THE DEMOCRATS MIGHT BE MAKING A HUGE MISTAKE HERE

 

9/2/20

 

Polling numbers are showing the presidential race tightening and doing so largely because of the violence that continues to plague our cities.   (For an example of such violence, see my last post, the nearly instantly seminal THIS WEEKEND’S MASS SHOOTING AT LUME’S, A PLACE IN THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD WHERE YOURS TRULY HAS ENJOYED MANY A MEAL.)  In response, both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris read speeches decrying the violence but also both reaffirming their support for the right to peacefully protest and pledging their unyielding allegiance to the ideals behind this year’s protests.

 

The mistake that Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris are making is to assume that the vast majority of people decry the violence but look favorably on the ideals of the Black Lives Matter and related movements.   In reality, a lot of people, and perhaps most voters, oppose not only the violence but also the ideals of the Black Lives Matter movement.

 

I can hear the knee-jerk reaction now:

 

“What?   The hell you say!   How can anybody who is not a reprehensible racist not support the ideals of the Black Lives Matter movement?”

 

To understand how good, well-meaning, well-acting, non-racist people can oppose the ideals of the Black Lives Matter (“BLM”) movement, one must understand that BLM is only the latest manifestation of, while maybe not the oldest extant political trick, a sleight of hand that was almost certainly in Hammurabi’s playbook.   The idea is to put an innocuous, or, preferably, noble name on a set of ideas and objectives that bear at best only the most remote relationship to said innocuously noble title.   Then, when somebody objects to the underlying objectives, goals, and ideas, accuse him or her of objecting to the nobility or harmlessness reflected in the title.   

 

In this case, “Black Lives Matter” is surely a noble sentiment.   Who but the most virulent racist (and here I am talking about real racism, not merely about being on the winning side of an argument with a liberal, which seems to be the only characteristic necessary to be labelled a racist in our brave new world, but I digress) would argue that Black lives don’t matter?   However, the ideals that fall under the title “Black Lives Matter” go beyond racial justice, ridding police departments of people who, by temperament and outlook, have no business being in law enforcement, and other such goals with which no one of goodwill would argue.   The goals of Black Lives Matter include

 

·         an economic system in which government controls and allocates resources and does so largely, or even solely, on the basis of race

·         defunding of law enforcement

·         the censoring of any speech or art form that can somehow be found offensive by any party that considers himself or herself aggrieved, i.e., the so-called “cancel culture,”

·         re-writing, or outright erasing, of history,

·         reparations, in varying degrees of size and severity, and

·         the most salient characteristic of anybody being his or her race/gender/gender identity, etc., not, say, his or her being an American citizen entitled to equal protection under the law, his being especially talented, or not so talented, in some area of human endeavor, or any number of other traits.   The thing that most, or even at all, matters is that someone is Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, male, female, LGBTQ, straight, etc.

 

If one reasonably objects to this agenda, one is thus accused of not caring about Black lives, of, indeed, arguing that Black lives don’t matter.   So cowed and demoralized, the accused meekly surrenders and performs penance by putting a “Black Lives Matter” sign on his front lawn without the slightest idea of what he is promoting by doing so.  Again, this approach is nothing new and often works, largely because people don’t pay attention and are too easily intimidated by people who also don’t pay attention but would like us to believe they do.

 

So there are a lot of people who BOTH decry the violence AND do not buy into the dangerous, near socialist agenda of the Black Live Matter movement.   However, the Democratic leadership, who appear to live in a myopic world in which everyone agrees with the woke nonsense emanating from the places in which their most generous contributors live and work, or who genuinely believe the world would be a better place if the governing manifesto were

 

“From each according to their (sic) race, to each according to their (sic) race”

 

 continue to reassure us that, while they decry the violence that sometimes accompanies BLM protests, they are totally onboard with the entire BLM agenda.

 

It is such an attitude that will lose Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris, along with those running on the Democratic ticket with them, votes from people of all races who, while agreeing wholeheartedly with the notion that Black lives matter, do not want to see their entire society transformed into some kind of Orwellian nightmare so people of privilege can avoid being accused of racism by people who have no idea what genuine racism is.

 

Will the Democrats so lose enough votes as to refuse the Clydesdale of a gift horse that is, or was, the 2020 presidential election?   Probably not; I still think Mr. Biden wins, as I have for a long time.  (See PRESIDENT TRUMP WILL NOT BE RE-ELECTED, 4/22/20 and posts hence.)  However, I am not as confident in that prediction as I was a few weeks ago.   And if the Dems somehow do manage to blow the seemingly unblowable, it will in part be, as many have been saying lately, because of the violence in the streets and the growing sense of lawlessness in this country.   But such a loss will also be attributable to the Democratic assumption that the great masses of people are in complete sympathy with the outlandish set of principles obscured beneath the noble title “Black Lives Matter.”