The Straight Skinny on the "Second Wave"

Friends, the media is laboring mightily to create the impression that, thanks to poor leadership in red states, there is a massive surge in cases of the coronavirus, and all of us are doomed unless we lock down again -- perhaps indefinitely.  The truth is that the "surge" is highly uneven, it is concentrated in states that saw little COVID-19 earlier, it affects mostly the young, and daily death totals are either stable or in decline.  There is indeed bad news on the virus, but there is also good news, and as usual we are getting a "liberal" helping of the former and absolutely none of the latter.  Could the imperative of blackening the country's mood so as to aid in the defeat of Donald Trump in November be guiding the media here?  I don't doubt it for a second, although they seem to enjoy (perversely) wallowing in misery, and inflicting melancholy on others, for its own sake.

Read all about it here:

https://spectator.us/where-deaths-coronavirus-wave/

In other news, the great state of Mississippi is abandoning the Battle Flag of the Confederacy, which, for more than 100 years, has adorned its state flag.  The reason is obvious.  Mississippi wants to be more inclusive, and less shamefaced.  Fair enough, but allow me to make two points.  One, symbols mean whatever we choose for them to mean.  The Confederate flag DOES NOT mean racism to most Southerners who cherish it, but what they think is, clearly, irrelevant to the Left.  Liberals can't abide hurt feelings, when they happen to people they consider worthy of protection, like African-Americans.  They quite enjoy hurting the feelings of people they despise, and we all know who that means.  First on the list would be white Southerners!  Second, Mississippi is kidding itself if it thinks that this action will reduce prejudice against the South and Mississippi in particular.  Liberals will continue to despise the state, because it is a hotbed of conservatism, it votes faithfully for the GOP, and it honors God and country over Marx and utopianism.  Moreover, the greater the successes of the Left, when it comes to erasing symbols they disdain, the more voracious their appetite for "change" will be.  As soon as the Confederate Battle Flag is hauled down for the last time, you better believe that some liberals will start dreaming of the day that the Stars and Stripes -- with all its nasty racist, sexist, imperialist associations -- will meet the same fate.  The Left CANNOT be appeased.  Not successfully, at any rate.  It will not rest until every "offensive" aspect of America is obliterated, and when that happens, trust me, you won't recognize this country any longer.  You've been warned.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mississippi-set-remove-confederate-emblem-050056539.html

A Sneak Peek at the Left's Playbook

Friends, my latest article explores two leftist fixations: their love of violent and intimidating protests, and their love of vote-by-mail.  I suggest that there could be a connection here, and the Left could be laying the groundwork for permanent domination of our culture and our political system, based on coercion.  See what you think:

Is there a Connection Between the Left's Enthusiasm for Protest-Related Violence and for Voting By Mail?

Americans need to start asking: could the Left be looking to replicate its stranglehold on higher education — obtained through years of intimidation and persecution of moderates and conservatives — on the national level? Will the stifling orthodoxy of “wokeness” at Berkeley, Harvard, and Vassar become the norm everywhere? Will even our democracy succumb? 

There are signs that it could happen.

In recent years, leftists have enjoyed numerous successes in exerting power over academia. They have done so partly by dominating the ranks of administrators and professors, but also through the adoption of highly aggressive tactics: marches, sit-ins, boycotts, harassment on social media, disruption of speakers, attacks on statues, buildings, and other infrastructure, and occasionally direct physical violence against conservatives and free-thinkers. 

One might expect that such anti-social and anti-democratic methods would cause higher ed's leadership to bristle with outrage and to resist related calls for “reform”. One would be wrong. The trend instead has been to placate the forces of anarchy and extremism. Time and again, the bourgeois Bolsheviks on campus have been rewarded for their lawless agitation. Colleges and universities have altered curricula, created new majors, built new dormitories, invented new scholarships, segregated graduation ceremonies, hired and fired administrators and professors, renamed buildings, and removed time-honored statues and memorials — all to keep the left-wing mob at bay. 

 

These zealots aren't stupid: they howl and they smash precisely because they know that it works.

The violence and disorder that has washed over urban America in the last month is, among many other things, an exercise is transposing the aggressive tactics that the Left has employed to browbeat academia to the arena of mass politics and popular culture. Hurling rocks and setting stores on fire are only the bluntest instruments in the Left's arsenal, moreover. Not by accident, the mailed fist has been coupled with more intimate forms of coercion. The slightest deviation from the party line of cringing subservience to the agenda and rhetoric of Black Lives Matter has earned those foolish enough to voice it the white-hot animosity of the Left, in addition to swift punishment in the form of social media shaming, loss of employment, death threats, etc. 

If the current attitude of celebrities, corporate leaders, and politicians — Republican and Democratic — is any indication, the tactics of intimidation are working. Not only are most sensible people avoiding any criticism of BLM as a movement, and of the protesters and rioters more generally, but they are also making haste to show their support for the cause, lest the forces of righteous indignation swallow them whole.

While the successes of the Left in strong-arming the American people are undeniable, and while the resistance to and condemnation of such coercive tactics has been almost entirely absent, especially among Democrats, the most important thing now is to ask: where does all this go? What will liberals' next step be? 

Surely, the ultimate prize for the Left is the permanent and total conquest of political power. Could their well-orchestrated campaign of intimidation on campus, and now in the streets of our biggest cities, provide a model for how to achieve their most cherished goals of all: the silencing of dissent in toto, and the obliteration, once and for all, of the Republican Party?

Consider that liberals are, in addition to rioting in the streets, calling for the transformation of American and Western democracy. They claim (disingenuously) that “voter suppression” is taking place on a massive scale, and that minorities, who are actually voting at record levels, are routinely denied their democratic rights. 

Their preferred solution? Eliminate all I.D. requirements for voting, expand voting rights as widely as possible, and make voting easier, by allowing people to vote when they wish and by mail or online.

Consider also, however, that the secret ballot is the keystone of modern democracy. Ever since the 19^th century, advocates for democracy have understood that merely giving ordinary people the right to vote changes very little, when an “ordinary Joe” can be browbeaten by agitators, by his employer, by his landlord, by clerical or political authorities, or even by the secret police, into supporting whomever the elite prefers.

The Left, however, wants to jettison the secret ballot and allow “ballot harvesting,” whereby activists visit people's homes, provide them with ballots, assist them in filling them out (“correctly”), and deliver them to the Board of Elections! And liberals actually scoff at the idea that any form of “fraud” could flourish in such a political environment. Ha!

Does anyone believe that Donald Trump would have won the 2016 election, if each voter had to announce his vote publicly? No, certainly not. The powers-that-be had made it very clear that only a “deplorable” would support Trump. And yet he won, in one of the greatest blows for government-by-the-people that has ever been struck.

My strong suspicion is that the Left intends to ensure, by blanketing America with intimidation and by demolishing the secret ballot, that similar surprise election results will never recur. They will do it by terrorizing and manipulating the voters, in the same way that they have already terrorized and manipulated university presidents, deans, and professors. Vote-by-mail is a means to that end.

Beware, America! So far the left-wing mob has merely frightened you. If you are not very careful, however, it will do far worse, and it will take far more.

Just as many institutions of higher education have been left with nothing but the tatters of liberal learning and free thought, so America might be left with only the husk of a democracy. Meanwhile, the thought police will reign supreme, while the real police — those alleged super-racists — will be as cowed and helpless as the rest of us.

Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com. He appears weekly on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.

Pretty compelling, huh?  I like to think so.  Here it is at Townhall:

https://townhall.com/columnists/nicholaswaddy/2020/06/30/is-there-a-connection-between-the-lefts-enthusiasm-for-protestrelated-violence-and-for-voting-by-mail-n2571595

Check out this article as well, which concerns the growing corporate boycott of Facebook over its refusal to crack down hard enough on "hate speech".  We all know what "hate" means to the Left: it means us!  Never them.  Oh, perish the though.

https://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-joins-facebook-ad-boycott-2020-6 

Tipping Their Hands

Friends, the great thing about leftists is that, no matter how far left they go, they always think they can go further.  It's a factor of the bubble that most of them live in.  They have no concept of when they've stepped over the line.  For all too many of them, there is no line.  C'est la vie.

On this week's Newsmaker Show, Brian and I talk about some of the Left's latest excesses, including the ever-widening circle of statues they want to haul down -- by force and against the law, needless to say.  We talk about President Trump's Tulsa rally, and how he rightly stood with law enforcement and against anarchists and troublemakers.  We discuss the irony that it's now the media criticizing the Trump campaign for not filling the arena in Tulsa with enough people, and it's now the Biden camp ducking debates.  I compliment the Dems for their mental agility, however.  They can criticize us for one thing today, and then for the exact opposite thing tomorrow.  Alternatively, they can criticize us for one thing today, and then do that same thing themselves tomorrow, but even more shamelessly.  Remarkable!

In historical terms, Brian and I analyze the Soviet blockade of West Berlin and how it motivated the Western alliance against communism; the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, its repeal, and the "loss of innocence" in American politics under Nixon; labor unrest and strikes in Britain, leading up to Margaret Thatcher's victory in 1979; and so much more!

Tune in and enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifpFc3A6G0I&feature=youtu.be

In other (and related) news, check out this outrageous story about the desecration of a bust of George Washington...at George Washington University!

https://jonathanturley.org/2020/06/23/protesters-topple-bust-of-george-washington-at-george-washington-university/

And it looks like General Flynn might finally be free and clear, more than three years after the Obama administration decided to take him down:

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/24/top-federal-appeals-court-orders-charges-against-michael-flynn-to-be-dismissed/

The Nexus of American Insanity

Friends, there can be little doubt that much of America is going bonkers.  The idea that our country is fundamentally racist, that the Trump administration is fundamentally fascist, that capitalism is fundamentally oppressive and unfair, that criminals are victims and police are thugs, and that COVID-19 is the most horrifying and chilling threat to public health in history, or even at the moment -- these are notions that only a diseased or a highly deluded mind could sustain.  And yet...here we are.

I recommend this article to you, which argues convincingly that, at the root of many of these delusions lies academia.  Peter Wood suggests that, far from defunding the police, we ought to be defunding ivory tower Marxists.  Of course, that will never happen on an institutional basis, but if we conservatives can find alternatives to the leftist indoctrination provided in most "liberal arts" colleges, surely our country would be better off.  He suggests that we stop donating to our alma maters, if those institutions have long ago stopped respecting our values.  Hear hear!  He suggests that we encourage our children and grandchildren to find alternative sources of learning and to eschew higher ed, as much as they are able.  Why not?  He suggests that, to the extent that conservatives hold sway over higher ed budgets, especially at the state level, we should consider cutting off funds to institutions that persecute patriots, Christians, police, white people, men, or anyone inclined to dispute the accuracy of academia's crypto-Marxist orthodoxy.  I agree.

As a professor myself, I realize that the tough times that lie ahead for higher education may negatively impact me.  So be it.  Mr. Wood is right that the cancer of leftism that is spread, first and foremost, by "educators" is the greatest single threat to the future of America, of our democracy, and of our civilization.  We need not accept left-wing profs as a force of nature, nor must we cede academia to the Left for all time.  In the long run, either we must wrest control of academia back and put it in responsible hands, or we must knock down the current edifice of higher ed and start over.  It may take decades, or it may take centuries, but the future of mankind is at stake, and therefore we dare not shrink from the challenge.

https://spectator.us/defund-colleges-not-cops/#

"Sex": It Ain't What It Used To Be

Friends, while the media concentrates on the really important issues -- like putting all policemen in jail, and giving all gangsters free puppies and a skeleton key to the city -- a quiet revolution has taken place in how our society views "sex" and gender.  You know what I'm talking about.  It's been painfully obvious for a while that leftists no longer believe in the male-female dichotomy that has undergirded Western and non-Western conceptions of sex and gender for millennia.  Well, that's not quite true: they still believe that women are good, and men are bad, but otherwise they like to suggest that sex and gender are way more complicated than just...boys and girls.

We've known that liberals feel this way, but it came as something of a shock to learn that the Supreme Court has drunk the Kool-Aid as well.  What's more, they recently transposed this very modern take on sex and gender onto the Civil Rights Act of 1964, mandating federal protection for gays and transgenders in the workplace.  Quite literally, liberals and "woke" Justices have turned our understanding of "sex" on its head, and the world will never be the same.

That's the subject of my latest article.  The implications for society and for gender relations are troubling enough, but I concentrate on the implications for the Constitution and the rule of law.

See if you agree with my slant on things...

The LGBT Community's Win is America's Loss

Recently, the Supreme Court decided that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on “sex”, also prohibits discrimination based on a person's sexual orientation or status as transgender. Two nominally conservative Justices, Roberts and Gorsuch, joined the Court's liberals in expanding federal protections for the LGBT community. Even Justice Kavanaugh, who voted in opposition to the ruling, effectively apologized for doing so and congratulated gay and transgender Americans for their historic “victory”.

While reasonable people can disagree about whether it is appropriate or necessary for federal law to prohibit such workplace discrimination, especially when in many cases local and state laws, not to mention corporate policies and procedures, already do so, the fact is that the Supreme Court's ruling perpetuates a disturbing trend: it does violence to the law itself and to the principle of the rule of law, by twisting the original and clear meaning of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

The framers of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were unambiguous: they criminalized discrimination based on “sex”. A person's sex was understood at the time to be biologically determined and would fall into one of only two categories: male or female. In the mid 60s, attitudes towards homosexuality and towards “transvestites” and “cross-dressers”, as they were widely called at the time, were almost uniformly hostile. These may be considered “identities” now, but in the 1960s they were considered criminal acts and/or clear signs of mental instability. Thus, no one in Congress would have proposed legal protections for homosexuals or transgender persons, and, if they had, such legislation would not have passed. 

These are facts. One can like them or dislike them, but one can't will them out of existence.

The Supreme Court's recent reinvention of the meaning of the Civil Rights Act therefore relies on the doctrine that the original wording of the bill, and the intent of the lawmakers who passed it, doesn't matter. What matters is the uses that contemporary society wishes to make of a law adopted 56 years ago, and contemporary society, and especially its political, cultural, and economic elite, is virtually unanimous in viewing discrimination against gays and transgender people as obscene.

Therefore, since it would be nice if the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had abolished discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and/or transgender status, the Supreme Court made the decision to pretend that it did. “Sex” now means, well, whatever we want it to mean, and in this case we want it to mean that gay and transgender Americans will receive the same protections in the workplace as women do. Case closed.

(To the objection that the Supreme Court merely broadened the concept of “sex”, I would reply that anyone who is fired for having sex in the office break room, or for having sex with his boss's wife, will quickly find that the broad-mindedness of federal judges has distinct limits.)

The bigger problem here is that, if no law or Constitutional provision has a fixed, static meaning, then every aspect of our legal and Constitutional system operates at the sole discretion of black-robed social justice warriors (for that is what most judges have become). We can expect that the law and the Constitution will be used time and time again to advance a “progressive” agenda, which the American people may or may not be ready to embrace, and which their elected legislators have declined to advance themselves. 

This is a trend that began as early as the 1950s, when the Supreme Court mandated the desegregation of public schools nationwide, based primarily on the re-purposing of the 14^th Amendment. Those efforts gathered steam in the 1960s and 70s, when a whole host of political and social reforms were pioneered by activist judges. Now, with the Supreme Court's endorsement of gay marriage in 2015, and its recent prohibition of employment discrimination against gays and transgender Americans, the beat goes on.

The widespread celebration of the LGBT community's “victory” must therefore be tempered by a rising concern that the integrity of our legal and Constitutional system has been forfeited on the altar of social progress and political expediency. After all, passing controversial legislation enshrining the rights of new groups is hard. Conjuring those rights into being by judicial fiat is comparatively easy. That, however, begets an entirely new and potentially worse problem: the easier we make it for unelected judges to revolutionize our way of life and overturn the will of the people's representatives, the more often they will do it.

We may someday find ourselves living in an America where the views of the voters and of the men and women in Congress are irrelevant, and the Justices of the nation's highest court reign supreme over all of us. In fact, that day may already be here. 

In that case, we had better hope that Justices Roberts, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh are familiar with the saying “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”, because self-restraint may be the only hope we have of preventing a judicial tyranny from taking root on American soil.

Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com. He appears weekly on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.

And here it is at American Greatness:

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/19/the-lgbt-communitys-win-is-americas-loss/ 

Communism Shows Its True Colors

Friends, this week's Newsmaker Show is typically exquisite in its masterful dissection of current events and sundry historical themes.

In terms of the here and now, Brian and I talk about the ongoing media assault on law enforcement, and the tragic experiment that is unfolding in Seattle, where an "autonomous zone" is embracing chaos over law and order.  We also discuss the campaign of vandalism underway against any and all historical monuments that offend the far-left, and the underwhelming response by police and local leaders.  To a point, violence against public property is being legitimized as a form of protest against "racism".  I predict that this will only beget more violence, since the Left appears to be emboldened by its recent successes.

In our coverage of "This Day in History," Brian and I talk about the Watergate burglary...and the political uses to which it was put.  We also cover the legacy of the O.J. Simpson murder trial and its implications for race relations.  Finally, Brian and I talk about the brutal Soviet suppression of the abortive revolt in East Berlin in 1953, which set a precedent for the further tightening of the Soviet noose in Eastern Europe.  We point out the irony that many left-wing protestors now embrace communism, when a REAL communist regime would sweep such misfits away in a heartbeat.

Tune in today!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQZ5I3izTDs&feature=youtu.be

A Supreme Disappointment

Friends, today brings us news that causes chagrin for anyone devoted to the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.  The "conservative" Supreme Court has decided, by a 6-3 vote, that gay and transgender people are protected from being fired from their jobs based on their "sex" by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Keep in mind that, in 1964, "sex" didn't have anything to do with "sexual orientation" or "gender identity".  These terms either didn't exist at the time or were not in common usage.  Moreover, the idea that the men and women who wrote and passed the Civil Rights Act intended to protect gays and transgender people from discrimination is absurd.  Everyone knows that homosexuality was considered deviant in the mid-60s.  It was usually viewed, in fact, as criminal and as mentally deranged behavior.  But now, by some legalistic legerdemain, the Supreme Court has transformed the meaning of the clear language of the Civil Rights Act to produce a blanket prohibition on employment discrimination against gays and transgenders.  Quite a feat!  Keep in mind that, in 1964, "sex" implied two binary choices: men and women.  Now, "sex" means that a person can choose between an infinite number of "sexes" or genders, and his/her/its employer must cater to all of them, even if they should happen to shift from week to week, or hour to hour.  No one in 1964 could contemplate such a state of affairs, much less enshrine it in legislation...and yet here we are.

The question arises: why would a "conservative" Supreme Court do such a thing?  Why would they do it, especially when most states have already prohibited the kinds of discrimination that the Court is now targeting?  Why would they do it, when "institutional" and "systemic" homophilia is self-evidently more common than homophobia?  The answer is simple: even "conservative" Justices live in Washington, D.C.  They are part of our political-cultural-economic elite, and that elite, almost to a man (or "person", I should say) believes that gays are wonderful, and thus anyone or anything that denies them their rights and entitlements, on any basis, even Constitutional or commonsensical, is monstrous and wrong.  Men like Neil Gorsuch, who voted with the majority in this case, would have to look their liberal peers in the eye if they voted "no," and the path of least resistance is therefore to go along to get along.  The searing contempt, and perhaps even the violence, that would be visited upon anyone who dared to dissent from the cherished doctrine of "equality" is a huge disincentive to principled resistance, needless to say.  That's probably why, even though Brett Kavanaugh voted with the minority, he effectively apologized for his vote and congratulated homosexuals and transgenders on their "vision, tenacity, and grit," as well as their "important victory," to which he was technically opposed!  Remarkable.

So...we are left to ask: what is "sex" in 2020?  It isn't what it was in 1964, or 1984, or even 2014.  It is, quite simply, whatever liberals say it is.  Doubt my judgement?  Try announcing that your sex is "Trumper".  See how far you get!

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/supreme-court-rules-gay-workers-protected-from-job-discrimination-in-big-win-for-lgbt-rights

In other news, Barbra Streisand has decided to right the wrongs of white privilege and systemic racism by giving a pile of Disney stock to a 6-year-old.  Aside from the sheer wretchedness of the warped pseudo-Marxist philosophy that suggests that money is the answer to every hurt, it apparently never occurred to Barbs that she is perpetuating the "white savior" myth that many black activists and far-left types find so repulsive.  But hey, Barbra Streisand is consistently repulsive, so I for one applaud her for staying true to herself.  Maybe her "sex" is "yuck"?  Far be it from me to discriminate.

https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/barbra-streisand-george-floyd-gianna-disney-stock-105907223.html

Good Bye, Charlotte -- Hello, Jacksonville!

Friends, Roy Cooper's grumbling and obstructionism has led the Republican National Convention to be moved from Charlotte to Jacksonville.  Congrats to the great city of Jacksonville!  It's one of the few big cities in America to have a Republican mayor.  It's also one of the few big cities in America that doesn't regularly burst into flames courtesy of a mob.  Good choice, GOP!

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/12/republicans_pick_jacksonville_as_alternative_convention_site_143439.html

Next, read this article about the current vogue for forcing anyone who doesn't tow the leftists' party line -- including misguided liberals -- to issue groveling apologies.  Free speech AND self-respect are both incompatible with leftism, or so it appears.

https://justthenews.com/nation/culture/forced-apologies-and-public-shaming-doctrinal-deviation-sweep-american-culture

Finally, as a historian I deplore the recent vandalism directed at historic monuments.  It's happening worldwide, and many in the media apparently consider it a campaign of purification.  It's not.  It's a campaign of childishness, intolerance, and spite.  Mark my words: if we let the Left have a field day with Confederates and slave owners now, they'll be after pretty much everyone born before the year 2000 before we know it.  The Left's "standard of decency", as Biden phrased it, sets the bar incredibly high.  In a nutshell, you can either bow before the Marxist demon-gods 100% of the time, or you can face the consequences...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-protests-statues/knocked-off-their-perch-protesters-target-empire-builders-confederate-symbols-idUSKBN23J1QA

The War on Police

Friends, this week's Newsmaker Show addresses the elephant in the room: the Left's blistering assault on law enforcement.  Some leftists are literally attacking the police in the streets, leading to injuries and deaths of police officers, while others are merely smearing all police as brutalizing "racists" and suggesting that we need to defund police departments or abolish them altogether.  Amazing!  Imagine: liberal politicians are actually insulting and condemning the very police officers who serve in their protection details...and who keep all of us safe!  It boggles the mind.  We can only hope that the voters see through this unthinking prejudice against law enforcement and punish those who promote it.  Given the realities of media bias, however, we can't be sure that will happen.  Presumably, in the short term, the effectiveness of law enforcement in our big cities will decline, and crime will rise.  Welcome to blue America!

In addition to the current unrest and who and what is behind it, Brian and I talk about the state of the presidential race, including the recent polls showing President Trump at a disadvantage.  I conclude that the media barrage against Trump is having some effect, but that, since Biden can't hide from public scrutiny forever, in the end the election will be close.  Brian and I also discuss the extraordinary pivot that the media has made from the pandemic to its BLM obsession.

In our "This Day in History" segment, Brian and I cover Benjamin Franklin and his kite, Nelson Mandela's remarkable journey from revolutionary to peacemaker, the lessons of the Salem Witch Trials, the sad fate of General William Westmoreland in the wake of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, President Eisenhower's strategy for winning the Cold War, as well as the roles of Norway and Italy in determining the shape and outcome of the Second World War.

So, in a nutshell, Brian and I discuss...everything under the sun, and we do it with style and grace!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y92AssQiVJo&feature=youtu.be

Kowtowing to the "Black Community" is All the Rage, But Why?

Friends, the image above -- a screenshot of the launch page of the Amazon website -- combines an homage to the Black Lives Matter movement with a sales pitch for shoes.  Believe it or not, it isn't designed to make us retch.  It's designed to position Amazon as a "woke" company that feels the pain of African-Americans.  No, not the African-Americans who are killed by violent criminals or whose homes or businesses have been destroyed by recent unrest.  They can feel their own pain, thank you very much.  We're talking about the blacks who are killed by the police, even if the circumstances were more than a little hazy.  They're the exemplars of "systemic racism" that Amazon, and now seemingly every major corporation and institution, feels they have to acknowledge.  And this begs the question: why does George Floyd (and his ilk) matter, when so little else does to these companies, except making a buck?

My latest article addresses exactly this question.  Check it out at Townhall:

https://townhall.com/columnists/nicholaswaddy/2020/06/09/statements-of-support-for-the-black-community-leave-one-big-question-unanswered-n2570302

While you're at it, you might also be interested in these related articles:

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/06/racism-inc/

https://nypost.com/2020/06/08/more-than-700-officers-injured-in-george-floyd-protests-across-us/

https://townhall.com/columnists/patbuchanan/2020/06/09/the-lefts-coming-war-on-cops-n2570281

No Dialogue, Please -- We're Leftists

Friends, the liberals' rush to insanity continues apace.  Now they're asking us to "defund the police", and keep in mind that they're doing this mainly in areas where Democrats and "woke" Marxist ideologues already control governments and police forces.  Yikes!  Maybe they think we should deputize Antifa to keep order in our cities, and put the policemen in chains?  That sounds about right.

The New York Times is caving on the issue of whether, in effect, Republicans and conservatives should be listened to.  Check it out:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/ny-times-revolt-over-op-ed-would-crush-dissenting-views

In other news, the economy is recovering a lot faster than anyone anticipated, and the job market is falling in line.  That's good news, right?  No!  It could help Trump win in November.  Horrors!  CNN, MSNBC -- more video of policemen behaving "badly", please!

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/may-2020-jobs-report

So What If The Russkies Beat Us To It?

Friends, this week's Newsmaker Show is Grade A analysis, as always!  Of course Brian and I break down the unrest in America's cities, and I lay the blame right where it belongs: with the leftist politicians and journalists who have been whipping up reverse racism and hatred of the police for decades.  So many Americans have been hoodwinked by leftist/Marxist delusions and genuinely believe that they live in an oppressive police state.  Now we're reaping the whirlwind of those delusions.

In "This Day in History", Brian and I cover the marriage of the Duke of Windsor in 1937 and the sacrifices that royals have to make to fulfill their public duties; the first American spacewalk in 1965 and its connection to the first private sector human spaceflight last Saturday; the Chicoms' crackdown at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and how little it affected U.S. policy towards the PRC; and the fate of Paris in WWII.

You won't want to miss a single second!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5fI0LtxNQU&feature=youtu.be

Anarchy vs. America: It Ought To Be A Simple Choice

Friends, when the forces of anarchy run riot in America's cities, you'd think that all "responsible" voices would unite in condemning the lawlessness and calling for it to end.  Not so!  Many leftists are praising the rioters, and defending the unrest as a legitimate response to black America's long list of grievances (some real, and some imagined).  In many cities, liberal mayors are forcing police to stand down and let the hoodlums have their fun.  President Trump has been restrained so far in his response, as have many Governors, but it's time we all joined forces and said: "Enough is enough!"  My latest article, though, isn't about what lies ahead.  It's about how we got here, and, as you might expect, I lay much of the blame on the American Left.  Read on, and see if you and I are on the same page.

Let's Be Honest: Racial Grievances are the Lifeblood of the American Left

Politicians all over the political spectrum are finally coming around to the commonsensical conclusion that, regardless of how unwarranted, scandalous, and illegal police officers' treatment of George Floyd may have been, there is no justification for the campaign of looting and organized violence that has been unleashed on America's cities. Violence is rarely the solution to violence, and crime is never the solution to crime.

We also should be candid about the fact that the mass protests, civil disobedience, and even the acts of arson, assault, theft, and murder we are witnessing in cities nationwide is the product of careful cultivation by the American Left and a complicit media. 

For years, these charlatans have been selling to people of color a delusion of gargantuan proportions: first, the idea that America in the early 21^st century is one of the most prejudiced and oppressive places that has ever existed; and, second, the idea that it is progressively getting worse. 

 

Neither notion is remotely true, but careful editing of news coverage, as well as indoctrination in the schools, higher education, and in virtually all facets of our popular culture, has convinced racial minorities (and many whites) that racism is the defining feature of the American experience. 

Not freedom. 

Not opportunity. 

Racism.

The recipe is simple: ignore all prejudice and violence that emanates from people of color and from liberals, and trumpet all prejudice and violence that emanates, or can plausibly be claimed to emanate, from whites who have not knelt before the gods of progressivism. 

Thus, every time a white American is rude to a black person, or displays bias, and the incident is caught on tape, it is, perforce, national news. If that white person inflicts any type of violence on people of color, so much the better — such a storyline fits the agenda of the Left and the media to a tee. Bias and/or violence that flows from the wrong sources, however, the Left and the media feel they have a solemn obligation to cover up, because even to acknowledge these phenomena would “reinforce” America's “original sin”: white racism.

The result is predictable: people of color are bombarded with messages, from politicians, pastors, movie stars, pop singers, sports heroes, teachers, and news anchors, that draw their attention to white racism, and which explain virtually all dysfunction and misfortune in communities of color as the product of such racism, both on the individual level and in “institutional” forms. 

Moreover, as we see in so many guises these days, the standard of evidence for proving the presence of racism has been steadily lowered. No longer does one need to demonstrate clear racist intent to be labeled a racist. A mere slip of the tongue, or a failure to demonstrate sufficient enthusiasm for the causes beloved of self-declared “anti-racists”, is more than enough to mark one as racist trash, destined for the dustbin of history. 

Likewise, no longer does an organization or institution have to intend to discriminate against any group to be accused of racism — merely failing to produce the “equality of results” that leftists desire will suffice to prove that “implicit bias” must color the policies and leadership of the relevant party.

Put simply, racism is the default explanation for everything of which the modern liberal disapproves. The burden is on each and every white American to prove that he or she is not racist, and only complete submission to the agenda of the Left can accomplish this (provisionally, that is, or rather until the Left decides to make one of its own a sacrificial lamb to social justice, which it often does).

The upshot of this sad state of affairs is that the Democratic Party, which is the political embodiment of the American Left — even though most leftists hold the moribund Dems in contempt — has embraced with aplomb the strategy of race-baiting its way to victory. The use of racially-based dog whistles is now de rigueur among Democrats, and the thought that ordinary Americans, much less people as odious as Republicans, are entitled to the benefit of the doubt has long since been dismissed as fanciful and naive.

And now, in our smoldering streets, in the wreckage of countless stores, in emergency rooms where the victims of mob violence are being patched up, and in the dingy morgues where the fatalities from street brawls are accumulating, we see the Left's philosophy of racial grievance taken to its ultimate conclusion. 

Liberals cultivated fear, anger, and despair, because they expected to profit from them. They did profit from them, in fact, but America as a whole has paid, is paying, and will continue to pay a steep price for the leftists' gravely irresponsible and short-sighted conduct.

And the saddest part is this: we were so close to healing many of the racial divides that now threaten to swallow us whole.

Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com. He appears weekly on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.

And here it is at WND:

https://www.wnd.com/2020/06/racial-grievances-lifeblood-american-left/