Glibertarians.com 2017 Archive

Category: Racism

  • Identity Politics Part 2: Let’s You and Him Fight!

    By Suthenboy

    A divided people are more easily conquered. The Imperialist European powers were well aware of this and commonly drew borders in their overseas colonies to encompass competing indigenous peoples so that those groups would fight with each other and not the conquering Europeans. Additionally they gained political capital by putting themselves in the position of arbiters of the disputes and alleviators of grievances for those indigenous people. The political left in the modern United States is also well aware of this strategy.

    Their most powerful weapon today is identity politics and the trump card in that deck is racial identity. They actively and deliberately fan the flames of racial animus and stoke grievances among minority populations. By playing the part of arbiters and alleviators they gain loyal voter support of minorities and by cobbling together a number of those minorities seek to gain a majority. They use the threat of labeling one a racist as a gag for those that disagree with them. The problem of course is that it is injurious to our society and culture to set a common people against themselves. Fortunately it appears to be a failing strategy of late yet they are doubling down on it.

    They have targeted every minority but the primary recipients have been Blacks. Until recently Black Americans were the largest minority in the United States. Constant reminders of the history of slavery, of real and imagined grievances, and relegating them to second-class citizenry have divided our country politically along racial lines. Over time and with great effort many of the rifts between Black America and the rest of the country had largely healed but they are intent on re-opening those wounds. Their post-racial America looks more like the mid-nineteenth century than the early twenty first.

    My own children belong to groups of friends that include mixed couples and members of all races, including a number of Blacks. In their direct experience those rifts don’t exist, but ask them about it and they can tell you all about the ignus fatuus that animates their politics.

    The left has actively and deliberately perpetrated resentment among the races for their own political gain successfully for decades. Many of them focus exclusively on that goal and profit handsomely from it. In order to do this they necessarily must cast away the very foundation of liberty – self-ownership. Self-ownership does not tolerate the assignment of collective guilt – that some are guilty of the sins of others. Personal responsibility is an anathema to those pushing to redistribute wealth from the descendants of slave holders to the descendants of slaves. No members of either group are victims or perpetrators and one of those groups barely exists at all.

    Their assignment of guilt is built on the absurd assertion that one is guilty of acts they neither performed or had any hand in deciding. The inevitable conclusion of the assertion that whites are guilty by mere virtue of their skin color, something they can cannot decide or change, refutes the agency of a large portion of the human race. Simply put it is the very dehumanizing bigotry that gave rise to slavery in the first place.

    How then to remedy this? What would be enough? If mere whiteness is guilt then nothing will ever be enough because we cannot change the past nor can anyone change their skin color. The repugnant answer to that question can only be total theft and extermination. Their answer is not to end oppression but to have the oppressed and oppressors exchange places. The morality of our society would decay to the primitive.

    The most grotesque aspect of this strategy is that the very premises of it are smoke. Racial differences are will-o-the wisps and focusing on them distracts us from solving real problems. It deprives all of us of the benefits of solidarity with our fellow countrymen. It wastes vast amounts of human potential. It creates unnecessary strife and poverty.

    The first step in solving this problem is to identify the problem. What if it turns out the problem is not a problem at all. That in a calculated way the left has manufactured straw giants and murky definitions which is a much bigger problem than race or class?

    See that Black dude over there? We have a common humanity. He isn’t a Black dude. His name is John and he is my countryman. So I ask you what does race mean?

  • Identity Politics Part 1: If You Can’t See the Chains Does it Mean They Aren’t There?

    By Suthenboy

    Without modern mechanized methods of farming it is necessary that humans hands perform that labor. That doesn’t mean mass human labor is necessary to become wealthy; without sophisticated machinery, daylight to dark toil is necessary just to have enough to eat. This economic reality gave rise to forcibly capturing people and coercing labor from them. It goes by the common name of slavery and it was universally practiced by all cultures on earth at one time. It was seen as a normal practice and though everyone would object to becoming a slave, neither slave nor master objected to it as an institution. It was just considered the way things are. As technology advanced and our means for creating wealth became greater, the need to co-opt the labor of others lessened. With the spread of the ideas born of the Western Enlightenment slavery quickly became regarded as less the way things are and more the way things should not be. It is now rightly reviled by Western Civilization, but in many ways its shadow hangs over us. The cost of slavery was high in lives and in moral currency. Slavery debases not just those held but the slaver as well. Slaves are deprived of their freedom and the slaver of his humanity. The stone age indigenous peoples of the Americas could not be successfully enslaved. The kind of confinement and structure it required was so alien to them that they simply died when it was imposed on them. The solution was, of course, to replace them with Africans. The slave trade was as old as time in Africa and still thrives today. Europeans desperate for labor in their new colonies eagerly stepped into that market.

    I live in the deep south. The Antebellum plantations that pepper my state mostly operate as tourist attractions these days. A few are still profitable as farms but tractors perform the backbreaking work, not humans. If you drive the River Road between Natchitoches and New Orleans, braving the stifling heat and humidity to tour some of these vast forerunners of modern industrial agriculture, you will get an idea of what a monumental struggle it was to produce wealth in the wild and expansive Mississippi flood plain. If you have ever worked in agriculture, your experience will give you a better idea of the scale of the superhuman effort that required.

    Of the 12-13 million Africans brought to the Americas as chattel, only a small fraction, some 400,000, were transported to the United States. Right from the start, this practice was controversial. Western European culture was more enlightened than any on earth at the time. The idea of individual liberty blossoming here and the glaring conflict that holding men as property presented with liberty was…I won’t sugarcoat it… problematic to say the least. Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence, summed up the prevailing opinion nicely when arguing against slavery “Why keep alive the question of slavery? It is admitted by all to be a great evil.”

    In the United States, the slave trade was somewhat unique in that it had strong racial overtones. Everywhere else, a person’s race had little to do with slavery. Historically, slavery was an equal opportunity employer. The slaves here, aside from those held by the indigenous people, were exclusively Africans. The feeble justification was that blacks were inherently inferior, that exposure to western civilization would improve them and advance their race.

    That evil practice was ended and not just by the advent of modern machinery and cheap energy or the dawning of a new morality. The intractability of those advocating for slavery eventually had to be overcome with powder and shot. The scale of that destructive war, both in lost property and blood, exceeded anything up to that time and every war after it until WWI. With that the barbarism of enslaving human beings was extinguished in the United States.

    Still, the ghost of slavery haunts us all. The advent of 1863 saw President Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation, and after the war he attempted to repatriate those who had been enslaved by birthing the nation of Liberia on the west coast of Africa. Still, there are remnants of that ghastly practice with us. The gussied up corpses of those plantations are still here. Driving south from Alexandria on the old Baton Rouge highway, you will see cabins that housed slaves still standing, now housing renters. The fields and orchards are still here, worked by the relentless plodding of tractors.

    At the end of the Civil War, the vast majority of those that had failed to perpetuate a primitive and outdated economy gathered what they could in wealth and property, fleeing to lands more amenable to their culture. The war had brought to a head the animosity between the conflicting cultures of enlightenment with primitivism, so they slipped away from the wrath of the victors. They would have been fools to stay and dead ones, at that. Anyone curious enough can travel to remote towns in various Latin American countries and find bizarre places where Antebellum America still lives, places where those seeking to escape revenge found a refuge to perpetuate that way of life.

    Despite the reminders around us, are those ghosts really ours? There is not a person alive in the United States today who has been held in bondage, nor a person alive today who has held another in bondage. Though the struggle was great, every descendant of slaves today enjoys equal standing before the law, on paper anyway, to every other citizen. Those that care too often thrive on equal footing with every other ethnicity.

    The vast majority of the white population here does not even have ancestors who held slaves. I can trace my own family back to the late seventeenth century in the Americas, and not one of those individuals held slaves. On my mother’s side, there are only abolitionists, and on my father’s side, no one wealthy enough to afford the purchase of slaves. The majority of white Americans are descended from immigrants that arrived on these shores after slavery was abolished. This is the most common legacy of white Americans today.

    In history, the United States is remarkable in the social and cultural progress it has achieved. In less than 200 years, we progressed from a culture that more resembled the old world order, to one that is most unique, one that holds liberty and the sovereignty of the individual above all else. Our founding principles allow us to cast off the yoke of history and forge ahead to new, better cultural ground. In many ways we have dragged the rest of the world with us, though they still have some catching up to do.

    These days, my old bones are more comfortable at home. I prefer good food, a warm fire, and, most of all, the company of my wife; but this was not always the case. I have travelled to many places in the world, and one of the things that struck me was the racism and tribalism outside of the U.S. The perception of the U.S. by the rest of the world of America as a country eaten alive with racism, appears to me to be projection. Racism as it exists here in America is mild in comparison to the rabid, virulent racism almost everywhere else.

    Why, then, we still struggle so much with the question of race is an interesting and important question. Go ahead, give it your best shot.

  • Dean Obeidallah Is An Insufferable Prick

    Dean Obeidallah is an insufferable prick.

    Itbah al-Yahud!

    On Monday, CNN published a strident op-ed by the failed lawyer, turned failed stand-up comic, turned C-list media pundit condemning Bill Maher for having Milo Yiannopoulos as a guest on his  HBO show. Now, I wholeheartedly agree with libertarian sex goddess Lucy Steigerwald that Milo Yiannopoulous merely is a stupid man’s version of Christopher Hitchens, but the mendaciousness on display when Obeidallah lists the litany of supposed sins committed by Yiannopoulos is breathtaking and warrants comment.

    In Obeidallah’s spit-flecked and stentorian denunciation, he charges Maher with failing to “ask [Yiannopoulous] about his anti-Semitic comment that ‘Jews run the media,’ … [ask] why Yiannopoulos wore a Nazi Iron Cross when he was younger … [and inquire about] his demonization of transgender people as, in essence, sexual predators?” Never mind the fact that the first and third charge are merely Obeidallah presenting intentionally provocative statements intended as shock humor out of context, is he not cognizant of the fact that labeling every instance of a symbol that has represented Germany since 1813, (as well as having been appropriated as a fairly innocuous symbol in surfer culture) as “Neo-Nazi” is equivalent to labeling all people wearing fashion keffiyeh as radical Islamist Hamas sympathizers?

    Ironically, only a day later, CNN would include the following graphic accompanying its latest attempt to foment a moral panic:

    Surf Nazis Must Die! (Source: CNN.com)

    Context is key, indeed!

    Obeidallah’s sanctimonious posturing is particularly galling considering the fact that in December of 2013, while a guest on Melissa Harris-Perry’s MSNBC show, he cracked a series of tasteless jokes mocking the fact that Mitt Romeny’s adoptive grandson, Kieran Romney, is ethnically African-American. When challenged over the racially-charged humor, while Harris-Perry delivered what appeared to be a sincere and heartfelt apology, all Obeidallah could muster up was a self-defensive non-apology, in which he managed to portray himself as the victim of false outrage by conservative “wing-nuts” who, in not having the super-secret decoder ring issued to all progressives, failed to realize that humor stemming from an observation that Kieran was essentially and forever different from the rest of his adoptive family due to his race was in fact a wry political statement as to the “lack of racial diversity we see at the Republican National Convention.” Which is why, of course, he referred the child as a “prop” in a mock apology to Kieran for comments made during the broadcast.

    You know who else made jokes about white women with black children? (Source:@MittRomney)

    As I mentioned earlier, Dean Obeidallah is an insufferable prick.

    In further evidence of his martyrdom at the feet of humorless conservative scolds, in his 2013 article for the Daily Beast, Obeidallah wrote:

    Here’s the thing: As a comedian, I always try to be funny. It doesn’t always work and I have told jokes that offended people. And I can assure you that in the future I will offend even more people even though that was not my intention.  Not only is comedy subjective, but so are sensibilities about when a comedian has “crossed the line.”
    In fact, being attacked by right-wing publications for my jokes is nothing new to me. I even wrote an article about that just a few months ago for The Daily Beast titled “The Tea Party’s War on Comedy” about right-wing media outlets lashing out a joke I tweeted. But here’s the reality: We can expect to see even more of this outrage by both the left and the right going forward.  Our collective self-righteous anger keeps escalating. Perhaps it’s because of the hyper-partisan times we live in.  Or maybe it’s due to social media or the media’s desperate need for content.  Perhaps it’s just payback by each side for the last time one of their own was attacked. Regardless of the reason, in time, it will only get worse.

    Pictured: Dean Obeidallah – Live at the Improv

    Despite Obeidallah’s 2013 attempt at ‘a pox on both your houses’ appeal to ethos, in 2017, we see no such attempt at nuance, no such reminders of the inherent subjectivity of comedy when Yiannopolous appeared, along with another comedian (Larry Wilmore), on an intentionally comedic political talk-show hosted by a comedian (Maher). Instead, Obeidallah waxed stentorian when he proclaimed:

    [S]tunningly, at the end of the interview, Maher seemed to be doing his best to make Yiannopoulos’ hateful views more acceptable. Maher concluded the interview by reading “provocative” jokes the late comedian Joan Rivers had made and saying she was still considered a “national treasure.”

    His point appeared to be that if some people gave another comedian a pass, then why shouldn’t we do the same with Yiannopoulos? Well, the reasons are obvious: Rivers was actually a comedian, while Yiannopoulos is a political pundit who writes for Bretitbart.com

    Did you get that? Obeidallah and Rivers have permission to be provocative, as they are card-carrying comedians, but humorist and raconteur Yiannopoulos doesn’t as he is a mere “political pundit” for Badthink.com.

    Are you fucking kidding me, you insufferable prick?

    The amount of cognitive dissonance possessed by Obeidallah to claim that only comedians who meet certain unnamed criteria can make jokes about sensitive topics but Yiannopoulus cannot as he writes op-eds for Brietbart surpasses Graham’s Number in magnitude. One has to marvel that the fact that Obeidallah’s sneer as he wrote the term “political pundit” is so evident that, like the the Greenhouses of Almería, it can be seen from space. When typing out those sentences, did Obeidallah forget that his day job is working the cable TV news circuit as a token progressive Muslim talking-head? Did Obeidallah forget that he was writing an op-ed for CNN? Did Obeidallah forget that he has his own political talk radio show on SiriusXM? The hypocrisy astounds. Yet, there is a simple explanation for it. It is the same reason that Yiannopoulus is currently being castigated for saying the same things that Allen Ginsberg said decades ago:

    GINSBERG: Well, then you must excuse me if I don’t adopt the submissive attitude you wish. I got on the air and said that when I was young I was approached by an older man and I don’t think it did me any harm. And that I like younger boys and I think that probably almost everybody has an inclination that is erotic toward younger people, including younger boys.

    LOFTON: How young were the boys?

    GINSBERG: In my case, I’d say fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.

    LOFTON: That you had sex with?

    GINSBERG: No, unfortunately I haven’t had the chance. [laughs] No, I’m talking about my desires. I’m being frank and candid. And I’m also saying that if anyone was frank and candid, you’d probably find that in anybody’s breast. (Harpers, “When Worlds Collide” Jan, 1990)

    Four years after this interview, Ginsberg wrote an essay explaining that he became a card-carrying member of the pedophile advocacy group NAMBLA, “in defense of free speech.” An agitator acting and speaking outrageously “in defense of free speech” sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But the simple fact remains that Yiannopoulus was recently forced to fall upon his own sword whereas Ginsberg remains in the American imagination as a Puckish merry trickster whose poems (“I saw the best minds of my generation … who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication”) are treated with reverence by the academy is because Ginsberg was a communist sympathizer cum progressive leftist and Yiannopoulus isn’t. In the minds of individuals like Obeidallah, it’s a very simple calculus: his progressive compatriots are to be forgiven all failings as their intentions are righteous and pure, whereas, conservatives, libertarians, etc. are always assumed to be acting and speaking in bad faith as their intentions are evil and corrupt. One wonders how Obeidallah rationalizes Joan Rivers’ interview of Reza Farahan, full of frank humor about race, religion, and homosexuality, where Melissa Rivers described her mother as a “fiscally conservative, socially liberal Republican.” In what way does Rivers’ status as a comedian allow Obeidallah to forgive her jokes like “[I’m a Republican] because I work very hard for my money and I don’t care if you’ve got 19 children – use condoms! I’ll pay for your first four children, that’s it!”? In Obeidallah’s Manichean worldview, didn’t Rivers play for the same “team” that Yiannopoulus represents? At the end of his 2013 article, despite spilling some token digital ink bemoaning the negative effect these “hyper-partisan times we live in” have upon humor, Obeidallah ended with this utterly obnoxious cri de coeur:

    And let me also be clear to the self-appointed right-wing pundits: I will never stop calling out the wrongs and hypocrisy of the right.  Be it citing Jesus’ name to justify slashing programs that help the less fortunate, demonizing Muslims or gays for political gain, or trying to disenfranchise minority voters with voter ID laws. And for those jokes and comments, I can assure you, I will never apologize.

    Remember, this came only 2 paragraphs after he wrote “We can expect to see even more of this outrage by both the left and the right going forward.  Our collective self-righteous anger keeps escalating.  Perhaps it’s because of the hyper-partisan times we live in.” How dull one must be to not grasp the conflict between these two sentiments! Indeed, taking into account all of Obeidallah’s self-contradictory statements, one is forced to conclude that either he suffers from early dementia or that he is utterly without any sort of intellectual honesty or moral scruples.

    Milo Cross
    Neo-Nazi or just a shitty accessory appealing to Milo’s notoriously gaudy taste?

    So we are left with the spectacle of Yiannopoulus being pilloried for the same sins of both Ginsburg and Obeidallah. It’s not even the blatant double-standard of how Yiannopoulus has been treated so poorly due to his perceived political views that rankles so much; it’s the complete and all-consuming self-righteousness of progressives like Obeidallah and his ilk as they bemoan their treatment at the hands of “humorless” conservatives, yet still deign to deliver angry philipics when someone who is not a progressive leftist attempts to do as they did. You see, in Obeidallah’s worldview, only people with the proper views can be certified comedians, and thus, given license to poke at sacred cows. Thus, Yiannopoulus is a filthy pedophile, whereas, George Takei merely has wickedly mischevious sense of humor. In Obediallah’s worldview, Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg is a vicious anti-Semite, but Trevor Noah merely makes wry observations on “Zionism.”  In Obediallah’s worldview, taking style tips from an anti-Semitic mass murderer and pedophile is merely fashion, but wearing a surfer’s necklace is irrefutable evidence that Yiannopoulus hold allegiance to an ideology that would see him placed in a death camp with both a pink and yellow triangle sewn to his blue and white striped prisoner’s pyjamas.

    Dean, if you do perchance come across this article, I recommend that after reading it you enter your bathroom. I would ask that you take the time to look at yourself in the mirror. Really look at yourself. After marveling over your close resemblance to Casey Kasem, I want you to look yourself in the eyes and come to the acceptance that you are the reason Donald J. Trump is President of the United States. I want you to know, deep down in your bones, that it is an incontrovertible truth that it was the sublime hypocrisy displayed by you and your fellow progressive hatchet-men in the media that drove this nation to elect an amoral demagogue. I want you to see your face as the realization creeps across it that the current political situation is a result of the utter contempt that you have expressed towards those whom you’ve deemed as evil merely because they do not subscribe to your economic and societal views. I want you to see your eyes mist and your brow furrow in anguish as it dawns upon you that the zealous self-righteousness of you and your fellow progressives, in which you believe it acceptable to slander a perceived ideological enemy through hyperbolic sound-bites disseminated through a compliant, yet mercurial, media, has produced an equal and opposite reaction to which you now find your most beloved shibboleths tossed on the trash-heap. And, finally, when you accept that the state of affairs is over in which one could be excused of even the most vile behavior if they were your ideological kinsmen, while even the most milquetoast of peccadilloes of others were excoriated with a fury that rivaled anything found in Johnathan Edward’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, if you have even a modicum of self-dignity, you will reach for your medicine cabinet, take your DOVO, pause for a moment as the cold steel is pressed against the flesh of your neck, and slide the blade from left to right.

    And you’ll have no one to blame but yourself, you insufferable prick.

  • Reclaiming the Language

    “The pen is mightier than the sword.” Much has been waxed, wroth and poetic, about that phrase since it was first penned by Edwin Bulwer-Lytton in 1839. At first blush, it is a sterling statement as to the power of the written word; to entertain, to persuade, to transport the minds of men into other shoes and allow them to walk roads previously unknown and unknowable.

    I still prefer my laptop.

    At second blush – and second blushes are best blushes, since they are so unexpected – it is a testament to the ability to control. The sword can only kill a man; the pen can make him into something fit to make his mother cringe in horror.

     

    Words are thought. Language makes up so much of who we are and how our brains work that a native language can be expressed with not merely a linguistic accent, but also a physical accent. Blind humans who have never seen the common body language of the speakers of their native language, will both use physical gestures to communicate and will also use similar gestures as those who can see them. Words are not merely things of our lips and tongue; they go down to the bone.

    The ability to control the words of others is a blueprint to change their very thoughts. Society is rife with examples of altering what words mean or which words must be used in an effort to steer the conversation. Gun “safety”.  Pretty much all of the media coverage of Trump’s campaign. The loss of perfectly functional terminology and colloquialisms: “-splainin’”, racist, fascist, liberal, feminist, Nazi.

    Remember the push to stop calling people illegal aliens? It doesn’t matter which word one uses as much these days, as it’s all been lumped under the broad tent of immigration, of which one is either for or against. And being against immigrants makes the Statue of Liberty cry. You meanie.

    We’re not banning homeless people, gods bless you sir, no! We’re just banning urban camping. Nothing to see here. Move along.

    Insidious propaganda is insidious.

     

    When words have been altered, taken – molded, primped, shoved into a tight dress and forced to pimp themselves on the streets for their masters – there often comes a push-back. Satire, mocking and Poe’s Law come into play. Frequently, the objects of this linguistic assault retake the word by embracing it and celebrating it. Pick the derogatory demographic slur, activists and cultural music will use it in earnest if given time.

    This is not always as effective as intended. If in doing so we accept the new interpretation foisted upon us by those who seek to control the conservation, embracing a slur as a badge of honor is to win the battle but lose the war

    Remember, the good football tackle doesn’t aim for the shoulders. Aim for the knees.

     

    The first return for nationalism offers a definition as patriotic feeling, principles, or efforts. Wikipedia first line on it is: Nationalism is a complex, multidimensional concept involving a shared communal identification with one’s nation. Dictionary.com’s first two definitions are 1) spirit or aspirations common to the whole of a nation 2) devotion and loyalty to one’s own country; patriotism. Merriam-Webster dubs it thusly: loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially :  a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.

    Excuse me, I have bad news for you.

    Google Trends shows that searches for nationalism have followed an identifiable pattern since 2004. Searches peak in November-ish and again in the spring before falling to an apathetic doldrum by summer. Searches have been trending upward since the summer of 2012, and sharply upward since spring of 2016.

    You know what else follows that pattern? Election coverage in the MSM. And maybe searches for the weather too, sometimes the pattern isn’t as important as first blushes imply.

    It would make sense that the language of the nation is particularly captured by nationalism when electing its national leaders. For the concept described in the aforementioned definitions, one can find it culturally expressed by the immortal Lee Greenwood, and no wonder politicians are so fond of borrowing nationalism’s evocative imagery.

    What a surprise it must have been to the average voter to find the word in the media as a derogatory slur. Being a nationalist was bad and basically like Nazis. (TW: Scare quote abuse. It’s brutal.) Nationalism is gonna getchoo. It’s quite confusing, because sometimes it might not be bad? Context and qualifiers are key to understanding, since white nationalism is… well, you’d think it would be nationalists who are also white but let’s see what Wikipedia has to say this time.

     

    White nationalism is a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism which holds the belief that white people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a white national identity. Its proponents identify with and are attached to the concept of a white nation.

     

    Well, that escalated quickly.

     

    When everything is Hitler, nothing is.

    As a propaganda tool, it couldn’t have a worse basis in logic. Every redneck, pool player, bar rowdy and biker who ever closed out Karaoke Night with a communal Greenwood sign-along for all those left standing hears the message loud and clear: Look, nationalism is bad enough, but if you’re white and a nationalist, you’re this guy.

    Say it insistently and often enough, and what’s the logical reaction? A hue and cry of white Americans shouting as one diversity-approved voice, “No! And we say again – no! We reject our heritage and traditional ideals, and the very familiarity bias with which all humans are afflicted, if the only other option is to be that guy!”

    My word. It is to laugh. Some of them will just shrug and say, “I guess, sure, if that’s what it means now, then I must be a white nationalist.” In a linguistic climate which seeks to normalize the idea that being born pale says all it needs about the content of one’s character, whites have been called worse and it’s exhausting to try to correct the barrage. Plenty attempt to argue, but true thinkers know that this is just the rationalization of lesser minds at work and pay no heed. Heeding would be actively harmful, in fact, since the white voice is over-used and the construct of whiteness is complicit in oppression.

     

    Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive. It likely would have been more accurate and fostered proper communication to describe Richard Spencer et al. as white-nationists. That might not have served the correct interests, however, and branding white nationalism dove-tails so handily with the efforts to cultivate racism as an actual significant problem, useful to those who would control us all.

     

    Reject it. This land is our land, and those words are our words. It’s a fucked-up land, to be sure; like an old broken-in boot – comfortable, ugly as sin but still bringing a sigh to your lips when the worn leather molds around you knowingly, as few things can. We’ve stepped in shit more than we meant to. These things happen to us all, we’re only human. The soles are sturdy yet, though, and there’s life left in the good leather and craftsmanship.

     

    We’re not the greatest country in the world… but we could be.

    Globalism is a fine concept when it comes to marketplaces. When it comes to ethereal communal ties, telling people they aren’t allowed to enjoy particularly the land of their birth is akin to an announcement that following any one NFL team is discriminatory and verboten. Good luck with that strategy. Let us know how it works out. American society is highly and vehemently tribalized. It’s astonishing that people can be reliant on tribal ties in virtually every aspect of society, from politics to clothes and wine, and yet a familiarity bias for the country we were trained to pledge allegiance to is the one tie it ought to be unthinkable to feel.

    Unthinkable? It’s practically reflexive. Are we trying to give people a complex?

     

    Much like immigration is now a broad subject one can only be for or against, nationalism is being used as a linguistic tool, a buzzword to steer the conversation. White-nationists such as Richard Spencer have been vaulted to the limelight as the media cries wolf about scary racists/nationalist for their own ends. This is how easily we are distracted from the real work at hand. We cannot do what we should be doing, we cannot talk about what needs to be addressed, because we are too busy discussing the will-o’-the-wisps the mainstream media and politicians would have us chasing. Just because someone has offered you poison, doesn’t mean you have to drink it.

     

  • Georgetown Professor Jonathan Brown Responds

    Jonathan Brown has struck back at his critics and issued a lengthy release addressing many of the complaints people have levied against his purported positions on slavery and rape.

    Professor Jonathan Brown

    He begins by admitting to his tone-deafness on the issue and how he perhaps needed to have more understanding of a broad audience when speaking in a scholarly manner.  He then puts out a claim that he has received many death and rape threats on him as well as his family, although he doesn’t substantiate the claim in any way, shape or form.

    He then continues to spin interesting stories about what he means and that the context was completely misrepresented.  He continues to explain how Muslims were actually some of the greatest abolitionists in the history of mankind and that a lot of the latter slavery in the Muslim world was misunderstood, especially much of that from the Ottoman Empire.

    Read it for yourself, but I personally have a hard time taking someone seriously that says rape can actually be punished under Sharia as assault with only two witnesses as opposed to the four necessary to prove the charge of Hudud (fornication/adultery).  It diminishes the rule of law in a civil society and still essentially makes women second-class citizens.

    Enjoy the read and share your thoughts on the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and the Director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding.

    Hat tip to The Fusionist

  • Attack of the Humor Police

    I will admit that, being an old fart, I have never heard of PewDiePie before. Apparently, he’s a YouTube phenom, and has triggered the screeching of the Humor Police.

    Maker Studios dropped Kjellberg on Monday after a Wall Street Journal investigation highlighted the anti-Semitic sign, as well as eight other videos that included anti-Jewish jokes or Nazi images.

    Now, one does not have to be a dreaded “alt-righter” (whatever the fuck that actually means) to see the humor in what he’s doing. I think it takes a special sort of stupid to conclude that because he used Nazis and Nazi symbology as a means of parody (“what people will do for five bucks!”) that this is somehow anti-Jewish or threatens people in any way. But the Humor Police are always on the job, stamping out anything that looks even the tiniest bit transgressive.

    So in that vein, I will confess that this video cracked me up. For a donation, this school will teach any English phrase you like. Since I found this funny, clearly I’m advocating that little kids use intoxicants. Right?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2JHEFsb-z0

  • Geraldo Rivera Causes Meltdown On Social Media Over Yale Step-down

    Who wants a mustache ride?
    Geraldo Rivera

    In a move against political correctness run amok, Geraldo Rivera, who made his name unlocking the secrets of the Al Capone vault and giving away US troop positions in Iraq has decided to step down as an Associate Fellow at Yale University’s (soon to be renamed) Calhoun College.

    As anticipated by anybody with a pulse, his twitter feed went completely insane with people calling him everything under the sun.

     

    I wonder how many of those accusing him of everything from slavery apologia to outright hatred of blacks realizes that Yale will remain named after an actual slave trader even after the name of the slave-owning seventh Vice President of the United States is removed from campus buildings.