V for Victory & Venom for Values: Part I
America’s Descent Into the Abyss
As I wrote in Part 1 of my Two Sides of the Same Counterfeit Coin series (3 days shy of 3 years ago).
I’m not an authority on race relations, but I have a knack for knowing what’s not working and why. My area of “why” is in human behavior — not the answers to how all these things can be fixed. There are people who have the answers (or ideas that could get us there with the cooperation and courage to foster them). The same can be said for most issues in America.
So, my aim is to clear the clutter for honest debate — especially for people who really know their stuff.
Like this guy, Glenn Loury:
We stood there in the summer of 1984. . . . Two decades had passed since the heyday of the civil rights achievements of the 1960s. It was time to take stock. Where have we blacks gotten ourselves to? I asked . . . High up in the speech throwing down the gauntlet came my signature declaration, the Civil Rights Movement is over, I asserted. I claimed that the problems of the lower classes of African American society plagued by poverty and joblessness were, at the end of the day, not remediable by the means which had been so effective in the 1960s of protest and petitioning for fair treatment.
What we now faced, I suggested, was a new American dilemma. The formulation I ultimately settled on contrasted an enemy without, that would be white racism, with an enemy within — black society.
“The Civil Rights Movement is over” — in 1984!
That — took guts! And that is the Loury I was looking for. Alas, I never found him. It’s a mighty fine day when you wake up to high praise from a man of his caliber — twice! He once called my writing “brilliant,” was “honored by it,” and “blown away” by my site and signed up. I’d like to think that’d at least give me a little credibility with his supporters. I’d like to think a lot of things. I guess I’m golden as long as I don’t challenge you and your crowd to live up to the principles you preach when it comes at a price.
Even though that price would ultimately elevate the person you’re protecting (and in so doing, lowering). But that’s the larger story I’m out to tell. And it seems to me that someone who said these words below, would understand the demands of difficulty and discernment in seeing the bigger picture.
We should be above whatever the fad or the fashion is of any given day. We should be looking at the deep questions. We should be analytical. We should be emphasizing reason.
— Glenn Loury, Tucker Carlson today
Only for problems that are popular and easy to perceive? Whatever’s in your wheelhouse? Is that as deep as your questions go, Glenn? Maybe when you’re done talking race, woke, and CRT for the ten-thousandth time — we can consider approaching problems in a more multidimensional manner? An endless barrage of niche-based argument to beat back bunk — has no chance in today’s trench warfare between armies of unreachables.
Just picking the “root cause” that works for you doesn’t cut it. You’ve gotta look at interconnected causes across-the-board.
The Left institutionalizes weakness — and the Democratic Party is notorious for lacking backbone. You weaken the very people you’re trying to strengthen — branding weakness to boot. And right on cue, the Right is ready to pounce. I don’t blame ’em — except for the part about them being weak while branding strength. The Right wants the Left and the black community to get its act together on matters deeply woven into the fabric of America’s long history of brutality and disgrace: Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, murder, decades of civil rights violations, questionable shootings, and so on. While the Right won’t even look at the material properties of a tube.
What’s wrong with that picture — and this one?
Hmm, so the dimensions exactly match the tubes used in Iraq’s history of manufacturing the Nasser-81 mm artillery rocket (a reverse-engineered version of the Italian Medusa).
Conservatives control the narrative about responsibility and think that magically translates to taking responsibility. Republicans pounce on the Left day in and day out as if the Right’s record vanished off the face of the earth. It’s all about framing the narrative — and the Left institutionalizing weakness is a gimme for the Right to rail on ’em.
That the Left brings it on themselves is another matter.
And the icing on the cake: Somewhat sincere intellectuals justifiably calling out universities, woke ways, racially rigged incidents and such: Providing endless fodder for the Right to rip people for behavior that pales in comparison to what they’ve done for decades. The Right delights in ridiculing the Left for burning buildings to further the cause. Yet they went batsh*t crazy after 9/11: Setting the world ablaze — and browbeating anybody out of line in their March of Folly.
THAT — is faith-based belief at its best. The Left’s anti-racism religion, woke, and whatnot — they’re amateurs. I didn’t write Mariana Trench of Mendacity from my imagination. So courageous from your keyboards: Gutless in the face of facts you don’t like — disguised by your goose-stepping glory in the Facts Over Feelings Parade.
It’s pure fantasy to think that you can ignore key dimensions of a problem and magically solve it. The problems that plague America are interrelated, and anything short of addressing that is going nowhere. But everyone’s wrapped up in their wheelhouse — operating under umbrellas of interests that don’t account for complexities outside of them. Do these people really wanna solve problems anyway? Do you?
Man is at least as much a problem-creating as a problem-solving animal. Better a crisis than the permanent boredom of meaninglessness.
— Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom
Taking on the entire country by myself is worlds away from what everyone else is doing. In reference to its opening image on Without Passion or Prejudice, I wrote: “Half the country is with me on this — and I just lost the other half. Had I started with the image below — it would be the opposite half.”
When you make up your mind on lickety-split perception alone: In what parallel universe does that qualify as critical thinking? Ann Baker’s article beautifully captures what critical thinking is and is not:
Indeed, nowadays, we tend to take in and repeat whatever the values and beliefs of those around us have rather than forming our own independent thought and stopping to organize and evaluate the information we are receiving.
What does it say to you that across communities where claims of critical thinking are everywhere — I haven’t found it anywhere? These people taking endless delight in flooding the internet with ceaseless claims about their immaculate critical thinking skills. But the second they’re challenged on anything that is even perceived as threatening their interests: They don't do anything that even remotely reflects the requirements of critical thinking. Belligerence and circular certitude come standard in their behavior that embodies the mentality of a mob:
Automatons devoid of rational thought & manners. Behavior without an atom of integrity, courtesy, curiosity, courage, decency, effort, or any virtue of any kind.
Nice essay. Richard, you have my attention. I'm intrigued to see where this is headed.