Posted on 09/20/2005 4:25:54 AM PDT by hildy123
I nearly fell out of my Barcalounger Sunday morning, watching The McLaughlin Group. The old Jesuit had Pat Buchanan, Eleanor Clift, Tony Blankley, and Clarence Page (who is black) sitting around. They were talking about Hurricane Katrina, of course. Suddenly, McLaughlin turned to Page and said: “Why the correlation between black and poor?”
Good grief, I thought, you can’t ask that. People get taken off the air for less. Poor Clarence Page didn’t know whether to spit or wind his watch. He mumbled something that wasn’t even close to being an answer. McLaughlin, realizing his gaffe, quickly and deftly steered the talk to other topics. Everybody in the studio, and all of us out there in viewerland, started breathing again. You can’t ask THAT. Nobody wants to hear about THAT.
At my neighbourhood block party that afternoon, a white, liberal neighbour expressed the sense of national shame that we’d all felt at some point in Katrina Week. “It was like some Third World country!” he said. “Like Somalia, or Haiti…” The guy stopped dead in his tracks, suddenly aware of what he had implied, then desperately back-pedaled, trying to erase his thoughtcrime. “I mean, you know, Third World. Like, um, Cambodia…” Those of us listening nodded in sympathy, silently thinking: Nice save there, guy.
All of us, and John McLaughlin, and very likely Clarence Page, too, all of us were still haunted by what we’d been watching on our TV screens through Katrina Week: the spectacle of several thousand black Americans openly, nakedly displaying their helpless, hopeless, clueless, angry dependency. It was there, it was real, though we’re stuffing it down the memory hole now as fast as we can work our fingers. Come on, you saw it too. What did you think? What did you feel?
Speaking for myself, I felt pity, anger, and shame, in proportions roughly 3-2-1.
Pity. It could hardly be plainer that nobody gives a damn about these poor black people, and nobody has any clue how to lift them up, least of all the people who bellyache endlessly about “racism” (see next point). The meritocracy vacuums up every clever, talented black kid it can find and puts him through college, after which he is welcomed joyfully into the Cognitive Elite. (Hey, look at us! No racism here!) The rest are packed off into welfare slums, or jails — anywhere really, so long as we don’t have to think about them. Yale or jail.
Anger. The whole thing woke my anger at liberals, big time. What lying, thieving hypocrites they are! All their vaunted “programs,” all that money, all those decades of preaching to us. What’s it accomplished? Black people don’t actually occupy any space in a white liberal’s mind at all. All their pretended concern is just intra-tribal moral posturing, asserting their moral superiority over other whites. Horrible, horrible, people. Hey, Teddy, Hillary, Barbra: You have a few houses each — how about giving one or two of them over to a poor black family flooded out from New Orleans? Whaddya say? Hillary? Ted? Hello?
Shame. Just like my neighbor. More so, if I may thus flatter myself, since I am a naturalized citizen. I chose this country. And because we can’t stir ourselves to care about this, above the level of posturing and lip service and cooking up convoluted lies to tell ourselves, a bunch of crummy foreigners are laughing at us. The hell with them, except… we kind of deserve it, don’t we?
The lying is the worst. Boy, how we lie to ourselves. What was that thing Orwell said in the Blitz, about how he didn’t mind people flying over and dropping bombs on him half as much as he minded the lies they used to justify themselves? Here’s Theodore Dalrymple, in a recent interview:
Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
Tell it, Preacher! That’s us, that’s the United States of America in this year of Our Lord 2005: a society of emasculated liars.
A few weeks ago my wife, but not I, attended a school district function here in Suffolk County, Long Island. It was some sort of awards ceremony for kids from all around our district. Now, my wife, so far as she has any interest in politics at all, which is not very far, I’d have to classify as a Clinton Democrat. She is quite keen to be on board with the PC stuff. As a member of a racial minority herself, she has a vague idea it’s “for” her. Having been raised in China, though, she has never properly internalized PC in a sophisticated way, never really acquired the necessary reflex habit of not noticing those things we are not supposed to notice, never really mastered double-think. With the best will in the world, poor Rosie is just hopelessly off-message with PC — a thing that causes me much secret delight.
Well, she started telling me about this function, and she couldn’t keep herself from laughing. First (she said) they did the academic awards. The kids were called up one by one, and three quarters of them were Chinese or Korean or had Russian names. (Which last means, in this context, they were Ashkenazi-Jewish.) Then they worked through lesser awards — drama club, stuff like that. Finally they got to all these caucus-race dummy awards for things like “putting forth effort” and “attendance.” For those, the black and Hispanic kids came up. Rosie: “I felt so uncomfortable. Just squirming in my seat. It was so obvious.”
[I recall attending some similar function myself a year or so ago. After a whole string of four or five Asian kids one after the other, getting awards for academic excellence of various kinds, the emcee announced an award for a name something like Sean Macdonald. Thank goodness, I thought to myself, a white Gentile at last. Then little Sean emerged from the seating area: a one hundred percent grade-A pure-blood Chinese! Plainly he was one of the many children adopted from East Asia by American families.]
“Didn’t other people notice this?” I asked. My wife said she thought some people had. People near her looked just as uncomfortable as she felt, and there was some smothered laughter.
We’d laughed ourselves at this vignette of life in modern America, husband and wife laughing together at one of our world’s little absurdities.
Last week, watching those scenes from New Orleans, an American city, I recalled that incident, and our laughter. Somehow it didn’t seem funny any more, though. Not funny at all.
Black poverty and welfare dependence (thank you, Democrats), are the Emperor's new clothes.
Randomly posting this:
Get this, if you haven't already heard. Buchanan was just on Imus in the Morning. However, that's not what I want to talk about. Also on Imus this a.m., they just said that bloggers have busted that guy who appeared on Tim Russert's Sunday show last weekend, Alan Broussard (I think it's Alan, the Broussard is right), who did the whole rap about the dead grandma at the nursing home who was never rescued and that it was all Bush & FEMA's fault, the "someone's coming for you Monday, Tuesday, Wed, Thurs, and then she allegedly died on Friday, it is all a lie. Grandma died on that first Monday before the levees broke, Grandma wasn't even at the nursing home Broussard named, and everything Broussard said was all lies. Hahahahahaha. Wait till this gets out. Wait till Rush gets hold of this, or Hannity, or Brit Hume. This is going to be a delight. And Tim Russert was totally snookered, as was all the MSM who hung on this jerk's every word as he wove his sad tale, his lying sad tale. Oh, this is going to be good.
This article can not exist.
This is a great post, by the way!
Yes, we do have a clue. Get at least a high school education. Do not have children until you are married. Stay married. You will not become Bill Gates, but you will not live a helpless life. The problem is, this requires too much work and responsibility.
Well put, hershey.
The party of Jim Crow keeps on crowing. The shackles of slavery were ripped off in 1865. But, forced back on in 1965. Thank you, LBJ and your great society.
This article well-expresses my rage at liberals and their ultimate racism: The racism of low expectations. Liberals believe they own blacks, in a slightly different but still as malignant way as as slaveowners once did.
I especially loved this quote from Theodore Dalrymple:
"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."
HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD!
PC PING!
I'm guessing that Russert will be on later in the week. Imus is going to hit him with this.
Imus has been saying "N.O." has to do with race as it does anything else. I say, "duh."
The dems are only able to tip-toe around the issue. Exhibit 1 - Al Sharpton. During last year's dem debates, they schmoozed him as if he were a legitimate candidate.
Here's something for your "Nailed It!" file...
Truth is just so damning for liberal Democrats.
Bump for later
"All their pretended concern is just intra-tribal moral posturing, asserting their moral superiority over other whites."
For another take on 'tribes' please see Bill Whittle at
http://www.ejectejecteject.com/
If someone can post as a link, I'd appreciate it.
Semper Fi,
A Blockbuster Report: As the city's murder rate escalates, the NOPD is "bleeding police officers," states the new Police Foundation study. [Jan 2004 Report]
"New Orleans is facing a crisis: our police force is shrinking at the same time that our city has recaptured the distinguished title of 'murder capital' of the United States among major cities," the Foundation stated. "We now have only about 1500 officers actually engaged in police work, down from 1700 three years ago. Not surprisingly, the reduction in police strength has been accompanied by steep increases in the number of murders. A New Orleanian is now seven times more likely to be murdered than a New Yorker. (Italics from the report.)[snip]Morale in the department is very low, and officers are deserting the department at rates that are significantly higher than in other major police departments. [snip]
Last year, the report continues, the city had a murder rate that was nearly 10 times higher than the national average. "
Also, CITIES AND CRIME: New Orleans homicides up as people fear killers, cops , August 22, 2005, BY ALAN SAYRE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
[snip]New Orleans has had such a problem with retaliation against witnesses -- including murder -- that the district attorney's office took the unusual step of starting a local witness protection program.Witnesses may also be reluctant to talk to police because of allegations of police brutality and corruption.
Home sweet home....a thought so dear to most of us....so why would so many of the poor of LA say they do not intend to go home? My theory is that one reason they don't want to return is they are finally free of living with the criminal element in their midst. Those looters and lawbreakers and druggies hid out in the poor neighborhoods and had their own terror regime operating there.
Why would anyone ever want to go back?
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