We are... dubious of Althouse's assertion that counter-Trayvonism plays into the hands of the left....
Saul Alinsky's fourth rule was: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." The counter-Trayvonists may ultimately be wrongheaded, but if they can provoke as conventional a liberal as Josh Marshall into disparaging "the racial victimization bus" — a colorblind sentiment if ever there was one — then perhaps they serve a dialetical purpose.
August 28, 2013
James Taranto considers my warnings against counter-Trayvonism.
In his Best of the Web column today. Excerpt:
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Yeah! I was dubious when you posted it. Glad to someone, pretty well known agrees.
The issue is that things like the knockout game have long predated "Trayvon".
Expecting the Left to deplore such incidents, rather than just give a limp statement such conduct is frowned upon, makes them live up to their statements about justice or reveals them as the hypocrites they are.
Your advice to avoid counter-Trayvonism is good political advice, but it ignore the increasing likelihood that those unfairly abused by Trayvonism will eventually take measures that stem from outside our political system.
...then perhaps they serve a dialetical purpose.
As Cornel West might put it, Obama might call it "conversation" and others still "teaching moments".
Good for the goose... on and on.
Respect individual dignity. How difficult can it be? Obama didn't do it. The civil rights businesses didn't do it. The journalists didn't do it. They desperately needed to have their selective interests exposed to public scrutiny.
Conservatives were routed from Hollywood. From the newspapers. From the broadcast networks. And largely from academia. What could it hurt to withdraw or be forced off another playing field that benefits the other political side?
Perhaps this strategy needs some tinkering.
Marshall demonstrates it's a leap too far for Liberals to admit their racism. The conflict can always be framed as demonstrating white racism.
Marshall projects his own shriveled viewpoint onto others when he says, "This whole episode amounts to little more than another plea from the subsection of aggrieved white Americans who still crave both social dominance and and [sic] the seat at the front of the racial victimization bus."
This really is an extension of civility, as Althouse has meandered around on.
There is a dichotomy of a very basic nature between liberals and conservatives Josh Marshall unwittingly reinforces.
Conservatives are maddest at the actual crime, while liberals and progressive Jews and black leaders do not care about the crime..but about arrests made.
To them, two unarmed young black thugs beating an 88-year old WWII Vet to death is nothing to be upset about because "arrests were made". And that ends the problem. Because the thugs were caught, no one has any right for ANGER or OUTRAGE.
But when a "nubian princess" alleges that white Dukies raped her, or "an unarmed Skittles Angel of a Child" was shot because a man racklessly got out of his own car....THAT IS HUGE and WORTH ENDLESS OUTRAGE.
Where the counter-Trayvonism comes into play is conservatives and mainstream Americans have grown tired of being "Mau-Mau'd" by black, white and jewish leftists stoking up a full lynch mob mentality and going into "DEMANDS" that people bow to them...condemn the people they have targeted, fire those people, jail them.
Now they are striking back, abandoning civility themselves. Because all civility meant to black, gay, social justice activism was you could kick sand in Whitey's face with no worry those "civil people" would turn it back on them.
Now they have started to, with counter-Trayvonism. Blacks are accused of being the most racist and violent people in America. Media accused of double standards, being in the tank for the Left. Public schools and Universities for having faculties full of left-wing whores that fail to educate students, more concerned with enforcing PC and doing leftist indoctrination. Advertisers and companies that koww-tow to the left are now seeing conservatives probing them and starting talk of organized boycotts.
Quid pro quo, baby!!
Neither Althouse nor Josh Marshall want to recognize that young black men participate in a culture that responds to stimuli with violence. Yet that culture exists, whether she and Marshall recognize it or not.
And there is no way to fix it until it is recognized.
Ann can lay out her case and allow room for discussion. Marshall will impute your motives and dismiss your arguments.
With all due respect, Prof A, I agree with Taranto, most certainly in the portion of his presentation you quote.
Every time the professional grievance hustlers perform their kabuki dance some friends of mine will claim that these hustlers have "The High Moral Ground".
I tell them that The Left, the Blacks do not have a monopoly on the High Moral Ground.
Some of them reply somewhat along the lines of the following composite:
"Unlike [Inwood], I'm not uncompassionate. I can see where his defense of, the wise-guy Republicans/Conservatives was, um, basically meant to, you know, be fair & uncontroversial But, you know, because of Republicans’/Conservatives’ reputation toward the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, not to mention the way it was said, [Inwood], you know, just didn’t, um, clearly foresee the consequences of the words & actions in question - taken in good faith, of course - &, um, why such words & actions in the public arena can cause thoughtful concerned people like [some perpetually aggrieved bozo who’s just condemned this counter action as that of racists] to, um feel hurt. But that's just my opinion & I know that [Inwood] can be somewhat, um, apologetic toward, you know, those less-than moderate Rightwing nuts... (click, click go the steel balls).”
Seems that some (many? most?) of these insecure trimmers have always had trouble justifying their allegiance to Conservative ideals (much less to the GOP), especially if they first embraced these ideals as an adult. They feel that they have to be twice as good as the people they left behind. And that they and all perceived representatives of their party/ideals must behave properly & try consciously to reflect credit upon the party/ideals. And, those who are perceived as presenting themselves as poor representatives of such party/ideals (anybody who defends Conservative principles, that is) thus incur the wrath of these self-anointed defenders of the faith (which wrath is never used against Liberals defending Loony Liberal principles). Worse, these trimmers are not embarrassed about using shame to encourage PC-sounding thoughts from the perceived Conservative misbehaver.
The left has a different set of scapegoats than the right, but their scapegoats are far more numerous and are killed with greater glee than the scapegoats of the right. Zimmerman had the stench of the kulak about him. The evidence that came out about him was for the most part exculpatory, and the evidence that came out about Trayvon was, if not damning, certainly not beatifying. But you couldn't argue contra Trayvon. "You (i.e. white people) killed him and now you're trying to kill his reputation." We are asked to send Zimmerman to jail for the balance of his life because he regarded Trayvon with suspicion......If people cannot argue contra Trayvon, they will argue counter Trayvon. America is filled with black adolescents that you should regard suspiciously.
Note that Taranto did not say that conservatives should do to blacks what liberals did to whites (or a "white Hispanic"). He did not say that conservatives should impute guilt to a particular black person because he is black, nor did he say that the heinous acts of a particular black person should be imputed to all blacks. Thus, this is not really anti-Trayvonism, and it is not a violation of the color-blind principle (a principle, by the way, that used to be espoused by liberals, but is now the property of conservatives and libertarians and a VERY small number of old-fashioned liberals).
Prof. Althouse is right to warn about where this new assertiveness on the right could lead. It could lead us into an intellectual and moral wasteland not unlike that through which so many modern liberals wander -- but it needn't do so, and we should be sure that it doesn't.
I would call counter Trayvonism reality. When the overwhelming majority of crimes, by percentage, are committed by black people, and the media, and our government refuses to acknowledge it for fear of name calling by the race hustlers, then we have a major problem that will not be solved by civilized means.
So that leaves un-civilized means.
Prediction...there will be more Trayvon like shootings in the country. People are fed up with black criminality, and the bellyaching of how they are being oppressed.
Soon, the only place where black people will be able to continue their crime sprees will be the slums of "Chocolate" cities, like Detroit, New Orleans, Atlanta, and Montgomery. (you didn't know about Montgomery did you? look it up)
Sorry, Althouse, I agree with Taranto. They designed this game, let's see how well they do on defense. The masses know hypocrisy when they see it.
Turning the other cheek and taking the high road is all well and fine in polite circles in theory but bringing a dildo to a gunfight is not a good idea in practice.
It seems to me that all of these propaganda games -- Alinskyism, Trayvonism, counter-Trayvonism -- are played for utterly short term stakes. A bunch of snakes fang each other in the desert as planes fly overhead.
Read some history. Read Macaulay, or Hugh Thomas. The propagandists are scoring points that won't even win them a footnote.
Zimmerman should sue Trayvon's family for his medical and legal expenses.
Ann, I still think you were off base with your original post. You live in a bit of bubble in Madison, Wisconsin.
There are plenty of people (black, white, and other) who don't realize the wide disparity in racial victims vs perpetrators. There are lots of people who believe the narrative they see and hear in the MSM that there are more white people attacking black people than vice versa.
It's healthy to point out these cases to educate the low-information voters.
As it stands, I don't think you've ever linked to the FBI crime stats. Might be worth a look and a link.
Carnifex said...
I would call counter Trayvonism reality. When the overwhelming majority of crimes, by percentage, are committed by black people, and the media, and our government refuses to acknowledge it for fear of name calling by the race hustlers, then we have a major problem that will not be solved by civilized means.
So that leaves un-civilized means.
Black on white crime including murder is far more common than white on black crime. What would happen if large numbers of whites started declaring, "No justice, no peace" and took to the streets? It would not be pretty. I fear a backlash is building and that never ends well.
I think that part of the problem is that crime by young black males has reached epidemic proportions, and that the root cause is progressive theory implemented primarily by Democrats. The party of slavery, Jim Crow, and the Klan has managed within many of our lives to fundamentally destroy the Black family, instituting generational dependence on the part of Black females and making many of their males criminals. There is a truism in economics that when you subsidize something, you get more of it, and single parenthood for those on the bottom of the economic pyramid has been subsidized since LBJ and his Great Society and War on Poverty. The problem is that if males are not required financially to raise their children, then they will never be properly socialized, and this is compounded when they are raised without a strong adult male in the household. Instead, they run in juvenile packs, terrorizing their own community, and the greater community when they leave their own community. It isn't that Blacks are really any more susceptable through anything innate or genetic, but rather that through centuries of oppression, they were on the bottom of the pyramid when progressives started subsidizing behavior that effectively destroyed Black families.
I fail to see how progressives can own the high ground here, since it was their policies that brought us where we are now. Good intentions are irrelevant - what matters are results, and most black on black, and, yes, black on white, crime can be laid at their doorsteps. President Obama and his Democratic allies have only made things worse, with even more subsidies for the underclasses, with ObamaPhones, ObamaCare, massive increases in food stamps, etc. It isn't that Conservatives don't care, because they do, but rather, that caring is irrelevant, as are motives, because what counts are results. Humans are flawed and selfish by nature, and pretending otherwise is Utopian cruelty and a major cause of much of this heartbreaking problem.
It's always been true that people in the group at the bottom any society commit the most violent crimes. So African-Americans are committing a high percentage of the violent crimes, disproportionate to their population share and mostly against their own. But the Trayvon Martin story seems to suggest that most violent crimes are committed by whites who go about terrorizing African-Americans. The "counter-Trayvons" are pointing out how false that is. But there could be other more constructive counter-Trayvons that focused on instances of white-black co-operation.
As has been said, a backlash is coming and I am beyond sick and tired of being held up as the problem. The issue is the black culture overall and nobody can fix it but them.
But they WON'T fix it. They don't want to do so.
At a certain point, decent people will simply wash their hands of the situation.
The last 5 years have killed racist as an epithet. At a certain point, people who don't want to die will notice that what the politicians are trying to sell doesn't work well in reality.
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