Who's "The Man" now?

How disappointing it must be to all right-thinking liberals and progressives to discover they themselves have become “The Man.” And that they and the people they support politically now embody just about everything they’ve fought against with such righteous indignation for years.   

That’s what’s happened in the U.S.

The same people who railed against invasive Big Brother overreach into peoples’ private lives and opposed censorship of any kind for decades have become what they detested.   

They’ve become The Establishment. “The Man,” in other words. 

You know, the shadowy entity we once believed controlled everything behind the scenes.  We felt its heavy hand everywhere – controlling what we were told by the media of the day, and even what we were allowed to think or say ourselves. “The Man” was always ready to crack down on anyone who challenged its authority. It didn’t hesitate to use outright lies, misinformation, propaganda, censorship, and, if necessary, threats of violence, to keep us under its thumb. 

You simply couldn’t trust “The Man.” And in the 1960s many of us didn’t. 

Back then, (when a lot of us were Democrats) we suspected “The Man” (mainly right wing Republicans) worked diligently to sow distrust and division among Americans solely on the basis of age, race, gender, education, class and income. Why? To keep us from uniting as one in opposition.  We had no doubt “The Man” covertly spied on and invaded the privacy of ordinary citizens as well as political opponents, used strong-arm tactics to crush opposition, used Federal agencies to harass and silence critics, and kangaroo courts to persecute political enemies.

“The Man” was authoritarian and tyrannical and wielded its power like a club to bludgeon its enemies and shut down dissent.  Only the truly brave had the guts to stand up to “The Man.”  They usually paid a high price – personally and professionally – for doing it. 

Sound familiar? 

Yeah, that’s who liberal Democrats, progressives, and the left have become.  It’s a mystery why they can’t see it because it’s just so damn obvious to many of us. 

Or perhaps they know what they’ve become. And they like it.  No, they love it.

They love having the power to get people fired for not agreeing with them. They love the power to decide what is and what isn’t acceptable to say or print; which words are forbidden and which are permitted.  They love the power to stop anyone from publicly challenging them.  They love having the power to force politicians and police chiefs to their knees, figuratively and literally.  They love using the courts and hand-picked judges to get what they want without the trouble and inconvenience of debating and passing laws.

They are fine with having their friends in government spy on people they don’t like, secretly fund their political allies, and punish their political enemies, even if that rides roughshod over the Constitution. They are fine with destroying the reputations and livelihoods of their critics, and even of celebrities who won’t grovel before them begging their forgiveness for some real or imagined slight. Most of all, they enjoy using their new-found power to silence free speech and opposing opinions.

They are the mob. And to a lot of Americans, they are terrifying.    

Is it any wonder that according to a recent survey almost 65% of all Americans are afraid of saying something politically incorrect or perhaps racially insensitive? The consequences are too awful to consider for most people, apparently.    

Think about that for a minute. 

People are just too afraid to speak out.  It could cost them their job. It could cost them their friends.  It could cost them everything near and dear to them.  Almost 65% of Americans have been intimidated into foregoing their own rights to free speech. That’s not an overstatement. 

No one is allowed to criticize or question the motives of those defacing public buildings and monuments with obscenities, burning the flag and Bibles. Or to ask why they are attacking police, private citizens and private property, and rioting and looting under the guise of “peaceful protests.”  Anyone who dares speak out against the obvious violence and destruction is called a fascist at best, but more often a racist, or perhaps a white supremacist. 

These ignorant barbarians have intimidated colleges and universities to ostracize and punish faculty who don't promote the "correct" narrative, and to cancel speakers with whom they don't agree. They’ve  intimidated comedians to the point that many will no longer perform on college campuses.  They’ve also managed to intimidate most of the media who refuse to report anything that exposes their intolerance of opposing views, much less their tendency toward violence. 

They've essentially created the same type of fascist state Antifa claims to be fighting to prevent. This is the same authoritarian regime that the Democrats, the left, and now the progressives claim Donald Trump is leading us toward.

Surprise. We’re already mostly there, thanks to all of the above. 

It’s not because of Donald Trump. If anything, it’s in spite what he’s tried to accomplish for the country, for the economy, and for our citizens of all races.        

So I have to ask Antifa, Democrats, the left, and the progressives a simple question. 

How does it feel to realize that you’ve become what you claim to hate? The bully. The censor.  The tyrant demanding control over every aspect of everyone’s private life, what they can say, what they can see or read, who they can associate with and more.  

Even what they can laugh at.  

How does it feel to be “The Man,” in other words?   

Enough of this crap ...

Haven’t we all had enough? 

It’s well past time, to start kicking ass and taking names. The only question now is why the hell it’s taking so long to do what was inevitable from the very start. 

The protests were never about Black Lives Matter.  We all know this.  We knew this when the protests started. Nor were they about George Floyd.  And while many initial protests were “peaceful” about 80% of the day, at night the other 20% was just about destroying things.

Tearing down statues was never about Confederates and pro-slavery politicians. Nor was pulling down statues of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Christopher Columbus.   It was about destroying things, plain and simple. It was about showing that mobs can destroy whatever they want, whenever they want, and spineless, gutless state and local politicians will do nothing to stop it; even to the point of throwing their own police under the bus, and making it impossible for them to keep order.

Portland, Seattle, DC, NYC, Minneapolis, Louisville, Chicago, and too many other American cities are standing aside and letting everything burn. The politicians in those cities are cowards, too frightened to put an end to this carnage. Some of these weasels have even gone out to join the protestors and call for all Federal agents to stop defending Federal property – which the Feds have an obligation to do under the law – and to leave their cities immediately. 

But before the Feds leave, these same politicians are demanding that the Feds clean up all the graffiti on Federal buildings placed there by the protestors. That’s chutzpah. 

The “peaceful protestors” have upped their game, knowing these nutless wonders running the cities are too afraid to do one damn thing to stop them. One of the latest tricks is deploying the Wall of Moms or the Wall of Vets.  This way, “Moms” or “Vets” act as a human shield behind which the protestors can throw frozen water bottles, rocks, fireworks and more serious explosive devices at the police and agents. It’s just a matter of time before they deploy the Wall of Kids.   

“Peaceful protestors” have lately wielded black umbrellas in their “peaceful” interactions with police and Federal agents.  One use is to hide behind while throwing things at the cops and agents.  Another is to fend off rubber bullets and other impact weapons used by law enforcement. Another is apparently to use as a sharpened-tip stabbing weapon against police and agents. 

Face it, it’s open season on cops everywhere. And nobody in power is doing squat. When the highest-ranking uniformed officer in the NYPD is attacked and bloodied by a “peaceful protestor” while other “protestors” record it on their phones, you know things are out of control.  Then when the culprit is caught and released the next day by NYC courts, it’s a complete shit show.   

To make matters worse, if that’s even possible, District Court judges, appointed mostly by Clinton or Obama, are now issuing rulings to prevent law enforcement from forcing anyone supposedly a “legal observer” or holding a press credential to follow their directions to disperse. 

Go ahead, guess the result:  violent protestors all in black wearing tactical gear, helmets, gas masks, and armed with weapons like rock hammers and electric saws suddenly have press credentials. Wow, is anyone surprised? 

But wait, there’s more. 

In the latest escalation, there are now heavily armed black militias forming in support of BLM. They call themselves the Not Fucking Around Coalition, or NFAC.  Unfortunately, their members are just as inept at handling firearms properly as the gangbangers in Chicago; in their first outing in Louisville, one of them accidently shot three of their own militia members. 

While they were proudly strutting their stuff, another militia appeared – clearly not on the side of BLM or Antifa like NFAC.  I didn’t see the other militia’s name, but I suspect it’s probably something along the line of Enough Of This Bullshit.  That would be my choice. 

Finally, is there any doubt by anyone with the good sense God gave a sweet potato that BLM, Antifa, the Democrats, and the left-leaning media are all in this together?

Anyone? Anyone? Speak up now …

Of course they are.  Nancy is so happy she can hardly keep her teeth from falling out. Chuck Schumer, doing his best impression of DC Comic’s Penguin, can hardly control himself. The media can’t get enough of showing heavily edited pieces of “peaceful protestors” set upon by police and Federal stormtroopers sent in by Dictator Trump. But, the same media have no time or interest in showing the protestors beating up police and other civilians, smashing windows and looting, setting cars and ambulances on fire, attacking Federal property and burning businesses. 

It's time for the inevitable finally to happen.

It’s time to say, in the immortal words Dick Cheney said to Patrick Leahy: Go fuck yourself. 

This needs to be said to every BLM member and supporter. To every Antifa asshole.  To all the lying Democrat politicians and media types. 

Three little words that convey so much. We’re not putting up with this crap anymore. 

Local and state politicians need to be told in no uncertain terms that if they won’t support the police and let the police do their job and keep order, then someone else will take over that task. You can be absolutely certain that someone won’t be social workers; more likely in the absence of police it will be ordinary folks and homegrown militias taking the law into their own hands.

Instantly, more crimes will automatically carry the death penalty. And all the big talk from Democrats and progressives about gun control and seizing guns from legal owners goes out the window immediately.  Try it and there will be a civil war.  Seriously, there will be.    

Next up, to BLM:  Take your ridiculous demands and shove them up your ass. There will be no reparations. Zero. We’re not getting rid of police departments (see above).  We’re not going to close down all our jails and prisons.  We’re not going to cancel everybody’s student loan debt. We’re not going to become a Marxist society. We’re not going to get rid of the nuclear family.  We’re not going to cower and worry you’ll be offended by something. 

We don’t care what you want anymore. Period. Any elected official who supports giving you any of those things doesn’t deserve to keep their job. And probably won’t.    

Your blatant hypocrisy about which black lives actually matter makes the name of your organization a sick joke. Be honest for a change:  black lives only matter if they are killed by cops and not by another black criminal.  Those black lives matter more to you than other black lives, including the lives of black cops, black business owners, and black children. 

You don’t have massive street protests, riots and looting for weeks when their lives are lost, most often at the hands of a black criminal.  You don’t have a gold coffin for each of them, do you?  Al Sharpton doesn’t deliver a eulogy at their funerals, does he?  You’ve tapped into the black grievance industry for all it’s worth, but only selectively.  So stop expecting any of us to still believe you think all black lives matter.  You clearly don’t. 

We know your organization’s a fraud; you know it, too. But the days of shaking down stupid gutless corporations and trying to cash in on manufactured white guilt are over.  Feds should file RICO Act charges against BLM for running a criminal enterprise across state lines.

Whatever sympathy we once might have had is gone.  We aren’t all racists; most Americans never were.  No American still alive ever owned slaves. We believe everyone – black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Aleut, or whatever – deserves impartial, equal justice under the law.  Equal justice for everyone is something everyone agrees on.  That should be enough. 

If it’s not enough for you, go fuck yourself. That’s all we’ve got.     

And if you come to our cities, towns and neighborhoods and threaten us, our families, our property, or our neighbors, to get more from us than that, you will regret it. That’s not a threat, that is a sincere and honest promise.   

And now, Antifa.  We’ve dealt with hooded clowns like you before; gutless bozos who hid under robes and hoods to terrorize and intimidate others.  Just like you’ve been doing.  That’s why there are ordinances on the books in at least 18 states that forbid masks and hoods to disguise yourself.  Originally designed to take on the KKK, these laws are applicable to you also.  

After all, the KKK and Antifa are pretty much the same type of domestic terrorists. 

That’s exactly what Antifa types are, and should be treated as such, under Federal law, not some woosie local ordinance.  If Feds start enforcing that, you could be facing from 10 years to life in a Federal prison.  There will be no black ninja outfits there, no Pop Tarts or Hot Pockets from your mom, and kneeling there may have much different consequences, depending on your cell mate.

Also, like BLM’s demands, we don’t care what you want anymore either. Assuming, for that matter, that you know what you want beyond destroying things.  Right now you appear to have the thought process and reasoning skills of zombies.

If you’ve seen the movies, you know what stops zombies. 

I suspect it works in real life, too.  It’s up to you if you want to test my theory. 

Nope? Then go fuck yourself.  I’m done. We’re all done with the lot of you.     

Back from BLM Re-Education Camp ...

It’s good to be home again.  And to be so enlightened.

I haven’t gotten my Participation Certificate yet, but I feel pretty good about the week I spent at BLM’s Re-Education Camp.  I learned so much. I’m certainly a better person now. 

Frankly, my first impression was that I had arrived in the wrong place.

I expected most people at a BLM camp to be black, or as the media have recently decided Black (with a capital B).  But most of the people there were White. (See, I learned.)

Like really White.  Blindingly White.  Whiter than me, by far.  Like so White they were almost a light blue. Unhealthy looking, too, like shoppers in a health-food store.

My first thought was they probably never spent much time outside.  They probably never did anything more strenuous than texting.  Or maybe walking up the stairs from their mom’s basement to get money from her purse to pay the Domino’s or Grub Hub delivery person.    

But here they were, in all their pale glory. In their black (Black?) T-shirt with the screen-printed Black Power Fist or Black Lives Matter text they bought online with mom’s credit card.  Ready to learn how to be taken seriously. Ready to discover how they could fit in with racial and economic groups that normally terrify them, and maybe routinely shook them down for their lunch money.  Ready to take on “The Man” to fight for racial justice, whatever that was.

And maybe, just maybe, get laid.  Because, honestly, that’s the hope of a lot of adolescent and socially awkward Whites marching in protests. If you’re an unattractive White string bean or a porker you may think a protest could be your best shot at getting laid without having to pay for it. Especially when you’re wearing a face mask that hides your zits.  

Anyway, I digress.  I only brought that up because most of the Whites, male or female or somewhere in between, in camp didn’t look like they’d ever had sex with a real person other than themselves, or were likely to anytime soon.   

But back to my studies.  My first course was Sloganeering.

It was taught by a self-described “radical Marxist transvestite self-loathing anti-Semite atheist” (born as Jane White to a bourgeois WASP family in New Jersey) now listed on the course outline as Patrice Lumumba Kanesha Rosenstein-Castro-Guevara-Rivera.

Or just “Pat” for short because that was an appropriately gender-fluid name.

Pat rejected such patriarchal pronouns as he/she, him/her, his/hers, and used only they/their to describe themselves (Pat).  Yeah, it got a little confusing at times. But most of us in their class eventually got the hang of it. We used first names a lot. 

I often wondered how this gender-neutral thing would work in countries with languages where ordinary inanimate items have a male or female gender and verbs to match. I never brought this up in class because Pat had a tendency to punish anyone who was overthinking. 

Anyway, about Sloganeering.  The theory behind it all is that the slogan must be offensive enough that media types won’t be able to resist it, even if they have to bleep out curse words.  Actually, the more bleeps the better. Listeners could then imagine the worst.   

Yet it also must be simple enough even a four-year-old, or a teen or adult with the intellect of a four-year-old, can easily remember it, even if they don’t understand it. 

That’s harder than it seems. Most great slogans are short and memorable, like “Pigs in a blanket; Fry ‘em like bacon.”  Easy to remember; hard to forget.  Hard to replicate, too. A classic.     

Next was Situational Protest Tactics, taught by an aging hipster named Moonbeam McDuster (probably a nom-de-guerre).  McDuster was a legend in the protest industry.  He’d managed some of the biggest protests:  fighting voter ID laws, school vouchers, Chick- fil-A store openings, racially insensitive dress codes, gender-specific school restrooms, and – lest we forget – his courageous stand against Subway’s five-dollar-foot-long ripoff.  (It wasn’t a full 12 inches long.)

From him we learned tips on how to prearrange events on social media.  How to blend in with ordinary protestors until the time was right and then working up everyone into a frenzy.

We also learned effective media manipulation techniques.  Like co-opting local politicians, creative taunting, distance spitting, faking an injury, inciting a riot and looting on cue, how to set up a “money shot” (i.e., cop cars on fire; smashing windows) for camera crews, and how to avoid harming media folks once a riot starts. 

Now, perhaps like many others, I’d always wondered why no CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, and CBS reporters or camera crews ever got hurt even in the most violent BLM protests. And why the cameras always seem to be at the right place at the right time, too.  The secret, it turns out, is wireless earpieces – you know, like the curly-wire jobs on Secret Service details – linking the media and protest organizers in real time. Who knew? 

In other courses, we also learned that while Black Lives Matter – probably the most – we still needed to convince more White people that everything bad is and has always been their fault. Black poverty. Black illiteracy.  Black unemployment. Black males in prison.   

Because everything is the fault of Whites.  And their legacy of enslaving Blacks.   

The public-school system saw the irrefutable truth in this early on. Lesson plans and textbooks had for decades reflected how slavery shaped American history from the beginning. 

Instead of a proud history as some claimed, America had in fact a shameful past. It included rapes of Black slaves by white masters, lynchings of innocent Blacks, secretly infecting Blacks with syphilis to study its effects, segregation, miscegenation laws, murders of civil rights activists, assassinations of Black leaders like MLK, Jr., and suppression of Black votes and racial discrimination even today. 

There wasn't much else in American history worth noting.   

If it weren't for slavery, America wouldn't be the racist nation it remains today. Nor as rich; that is, just for the Whites. Also because of slavery, Blacks never shared in that prosperity.  

The New York Times and its award-winning 1619 Project spelled it all out.    

Whites in the media and among Democrats in Congress, as well as all Blacks in the House and Senate (except one), agreed.  Blue-state governors and big-city mayors also concurred that Whites were ultimately responsible for everything bad in the country, and especially in their cities, even for Black on Black crime and the high number of Blacks killing other Blacks every day.

Blacks couldn’t be held to the same standards as Whites because Blacks never recovered from their enslavement by Whites.     

It was time for Whites to admit their guilt. And pay up. Not just with money – although that would be nice – but also with perpetual special treatment of Blacks.  Until reparations come through, Blacks should get everything for free – free college, free housing, free guaranteed minimum income, and whatever else they decide – and the right to discriminate as they wish on the basis of race, as just restitution for slavery at the hands of Whites.  Because it’s owed to them.       

That’s what the entire movement is really about.  And why convincing Whites is the struggle.  Many older White people remember reading books years ago that claimed a different view of history.  Not all Whites watch CNN or read The New York Times; some even watch Fox News.

On top of that, older Whites are notoriously stubborn and won’t easily give up the marks of their Whiteness.  Like that “Protestant work ethic” thing.  Their notion that children do better in two-parent households.  Their insistence on personal responsibility.  The high value Whites place on being on time, being polite, and speaking proper English.  Their belief in objective, rational linear thinking; cause and effect relationships; and their reliance on quantitative analysis.

It's so ingrained in Whites we may have to intimidate them until they accept the blame for everything and give up these foolish and oppressive notions of White culture.

Hence, the riots will continue and cities will continue to burn.    

Now, before anyone thinks BLM Re-Education Camp was nothing but hard work, it wasn’t.  There were a lot of games and contests to break up the workload.

The most challenging was the brick toss – especially difficult for a lot of the noodle-armed pasty White guys; frankly, the bigger, heftier White girls embarrassed them. 

The skateboard window smash game – my favorite – had competition between teams.  White team members smashed the windows so their handful of Black team members could race in and steal stuff. We got points for highest number of useless items stolen in a minute or less. 

My team won mainly because we were lucky enough to draw a Michaels craft store as our assigned target, which was, as always, crammed full of completely useless stuff. I’ll admit the teams that drew an ABC liquor store, or even the Dollar Store, got better stuff, but a win is a win. 

And it was about the only time we Whites had a chance to interact with Blacks. Which was nice.  The rest of the time the camp leaders kept us segregated.  

So anyway. It’s good to be back.  Mom and Dad said it’s good to see me again and have me back in their basement.  While I was away, they’d restocked my minifridge with all my favorite juice boxes. They also refilled my supply of my favorite Pop Tarts and bought me a new PlayStation.

Then they asked if I had fun at camp. If I made any new friends there.  And I just snapped. 

Fucking oppressive White people.  Always with the questions.  

How does all the chaos and violence end ...

This is a question many of us are asking …

Some think they know, even now. 

Democrats think it ends when they win the House, Senate, and Oval Office in 2020. 

They think the chaos will help them get there.  They are counting on the “energy” and anger of the protestors to help them win big across the nation. They’ve clearly publicly supported the demands of those protesting the shootings of black men and women by police. That’s supposed to help them hold the black vote and gain more young, white and Hispanic voters. 

That, along with the media’s cooperation in successfully – and erroneously – sticking the entire blame for the coronavirus pandemic and the economic shut down on Trump and Republicans, should be enough for a Democrat sweep at the Federal and state level in 2020. 

Democrats believe that when they win control, the chaos and destruction will stop. 

Even if they do win everything, things won’t get any better. The riots will continue. Statues will continue to come down.  Monuments will continue to be vandalized.  Cities will continue to burn. Businesses will continue to be looted. 

That’s because what’s driving the BLM and Antifa folks has little to do with police shootings of blacks, much less with party politics. They don’t like Democrats any more than Republicans, despite what Democrats want to believe.  For that matter, they don’t like the media, either. BLM blacks openly mock the white kids and aging white hippie lefties marching with them.

Candidly, BLM wants everyone to bow down before them and give them whatever they want, which will never happen because what they want is absurd.  BLM knows this, so they’ll settle for terrorizing and intimidating everyone until they are stopped, extorting millions in protection money from big companies until then.  Antifa is more straightforward: it just likes to destroy things. 

Any election is not going to stop them, either way.    

To their credit, Republicans are under no illusion that if they keep the White House, the Senate, and get a majority in the House, the protests will end.  Nobody on that side of the aisle expects the violence and destruction to end anytime soon.   So until the election most Republicans in Congress will do what they usually do in a crisis:  blame Democrats and continue to cower hoping that a show of submission and  ignoring a problem will make it go away.   

The simple truth is that the violence and destruction will not end until ordinary American citizens decide they’ve had enough and refuse to be intimidated by the mob anymore.  This will happen when the protestors do something so egregious, so reprehensible, that the public will no longer tolerate or have any sympathy for the protestors. Even the media will be appalled.

Then the public will demand police and the Feds step in and stop the madness. This will occasion a great deal of pearl clutching among the elites about the need for compromise and reason.

But that ship will have sailed. The line will have been crossed.  

I’m not certain what the dramatic trigger it will be. I am certain however it will happen soon, well before the 2020 election.  BLM and its supporters, and Antifa, keep stepping up the attacks on statues and memorials to people most Americans still believe deserve respect.  They are even attacking monuments to abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and those who fought to free the slaves such as Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.  They’ve also vandalized the  monument to the all-black regiment that fought courageously on the Union side in the Civil War.  Why? 

It’s only a matter of time before someone within the BLM supporters or an Antifa thug goes too far and commits an act that galvanizes the public against both entities. 

The 1963 bombing of the South Baptist Church in Alabama that killed four innocent black girls, the murder of the black and white civil rights activists in Mississippi in 1964, and the actions of Bull Connor against civil rights protestors in Birmingham in  the 1960s, helped to change the opinions of millions of white citizens about recognizing and addressing racism against minorities. 

I’m hoping something as gruesome doesn’t happen by a BLM supporter or some black-clad Antifa wannabe. But it could.  There’s already been an videoed incident at a children’s hospital in Houston where the car of a father and his child was pelted with bricks and bottles by protestors as he and his screaming and clearly terrorized child tried to get out.  This is a very bad trend.   

I believe whatever the trigger is, it will happen well before the election. 

If local and state officials order their law enforcement agencies to continue to stand down after that, more police will resign or retire.  With fewer police around, crime will go up even more. With more crime, and unabated violence and destruction by the BLM and Antifa types, armed citizens will start confronting criminals and the mobs to protect their own property. 

Because no one else will, apparently. Not local officials. Not state officials. 

If you doubt people are already arming themselves because they're scared of how the chaos they see on the news might spread to their neighborhood, you’re not tracking the soaring rate of gun and ammunition sales and requests for concealed-carry permits over the past few months.

Ordinary citizens are already arming themselves to the teeth. They’re also stocking up on ammo. 

It’s a mistake to dismiss these buyers as merely far-right gun nuts and survivalists. The media would love to promote that narrative.  The facts on the ground say otherwise.   

A large number are first-time gun owners. Many live in liberal-run cities. Many live in the liberal-leaning suburbs; some may also be fervent supporters of bans on assault weapons.  They aren’t all right-wing loons, white supremacists, or fanatics preaching the end of days. Far from it.  

They are remarkably ordinary Americans. The one thing they have in common is they are increasingly scared that the chaos will reach them and their families. They are getting a firearm, just in case the very worst happens. They hope it never comes to that.  

But until then they want to be prepared. They'll discover a lot of their neighbors feel the same way. And a lot of them now have firearms, also.  Just in case.          

When they realize so many of their friends and neighbors are armed, they’ll start more confidently confronting criminals and any mob whenever these threaten to appear nearby.     

However, it's also a short hop from that to start taking justice into their own hands. As someone stated succinctly, if the police disappear more crimes will suddenly carry the death penalty. 

In Florida, where I live, people here have a lot of legal latitude to defend themselves and their families with the use of deadly force.  Google “stand your ground & Florida” and “castle doctrine & Florida” if you doubt me.  Along with our high level of gun ownership, and the large number of former cops and military who retire here, especially in Central Florida, Florida is an extraordinarily poor choice to see how far you can go with threatening anyone with violence.   

It's almost inevitable that someone or some group will eventually try. They'll be sorry.  

I also believe where police have been ordered to stand down, violence and destruction by the protestors will increasingly be met by the threat of violence from the public. It's already happened, when neighbors from largely Italian South Philly stood off protesters who wanted to loot their neighborhood Target; another group guarded a Christopher Columbus statue. 

There’s only so much reasonable people will take.  And reasonable people with guns who fear for their lives and property will take even less.  We are getting close to that point. 

If the attacks and destruction continue across the country, and if the police and Feds don’t intervene soon, I’m fairly certain the general public will. 

All it’s going to take is a trigger event. 

Robert C. Byrd and the Eskimo Pie ...

One is racist. The other is not. 

Which is which?  It depends on who is deciding. 

The late Senator Robert C. Byrd was a Klan organizer – or Kleagle – who worked as a young man to recruit new members to the Klan in West Virginia.  For his efforts in setting up a 150-member local Klan chapter he was elected leader, or Exalted Cyclops. 

Despite the rumors, he never was a Grand Wizard.  Just an Exalted Cyclops. 

An avid segregationist, Byrd opposed integrating the armed forces and once wrote:

“I shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side ... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”

He also filibustered against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He is also the only Senator to oppose the only two black nominees to the Supreme Court. 

By most of today’s politically correct standards, he’d be considered a racist. His portraits and statues everywhere would be at least defaced and probably destroyed by BLM supporters.  But his name is on almost everything that doesn’t move in West Virginia – schools, highways, public buildings, etc. – and his statues and portraits are still up.

What’s saved his legacy?  He later became a liberal Democrat. This single act of contrition changed everything.  His racist and segregationist past no longer mattered.  He had evolved. Or as Joe Biden said at his funeral, “moved to the good side.”

In fact, at Byrd’s funeral, Biden praised him as someone who “elevated the Senate.” 

A former KKK recruiter? A former head of a local Klan chapter? Someone who once called blacks “race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wild” and people who he’d rather “die a thousand times” than serve beside? That’s Robert C. Byrd.  

Nothing to see here, right? Besides, that happened years ago. Why dwell on it now? 

Now consider the Eskimo Pie.  It was created in the 1920s.  In all the years since then, I doubt any Eskimo has ever claimed to be offended by the name.  I haven’t heard or seen anything about an Eskimo Lives Matter movement.  Still, the current owners of the Eskimo Pie brand have preemptively decided the name of the frozen delight is racially insensitive.  

So it must be changed.

To be completely honest, I didn’t know they were even making it anymore.  But soon, its racially tinged name will be banished forever.  Eskimos everywhere should rejoice. 

Don’t you feel better?  I know I’ll sleep better at night. 

If you’re wondering why there’s so much cultural insanity right now, this is a perfect example. 

A proven racist like Byrd is celebrated.  Meanwhile, George Washington, the father of our country, is reviled. So is Thomas Jefferson. All because they owned slaves centuries ago. 

Byrd remained a member of the KKK into the early 1940s. And a segregationist into the 1950s and 60s. Then again, so were most of his southern Democrat peers.   

Yet Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves, recently had his monument defaced. Now there’s a move to remove a landmark 1876 statue of Lincoln and a freed slave.  (The statue was funded entirely by grateful freed slaves back then.)    

Mobs have also attacked monuments to U.S. Grant, the Union general who defeated the Confederacy and who as President pushed through reforms that gave former slaves the right to vote. A statue of a noted abolitionist who gave his life to end slavery was torn down by the same mobs protesting past and current racial injustice in America.  

Nancy Pelosi has taken it upon herself to remove portraits of past Speakers of the House who supported slavery more than 150 years ago.  She’s also pushed for the removal of statues of the now politically incorrect – in hindsight – from the House.  

She thinks this will appease the BLM folks; she’s hoping maybe they won’t come after her and Democrats if she blackwashes American history by removing a few portraits and statues they wouldn’t like. She doesn’t understand that none of the BLM folks know anything about American history, much less about the people who were in those portraits and embodied in statues.

The destruction has nothing to do with righting wrongs. It’s all about intimidation. As one BLM leader admitted recently, if all of BLM’s demands aren’t met – and the list is ridiculous, including massive reparations to blacks and the end of prisons – they plan to burn the system down. 

The intimidation is working.  It’s obviously being felt by corporate weasels preemptively altering brand names and packaging to avoid offending anyone at all, especially anyone of color. I suppose that’s how the Eskimo Pie brand got on the chopping block. 

The death toll for brand names and characters is staggering and continues to grow.

No more Aunt Jemima (even though she was based on a real black person).

No more Uncle Ben. 

No more Cream of Wheat “Chef.”

No more Land O’Lakes Indian maiden.

No more Mrs. Butterworth (somebody said the bottles were shaped like a “mammy").

And of course, no more Eskimo Pie.

There will be more.  And I can guarantee it will get sillier and sillier as timid brand managers try to kiss up to the loonies demanding an end to what they perceive as hurtful stereotyping.

It’s like the days when people saw subliminal messaging and images in ads. Or thought they did. They saw suggestive images in liquor ad ice cubes. Or in pipe or cigarette smoke curling up.  Or in soda or champagne bubbles. Or in the reflection from a shiny new car.

People looking hard enough will always see what they want to see. 

They also won’t see what they don’t want to see. Like the history of racism of the Democrat Party, its role in Jim Crow laws and suppression of black votes, and of Klansmen like Robert Byrd. 

Or the condescending racism by the media and Democrats in plain view every day.  It’s the worst kind racism: the kind that implies blacks aren’t really able to make it on their own – they simply can’t compete or succeed educationally or economically without government assistance and special consideration to "level the playing field." 

In short, what they are saying is that blacks can’t be held to the same standards as everyone else. Blacks just aren’t up to the challenge.   

That’s real racism.  It should appall every thinking person of any color.      

Appeasing the barbarians ...

Suddenly, everybody is apologizing. 

Celebrities. Politicians. Pro athletes. Coaches.  Generals.  Police chiefs.  Heads of state. 

They can’t say enough how sorry they are.

I’m not sure that they’re all apologizing for.  But they want everyone to know how sincere they are.  Especially blacks. They want everyone – all the PC-approved “victim” classes – to know that they are ashamed of being white and for not speaking out about this before now.    

And for not paying much more attention to the needs and problems of black people.  Because black lives matter – in fact, black lives must matter more than any other lives.  Black lives matter more than police lives, crime victims’ lives, and business owners’ lives. Even when those police, crime victims, and business owners happen to be black, too.   

Black lives matter only when the BLM folks decide who qualifies. For instance, blacks killed in Chicago and elsewhere by other blacks don’t matter.  Black police killed by blacks don’t matter. Black owners of businesses looted and burned by blacks don’t matter. 

You won’t see BLM supporters protesting blacks killing blacks, blacks killing black police, blacks destroying black-owned businesses, and burning down black neighborhoods. 

That’s because, despite the name of the organization, only some black lives matter.       

BLM made George Floyd’s one of the lives that matter.  Not because he was anything special – far from it.  He was a career criminal high on meth and fentanyl and carrying drugs when last arrested, but because his death came at the hands of white cops he became a martyr. 

There’s little doubt those cops caused his death. There’s also little doubt at least one of them did it intentionally. There’s video of that cop refusing other officers’ requests that he stop kneeling on Floyd’s neck, even after they couldn’t find a pulse.  That’s murder in my opinion. 

We all know precisely who was responsible for Floyd’s death.  Those particular cops.  Not all other cops.  Not the rest of America.  Not all white people. 

And most certainly not me. 

I’m sorry he died.  That’s all I got.  That’s not enough for a lot of folks.  Too bad. 

I won’t apologize for something I never did, wouldn’t do, and had no part in.  It may make some people feel virtuous to apologize for being white and to confess their sin of white privilege, but I can’t bring myself to do that.

Because for me it would be bald-faced lie.  I’m not sorry for something I didn’t do. I won’t accept blame for things over which I personally had no control, just to appease someone else.     

I can’t apologize for being white; I had no choice of in the matter. My parents were white, their parents were white, and I’d bet my great grandparents were white as well.  You don’t have to be a Nobel-winning geneticist to figure the odds I’d be white, too.  As far as I can tell, nobody in my family ever owned slaves or participated in the slave trade, either. I’m positive I never did.

I always went to integrated public schools, both in Miami and in New Jersey.  My public university was integrated.  I never lived or went to school in an intentionally segregated environment. 

I can’t honestly say some of my best friends growing up or in college were black. They weren’t.  My best friends were white. I suspect most of the black kids’ best friends were black.

In my career, I worked with many black professionals, men and women, as clients.  I genuinely enjoyed working with them.  Some came to my house for purely social events; we also often sat together at their companies’ celebrations.  We had a lot of heart to heart conversations well beyond business matters on all manner of topics.  But curiously, never about race. 

Their race and my race were a given.  And wholly irrelevant to our relationship.

I guess what I’m getting to is that I’m not blind to someone’s race – that would be a ridiculous thing to say.  But it doesn’t make that much of a difference to me.  I don’t care what race anyone is. Unfortunately, that makes some folks today very angry.  Again, too bad. 

Shameless groveling doesn’t suit me either.  It’s one thing to beg for forgiveness if you are at fault and you’re truly sorry.  It’s quite another if you’ve done nothing wrong. That’s just stupid. 

If you think unwarranted apologizing and groveling will appease someone or some group that’s threatening you, you are an idiot.  A spineless pussy. A patsy. Cringing and groveling don't make bullies suddenly like you; it does the opposite – they despise you for your weakness and know they can get whatever they want from you, anytime they like.  They own you. 

Until you stand up and confront them head on – call their bluff and fight back if necessary – you’ll always be their bitch.  They’ll humiliate you time and time again to prove it.   

I refuse to play this game.  That puts me out of the social and political mainstream at present.  

Watching celebrities, politicians and other public figures abase themselves to appease barbarians disgusts me.  Pretending wholesale pillaging, looting, destruction of property and violence against innocents is nothing more than a peaceful protest is insane; it’s the work of barbarians. It’s not being done in the service of a noble and just cause.  It’s an attempt to intimidate, bully, and see how much they can extort from all of us before we fight back. 

Unfortunately, so far it’s working pretty well for the bullies. That's disheartening.     

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m simply not comfortable appeasing bullies of any kind, particularly now, even though a lot of other folks think that’s acceptable.

I can’t do it.  It goes against my principles, and my self-respect.

I am sorry about one thing: that so many among us seem to have neither anymore. 

You can get off your knees now ...

It’s time for everyone to get off their knees.

What happened to George Floyd was bad. The cops involved have been arrested and charged.  They should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.  I’m sure they will be. 

Since everyone seems to be in complete agreement with the above, why aren’t the protests drawing to an end?  Why are the BLM folks planning even more?

It’s because the protests aren’t really about Floyd. Or justice.  The protests may have started that way, but after more than two weeks of nonstop protests, and the charging of the officers, it’s now about something well beyond the terrible death of Floyd. 

So what are they about?  What do the protestors want? Perhaps to be more to the point, what do the people trying to keep the protests going want?      

Nobody can really define precisely what the protestors want. The protestors can’t either.

They want their voices to be heard.  They say they are demanding an end to racial injustice. An end to racial inequality.  An end to systemic racism in America.  Okay. We’ve all heard all that. 

At the risk of belaboring the blindingly obvious, who wouldn’t want those things? Who would be in favor of racial injustice, racial inequality, and systemic racism?  Nobody sane.   

But there’s scant evidence that any of those are as pervasive as BLM and the protestors claim.  If anything, the preponderance of factual evidence supports just the opposite. The overwhelming majority of Americans are not racist.  Nor is the justice system racist.

Are there racists still among us? Sure.  There are racists in every race, including among blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans – whites don’t have a corner on racism.  There always will be racists; no amount of mass protesting will ever change their minds.

The reality is there aren’t that many of them anymore. Seriously, there aren’t.   

There are still some in police departments, but I’d suggest that’s a much smaller number than BLM and the media want us to believe. There’s certainly no evidence at all that racism is pervasive in routine policing by police departments across the nation. Police go where crime is, and unfortunately that’s most often in black communities, especially in urban settings.

That’s not to say there aren’t high-profile racists out there. We all know who they are.      

Some like Ralph Northam are leading states.  Some like Bill DeBlasio are leading cities. Some, like Ilhan Omar, AOC, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Talib, are actually sitting members of Congress, which baffles me.  Some, like race baiter, fraudster and tax-cheat Al Sharpton, always seem to be on TV and taken seriously.  Some like Jerimiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan are in church pulpits.   

if you view everything only through the lens of race you are a racist. If you judge people and their motives by their race alone, you’re a racist.  

All of those I named above fit that description. 

In fact, by that standard I’d wager there are more racists in BLM and in the people carrying “Black Lives Matter” signs than in all the police departments in the entire country.

The BLM leaders and others leading the protests, know this.  That’s why if you ask them to provide evidence that Americans are consciously engaging in any of what they’re striving to end, they’re lost.  They can only cite outcomes as proof these exist.  

A higher percentage of blacks than whites in prison. Far lower average wealth in black households than white households. Higher unemployment among blacks than whites.  

Now, all these things are true.  But the reason for these outcomes most often has less to do with racial injustice, racial inequality, or systemic racism  than with other causes.

Like the breakdown of the nuclear family in black communities – only about 29% of blacks are married compared to about 48% of whites.  Like the much higher percentage (over 75%) of black children born to single mothers, compared to 30% for whites. 

Like the fact that blacks account for 13% of the population but 52% of homicides, and 38.5% of all violent crimes according to FBI stats. 

If anyone does the math, it should not be surprising that blacks are about 40% of our prison population. They aren’t there because of racial injustice, however, or targeting by police, but for the simple reason that they commit more violent crimes.     

At any time, about 25% of all black males have been, or currently are, in the justice system.  That means there are fewer black males out there to serve as responsible role models for younger blacks; more black males with a criminal record.    

And black males missing by incarceration means more single-parent households, which can have a harder time raising and supporting children. It also means those same black males with a criminal record have a harder time getting a good job or moving up the economic ladder.

All this ripples through everything in the black experience and is a major reason why the black community has seemingly permanent impediments to escaping poverty and crime.

Yet the protests are not about any of this.  Nor about the fact that over 90% of murdered blacks were killed by other blacks. Nor that the leading cause of death for black teenage males is murder.  Nor the fact that police killings of unarmed blacks are fewer than a dozen a year; more unarmed whites than blacks are killed by police each year.  

These stats are well known.  But also widely ignored or buried.

So what are the protests over Floyd really about? 

One word: intimidation.  

And to a large degree, it’s working. They’ve managed to get Senators, Representatives, governors, police chiefs, National Guard, pro athletes, and vast numbers of others to kneel in submission to them. 

It’s been embarrassing to watch, because the whole “movement” has been a fraud, starting with the canonization of George Floyd. 

Mr. Floyd was a career criminal who once participated in a home invasion and held a gun to the belly of the pregnant black woman while his pals ransacked her home looking for money and drugs. He had multiple arrests on his record and spent years in prison for everything from assault to drug possession with intent to distribute. 

When he was arrested this last time, and as it turns out his final time, it was for trying to pass a forged $20 bill while he was high on meth and fentanyl. Yes, those both showed up in the toxicology reports from both his autopsies – but you’d never find that from media reports.

It’s been carefully hidden from the thousands marching to honor him.  Instead, we’re continually told by morons in the media and BLM types, race hustlers like Sharpton, as well as Floyd’s family, that he was a good man, a pillar of the community, and was turning his life around. 

No, he wasn’t any of that. He was a common criminal. He didn’t deserve to die as he did, but he’s not up there with Rosa Parks and MLK, Jr.  Not even close. It’s disgusting to see people abase themselves at the altar of a criminal like Floyd.

It's even more appalling to hear our politicians and celebrities kissing up to something they know is an outright fraud. And trust me, they know it’s all a fraud.  The only reason they are sucking up to this is they’re afraid of the mob; they are afraid to speak out for fear people won’t like them.  In that regard, BLM and the protestors’ goal of intimidation has succeeded. 

It’s empowered them to demand more. Kneeling’s not enough anymore. Now that they’ve got politicians, celebrities, the media, over-the-hill lefties, young white guys with man-buns and tats, and rich white girls trying to act “street,” on their knees, they want more.

Like getting rid of the police.  I think they’re just trying to see how far they can push their power.  Testing behavior, in other words. But of course the Democrat Party, never one to miss the opportunity to pander shamelessly, is starting to support this numbskull idea.   

Suddenly, everyone has to believe in Black Lives Matter. Or else.   

Everyone but me, I guess. I believe black lives matter as much as white lives, Asian lives, Hispanic lives and others, but no more than those other lives matter.  I simply can’t accept the BLM movement at face value.     

If Black Lives Matter, then why do only blacks shot be police, and not blacks shot by other blacks matter?  If Black Lives Matter so much, then why did 18 blacks die in Chicago over Memorial Day weekend, with another 85 shot, and the black mayor says she has everything under control?  If Black Lives Matter, why is okay to loot and burn down black-owned businesses, and torch black neighborhoods – to protest racial inequality? 

It time to get off your knees, everyone.  Stop buying the BS that this matters.  That by kowtowing to the mob they will like you. That you have something to be guilty about. 

It doesn’t. They won’t. And you don’t. Stop embarrassing yourselves.