Bayou Renaissance Man

Four days after the assassination attempt on President Trump, there's still an awful lot of smoke blocking our view of the fire.  Unfortunately, that's likely to be the case for months to come.  The fact that the would-be assassin was allowed to get "danger close" and fire several shots is an indictment in itself of the US Secret Service and every other agency involved in providing security that day.  It was an unconscionable failure of policies and systems that should have been so well-rehearsed that they were almost on autopilot.  We've had so much experience of providing security to high-risk targets that this should have been a no-brainer.  Clearly, it wasn't.  Heads should roll at the highest level, and if any element of Diversity-Equity-Inclusion and other progressive buzzword policies can be shown to have contributed to the failure, it/they should be discarded at once and all concerned re-trained using more realistic, real-world-applicable frameworks.

Will that happen under President Biden?  Oh, hell no.  Might it happen under President Trump if he's re-elected, and if he stays alive (despite all the Secret Service, the FBI and other agencies can do) until he takes office?  You bet your life!  I daresay there'll be (metaphorically) a swinging sword scything its way through Washington DC, and it'll likely start with those agencies and people who failed so abysmally last Saturday.

I'm having fun watching the Democratic Party almost fall apart under the strain of deciding what to do next.  I'm pretty sure President Trump boosted his electoral chances very highly through surviving the attack;  most political commentators appear to agree.  That means any potential candidate to replace Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket has to face the very real possibility that he/she will be almost guaranteed to lose, all other things being equal (which they seldom are, of course).  That might spell political disaster for their future career.  To run and fail is much worse, in terms of future electoral optics, than to withdraw from the race out of "loyalty for the incumbent", appear to give him as much support as possible, then commiserate with him over his failure as he heads for the old age home.  Most potential Presidential candidates among the Democrats understand that very well.  I daresay they're now pushing for a Biden/Harris ticket in the confident expectation it'll fail, leaving the way open for one of them to replace it in future.

As for President Trump;  he continues to be the motivating spark trying to light a fire in the Republican Party.  I've been very disappointed in the Republican convention so far.  There appears to be a general lack of enthusiasm, drive and energy.  It's largely the same old, same old pious political platitudes.  Trump's selection of J. D. Vance as his vice-presidential running mate interests me very much, for a number of reasons.

1. Vance, like Trump, has for most of his life been outside electoral politics.  He only entered the Senate two years ago.  Prior to that, he made his own way in life, and comes from what many call the "underclass" of society.  He's a self-made man, in that sense.  That means he understands President Trump, and the two will probably work well together.
2. Vance is young enough (almost 40) to have decades left in his political career.  If he and Trump do a good job, he might be elected as President for one or two terms when Trump finally lays down the gavel.  However, would this be best for him?  He'd end up in his early 50's as an ex-President with very little to do.  He's unlikely to take well to that;  he'll be young and energetic enough to want to do more, but what is there that can compare to the Presidency?  It'll be interesting to watch how this works out.
3. I think it's very worthwhile to analyze those who are opposed to Vance's selection, and their reasons for their position.  He seems to be annoying all the right people!  As one source put it:  "If Mitt Romney doesn't like J. D. Vance, then J. D. Vance was the right choice."

One thing I must say, very vehemently, is that I'm sickened and disgusted by those who latched on to the fact that Vance's wife is of Indian descent (although born here in the USA).  So what?  Does her race make any difference to whether or not she's a good person?  They also object to the fact that she's Hindu, while her husband is Catholic.  It's their business to make that work for their family, not ours.  Leave them alone to do so!  Racism is still alive and well in the USA, and to see it so nakedly on display in the disparaging comments made about Mrs. Vance is nauseating.  I know some few of my readers are among those raising such objections, which saddens me.  I can only suggest that if they feel that way, they shouldn't be reading my blog either, because there's no place for such attitudes here.

In closing, let me repeat that I'm neither a Republican nor a Democrat.  I'm genuinely independent in my thinking, and will always support the best candidate for a given position rather than a political party.  (Yes, that means I might vote for a Democrat over a Republican if the former candidate warranted it, and/or the latter candidate was a particularly poor politician.)  However, in the present situation in this country, there's only one side that appears to be trying to restore genuinely constitutional government;  what President Abraham Lincoln famously summarized as "government of the people, by the people, for the people".  I may not agree with every position taken by that party, but its foundation(s) is/are solid in that sense (unlike their opposition).  Therefore, that side, and its candidates, gets my vote.  We'll "sweat the petty stuff" later.

Peter

People forget how deep-seated is the hatred between the races of the Caucasus.  Even if a ceasefire were enforced today on the battlefield, the ethnic divisions and bitter resentments of the past would remain, and sooner or later they'd break loose again.

As an illustration, here's a joke posted on MeWe by Michael Z. Williamson.  It's an old one, that I've read several times in the past, but the emotions it expresses are very real.  Click the image for a larger view.

One laughs when reading it . . . but that truly is how strongly the hatred continues between many Russians and many Poles.  Don't forget, the western provinces of Ukraine used to be the eastern provinces of Poland until the Soviet Union allied with Hitler to dismember that country in 1939/1940.  Ethnic Poles were "cleansed" back into Poland, and Ukrainian and Russian newcomers were settled on the land that had once been theirs.  After the carnage of World War II finally died down, there weren't many on either side who could rebuild what had been there before, because all sides had genocided the heck out of each other as a matter of policy.

I saw the same thing in Africa on numerous occasions.  I'm sure many of you recall the Rwanda genocide of 1994, or the many conflicts making up the Congolese civil war over the past half-century or so.  Most recently, Nigeria saw ethnic and religious conflict flare up over the Christmas period.  The root causes and ethnic hatreds on display there mirror and echo those in eastern Europe, and are every bit as bloody.

I don't hold out much hope for a rapid, peaceful settlement in Ukraine.  Too much blood has been shed.

Peter

Ibrahim X. Kendi, darling of the "Everything is raaaaaaaaa-cis!" crowd, recently spoke at the launch of a new Netflix production, "Stamped from the Beginning".  Here's an excerpt from his talk.

“I don’t think white people worldwide have really reckoned with how much their own personal identity is shaped by constructions of whiteness, and how much that construction of whiteness prevents white people from connecting to humanity. In other words, recognizing that — when you — when you recognize that you are part and parcel of humanity — in other words, you’re not over humanity, right? It allows you to really be able to connect to people who don’t look like you, who have kinky hair, who have dark skin, and to see yourself in them. And it’s whiteness that prevents that, right? And when you’re not able to see yourself in other human beings, that creates all sorts of problems, but not just societal problems, personal problems that I think, hopefully, this film and this work will liberate those folks from.”

I couldn't disagree more with Mr. Kendi.  Let's look at a few examples of why he's so very, very wrong.

1. In my experience of racism (which is, I daresay, considerably more extensive and a whole lot more violent than Mr. Kendi's), "whiteness" has little or nothing to do with the problem.  It's any person who thinks in terms of his or her race versus all the others.  To cite just a few examples, there's black African resentment and hatred of Indians and Asians, frequently taking violent form, as in Uganda in 1972;  Chinese contempt for all gwailos, all other races, but particularly for blacks;  colonial attitudes of racial superiority by whites against blacks;  tribal hatreds between black groups and individuals, which can be far bloodier and deadlier than any merely interracial conflict (witness the Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe between 1982 and 1987 [which I saw for myself], or the Hutu massacre of hundreds of thousands of Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994 [ditto in the aftermath], or the ongoing tribal and religious conflict in Nigeria);  and so on ad infinitum.  Yes, white people have perpetrated such hatred and discrimination.  So has almost every other race on earth, including black people.  "Whiteness" as such is no more a factor than is "blackness" or "Chinese-ness" or any other "-ness".
2. Mr. Kendi claims, "that construction of whiteness prevents white people from connecting to humanity".  I can't help but think of the millions upon millions of white people who routinely conduct business and/or tourism with people of other races in many other countries, on many other continents, all over the world.  Is that not "connecting to humanity"?  If not, what is it?  What about a person like myself, raised as part of a privileged white minority in a racially governed country, but able to live and work among black people of many tribes and cultures throughout sub-Saharan Africa?  Am I not "connected to humanity"?  I certainly don't regard myself as special, or somehow "super-connected" for any reason.  I'm just an ordinary guy who recognizes a common humanity with every other regular guy (and gal) out there.  I'm not conscious of any "construction of whiteness" that has prevented me from living like that.  If it had been there, I daresay my (many) black colleagues, friends and fellow workers would have pointed it out over the many years we spent together.  Also, I was (and am) far from unique.  There were, and are, many like me.
3. As for seeing myself in some others who don't look like me, that's no hardship or problem at all.  We all do it, all the time, with those with whom we associate.  It's not innate behavior, but learned.  Look at small children - toddlers.  Put them together with others of the same age group, and there's instant affinity and communication.  They don't see each other as white or black or brown or yellow, but as fellow infants, and they communicate, and play, and carry on like that.  So do puppies and kittens, or baby chicks and ducks.  Even a predator-to-be like a lion cub can (and, in the absence of its mother, will) play gently with a prey-to-be like a fawn, and not try to kill or eat it.  It's an automatic, instinctive identification of young to young.  In the same way, people are good or bad regardless of the color of their skin.  Their goodness or badness is the result of their own choices, the decisions they've made that have shaped their personalities.  (As a prison chaplain, I had plenty of opportunity to see that up close and personal.  A bad guy was a bad guy, regardless of his skin color.)
4. On the other hand, I certainly don't see myself in some other people, irrespective of their skin color.  Again, I have very extensive personal experience of this.  When I encountered genocidal Interahamwe militia in Rwanda, or "blood in, blood out" prison gangs in the USA, you may rest assured I did not see myself in or as part of them.  They had made choices and espoused views that set them apart from the rest of humanity.  I had little or nothing in common with them, and apart from trying to be as polite as possible in order to facilitate communication, I didn't want to "see myself in them".  I don't think any person in his or her right mind would want that.  Again, my "whiteness" had damn all to do with it.

I suspect Mr. Kendi, like so many others of his ilk, has invested himself so heavily in the racism paradigm that defines his (and their) world view that he's literally incapable of seeing beyond it.  The truth is, of course, far more varied than any one such perspective can encompass.

When speaking to groups about trying to see things from a wider perspective, I often use the example of white light.  When it's shone through a prism, out comes the entire rainbow spectrum of colors, something with which I'm sure we're all familiar.

I usually say that each of us is standing in one of the colors on the right of the image.  Someone standing in the red will exclaim, "Look!  Light is red!  You can see it for yourself!  It's obvious!"  On the other hand, someone standing in the purple segment will say precisely the same about what he sees - and both of them will accuse the other of being wrong.  Only when they both realize that the light each of them sees is coming from the same source, but filtered through the prism, will they be able to accept that the light is white to begin with.

The same applies to those fixated on racism.  Mr. Kendi is clearly determined to maintain that the light he sees is (pick any color).  A Chinese racist might see a different color, and a Caucasian racist yet another.  The reality is that humanity is a mixture of all of them.  Our common humanity is the white light.  Trouble is, so few of us will step out of our "comfort zone" in one of the rainbow colors, and see that for ourselves.  (And if it troubles some that the source light is white, I'm sorry about that, but that's science!  It's got nothing to do with the color of our skin!)

Peter

Steven Crowder yesterday leaked images of three pages from the alleged manifesto of the Nashville school shooter.  His posts have been scrubbed from social media, but the images may be seen on his Web site.  I highly recommend clicking over there to read them.

It turns out the shooter, named Audrey Elizabeth Hale at birth but claiming to be a trans male, was an out-and-out racist and fanatically anti-white "true believer".  So much for official insinuations that she "snapped" because she experienced rejection due to her trans status.  That appears to have had little or nothing to do with her actions.

Well over half a year after the shooting, the authorities have yet to release her manifesto, and are refusing to even talk about the video she mentions in the portion released by Crowder yesterday.  How much more do they know that they aren't telling us?  The official silence is so deafening that one must needs assume that they're trying to lie to us yet again, this time by omission more than commission.

I think we owe Steven Crowder a debt of gratitude for doing what the authorities should have done a long time ago.  I hope he has more of the manifesto, and will release it soon.  And, to all those in authority who refused to do so . . . thanks for nothing!

Peter

Last week, in a fit of triumphalism, an equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee was melted down into ingots of anonymous, faceless metal.

The statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that was at the center of the deadly 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., was secretly melted down last week to be remade into a more inclusive artwork ... It was cut into nine pieces, weighed about 6,000 pounds and required a forklift to move ... It was melted down and then molded into a brick-like casting.

The controversial statue had been removed from its spot in 2021 and placed in a bus depot until it was handed over to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, which had to move the artwork to various locations over safety concerns.

. . .

Charlottesville’s black history museum went forward with their melting plans at a foundry outside of the state last week and there’s no plans to recast the metal into cannons, as some confederacy groups proposed.

Andrea Douglas and Jalane Schmidt – who run Swords into Plowshares – plan on taking the bronze and remake into something that city residents come up with.

They’ve already started getting ideas from residents, the Washington Post said.

Schmidt was happy to see Lee go, saying the statue was like “if there’s a rabid dog in the neighborhood that’s been hurting people, and it needs to be euthanized.”

However, one of the foundrymen, who was not named, said he hopes the melting doesn’t “convey a message of hate on hate.”

The group had a hard time finding someone that would melt down the metal and the foundry they did use is owned by a black man.

“The risk is being targeted by people of hate, having my business damaged, having threats to family and friends, [but] when you are approached with such an honor, especially to destroy hate, you have to do it,” the owner told the outlet.

There's more at the link.

Trouble is, lashing out in hatred or triumphalism or whatever against a hated symbol . . . well, two can play at that game.  The red-hot face of the Lee statue was photographed just before it finally melted down into slag, and that image has become a rallying cry for those on the other side.  Witness this T-shirt already available on Amazon:

I'm sure it won't be the last of its kind, or the only memorial to the statue and the man it depicted.

I hold no brief for the long-dead Confederate States of America, or their leading figures.  I wasn't born then, and didn't come to America until my 37th year of age, so I was far removed from those memories and still am.  However, millions of others aren't, and they take what was done to the Lee statue as a personal, cultural and historical insult.  They aren't about to forget it, and are (to judge by some of the comments I've seen on social media) more than likely to find ways to retaliate.  I wonder how many statues of George Floyd, or Martin Luther King Jr., or other figures important to black history and culture, are likely to be kidnapped and melted down?  If that happens, I doubt whether the reaction of the black community will be mild acceptance . . . so why couldn't the black leaders who demanded, and got, the destruction of the Lee statue have foreseen the reaction to their intemperate act?

This isn't over, not by a long way.  It's left a legacy of bitterness that will take years, perhaps decades, to work out of the American system - and who knows what further consequences it may spawn?

Peter

The growing, already possibly unbridgeable divisions in American society today have deep parallels with the pre-Civil War society of our forefathers.  The lack of tolerance, open hostility between factions, and propensity to violence erupted into the first American Civil War during the 1860's.  Can it happen again?  Might we be on the brink of a second American Civil War?  It's possible.  It most likely won't be along the same lines as the first, with formal armies and battlefields and rival governments.  It'll be more like the conflict in "Bleeding Kansas", where pro- and anti-slavery militias waged internecine warfare on their neighbors, butchering in the name of their beliefs and causing chaos and misery that lasted for generations.

One of the best depictions of the Kansas conflict is Ang Lee's 1999 film "Ride With The Devil".  Most unusually, it's available on YouTube at present, although how long it remains there is unpredictable - most such movies get taken down by copyright claims in short order.  Until then, here it is.  (If it gets taken down, I think it's worth viewing it on streaming media or even buying your own copy.)

I recommend taking the time to watch this movie, and think about the social division and hatred it portrays.  I'm seeing far too much of the same thing these days to be complacent about it.  I genuinely fear we may see something similar before too long, although probably in a different way to the Civil War era.  I won't be surprised to see vigilante gangs "punishing" those among them who don't see things the same way, just as gangs of Border Ruffians and Free-Staters "punished" the communities of western Missouri and Kansas.  (The infamous John Brown was an ally of the Free-Staters.)

God forbid we should see such hatred spill over into violence again.

Peter

The Supreme Court appears to have made it all but impossible to use race as a criterion in selecting or approving students for tertiary education.  CNN reports:

CNN Chief Legal Analyst Laura Coates said the Supreme Court's decision to gut affirmative action in college admissions will have sweeping changes to education in the US.

"This opinion, make no mistake about it, it is going to change the landscape of education, and this is what the majority has asked for," she said.

The fact that almost every liberal and/or progressive and/or left-wing voice out there is currently screaming in protest at the decision makes it all the sweeter.  Those people have made it very difficult, to the point of impossibility, for certain students (Asian in particular, but including whites) to get fair, even-handed consideration when applying for places at university.  Hopefully, that will go away Real. Soon. Now.  It's long gone time that happened.

I'm absolutely in favor of removing any shape, shade or form of discrimination on the grounds of race.  The fact that universities have been able to use it as a back-handed form of "reverse discrimination" is as disgraceful as its former use to "hold down" black and hispanic candidates.

No racial discrimination means no racial discrimination, period.

Peter

Like many of my readers, I'm aware of the rising tide of anti-semitism among hard-core conservative and right-wing movements.  It's been around for centuries, so that's nothing new.  What does trouble me is that it's based on such flimsy foundations - so flimsy that they cannot, repeat, CANNOT be sustained when one does a detailed analysis of their (allegedly) factual foundation.  Most of them are conspiracy theories, pure and simple.

Many anti-semites rely on the "post hoc ergo propter hoc" logical fallacy ("Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X").  I've lost count of how many times I've seen an infamous quote referenced on social media:  "Every. Single. Time."  This refers to the claim that, after something bad happens, a prominent person or persons involved with the incident is/are proved to be Jewish.  It's never explained precisely how their religion or ethnicity has anything to do with what happened:  it's simply taken as a given that the very fact that a Jew or Jews was involved explains why something bad happened, because "obviously" that religion and its representatives was/were behind it.  Logically, rationally, that's utter nonsense - but the claims are still being made.

Fellow blogger Eaton Rapids Joe applies his own analysis to anti-semitic claims.  I recommend clicking over there to read it for yourself.  His key point:

But the primary problem with "Blame the Jews" is that "the proof" is always done after-the-fact. It is not a testable-hypothesis that is proposed a priori, it is a witch-hunt performed a posteriori. And if they dig deeply enough, they can always find a Jew. It is finding water (di-Hydrogen Oxide) in the cells of every tumor during the post-mortem.

There's more at the link.  Go read.

I think a useful analogy can be drawn between this a posteriori anti-semitism and mathematical odds.  If one flips a coin, the mathematical odds of it landing "heads" or "tails" are 50-50.  If it should happen that it lands "heads" ten times in a row, that does not mean that it's more likely to land "tails" on the next flip because "the odds are against heads coming up again".  No, every single flip is a 50-50 chance, and previous flips have no bearing on those odds at all.  That's how casinos and games of chance make their money.  People don't understand the mathematics behind odds, and persist in putting their money on what they think is more likely to happen - even if it isn't.

In the same way, those who blame Jews for a particular problem are basing their claims on a repetition of past events.  If Jews were (allegedly) responsible for a string of difficulties or incidents or occurrences, then the odds that they'll be responsible for future ones of a similar nature are greatly increased, according to the anti-semites.  There are two strikes against that perspective:

1. In the first place, one can seldom (if ever) prove that Jews were responsible for some or all of the previous incidents.  Those blaming them rely on the "Every. Single. Time" hypothesis, which cannot be rationally foreseen, and relies on after-the-fact conclusions that may not have any real foundation in fact.  They rely on inference, rather than on sober analysis of evidence in the light of reason.  Thus, blame may be (and frequently is) unfairly apportioned.
2. Second, the 50-50 chance again applies.  Things happen whether or not people of a particular race, faith or ethnicity are involved.  A string of such events that are blamed (fairly or unfairly) on a particular group may, or may not, mean that the next such incident can also be blamed on that group - but one can never be sure.  It's not possible to know with certainty, in advance, that that'll be the case.

Are there "bad Jews"?  Sure there are - just as there are bad Christians, bad Muslims, bad Hindus, bad-whatever-faith-you-like out there.  We don't blame the group for the actions of the individual.  We blame the individual, and deal with them as such.

This extends to racism as well.  How many times have we heard people say that "all" blacks, or whites, or asians, or whatever, are criminal, or greedy, or patriarchal, or whatever, because many members of those groups exhibit such traits?  That's completely false, as even a moment's thought will illustrate.  It's not the race of the "bad guy" that matters, it's whether or not he's a bad guy in the first place!  Yes, there are areas such as gang-ridden inner-city slums where one would be foolish not to regard everyone of a given ethnicity as potentially a criminal, and be on one's guard - but that's not to say that all of them really are criminals.  That would be to imply that giants such as Clarence Thomas, or Thomas Sowell, are equally criminal (at least in potential) because they share their race with many gang-bangers and drug-dealers.  Nope.  We should not judge by the group.  We should judge by the individual.  We should do that when it comes to race, and also when it comes to religion.

Sadly, we often fail at that, because emotion can override reason, particularly in the presence of extremism.  I wrote about it in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris in 1915.  I stand by what I wrote then, and I think it's worth applying it to anti-semitism and our reactions to individual Jews.  I began:

I've seen war from the inside.  I've been under fire, and I've fired on others.  I've been wounded - one of my wife's early experiences after we married was to pick a piece of shrapnel out of my back as it finally worked its way out of my body - and I've inflicted my share of wounds.  I've picked up the dead, and the pieces of the dead.

Those aren't the worst aspects of violent conflict.  To me, the worst is what it does to the human psyche.  You become dehumanized.  Your enemies are no longer people - they're objects, things, targets.  You aren't shooting at John, whose mother is ill, and who's missing his girlfriend terribly, and who wants to marry her as soon as he can get home to do so.  You're shooting at that enemy over there, the one who'll surely 'do unto you' unless you 'do unto him' first.  He's not a human being.  He's a 'gook'.  He's 'the enemy'.  He's a thing rather than a person.  It's easier to shoot a thing than it is a person.  So, right now, our boys are 'in the sandbox' shooting 'ragheads'.  Their boys - those in Paris yesterday - were 'in the land of the infidels'.  Those in this country on 9/11/2001 were 'in the land of the Great Satan'.  They were - and still are - killing 'kaffirs', unbelievers . . . not human beings.

Go read the rest for yourself.  I hope it clarifies matters.

In closing, I'd like to bring in Rudyard Kipling.  He had an uncanny ability to use poetry to open our eyes to unspoken realities.  His poem "The Stranger", although obviously written from a pro-European and pro-Western perspective, illustrates the conundrum of bias and discrimination as few others have done.  Note how he acknowledges that "lies" and "badness" are on both sides of the equation - something few are willing to acknowledge.  (For an interesting analysis of Kipling's state of mind when he wrote this poem, see here.)

The Stranger within my gate,
  He may be true or kind,
 But he does not talk my talk—
  I cannot feel his mind.
 I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
   But not the soul behind.

The men of my own stock
  They may do ill or well,
 But they tell the lies I am wonted to,
  They are used to the lies I tell.
 And we do not need interpreters
  When we go to buy and sell.

The Stranger within my gates,
   He may be evil or good,
 But I cannot tell what powers control—
  What reasons sway his mood;
 Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
  Shall repossess his blood.

The men of my own stock,
   Bitter bad they may be,
 But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
  And see the things I see;
 And whatever I think of them and their likes
  They think of the likes of me.

This was my father's belief
   And this is also mine:
 Let the corn be all one sheaf—
  And the grapes be all one vine,
 Ere our children's teeth are set on edge
  By bitter bread and wine.

Too many of us approach others out of that mindset.  It's at the root of anti-semitism, racism, and a host of other evils.  Because someone is "different" from what we're familiar with, we treat them differently from how we treat those who are "not different" - whether or not that's justified or justifiable.  I suggest that's at the root of anti-semitism, as well as other forms of discrimination.

Can anti-semitism be valid?  Based on cold, hard fact, I suggest not.  I'll leave the last word to Robert Heinlein.

What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

If we'd all do that, I suspect a lot of discrimination would be undone, because it would very rapidly become clear that it's not based on fact at all, but on emotion, prejudice and suspicion.  Too many of us always want someone to blame, someone we can hold responsible.  That's a whole lot easier to deal with than sifting through the evidence to find the truth.

Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  I see some commenters are making their (contrary) positions clear.  I'm going to let them have their say, because their blinkered perspective and refusal to face facts actually reinforces what I've said above.  Facts are stubborn things.  The only thing more stubborn is those who cling to what they claim are facts, but in fact are anything but.  They're nothing more than tired old shibboleths that cannot stand up to the weight of impartial, objective analysis - something anti-semites tend to avoid.

*Sigh*

The Good Citizen is an iconoclastic, acerbic, insightful commenter on the follies and foibles of modern society.  In his most recent column, he tackles the issue of race and racism in America, and makes some pungent observations.  It's far too long to embed here, but I've selected a few choice excerpts.

How did we arrive at this world where everything is racist?

And if everything is racist, then nothing is racist, and the word has no meaning, which would mean we’ve truly arrived at a colorblind society.

Why is this affliction, this sick obsession with race and racism mostly isolated to the United States?

Cui Bono?

. . .

After the Occupy Wall Street movement was infiltrated and decimated from within ... anger at the bankers and speculators and real owners of the country who engineered the global financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent recession did not subside ... So they turned to the one guaranteed psyop to create confusion, maximize division, and take the heat off themselves—racial division.

. . .

For the first time, the terms White Privilege, Whiteness, Systemic Racism, and Discrimination magically found legs and devotees outside the comedic lecture auditoriums of Race Marxists. Magically, the narrative shifted overnight to take the heat off the criminal class.

Gradually and then suddenly whiteness became a crime, if not a felony, a way of being in the world that was responsible for every non-white person’s problems. As with affirmative action, non-whites who put family and education first also had to be sacrificed in the name of equity. Asians suffered the most, in hiring and university admissions, and both races still pay the price today.

Whiteness was responsible for historical sins that needed repairing, in the only way a subservient underclass shucking and jiving on the Democrat plantation for sixty years have been habituated to understand absolution—with money and handouts and a shove to the front of the line.

. . .

No racism needs evidence or proof, and yet the accusation will stand because we are all guilty until proven innocent through the self-debasing repentant embrace of anti-racism; through blood guilt, historical guilt, associative guilt, even a guilty conscience, all of which can only be absolved in the same way—by giving the oppressed victims more money and removing all obstacles to obtainment, namely hard work, merit, and achievement.

Racism is now everywhere. Math is racist. White inventions are racist. Algebra is racist. Testing is racist. Police are racist. Every institution that wasn’t created or founded by and for black people, is racist, oppressive, and keeps black people from realizing their true potential.

. . .

In a world of illusions where truth is subverted or inverted this anti-white grift now passes for acceptable public “discourse” on television, in corporate board rooms or H.R. departments, at school board meetings, on Facebook, in the columns of coastal media monopolies, in television commercial casting rooms, and at university tenure committees.

. . .

We are now supposed to believe that white-on-black crime is endemic, a total and complete statistical inversion of reality by a double-digit factor.

. . .

The media’s role in this race war psyop is no different than in any other psyop—push the official narrative, even if it defies all statistical evidence, even if it’s the most preposterous bunch of shit that no rational humans could possibly believe and ignore all the counter facts.

. . .

They need black people so far from the truth that they don’t dare ever consider leaving their Democrat-run Globopsycho plantation.

Because people who see the truth can never be enslaved.

But their greatest coup hasn’t been keeping the truth from the black community, and getting them to blame everyone else for their problems so that they can never even begin the process of healing and rebuilding.

It’s been getting corporations, government institutions, public schools, professional sports leagues, the entire entertainment industry, and millions of brainwashed white liberals with a savior complex to help keep them mentally enslaved and careening toward cultural self-destruction.

There's much more at the link.  It's well worth reading in full.

When you read news headlines about reparations, and the insane amounts being bandied about by their proponents, look at them in the light of The Good Citizen's perspective.  They're nothing more than the promise of unlimited freebies to one section of the population, at the expense of every other section.  They're an incentive to vote the way they're told, because if they do, they'll be rewarded with all that lovely money that they haven't earned and don't deserve.  It's nothing more than a bribe . . . and, sadly, it's working.

As far as I'm aware, no person living in the United States today was a slave, or the son or daughter of a slave, or the grandson or granddaughter for that matter - so why should they receive reparations for slavery?  As far as I'm aware, no-one born in the USA and living today has ever owned a slave - so why should they be forced to pay reparations for slavery to others?

It's merely the latest con game being practiced upon us by the moonbats of the progressive left, and should be rejected with the contempt it - and they - deserve.  Sadly, a lot of people have been taken in by their propaganda, and don't see it that way.

Think about that in the light of Tucker Carlson's comments last Friday, as noted in the preceding post.  That's what he's talking about - the deliberate destruction of America through lies, deceit and fraud.  Race and racism are merely pawns in the hands of those wanting to achieve that.

Peter

There's an awful lot of twaddle being bruited about over Scott Adams' allegedly "racist" comments a few days ago.  His "Dilbert" comic strip has been dropped by hundreds of syndicated outlets, and also by its distributor, and he's basically been pilloried by the entire establishment.  Was this justified?  Did he deserve it?

For a start, let's cut to the chase.  Here's what Mr. Adams had to say, directly from his podcast.  Watch and listen for yourselves, and make up your own mind.  The video is cued to the relevant portion of the podcast, from about 13m. 21 sec. to 20m. 51sec.

That's painful to watch, in the sense that honesty is painful.  Mr. Adams has, as he says, for years tried to help black people as a group, and has committed much time and resources to that;  but he now believes that's been wasted effort, because a very large proportion of that group appears to regard him, as a white person, as being "not OK" (for various values of that term).

I personally share his pain, not because I'm in any sense a racist - I think my track record shows quite definitively that I'm nothing of the sort - but because I had to undergo a similar awakening in South Africa after apartheid ended.  I was always opposed to apartheid, and rightly so, IMHO.  It was one of the most evil systems of government of the 20th century, akin in many ways to Nazism in Germany (in fact, some of the architects and primary implementers of apartheid were imprisoned during World War II for their support for Adolf Hitler).  I've written at some length in the past about my activities to help the victims of violence during that period.  I won't repeat that here, but if you've missed them, here are a few articles to give you a perspective on what I did.  I'd do it again in a heartbeat.  Note the last article in particular.

Remembering Mike

The night Christmas became real

My heroes

Was apartheid South Africa really that bad?

I very humbly gave thanks to God when apartheid was finally consigned to the trashcan of history . . . but I soon found that the "new South Africa" had just as many injustices as the old.  That was driven home to me when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed, and began to hear evidence of the atrocities committed during the apartheid era.  It soon emerged that it was intended to blacken the reputation of the apartheid government, but ignore or "whitewash" (you should pardon the expression) the equally grave injustices, crimes and atrocities of the so-called "liberation movements" (one of which, the African National Congress, forms the government of South Africa today).

I found that out personally.  I offered to give evidence to the Commission concerning one particular atrocity, but made it clear that I wanted to discuss both sides of the incident, not just the role of the apartheid authorities, because there was more than enough blame to go around.  I was warned, very bluntly, that if I tried to give evidence about "liberation movement" atrocities I would be killed.  My testimony would only be acceptable if it ignored their role, and condemned the actions of the police and the authorities.  That's when I realized that the new authorities were just as corrupt, in their own way, as the old.

I continue to believe that apartheid had to go, and so-called "white supremacy" with it.  No race can legitimately claim supremacy over another, and in doing so deny access for the latter to justice, resources, education and all that is needed in a modern society.  That's a living definition of "evil", in the Biblical and every other sense.  However, I also believe that justice must extend in the other direction, too.  Long after - generations after - historical problems such as slavery are over, one can't blame them for the trials and tribulations of one's race today.  Too many black Americans do that - and their own race, their own "system" if you will, has produced that result.  As Arthur Sido points out:

[Black] hatred toward Whites runs deeper and is the product of decades of conditioning. When blacks consume media, what do they hear and see? They hear rap lyrics claiming that The Man, iow White people, are out to get them and keeping them down. In TV shows and movies it is always the same refrain, White people out to get them, reminders of slavery and the “Civil Rights” movement. Movies about contemporary Whites doing them wrong, just looking for an opportunity to lynch the fellas and rape dey women, despite the statistically verifiable fact that White on black rape happens so rarely as to essentially be non-existent.

For younger blacks especially, like those under 45, their entire life has been decades of being marinated in a toxic stew of White hatred and resentment. From the earliest age they have been taught to believe nothing is their fault and every problem they have can and indeed must be laid at the feet of Wypeepo. It has gotten worse as endless “entertainment” has become so ubiquitous via streaming media and social media more broadly. Spend a few minutes on “black twitter” or “we wuz kangz” Facebook and you will be treated to wild conspiracy theories, accusations without a shred of evidence and assertions that don’t stand up to the mildest examination. Young blacks who all seem to have the latest smartphones (and what passes for fashion) despite their supposed oppression are inundated with anti-White messaging from the time they wake until they fall back asleep.

It is not an exaggeration at all to say that contemporary black existence can only be understood when viewed as entirely revolving around their supposed oppression, the presence of “White supremacy” and the resulting hatred they harbor.

There's more at the link.

I saw abundant evidence of this during my service as a prison chaplain in this country.  Time and again I'd run into groups in prison - be they faith groups like the Nation of Islam or the Moorish Science Temple, or prison gangs like the Black Guerrilla Family and allied organizations - for whom anti-white racism was the order of the day in their attitudes and conversation.  They had been propagandized before their entry into prison, and they propagandized each other and other inmates while they were there, and their families and friends who visited them were visibly propagandized as well.  Facts were irrelevant.  They'd made up their minds, and there was no changing them.

Crime figures - cold, hard statistics, not "massaged" to convey any racially-biased propaganda, but the reality of what's happening on our streets - bear out that the black community has a far greater crime problem, proportionally speaking, than any other race group in America.  Do your own reading, and see for yourself.  Here's just one presentation of the problem.

Homicide rates in America by race

The CDC confirms that, following an extended period of general decline, the overall homicide rate -- as well as the homicide rate within each racial group -- has increased from 2014 to 2015. In 2015, the homicide rates were (per 100,000 population):

• 20.9 for blacks (non-Hispanic)
• 4.9 for Hispanics
• 2.6 for whites (non-Hispanic)
• 5.7 for all races

Compared to the national average, the homicide rate was 54% lower for whites, 14% lower for Hispanics, and 267% higher for blacks. Put another way, the homicide rate among African-Americans is nearly quadruple that of the national average.

Again, more at the link.  To make matters worse, the perpetrators of those disproportionate murders are all too often themselves black.  It's no good blaming white people for that.

Therefore, a great deal of what Scott Adams had to say was not racism - in the sense of a deliberate bias against another group, solely on the grounds of its ethnicity - but based on the hard reality of life in these United States.

When almost half of the black community believes, or feels, that it's "not OK to be white", that's an immense problem in and of itself, because it flies in the face of documented, statistically demonstrable reality.  It's based on lies, and is the product of years of indoctrination and "identity politics".  In the light of that reality, was Mr. Adams being racist in deciding to separate himself from that community - or simply practical?  I'll leave you to listen to his comments, and study the reality of life in America today, and make up your own mind.

My choice is somewhat different to his.  I'll continue to speak out against racism in all its forms, and to try to promote national unity and mutual tolerance as far as that's possible (accepting, however, the reality that it's not always possible).  I have black friends and acquaintances, people whom I trust and like, and I'll continue to associate with them.  Nevertheless, I most certainly will continue to be on my guard in places such as inner-city urban ghettoes, because I know full well the dangers of life in those places.  I also know from whence - and from whom - that danger comes.  It's not racist to be on one's guard against that reality.  In fact, my black friends and acquaintances are themselves on guard against it - for good reason.

I continue to believe - as I've said many times in these pages - that one can't judge any other person by the group to which they belong, be that group ethnic, racial, language, religious, or any other criterion.  One assesses a person according to his or her own, individual merits (or the lack thereof), not the group(s) to which they belong.  I don't know any other fair, reasonable way to live.  If you do, please let us know, because I'm sure we'd all like to hear it.

Peter

How, precisely, does exhuming a corpse contribute to "wokeness" or anti-racism?

The city of Richmond, Virginia, has dug up the remains of Confederate General A.P. Hill as it continues to purge Confederate symbols and monuments from public spaces.

The remains of Hill, which had been buried under a monument to the general, were located on Tuesday after two days of digging. The casket of Hill, who was reportedly buried standing up, was rotted away when workers finally found the remains using an excavator. 

According to local reporter Riley Wyant, the remains of Hill were blocked from public view using a tarp before they were transferred into a body bag and wheeled away on a stretcher. The remains were transferred to the general’s relatives, including John Hill, the general’s closest indirect descendant.

The city had brought in an excavator to search for Hill’s remains, which had been buried at an intersection of the city for over 130 years. On top of the grave was a statue of the Confederate soldier. The statue, which was removed via crane on Monday, was the last city-owned Confederate monument to be removed from Richmond.

There's more at the link.

To add insult to injury, the mayor of Richmond went on record as saying, "Over two years ago, Richmond was home to more Confederate statues than any city in the United States. Collectively, we have closed that chapter. We now continue the work of being a more inclusive and welcoming place where ALL belong."  All, obviously, except long-dead Confederate soldiers and their modern descendants...  Ironically, the late General Hill was reportedly not a slave-owner, and is said (by his wife) to have spoken out against the practice - not that that holds any interest or meaning for those who wanted him out of the way as an inconvenient and politically incorrect symbol of the past.

This appears to be another example of triumphalism - the attitude that "We're in charge now, so what we say goes, and if you don't like it you can lump it!"  It's the besetting sin of new rulers or conquerors throughout history.  In due course, when the pendulum swings and the worm turns, their monuments and handwork are in their turn overturned by the new triumphalism of those who succeed them in power.  However, that probably doesn't interest the current powers that be in Richmond.  They're looking backward, not forward.

(Speaking of looking backward, in January 897 the corpse of Pope Formosus was dug up and put on trial by his enemies.  Being obviously in no condition to rebut the charges, he was found guilty posthumously.  Nearer our own time, during the Spanish Civil war (1936-39), Republican authorities dug up the corpses of deceased nuns and monks and displayed their decayed remains to disapproving crowds of their supporters.  Neither atrocity, of course, had any effect on the living, except to provide an outlet for emotional condemnation of those who could no longer defend themselves.  One wonders whether those examples inspired the city authorities in Richmond?)

I hold no brief to defend the Confederacy.  I didn't even come to this country until 132 years after the Confederacy ceased to exist!  Nevertheless, I can and do condemn hatred, bigotry and racism in all their forms.  The actions of the Richmond authorities come perilously close, in my opinion, to qualifying for all three of those labels:  perhaps as much, if not more so, than the historical record of the late General Hill.

Welcome to modern America!

Peter

If it isn't, it'll do until something even more spectacularly bone-headed comes along.  Click the image for a larger view.

Dear Ms. Forsythe,

For your information, as far as I'm aware, there are vanishingly few (if any) authentically black or brown ethnic Russians.  Their native genes (you should pardon the expression) don't contain the necessary color-coding.  Therefore, the chances of a black or brown Russian running that country are so slim as to be effectively non-existent.  "White privilege" and "white supremacy" simply aren't relevant factors there.  To pretend otherwise would be un-ethnical.

However, your unblinking focus on racial animosity and hostility probably won't allow you to acknowledge that.  Perhaps you should try thinking outside the racial box once in a while?

Signed,

Your blogger-mentor in international genetics.

(In the light of your views, perhaps he should acknowledge [while pretending to hang his head in simulated shame] that he's your non-Russian, African-born-and-bred [hence far more African than most Americans using that label], Caucasian [i.e. white] mentor).

I don't suppose it'll do much good, but in the interest of positive race relations, one has to try.

*Sigh*

Peter

I'm angry, but not surprised, to read of the collapse of a murder trial in Florida due to racial issues.

The foreperson of the jury in the murder trial of Dayonte Resiles said three jurors were unwilling to convict Resiles based on his race.

The foreperson discussed on Friday the most recent twist in the trial that ended Wednesday with the hung jury.

“[The three jurors] said, ‘I don’t want to send a young Black male to jail for the rest of their life or have him get the death sentence,'” said the foreperson.

Resiles faces life in prison and possibly the death penalty for the murder of Jill Su, a 59-year-old Davie woman who was killed in her home back in September of 2014.

. . .

After six days of deliberations, the jury came back with manslaughter, but when it came time for the foreperson to confirm the verdict to the judge, she couldn’t do it.

“The whole time I’m staring at the judge and at the clerk, and we’re locking eyes, and I’m looking at each one of them,” said the juror. “They’re just waiting for my verdict of either ‘yes, I agree’ or ‘no,’ and I just couldn’t, and that’s why I said no.”

She said most of the jury was ready to convict Resiles of at least second-degree murder, but the three refused because the defendant is Black.

After they compromised on manslaughter, she said, her courtroom change of heart led to threats from other jurors.

“You guys keep saying ‘a young Black man,’ but I don’t see race. I just see a human being, and you know, one particular person said to me, ‘Hey, if you were outside this courtroom, you would have gotten smacked out in the street for this,'” said the juror.

There's more at the link.

So now, in at least some parts of the country, we have to worry about the justice system being deliberately undermined by jurors who'll reach their verdict on the basis of the race of the suspect(s), rather than the facts of the case.  That's not a justice system at all.  That's a racist system.

That's something to bear in mind if you're the defendant in such a case.  Depending on the color of your skin, you might find some jurors voting to convict you because of that factor, while others might vote to acquit you on the same basis.  You may be justified in your actions under the law, but the law is no longer an unbiased arbiter.  It's subject to the whims of those who must apply it.

The old proverb says, "Better to be judged by twelve (i.e. a jury) than carried by six (i.e. pallbearers)".  Today, that may no longer be good advice.

Peter

Shamelessly stolen from Eaton Rapids Joe:

Joe comments:  "Presumably, this means they will only loot Black and other minority owned businesses."

It's a nice thought, but... one suspects not.

Peter

I'm gritting my teeth to hold back a few (well, more than a few) choice expressions of my opinion at this report.

The Agriculture Program Coordinator for WSU’s San Juan County Extension Ag Program promoted a webinar event titled, “Examining Whiteness in Food Systems.” During the hour-long presentation, attendees learned that “white supremacy culture” creates food insecurity by “center[ing] whiteness across the food system.”

. . .

Jennifer Zuckerman of the Duke World Food Policy Center led the discussion. She framed the webinar around her identity as a white woman who has “benefited from whiteness for my entire life at the expense of other people.” With that in mind, she explored the “really specific ways in which whiteness shows up in the food system and particularly in the work of food insecurity.”

Promoting the belief that “whiteness permeates the food system” and that “it specifically articulates these white ideals of health and nutrition,” Zuckerman chided the “whitened dreams of farming and gardening.”

She took particular aim at farmer’s markets as being too white. She uses a quote from Rachel Slocum (“a preeminent researcher on whiteness and food”) as a jumping-off point.

“What that does is it erases the past and present of race and agriculture. What whiteness also does is ‘mobilizes funding to predominantly white organizations who then direct programming at nonwhite beneficiaries’,” she said. “And we’ll talk about that a little bit more when we talk about communities that can’t take care of themselves. Also, what this does is it creates inviting spaces for white people. Then program directors or farmer’s market directors are scrambling because they’re trying to add diversity to a white space. So what whiteness does is center whiteness.”

. . .

Zuckerman is particularly offended by white groups bringing mobile food banks to communities of color.

Efforts to offer food free of charge presumes “that low income and or BIPOC communities and individuals (and that’s not necessarily one in the same) cannot provide or make decisions for themselves.” She says it comes out of the “white supremacy culture” of individualism and neo-liberalism.

“What this does is it pathologizes people and makes the assumption that they need to be helped,” Zuckerman notes. “And these assumptions are based on negative racial and class stereotypes. They dictate who’s given power and decision-making in food policy and programming. And then what happens, as a result, is that organizations prescribe solutions to the community without consulting them, assuming that they know better. And there’s so much in our systems that reinforce this narrative that communities can’t take care of themselves.”

There's more at the link, if you want to inflict such drivel upon yourselves.

I won't even bother to debate specific points she raises.  The thing is, right from the start, the entire program she espouses is based upon lies and false principles.  There is no way any rational, reasonable person, understanding farmers' markets and agriculture to even a limited extent, is going to see "whiteness" around every corner and lurking beneath every table.  It's bullshit, pure and simple.  It's an attempt to inject a factor that does not exist.  Once you accept that - once you accept her right to lie in order to introduce a non-existent factor - the fight's lost, right there.  Everything else she says is predicated upon that lie.

Trouble is, too many people today are willing to give idjits like this a hearing.  They actually listen to them, and give them time to make their point.  Instead, they should be challenging them up front, as soon as they make a false insinuation, to demonstrate it in reality and prove their point.  When they can't, they should turn around and walk away, right there and then.  Why allow a liar to continue to lie?  The proponents of such nonsense are more than capable of building an edifice of falsehood on top of that initial lie - and if they've persuaded you to accept the foundation, then the edifice may even appear convincing.  However, every level is built upon the lies of the previous levels.  Remove the key, foundational lie, and everything else must fail.

"Whiteness" is a lie, just as is "blackness" or "brown-ness" or "yellowness" or "green with purple spots-ness".  Any effort to judge individuals by the group(s) to which they belong is doomed to failure, because people are individuals.  Every group has good and bad people in it, more or less intelligent, more or less honest, more or less strong, and so on and so forth.  "Whiteness" is merely the latest way to express identity politics, where individuals are reduced to the group to which they belong.  Ideological opponents are pigeonholed according to the groups in which the speaker defines them.  If they object, the speaker will simply adduce more and more "evidence" (read:  lies and half-truths) to justify the (wrong) classification.

If someone gets to define the group, they get to label those in it.  The solution?  Deny them the right to define the group, and refuse to be labeled by them.  Who the hell do they think they are, anyway, to define or label you or anyone else?

Identity politics is poison, pure and simple.  Avoid it at all costs - and if anyone insists that you vote according to identity politics, vote against everything they're for.  That's an excellent rule of thumb, IMHO.

Peter

It's with mixed feelings that I read of the death of F. W. de Klerk, last white State President of the apartheid-era Republic of South Africa.

F.W. de Klerk, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela and as South Africa’s last apartheid president oversaw the end of the country’s White minority rule, has died at the age of 85.

De Klerk was a controversial figure in South Africa where many blamed him for violence against Black South Africans and anti-apartheid activists during his time in power, while some White South Africans saw his efforts to end apartheid as a betrayal. 

It was de Klerk who in a speech to South Africa's parliament on Feb. 2, 1990, announced that Mandela would be released from prison after 27 years. The announcement electrified a country that for decades had been scorned and sanctioned by much of the world for its brutal system of racial discrimination known as apartheid.

. . .

The country would be, de Klerk told the media after his fateful speech, "a new South Africa." But Mandela’s release was just the beginning of intense political negotiations on the way forward. Power would shift. A new constitution would be written. Ways of life would be upended.

. . .

"Sometimes, Mr. de Klerk does not get the credit that he deserves," Nobel laureate and former archbishop Desmond Tutu told David Frost in an interview in 2012. 

Despite his role in South Africa’s transformation, de Klerk would continue to defend what his National Party decades ago had declared as the goal of apartheid, the separate development of White and Black South Africans. In practice, however, apartheid forced millions of the country’s Black majority into nominally independent "homelands" where poverty was widespread, while the White minority held most of South Africa’s land. Apartheid starved the Black South African education system of resources, criminalized interracial relations, created black slums on the edges of White cities and tore apart families.

De Klerk late in life would acknowledge that "separate but equal failed."

There's more at the link.

De Klerk had the political vision to recognize that in the late 1980's, South Africa had reached an impasse, a no-win situation.  The apartheid government could maintain its grip on power, but could not do so without brutally suppressing race riots and unrest that were sweeping the country, at the cost of thousands of lives every year.  The opposition African National Congress and its allies could not overthrow the apartheid state by violence, but they could (and did) make much of the country ungovernable.  Neither side could win;  but neither side could be defeated, either.  There had to be a new way forward.

De Klerk had the courage to take that step, releasing Nelson Mandela from prison, unbanning the ANC, and beginning negotiations to bring true democracy to South Africa.  Many have pointed to the resultant corruption, chaos and anarchy in that country as "his fault".  Many have maintained that things were somehow better under apartheid than they've been under majority rule.  I don't agree, of course.  I answered such objections some years ago, and my answer remains as true now as it was then.  Apartheid was one of the most evil systems of government of the 20th century, fully comparable in its moral and ethical dregs to communism, fascism and Nazism.  It had to go.  The fact that what replaced it has not been much better in practical terms can't be allowed to obscure the fact that the real evil underlying apartheid was conquered.  That, in and of itself, was worthwhile.

De Klerk was a deeply fallible man (as are we all):  but he rose above his fallibility to do the only honorable thing he could.  He chose to step back from the bloodshed and chaos, and do his best to bring about a peaceful resolution.  He may not have succeeded;  but, for trying, I honor his memory.  So did the Nobel Committee when they jointly awarded him and Nelson Mandela the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.  It was richly deserved.

I remember listening to de Klerk announce, in Parliament, that he would release Nelson Mandela from prison and unban the ANC.  It was like a bomb set off underneath the tangled morass of South African politics.  Right-wing, pro-apartheid individuals and groups denounced him as a traitor.  Left-wing, anti-apartheid groups called it a good first step, but not nearly enough.  Most of us just hoped and prayed that what he'd set in motion would somehow end the killing and lead to peace.  Eventually, after much more bloodshed, it did.  Let that be his memorial.

Peter

One of the most mind-boggling results of Tuesday's elections in Virginia and elsewhere, in which left-wing candidates did not fare well, has been the reaction of the progressive ultra-liberal left to their loss.  Typical of it has been this tweet from someone using the name Helen Carter:

I thought at first that this had to be a parody Twitter account.  I couldn't believe that someone could be so blind to reality (not to mention so unconsciously racist) as to truly hold those opinions.  However, an examination of Helen Carter's Twitter account shows that she posts equally daft opinions on other topics.  She's living in a far-left-wing version of cloud cuckoo land.  She's five cents short of a nickel when it comes to reality.  Note this pinned tweet:

Talk about the fallacy of invincible ignorance!  As Robert Heinlein put it, "Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig."  However, Ms. Carter is far from alone.  There are many others like her.

Do any of you, readers, have more examples of such ideologically-blind-to-reality frustration, on either the left or the right of the political spectrum?  Both sides are equally guilty of them, I'm sure.  If you do, please share them with us in Comments.

Peter