  The claim is essentially that police are killing innocent black men across the country, that white cops are hunting down black men and killing them. That is of course a fiction.  It’s not an exaggeration, it’s not hyperbole.  It’s fiction created out of whole cloth.  In 2019, there were a total of 1,089 people killed by police in America, 877 of which race was known. Of that 877 number 259, or 29% were black, 9 of whom were unarmed – although unarmed is not synonymous with innocent.  Given that blacks make up 12% of the population that 29% seems disproportionate.  At the same time however, given that black men make up 6% of the American population but are responsible for approximately 55% of all murders, the 29% of those killed by police doesn’t seem so disproportionate after all. 

But facts be damned!  So Black Lives Matter, Democrats and Antifa got together and pushed the Defund the Police movement.  Across the country police forces faced budget cuts, manpower shortages and the Ferguson Effect where officers subtly pull back from enforcement activities because they’re worried about being scapegoated by administrations that don’t have their backs.

The result of this insanity?  Crime is up around the country and, surprise, more dead black people… How many?  A lot.  Murders increased by 25% in the United States in 2020, more than double the increase in any year since at least 1960.  The total was 20,480, an increase of 4,056 over 2019, and given that blacks generally make up approximately 60% of murder victims, the leftist attack on American policing cost the lives of 2,474 black Americans.  That’s 2,474 funerals, families devastated and opportunities lost.  Those 2,474 black lives didn’t seem to matter.

On October 1^st the New York Post ran a piece about the 21 children who have been murdered this year, triple the number from both 2019 and 2020.  The cover image was heartbreaking… but one notices that of the 18 faces shown, at least 17 of them are black.  Apparently those black lives don’t matter. 

Nor for that matter do the average citizens of urban communities who for years decried the lack of services in their neighborhoods.  Given the rampant crime in cities across the country, hundreds of thousands of small businesses who serve those communities have closed and large businesses are following suit.  In San Francisco the shoplifting has become so rampant that Walgreens has just announced it’s closing 5 more stores, which comes on the heels of 17 already closed due to shoplifting.  That will no doubt make life easier for the elderly black Americans who need to get their medicines or citizens looking for snacks or Band Aids or Halloween candy.  Their black lives don't seem to matter.

Second:  Schools:

Education is one of the most important elements of the lives of Americans.  School is often where young people learn to socialize, follow directions, work hard, pay attention and maybe be part of a team.  Of course all of that is secondary to the primary object of schools, which is teaching math, reading, writing, science and history.  On all of that, public schools in America are failing black students miserably.

Here’s proof.  Below are the 2019 scores in math and reading for black 8^th grade students in eleven of the largest school districts.

Black 8th grade students proficient in:
	Math	Reading
Atlanta	10%	15%
Baltimore	6%	10%
Chicago	15%	16%
Dallas	10%	7%
Denver	13%	14%
Detroit	4%	5%
Los Angeles	8%	9%
Miami	12%	13%
New York	10%	14%
Philadelphia	8%	13%
Washington, DC	11%	14%

Source: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/mathematics/districts/scores/?grade=4
(Scroll to bottom of page and select the city then 8^th grade)

What are these numbers?  They are the number of black 8^th grade students who are PROFICIENT or above in math and reading.  The average rate of achievement of proficient or above is 10% for math and 12% for reading.  That means that literally 90% of the black 8^th graders fail math and 88% fail reading. 

This is a staggering level of failure on the part of schools.  Education is one of the most fundamental elements in equipping a young person for success in life and the public schools across the country are failing black students, criminally.  And just to be clear, it doesn’t have to be that way.  Watch Stand and Deliver or Lean on Me – both based on true stories – to see that it doesn’t have to be that way.  Or read about the Harlem Success Academy in New York or the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta.  Sadly, in most of America’s school systems young black lives don’t seem to matter. 

Third:  Open Borders

Employment is the single biggest driver of prosperity and financial success. Many, if not most Americans start out working at entry level jobs, often making minimum wage or somewhere close to it.  From there generally, as they gain work experience, confidence and skills, most people advance to different jobs or get promoted in ways that see their incomes increase. 

To the degree that many of the ill educated black students America's government schools are producing can get jobs, those jobs are likely to be entry level jobs.  But for decades the opportunities for those entry level jobs has been undermined by unfettered illegal immigration.  The result is that many of those entry level jobs are filled by illegal immigrants rather than by young black Americans.  As such, the opportunities for employment leading to advancement and financial and social success for those unskilled and uneducated black youth are curtailed dramatically.  Without such entry level jobs, the kind one would use to acquire the skills and experience needed to achieve the American dream, their opportunities are largely nonexistent.  Apparently their black lives don’t matter. 

All three of these areas are owned, lock stock and barrel by Democrats.  Democrats are the ones who want to defund the police.  Democrats control the teachers’ unions and almost every major city in the country where the schools are so bad.  Democrats are the ones who want open borders and refuse to enforce immigration laws.

There are other things as well, like Democrat social programs responsible for the dissolution of the black family and keeping generations of families on government handouts, but these three alone are enough to demonstrate that indeed, black lives don’t matter, at least not to Democrats. 

They want black votes and they use black faces and black stories to increase budgets, grow their bureaucratic ranks and strengthen their regulatory power, but they don’t actually care about black men and women and children.  And that’s the irony here. The worse conditions get for black Americans, the more black Americans vote for Democrats, the very party that played such a central role in the destruction of the black American family in the first place.  It reminds one of the ironic saying: “The beatings will continue until morale improves”.   

Oh Beautiful, For Racist Skies... Forever We Are Doomed...

America’s racist!!! One would think, if America is to considered a racist country, we’d want to know the definition of the word. And who better to get that definition from but a giant of the anti-racist movement, Ibram X. Kendi, the author of How to Be an Antiracist. Here’s Mr. Kendi’s definition of racism: "I would define it as a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas…" Apparently Dr. Kendi missed that day in kindergarten where the teacher said “You cannot use the word you’re trying to define in the definition of that same word.”

In an effort to help Mr. Kendi and others understand the words they’re using, below is a slightly more coherent definition of racism:

Racist: One who believes that one “race” (in this context, members of the human race differentiated by the color of their skin) is genetically superior to another. Often the holder of this opinion believes themselves to be amongst the superior race. (For a bit more on this, click here to read my first ever blogpost:  Racism: America's Original Sin.) 

The point of the above is that if one seeks to use a word to describe something, it helps to use the language properly, something Mr. Kendi apparently has trouble doing.

America is racist! That statement is fundamentally illogical. A country cannot be racist. It can be landlocked, beautiful or on the equator, but it can’t be racist. Its people can be however. Indeed, Americans can be racist, and no doubt there are some among us who are. But how many Americans actually are racists? It’s impossible to know, but we do know that there are whites who are racists and believe in white superiority just as there are blacks who are racists and believe in black superiority. But in the context of the “America is racist” trope, it’s only the white racists who count. So how many are there? Are they increasing in numbers?

It’s hard to tell, but to the degree that Americans are part of the KKK, which is historically a group that counts racist anti-black ideas as one of its bedrock principles, perhaps not quite as many as the left would like us to think.

In the 1920’s at its apogee, the KKK had anywhere from 3 to 8 million members. At the time the American population was approximately 110 million. That would mean that somewhere in the ballpark of 5% of the American population would have been members of the Klan. Included in that group were doctors, lawyers, politicians and even a future Supreme Court Justice.

Today however, the number of Americans who are part of the Klan is estimated to be between 3,000 and 5,000. With our larger population that works out to be .000015% of our population as members of the Klan. Were the number 5% as in 1920 there would be 15 million Klan members in the US today. But there’s not. In fact there’s been a reduction of 99.99% of members of the premier racist organization in American history.

Another way of looking at potential racists in America is people who actually commit “hate crimes” where racism is their probable motivation. According to the FBI data states that in 2019 there were 6,406 “hate crimes” in the US where the offender is known – and approximately 2,000 more where they don’t know the offender. These crimes include Murder – 19 offenders and 51 victims, Aggravated Assault – 1,094 / 1,158, Simple Assault – 2,030 / 2,023, Intimidation – 1,640/ 2,206, Burglary – 64 / 129 and various other crimes. Of those “hate crimes” the number of white perpetrators was 3,365 or 52% of the total while the number of black perpetrators was 1,532 or 24% of the total. Whites make up 62% of the American population but only 52% of the “hate crime” offenders while blacks make up 12.6% of the American population but 24% of the “hate crime” offenders…

Finally, one would expect that racists believe that their race (color) is very important to their image of themselves as that’s necessary in order to think of someone of a different color is somehow below them. Pew Research did a survey asking that very question and the results were: 5% of whites thought whiteness was very important and an additional 10% thought it was somewhat important for a total of 15% of whites thinking that their whiteness was important to their image of themselves. For blacks the corresponding numbers about how important blackness was to their self image were 52% & 22% for a total of 74% of blacks thinking that their blackness is important to their image of themselves.

It’s certain that none of these measures is a perfect correlation with the number of racist white people in the United States, but it’s clear that if white Americans were the racist bigots Democrats keep suggesting they are, proof of that would likely show up in one of these datasets. But they don’t.

Nonetheless, we’re told by Democrats, BLM, Antifa and college professors like Dr. Kendi that America is a racist country. What they really mean is that white Americans are racists, and that they have built a systemically racist nation in which black Americans are subjugated and lack opportunities.

Clearly the former is simply not accurate, nor is the latter. If America was a nation of racism incarnate we’d likely not have had a black president, we’d likely not pour billions of dollars a year into the pockets of black entertainers nor put them on the pedestals or jerseys or wall posters. It’s unlikely that 8% of American millionaires would be black nor that the last two federal holidays created would have been centered on black history.

If you’d really like to know what is going on, Google “How many racists are there in the United States”. It’s unlikely you’ll get an even a remotely accurate answer – or logical attempt to come up with one – within the first half dozen pages. What you will get however are countless studies and articles and statistics demonstrating that America is “systemically racist”, rife with “structural racism”, that race relations are getting worse and polls proving that Donald Trump caused a rise in “white nationalism” and “hate groups”. Virtually everything you find will be support for the left’s lie that America is a racist country: disparity, unequal, disadvantage, etc.

Despite the dearth of data demonstrating that America is made up of actual racists, and indeed extraordinary proof to the contrary, the left persists. The president of the United States stated that white supremacists are the “most lethal threat” to the country, the Attorney General claims white supremacists are the biggest domestic terror threat and the Pentagon is teaching soldiers about Critical Race Theory. This is the equivalent of standing in the middle of a desert and pretending you’re drowning. You’re not, and engaging your fellow lost souls to fight that battle will only make them more vulnerable to real threats like scorpions, snakes and dying of thirst. By proffering the fiction that America is racist Kendi, the Democrats and their comrades are leading the country into an inferno from which escape, in one piece and as one people is highly unlikely.

Divide and Conquer: Democrats Turn Americans Against One Another in Naked Pursuit of Power

Evidence of civil war has been playing out in the streets of America for the last year; the reality is it’s been percolating for decades. From the 1999 WTO protests to the hordes calling George Bush a Nazi to Occupy Wall Street, the hyperbole and violence have been ratcheting up for years.

The catalyst that put us on the path to today was the nomination of Barack Obama. Not because of Obama himself, but rather because of the cudgel Democrats crafted from his race. Anyone who opposed Obama’s policies was racist. Suddenly, conservatives who reiterated policies they’d supported for decades were racists as was anyone who opposed Democrat policies.

But race was only the beginning. If you opposed gay marriage: Homophobic. Opposed women in combat:  Sexist. Supported the police:  Fascist.

Such was the beginning of the journey that brings us to America circa 2021.  Today you’re either on the side of angels or the side of Hitler. There’s no middle ground. George Washington was a slave-owning racist and nothing else matters. Michael Brown and George Floyd were innocent victims of racist cops. Period. All women should be believed… unless they accuse Democrats. There are an infinite number of genders. Clearly.  America is systemically racist and any evidence to the contrary is fiction. "Border wall" is a dog whistle for white nationalists.

The reality is, there are racists among us.  So too sexists, homophobes and fascists. There are also bad cops, sexual predators, and evil people. But here’s the thing: Most Americans are none of those. It wouldn’t be possible to build the free, thriving, diverse and prosperous nation America so recently was if they were. If America were systemically racist, we’d never have had a black president: many of the most popular and highest earning entertainers wouldn’t be black; Asian Americans wouldn’t make up 40% or more of the student body at some of America’s best colleges; and minorities wouldn’t own 30% of businesses.

But of course, none of that matters to Democrats. The only thing that matters is setting Americans against one another via victimization and leveraging that conflict for power.

But here’s the other thing about all of this: There’s not an American alive today who can’t claim victim status for one thing or another. If you’re black, you’ll undoubtedly encounter racists. If you’re short you’ve likely been the butt of short jokes, while if you’re 7’ tall “How’s the weather up there?” is a ritual greeting.  Beautiful women are taken for dumb while rich men are in the IRS crosshairs. Fat people or ugly people often find themselves ostracized or worse. An Asian might be expected to be good in math while gays no doubt have heard countless whispers that communicate disapproval or disdain.

The point is, if someone wants to see themselves as a victim, they can… every time. But that’s not traditionally what Americans do. In early 20th century America, when Jim Crow reigned in the south and redlines crisscrossed the country, black Americans moved to places like Harlem and Chicago’s south side and built thriving communities. In the latter half of the 19th century, two million Irish came to America and, despite facing extraordinary hatred, built successful communities. Millions of Jews came at the turn of the century and despite virulent anti-Semitism built a pantheon of successful businesses. Chinese, Vietnamese and Mexican immigrants had similar experiences. And up until the 1970s there were places where women weren’t allowed to get credit cards or open bank accounts without their husbands’ signatures!

Virtually every American alive today can point to some injustice in their lives or those of their ancestors that they could use to paint themselves as victims. But again, historically Americans have not done that. In fact, American history is a story of a people, a diverse mix of people really, overcoming extraordinary adversity and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps to build a nation out of a sparsely populated continent and, in the process, changing the world for the better in virtually every area of culture, charity, science, commerce and, of course, freedom.

That is the story of America. Americans, largely (but not exclusively) white males, built a nation unlike anything the world has ever seen. Americans, again, largely white men, but not exclusively so, united to save the world from self-destruction in two hot wars and one cold. Americans, largely white men, but not exclusively, put men on the moon. Along the way, they invented television, air conditioning, movies, mobile phones, safety elevators, the Internet, the iPhone, the Pet Rock and, sadly, Facebook.

A nation made up of imperfect men and women, in the short expanse of two centuries, has created prosperity unlike anything the world has ever seen. It’s not perfect -- at times it’s even been ugly -- but for the most part, it’s been spectacular. Not for everyone, and not all the time, but for most people of every race, creed, and color, America has been a Godsend.

Not sure about that?  Would black Americans be better off moving back to Africa? Would Italian Americans be better off moving back to Italy? Chinese to China? Mexicans to Mexico? Iranian Americans back to Iran? The answer is likely no in almost every instance.

But again, none of that matters to Democrats. America’s greatness doesn’t matter.  America’s freedom and prosperity don’t matter to Democrats. What matters to Democrats is raw power. The proof is easy to see and can be found in the fealty black Americans pay to the Democrat party. Democrats don’t care about black Americans, but use their votes to get and maintain power. For 50 years Democrats have had a stranglehold on the black vote, and what they’ve done with that power shows exactly how much they value the lives of black Americans. Not much…

And that’s the template for the Democrats’ endgame: Divide and conquer. By seeking to turn every American into a victim, by seeking to demonize the group that played the single biggest role in building the nation that we inhabit today (white males – because of numbers, not because of DNA or some special gift from God), Democrats are seeking to build a coalition of us vs. them, where the “us” is characterized by victimhood and the “them” are evil incarnate in the form of white males.

The beauty of that plan is that, when literally every single person can point to something today or two decades ago or two centuries ago that constitutes a slight or injustice to be rectified, the pool of potential soldiers is bottomless and all that’s necessary is a promise of salvation. Army not big enough? Craft a few more victim narrative promises of salvation and presto, more soldiers.

But the consequence of those votes will be anything but salvation. Once they set the entire population at war against itself, Democrats will step in to pick up the pieces and their literal death grip on power will bring the end of individual liberty, limited government and in time, the Republic itself. And with it will go the prosperity that gave so many Democrats the luxury of focusing on our differences and fabricating victimhood in the first place. Caveat emptor.

Why America is on the Brink of Civil War...

If you’d have asked me even six months ago what the chances of the United States being on the verge of a civil war I would have said probably under 1%. Today I think that number is much closer to 25% and maybe even higher.

Why is that? Simple. Democrats, media and academia…

I grew up on the Navy base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It was a small base but there were a million things to do. Horseback riding, year round sports, a bowling alley, four pools that I can remember, game rooms, gyms, motocross, hiking, scuba diving, surfing, half a dozen outdoor movie theaters – it almost never rained! - karate tournaments and spectacular parades and midways for 4th of July. Cable TV hadn’t reached us and of course the Internet hadn’t been invented so we spent our time actually doing things… I loved virtually every minute of it, but despite being in something close to nirvana, there were people who hated it and were miserable.  We find what we're looking for.   

We often get out of life what we are expecting... are you a glass half full or a glass half empty person?  This question explains why America is at the brink of civil war.

We look around and see people burning down our cities, destroying public and private property, disrupting life for millions of Americans who are simply trying to go to work, eat their lunch or shop at a mall. We see people chanting “F the Police”, “No justice, No Peace” holding up “Black Lives Mater” signs and calling everyone and anyone who doesn’t agree with them racists. We see in New York, LA and countless other cities thugs shooting cops, beating civilians and feeling entitled to do so the whole time.

How did we get here? Very simple. We’ve had decades of the Democrat / Media / Academia Industrial Complex telling Americans that the country is racist. That Republicans don’t care about the poor. That Christians are homophobic. That whites have privilege. That America is rife with systematic racism. That cops hunt down and kill unarmed innocent black males with impunity. And of course that if you are a person of color you have no control over your life and the system will not allow you to succeed, regardless of the hard work you put in, the education you achieve or the virtuous life you lead.  In essence they have been proffering the notion that not only is the glass half empty... but that the other guy took your glass and poured half your water into his glass and then poisoned what's left in yours.  

It is upon this decade’s long backdrop of despicable lies that the same group, along with the Obama holdovers in DOJ, has spent the last four years telling us that Donald Trump is a racist bigot. That Donald Trump was bought and paid for by Russia. That Donald Trump is guilty of abuse of power with respect to Ukraine. That Donald Trump is a power hungry fascist who seeks to make himself king by stealing the election and disenfranchising minority voters.

Of course, none of those things are true. None of them. But that has not stopped the media, academia and the Democrats from shilling each of them, repeatedly. And the result is, you have young people – mostly young, but not all by any stretch – who today see exactly what they have been told to see, exactly what they expect to see. If you are told that you can’t succeed regardless of the life you lead, regardless of the hard work you do, then it’s not unexpected that you would want to tear down the system that has boxed you in.

The fact that all of the bile that the Democrats have been spewing for decades is not true is of no consequence. The fact that the media blatantly paints a picture that is demonstrably false 24 hours a day, seven days a week is of no consequence. The fact that leftist hack academics have rewritten American history through the perspective of their 21st century woke lenses, is of no consequence. The only thing that is of consequence is power… Democrat power. Nothing else matters. As such, if burning down cities is the cost of power, so be it. If putting targets on the backs of police is the cost of power, so be it. If undermining the basic elements of common courtesy, politeness and civic order are the cost of power, so be it. If destroying the life's work of shopkeepers and the jobs of workers trying to provide for their families are the cost of power, so be it.

What you are seeing in the streets is not protest, peaceful or otherwise. What America is experiencing is the beginning of a civil war, only one side has not yet awoken to the fact that it is involved in one. Civil wars don’t have to last long nor be bloody, but they can be, and this one might be. But it doesn’t have to be. Stopping it will take no only a firm response by police and the government, but more importantly in the long run, it means expunging from academia the anti-American fascists who have been rewriting American history as a march through hate and oppression and racism. It means discrediting and marginalizing the manipulative media cabal that proffers the “blame America first” or “America is racist” fictions as they seek to drive up temperatures. Finally it will take a party, whether it’s the GOP or some new entity, that finally stands up for the United States and embraces its history, both good and bad. They must be willing to recognize that America is indeed an imperfect place, as it has been since its founding, but that it gets better decade after decade and has done more to advance the condition of mankind than any nation in human history. They must know and be willing to say that the United States is the greatest nation in the history of human civilization and that there is more freedom here, more opportunities here and more prosperity here than anywhere on the planet. That with hard work one can make a better life for himself, for his family and his community.

Imagine what a country could do if those were the ideas that young people were being exposed to every day. Imagine if they expected to succeed… if they expected to be treated fairly… if they had gratitude for our freedoms and what others sacrificed to give it to them. Imagine they understood they are living in a time and place most people in history would have traded their souls for and millions of people risk their lives for every year.

Tell young people their lives aren't theirs, they can't succeed and racism is everywhere and they will believe it find it around every corner.  Tell them racism and other evils exist, but they live in the land of opportunity and their success is in their hands and they will succeed despite the roadblocks.   Couple that glass half full on steroids mindset with America’s bounty and the opportunities are infinite.

What Would Jesus Have Done in Kenosha Last Week... What Would You Have Done?

Imagine that Jesus was in Kenosha last week when Jacob Blake, a man with a warrant out on him for criminal trespassing, domestic abuse and sexual assault, began threatening the very person he had previously abused. In order to keep things from getting out of hand he might have given Mr. Blake a heart attack. He might have turned Mr. Blake into The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Or he might have had Mr. Blake pull a hamstring so that he ended up wreathing on the ground not being able to move. But none of those things happened and the truth is, I’ve no idea what the Lord would have done had he been responding to the 911 call.  But I know what the police did… They shot Mr. Blake.

There is of course a bit more to the story. They didn’t just show up and start shooting. No, apparently they tried talking to him, but that didn’t work. They tazed him, twice. That didn’t work. They tried to physically restrain him. That didn’t work… at one point apparently he even had one of the three police in a headlock! They eventually pulled their guns on him and told him to stop moving. Even that didn’t work. So when he reached inside his car after being told again to stop and didn’t, they shot him.

Just as I don’t know what Jesus would have done with the 911 call, I don’t have any idea what he would have done in reaction to the shooting… but I do know what the leftist BLM and Antifa mobs did… they rioted, of course.

While we can’t know what Jesus would have done had he responded to that 911 call, we can ask what exactly would most Americans, black or white do if they were in the shoes of the policeman? You have a known violent criminal who has been fighting with you, who was not fazed by a Taser, who was noncompliant in the face of police pointing guns at him commanding him to stop, who continues to defy them and reaches into his car… The police, observing this behavior, not knowing what Blake was reaching for, possibly a gun, had to decide in an instant. Had it been a gun Blake was going for, not only could he have shot one or more of the police, he might have accidentally shot one of his 3 small children sitting in the back seat or some innocent bystanders.  What would you have done?

Should the police have waited until Blake emerged from the car with a gun pointed at them or until he had already started firing? Is that the standard we expect for police now? Wait until a criminal points a gun at you and shoots before you fire? Maybe they should they have used less lethal force instead? Like what? They tried physically restraining him and by using a Taser on him, twice! Neither worked. Should they have tried a net like gladiators used to use? Blake was undaunted and violent… so expecting him to reach into his car and pull out a candy bar or some flowers wasn’t exactly rational. The police expected something violent and fired before someone other than the criminal got hurt. What is the right alternative in this circumstance that would have guaranteed no one else – or even Jacob Blake – was hurt?

“But they didn’t have to shoot him 7 times!” or “They didn’t know what he was reaching for at the time… it could have been his keys!” Because… yeah... It’s one thing to play the Monday morning quarterback and say what should have been done or not done after the fact, but in the heat of battle… and make no mistake, for those involved that’s exactly what this was, what was the right answer in that split second, at that moment when the lives of at least three police officers, three children, numerous civilians and the suspect were on the line? Sure, someone might say, hey that’s not fair to ask us, we’re not trained to know what to do in situations like that, but the police are. That’s true… but it was clear they tried all those things they were trained to do and nothing seemed to stop Blake… but that doesn’t seem to have mattered to the rioters.

So where does appear to leave America in 2020? Do facts not matter any longer? Do circumstances not matter? Is everything literally black and white as in black vs. white? How does this comport with Martin Luther King’s hope that people would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin? All anyone knew in the hours after the shooting was that a black man was shot by white cops… Full stop.  Period. Yet, chaos and violence ensued.

In today’s world of identity politics and the cult of victimization the facts no longer matter. Rational thought no longer matters. Objective reality no longer matters. The only thing that matters is the message of victimhood, the color of one’s skin or gender or whatever today's characteristic of choice, but only as it relates to traditional America and traditional American values. If a black criminal gets shot because he’s defied every non lethal attempt to subdue him, he’s a hero, regardless of the facts. If a white kid shoots three protesters in self defense he’s a white racist… regardless of the facts.

People like Nancy Pelosi, LaBron James, Mark Cuban and the entirety of the media, education and Democrat cabal have brought America to the brink of anarchy with their disregard for the truth, for objective reality and for the true and good nature of most Americans. They have embraced, manipulated and leveraged anecdotal evidence of human failings to tarnish the name of half the population and undermine the founding principles of the nation that has done more good for more people than any in human history. All in the name of Hope and Change… In reality, it is power they seek. It is obedience they seek. Fundamentally, it is fealty to their worldview they seek. Racism is no longer defined by actual racist behavior… it’s defined by whatever they say it is. Free speech no longer means actual freedom to speak your mind… no, it means you’re free to say only those things they agree with. Fair is no longer a term that can be debated based on the merits of an argument… no, alas, fair means outcomes that are aligned with the various identities of the people involved, regardless of effort or risk or ingenuity associated with the endeavor being undertaken.

Which brings us back to Kenosha. And Portland. And Seattle. And Baltimore. And Chicago. And New York. And Ferguson. America was never perfect and it never will be. But it has been the greatest nation on the planet for at least a century and has grown better decade after decade. But that’s not good enough for Pelosi, James, et al. They have a worldview of perfection as they define it and they demand it now. They are in the process of killing the goose that has laid golden eggs for 233 years. If they are allowed to win the argument today and the election in November the nation will come to resemble Kenosha far more than it does the rich enclaves that they inhabit… and the goals that they pretend they care about will end up in tatters on the floor.  More importantly, the people they profess to care about will end up as part of a system which will likely provide far fewer opportunities, far fewer freedoms, far less security and far less prosperity than the one they inhabit today. As I mentioned, I can’t speak for Jesus, but I can’t imagine that he or anyone with a functioning brain would be in favor of replacing imperfect freedom with leftist fascism… but that’s exactly where this cabal wants to take us.

30 Million Dead Americans? The Coronavirus Is Not A Hoax, But The Hysteria Surrounding It Very Much Is...

On June 6th 1944 over 250,000 American and allied personnel left from England and headed to the Normandy to face the Nazis who were entrenched along in giant fortified bunkers all along the French coast. The Nazis had control of virtually all of Europe and Operation Overlord was the Allied attempt to gain a beachhead in northern France from which they could open another front against Germany.

Once the smoke cleared on D-Day, the Allies had suffered approximately 10,000 casualties, 4,400 of which were fatalities. Those numbers are of course staggering for one day, but the truth is, relative to the anticipated casualties, those number are quite low. Prior to the invasion General Eisenhower and his staff estimated 13% of the invasion troops might die and 25% of those who landed on the beaches would end up casualties. Together those calculations suggested that during the first 24 hour period nearly 30,000 Allied soldiers and sailors would end up dead and another 24,000 would be wounded.

That’s not what happened… but it could have. And that’s the point. Despite the potential for over 50,000 dead and wounded in one day and for a failure which could have allowed Germany to make its hold on the continent permanent, Ike decided to launch Operation Overlord nonetheless… because it needed to be done. Life with a Europe ruled by Nazis was simply not feasible for the United States and her allies. And so D-Day was launched. And the rest is history.

Today while there it’s not a Nazi storm taking over Europe or America – although BLM and Antifa certainly demonstrate very similar tactics – it’s the neutron bomb of Covid 19 is. Neutron bombs of course are generally intended to leave structures standing while killing people via radiation poisoning. That is exactly what Covid 19 is doing to the American economy. Not the virus itself or course, but rather the shutdowns, quarantines, lockdowns and other government interventions.

Not that the virus is not killing people. It is. Thus far about 165,000 people in the United States. That is not a small number by any stretch, but in a country of 330 million people in which 2.5 million people die annually, it is far from a catastrophe, although for the victims and their families, it is no doubt catastrophic. On Friday the government announced that 1.8 new jobs had been created in July and that unemployment dropped to a 10.2% down from almost 14.7% in April – and up from a record low of 3.5% in December. This good news comes despite the fact that the media pillories Republican governors for opening their states while venerating Democrats who seek to keep the country locked up tighter than a drum. Despite what seems to be an economy on the mend however, the reality is, the only reason the nation is still standing is that the federal government and the FED have pumped close to $10 billion into the economy since March… much of it ending up in the stock and debt markets.

Everywhere you look, hotels, restaurants, gyms, karate classes, airlines, sports teams, convention centers, the number things that are closed or working at threadbare capacity are extraordinary. But these are only the faces we see. Behind all of these public facing businesses are millions of small businesses that provide services like, pool maintenance, janitorial services, furniture repair, painting as well as goods like bread, eggs, chairs, exercise equipment, foam fingers, bobbleheads and thousands of other things businesses use and need to survive. Those businesses employ millions of people who are today not working.

Sure, companies like Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Campbell’s Soup, Netflix, Amazon and Clorox are doing fine, but they are a small fraction of the American economy. And there’s the rub. America can’t survive just buying Great Value tomato sauce and Behr paints or cleaning the kitchen with Windex when not arguing on Facebook or watching Netflix and eating Orville Redenbacher Popcorn. Small and medium sized businesses drive the American economy, representing a majority of the job creation and sustaining tens of millions of employees. The true cost of this disaster – the government shutdowns rather than the virus itself – have yet to be felt, and are likely to be felt for years to come.

The Democrat’s and media’s willingness to use this virus to keep the country closed for the purpose of harming Donald Trump is simply despicable. Unlike the Nazis in 1944, Covid 19 is not an existential threat to the country, or the world. Below is a chart from the CDC. It tracks the one week average death total in the United States going back to July 2018. The funny thing about this chart is that it shows that the number of excess deaths relative to the number of expected deaths is quite small, averaging 14.4% more deaths each week than was expected. Since February 15th the number of excess weekly deaths has averaged 8,000 above the 63,000 average expected.

For a nation with a population of 330 million people, the 165,000 people who have died represent .00005% of the population. To give you an idea of how good a job of misleading the public on the dangers of Covid 19 the media and the Democrats have done, according to a July 15 poll by Publicis Groupe (page 24), Americans on average think 9% of the population has died from Covid 19… that’s 30 million people! That’s 180 times more than the actual number who have died!

So we’ve shut the country down for a virus that Americans think has killed 30 million people when in reality it’s killed 165,000. We’ve added $10 trillion to our national debt, we’ve seen tens of thousands of businesses declare bankruptcy, we’ve watched as tens of millions of people have gone on unemployment, we’ve seen depression and suicide leap, we’ve stopped people from going to church, school and in many cases, work. And all in an attempt to keep Donald Trump from being reelected in November.

To come full circle, the United States lost 400,000 troops during WW II when the population was 140 million. That’s .002% of the population lost – mostly young men of working age – in the pursuit of fighting a real, existential threat to the country and the world. Today, America has essentially eviscerated her economy and much of her community in reaction to a virus that has killed .00005% of her population, 80% of whom were 65 and older, most with underlying health problems. The Coronavirus may be many things, but it’s far from an existential threat to the United States. Heart disease kills 4 times as many people each year and we don’t shut the country down for it. Cancer kills 3 times as many people each year and we don’t shut the country down for it. Sure, they’re not contagious, but the Flu is and it kills 1/3 to ½ as many people each year and we don’t shut the country down for it either.

The bottom line is, while the Coronavirus is not a hoax, the shutdowns, the lockdowns and the hysteria surrounding it very much are and it was perpetrated on the American people by the Democrats and their media sycophants in their willingness to sacrifice the nation for their “Orange Man Bad” psychosis.

In November voters will have the opportunity to demonstrate to these anti-American misanthropes that most Americans are not snowflakes… That most Americans understand that life involves risks, but that is the cost of building a better life for their families and their communities and yes, building a better country. Ben Franklin said: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” That quote, like many of Franklin’s seems to have a particular resonance in America 265 years after he uttered it. In the face of real threats Americans have demonstrated a real willingness to sacrifice for the common good. Covid 19 is not that, despite what the media and the Democrats want us to believe. Americans have had enough of this hoax of a national threat and the pernicious statists who have foisted it on the country. Hopefully they will demonstrate their displeasure in November…