"Is Anybody in Charge?"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“Is Anybody in Charge?”

June 20, 2020

“The inmates have taken over the asylum.”

                                                                        Idiom, adopted from the short story

                                                                        “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether,” 1845

                                                                        Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1949)

Civilization moves inexorably forward. Over centuries, more and more people have enjoyed the freedom that democratic forms of government offer, and the fruits that industrial and technological advancements and free market capitalism provide. But bumps and potholes inhibit progress. The United States (and the western world) must not allow the disruptions by a few to impede the rights of the many. In the midst of chaos, we ask: Is anybody in charge?

Reminiscent of the takeover of deans’ offices in 1968, college students at UCLA, already granted safe spaces where they are protected from white-privileged professors and students, demand a “no-harm” grading system, shorter exams and extended deadlines for Black students. As a form of virtue signaling, corporations empower activists, in hopes of reducing the threat of litigation. The New York Times, at the instigation of the staff, fired James Bennet, a white, male editor for publishing a Republican Senator’s op-ed. A headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Buildings Matter, Too,” led to the resignation of a top editor. In a dozen and more cities, like New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Des Moines protests turned into riots, and looters took to the streets, burning cars, smashing windows and robbing stores. Police stepped aside and knelt in obeisance to protesters.

Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle has allowed a vigilante group to take over six blocks in the residential area of Capital Hill, which includes a police station, as an autonomous zone (CHAZ). They patrol its border with weapons, demand rent control and reverse gentrification. They want to abolish the police force and receive free healthcare, and they want the release of all those imprisoned on marijuana charges. Under the banner of Black Lives Matter, mobs have defaced and destroyed statues across the country. While their preferred targets are Southern Civil War Generals, they have been indiscriminate in their targets. In Los Angeles, a statue of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved the lives of thousands of Jews during World War II was marred with irrelevant slogans: “BLM” and “Free Palestine.” In Washington, D.C., vandals defaced the Lincoln Memorial and the World War II Memorial. World War I American doughboy statues in Birmingham, Alabama and Pittsburg, Pennsylvania were vandalized. The Sacred Heart of Jesus statue at St. John the Evangelist Parish in Wasco, California had its head ripped off.

The erection and tearing down of figures from our past should be left to sober debate and reflection, not mobs. Nevertheless, it is not statues that should be permanent in our culture, but respect, civility and tolerance. Our local paper, the New London Day, celebrated the taking down of the statute of Christopher Columbus because it was “offensive.” They said it represented a symbol of “dominance of one group over another.” But that has always been so – tribes have fought tribes and nations have fought nations. One side always dominates.  No mention was made of the risks Columbus took in his voyage of discovery. Far wiser were words uttered by President Trump at West Point: “What has historically made America unique is the durability of its institutions against the passions and prejudices of the moment.”

Half a dozen retired U.S. Generals denounced President Trump for threatening to call in the military to subdue violent protests. On June 3, 2020, National Guard vehicles, along with police, blocked 16^th Street near Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. Under the Insurrection Act of 1807, Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and George H.W. Bush deployed troops to states. In a June 1, 2020 article in the Chicago Tribune, Jonathon Berlin and Kori Rumore listed twelve occasions when the President, under the Armed Forces Reserve Act of 1952, sent troops to quell riots.

While the use of the military to quash civilian rioters is rare, it is even more unusual for retired generals to criticize an elected President. Under our Constitution, the military is subservient to an elected, civilian President. There should never be any question as to who has ultimate authority. General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apologized for joining the President in his walk across Lafayette Square to St. John’s Episcopal Church whose basement had been burned by rioters. It was his apology, not the walk, that turned the event political. General Martin Dempsey referred to President Trump’s rhetoric as “inflammatory.” This is the same General Dempsey who as President Obama’s nominee to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff refused to deploy F-16s from Aviano Airbase in Italy to protect U.S. soldiers at the Benghazi compound in September 2012. General James Mattis, in The Atlantic wrote: “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try.” Has General Mattis forgotten the ways in which we have been divided by those who feign inclusion? The compartmentalizing of the electorate by sex, sexual orientation and race; the splitting of us into oppressors and victims; the calling of Trump voters “deplorables” and “clinging to guns and religion.” The identity politics of Democrats are not politics of inclusion.

Slavery was an abomination, which the Civil War was fought to eliminate. But preservation of the Union was also critical to Lincoln. An estimated 360,000 Northern soldiers died during the War and almost as many from the South. Families were torn apart, brother fought brother. Statues of Southern generals and politicians were erected, not to honor the antebellum South, but to help reconcile a nation divided by rivers of fraternal blood.

In his 1919 poem “The Second Coming,” written in the aftermath of the Great War and during the infamous Spanish Influenza, William Butler Yeats wrote; “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…/The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.” The right to protest is protected; anarchy is not. We need leaders who call for unity, but who do so with wisdom, sanity, civility and tolerance.

Defunding the police is not an answer to crime-infested streets, nor is dividing people into victims and oppressors unifying. A free people are not a homogenous unit. We need an escalator that allows people to move up the economic ladder, based on ability and aspiration, regardless of race, sex or religion. We cannot forget that a poor white family in Appalachia has more in common with a poverty-stricken inner-city Black family, than does that Black family’s “woke,” hypocritical ally twenty blocks south, who marches with a sign calling out white oppressors, and then heads home to her doorman building. When leaders abdicate responsibility, as has happened in blue-coated cities, elite universities and schools, corporations and media outlets, chaos ensues. During the economic challenging and inflation-ridden 1970s, the New York Times concluded an April 14, 1978 column that we lived in “an atmosphere of confusion, indecision and incoherence.” Words that could serve as an epitaph for today.

"It's the Culture, Stupid - Part II"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“It’s the Culture, Stupid – Part II”

June 13, 2020

“Nothing in the entire world is more dangerous

than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

                                                                                                Martin Luther King (1929-1968)

                                                                                                Strength to Love, 1963

                                                                                                collection of sermons

Ignorance is the bane of civilized society. It is inexcusable in a country with free high schools. In a manifestation of cancel culture, mobs tear down statues of yesteryear’s heroes. I wonder: what is gained by destroying historical artifacts? Where is the curiosity expressed by Washington Irving in Sketchbook almost two hundred years ago? “I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achievements.”[1] Should we rename army bases in a moment of exuberant zeal, or would it be wiser to debate the issue when heads are cooler? Are past wrongs righted when relegated to the ash heap of ignorance? Can we assume we have reached perfection where our descendants will find nothing wrong in today’s actions? Would those whose bravery stems from being part of a mob tearing down statues of Christopher Columbus have had the courage of the Italian navigator to sail across an infinite sea to an unknown land?

History must be considered in context and with perspective. It is impossible for us to judge the behavior of our forefathers based on today’s moral standards, just as it will be unfair to us for our descendants to mock our actions today based on values a hundred years hence. Should we ignore Columbus because he is now pilloried as a racist, more than five hundred years after his voyage of discovery? Should we disregard Thomas Jefferson, and the words he wrote about self-evident truths and of how all men were created equal with unalienable rights, because he kept slaves? Cannot we admire the former and criticize the latter?

The cultural war is perhaps most pronounced in the Washington D.C. environs, where 283,000 federal bureaucrats work. They are joined by about 14,000 staffers for the 535 Congressmen and Senators. Lobbyists comprise another 11,600 people. Added to the mix are thousands who work in media. In all, they make up almost 20% of the metro areas workforce. These are highly paid people who live in four of the nation’s five wealthiest counties – Howard (MD) and Loudon, Fairfax, and Arlington, all in Virginia. It is a self-contained culture where most jobs are based on who you know. Once hired, they are ensconced, moving from agency to lobbyist firm to agency. But as Richard Grenell, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany and ex-acting Director of National Intelligence, recently noted, the D.C. culture is autonomous, where there is “no outside thought, there’s no perspective.” While forty million Americans lost their jobs due to a state-mandated shut-down of the economy, these people kept theirs, even when told to stay home – most paid from our tax dollars. The contrast to the rest of the country is startling. It was this narcissistic cocoon that Donald Trump threatened to dismantle in 2016 when he pledged to “drain the swamp.”

So, is it a surprise that this mixture of conventional bureaucrats, lobbyists and media worked hard to defeat Mr. Trump in the 2016 election? Should we be stunned to learn that the Obama Administration and the intelligence services interfered with the peaceful transition of power post-election and pre-inauguration? Was it startling that seventy members of Congress refused to attend the inauguration, or that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore up her copy of Mr. Trump’s State of the Union speech in front of 37 million viewers? With the Durham report pending, should we be shocked that 1,500 Justice Department retirees have spoken out against Attorney General William Barr, or that so many have attacked the President and his Administration? Has any previous President been treated with such hypocritical condescension?

And why is it that racism is most prevalent in bastions of progressivism like New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Baltimore and Philadelphia? Have policies that provide uncompetitive schools, a failure to support two-parent traditional families and a culture of victimization failed the very people they were supposed to help? For Democrats, a year that began with a strong economy and record levels of employment for Black workers, the killing of George Floyd was a godsend, to complement the shuttering of the economy to counter COVID-19. Just as scare stories regarding the pandemic proliferate, the murder of Mr. Floyd has been exploited as systemic racism. Why do so many now want to defund the police? In a review of Stacy Abrams new book, Our Time is Now, Barton Swaim provides one answer: “Because, for overeducated white liberals…blaming the cops is easier than blaming themselves.” Certainly, there are bad cops who should be fired. But these same liberals ignore inconvenient facts like bad cops get protected by unions, that police shootings have declined dramatically in the past twenty years and that racism is most prominent in Blue-run cities and states. The legitimate protests gave activists like George Soros the opportunity to unleash Black Lives Matter, an organization he helps fund through Open Society Foundation. BLM draws attention to alleged racism and inequalities but does little to address root causes – education, family and personal responsibility – and did little to curtail the riots and looting, abetted by radical groups like Antifa. As Candice Owens says in a video viewed over six million times, a divided nation is fundamental to the success of progressive politics.

Nevertheless, great harm was done to African-Americans. First slavery and then a century of “Jim Crow” laws that prevented Blacks from achieving the promises of America. The 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act largely corrected past wrongs, though implementation was slow and sometimes painful. To help atone for centuries of ill treatment, affirmative action was introduced in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson in Executive Order 11246. It was a necessary program at the time. But implicit in that policy is that it gives birth to victimization – that without help from government, success is impossible. It is patronizing and racist. No one race is intellectually or morally inferior to another.

Politicians choose to compartmentalize the electorate. When the goal is votes, it is more efficient to address the concerns of a group than to consider the fears and desires of an individual. Like everyone, Blacks need tools to succeed – strong family ties, a good education where choice is an option, and an environment that encourages personal responsibility and accountability. Millions of Blacks have made successes of their lives in fields ranging from the military, music, literature, law, sports, politics, medicine, science and hundreds of others. They have done so as individuals – as Democrats and as Republicans, as liberals and as conservatives. But when they do so as conservatives, they are disparaged by white liberals; they are told they are traitors to their class, that they are “Uncle Toms,” that “they ain’t Black.”

Ignorance of our past is no excuse. Platitudes do not provide answers. Political polarization is not uncommon. America has always been splintered by policy differences. It is only in time of war that we become truly unified. However, a culture that emphasizes diversity of race, sex and religion, but not thought is negative for freedom and independence. It is when opinions are censored, as they have been in our universities in recent years, amplified in the press and social media and promoted by politicians that we risk authoritarianism. We move forward as individuals, not as Christians, Jews, Blacks, Whites, gays, women or men. That is how we should be weighed, by the “measure of our character.” But politics is about garnering votes; it is about power, something we all need to keep in mind, especially in an election year. 

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[1] As quoted by Nicholas Basbanes in his biography of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Cross of Snow.