The New Race Hustlers

Two young black men are darlings of Democrats these days: Ta Nehisi Coates and Deray McKesson. Both grew up in Baltimore and both support Black Lives Matter. Both are educated and well-spoken as long as you don’t listen too closely to what they’re saying. McKesson is a founder of Black Lives Matter and Coates wrote the book Between The World And Me that, “has become the intellectual and emotional voice of the Black Lives Matter movement,” according to Robert Cherry writing in the New York Post last week. Both are moving to take over from the two alleged Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Like them, McKesson and Coates preach that black men are victims of white supremacy and white racist cops are looking to shoot them down.

Both want to keep race an issue in American politics. With the cooperation of the Mainstream Media and millions of liberals suffering from white guilt, they’re succeeding. Other Americans, however, are sick of hearing about it. Coates exacerbates that race fatigue by pushing reparations for descendants of former slaves, claiming it’s the best way to counter the ostensible pervasiveness of white supremacy. When US Senator Bernie Sanders was asked in a debate if he supported reparations, however, he said no, because it would never get through Congress and because it would be divisive.

3-minute podcast of my Sanders interview

When I got the opportunity last January, I asked Sanders why he thought it would be divisive but he dodged the question. He instead lamented black poverty and black unemployment, but I followed up by asking if he believed paying reparations was a good idea on its face. After he dodged again, Conway Sun publisher Mark Guerringue asked if he supported the principle of reparations. Then Sanders put the question back on us: “Does anybody else support the principle of it? Do you support the principle of it?”

“No,” said Guerringue.

“No candidate does,” I responded.

“It’s a big word,” said Sanders. “What does it mean?”

A fair question. Newsweek tried to answer it in 2015 putting out cost estimates for reparations ranging from $36 billion to $10 trillion and citing obvious problems like who would get it and in what form? As Jackson and Sharpton fade away, Coates and McKesson keep stoking guilt in liberal white America — a major Democrat constituency. Both men are at the core of Democrat efforts to portray the problems of black America as “the lingering effects of slavery” and not the legacy of disastrous Democrat policies.

Sharpton and Jackson

Some older black Americans have a different view. Economist Thomas Sowell believed the Democrat view as a young man, but rejected it later in life. In his 2014 article: A Legacy of Liberalism, Sowell contends: “The current problems facing blacks in America owe more to the Great Society than to slavery. Nearly a hundred years of the supposed ‘legacy of slavery’ found most black children being raised in two-parent families in 1960. But thirty years after the liberal welfare state found the great majority of black children being raised by a single parent… The murder rate among blacks in 1960 was one-half of what it became 20 years later, after a legacy of liberals’ law-enforcement policies.”

San Francisco 49er's quarterback Colin Kaepernick recently refused to stand for the National Anthem. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he said. after becoming engaged to Black Lives Matter activist Nessa Diab and converting to Islam.

Meanwhile, Burgess Owens — another black former NFL player, just released a book titled: “Liberalism or How to Turn Good Men into Whiners, Weenies and Wimps.” Owens quotes Frederick Douglass’s response to a question asked of him: “What shall we do with the Negro?” Douglass answered: 

“I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, of they are rotten to the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them the tree in any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him the chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!”

Frederick Douglass

Douglass’s opinion echoes the thinking of black Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley. He must have had Douglass in mind when naming his recent book. He was making a plea to liberal Democrats when he picked the title: “Please Stop Helping Us.”

Maine "Refugees" Who Died Fighting For ISIS

Two Muslim immigrants who lived in Maine were killed fighting for ISIS and each left a wife and children here on welfare. The second, Adnan Fazeli, was revealed last week by the Portland Press Herald, but how many people realize there was at least one other? And, are there any more? If so, that information would be kept under wraps as long as possible.

The first was Abdirahmaan Muhumed, aka Abdifatah Ahmed, about whom I wrote in January, 2015. He was born in Somalia, raised in Minnesota, lived in Lewiston, and became a US citizen in South Portland, Maine. His Maine wife divorced him because he wanted multiple wives. He was killed in Syria in 2014 and it’s worth mentioning that he also worked at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport. Think about that next time you board a plane.

Wahhabist

Last week’s Press Herald headline on Fazeli read: “Documents: Freeport man died fighting for Islamic State in Lebanon.” Was he a “Freeport man”? By whose definition? He was an Iranian who professed, at one time at least, a desire to become American. To be a “Freeport man” one must be an American. Nowhere in the article does it say Fazeli was a citizen. It said he became radicalized in Maine by watching ISIS videos and converting to Wahhabism, which the PPH called an “austere” version of Islam. That’s like calling the KKK an austere version of Christianity. Wahhabism is radical Islam. It’s jihadism calling for the destruction of the west. Maine State Police Detective George Loder said: “Fazeli’s change in behavior alienated him from many of his Shia and moderate Sunni friends in the area. However, there were a few local Sunnis who supported his [radical Islamist] fervor and treated him with a great deal of respect.”

The article said Fazeli was a “refugee” brought to Portland by Catholic Charities in 2009. He was born in Iran and raised a Shia Muslim, but “self-identified” as Arab and not “Iranian.” What a suspicious phrase that is. Was he born Persian, which is a different, majority-ethnic group in Iran? Faze also identified as a Sunni Muslim, a branch of Islam which comprises about 9% of Iran’s population, but he was afraid of being arrested so he “fled” to Syria, a puppet state of Iran where a civil war was raging between Sunnis and Shiites. How does that make sense? Syria would be the last place to go for “refuge.” Was he perhaps interested in joining Sunni terrorists like ISIS and al Qaida which were fighting the Shia in Syria? 

Yasidi females -- former ISIS sex slaves

Then he “fled” Syria, arriving as a “refugee” in Philadelphia in 2009, and “came to the Portland area through Catholic Charities Refugee and Immigration Services,” according to the Press Herald. The article goes on to say: “Catholic Charities in Portland said Fazeli tried to receive social services [welfare] from the organization but was told that because he had come to Maine from another U.S. city after he’d immigrated to the U.S., he was not eligible…”

However, Fazeli did go on welfare along with his wife and three kids. This was reluctantly revealed in subsequent Press Herald article headlined: “LePage orders scrutiny of welfare benefits for immigrants in Maine… a reaction to the case of an Iranian refugee who... was killed fighting for the Islamic State in Lebanon in 2015.”

Interesting that he wasn’t a “Freeport man” anymore, but “an Iranian refugee.” Most illegal aliens sneaking into the country now ask for “asylum” as instructed by immigration lawyers — virtually all of whom are Democrats. Most "refugees" are not fleeing war-torn countries either. They come from the Middle East, Africa, Central America, and other places as economic migrants to get what Fazeli was getting. Only some are leaving Syria or Somalia, but media like the Portland Press Herald and the Sun Journal of Lewiston imply that all are genuine refugees from war-torn countries. The London Daily Mail reports that four out of five migrants to the EU in 2015, for example, were economic migrants looking for a better life, not refugees fleeing a war zone.

Soros and Hillary

This “refugee” migration is pushed by the Democrat Party as a recruitment drive. That’s why George Soros funds it so lavishly both here and in Europe according to recently-hacked documents from Soros’s “Open Society Foundation.” It's a scam to "fundamentally transform" the United States and the entire western world while getting the rest of us to pay for it.

Obama and Soros

Soros also funds attacks against writers like David Horowitz, Pam Geller and Cliff May (all of whom I’ve met) and others who expose things like what I've written above. Stories like Fazeli's and Muhamed’s give ordinary voters a peek under the rug where liberal media desperately try to sweep stories about radical Islam in the USA — while depicting writers like me as hateful bigots for exposing them.

Bedeviling Choice

How did we end up with two candidates most of us dislike? Well, we voted them in, that’s how. What does that say about us, the American people? That’s the essential question here. Hillary and the Donald reflect us — and we don’t like what we see. This year we tend not to ask “Who are you voting for?” so much as “Who are you voting against?”

Leaked emails confirm the Democrat National Committee steered the nomination toward Hillary and away from Sanders. They also confirm an incestuous relationship between Democrats and Mainstream Media. Both phenomena were long suspected but the emails are proof in black and white.

Republican leaders never hid their dismay as Trump won primaries. They maneuvered openly to deny him the nomination but failed. Trump got a record number of popular votes and won legitimately. Hillary also got more votes than her opponents, but Sanders supporters ask themselves if his momentum might have carried him past Hillary had the DNC had not covertly worked against him early on. We’ll never know.

Ordinary voters in both parties were dissatisfied with leadership, but only Republicans got a “change” candidate while Democrats got an old battle ax. Lately, however, Republicans feel buyer’s remorse as Trump repeatedly trips over his own tongue. Hillary has political experience and it shows. She is focused and on message as the general election campaign proceeds. 

With zero experience, Trump is neither. Every day he gives the hostile mainstream media more arrows to shoot at him. While he bleeds in the polls, Republicans like Ted Cruz, Susan Collins, and Ben Sasse grab life jackets and jump ship. They’re not facing reelection this year but others are. Party leader Mitch McConnell said he’ll understand if they want to grab their life jackets and jump too.

Aside from refusing to release his tax returns, Trump is an open book. He eschews teleprompters and speaks his mind day after day. That novel approach appealed to voters in the primaries but it’s sinking him in the general. It’s still ten weeks to election day, and that’s an eternity in politics, but it’s not looking good for him. She sticks to script while he shoots from the lip.

Hillary has been caught in lie after lie, but the mainstream media virtually ignore them. Trump says dumb things almost every other day and they focus on him instead. Obama’s “Justice” Department protects Hillary too, but fears more email leaks showing the Clinton Family Foundation as more a money laundering operation and political slush fund than a charity. That could still sink her. If the electorate starts seeing her and Bill’s quarter million dollar “speaking fees” as bribes and payoffs, her polls could flip quickly. She’s a smooth and practiced liar as I personally witnessed last December when I had a 15-minute exchange with her. Lies roll off her tongue effortlessly and she’s been skating away from accountability for decades.

“The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t,” goes the idiom. We know what Hillary will do if she gets in so she would be the devil we know. We’re not sure what Trump would do. He’s been all over the political map during the past thirty years and it’s hard to tell, so he’s the devil we don’t know.

Trump, my least-favorite of the Republicans who ran, is one of the few candidates I didn’t get a chance to interview this election cycle. He says he’s pro-life, pro 2nd Amendment, wants to beef up the military and enforce immigration law — all good, but he used to think differently on some of those issues and has not explained why he changed. He never spoke of reducing the size of government either.

Trump did release a list of judges he would appoint to the Supreme Court — all strict constructionists. The four liberals on the court do not feel bound by the Constitution and would rely on foreign law. One, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, advised Egypt not to use the US Constitution as a model. I was more appalled, however, when Reagan-appointed Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner said: “[T]he original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the post–Civil War amendments (including the 14th), do not speak to today… I’m not … particularly interested in the text of the Constitution. I don’t believe that any document drafted in the 18th century can guide our behavior today.” Hillary would appoint more like these.

If you’ve ever said: “This is a free country and I can do what I want,” remember: that’s true only because of the Constitution — especially the Bill of Rights. Primarily, however, the Constitution is a document that says to government: “you have these powers only and no more.” It was designed to prevent the federal government from becoming the behemoth it is.

To preserve the Constitution at least, I plan to vote for Trump, the devil I don’t know.

Don't Know Much About History

Teaching US history to 14-year-olds could be frustrating. In Maine, as in most states, students took US History in 5th, 8th, and 11th grades. That latter was required for a high school diploma and I believe it still is, but none of it guarantees that those who graduate high school have even a cursory understanding of American history — or any other history for that matter. My frustration in 8th grade was the discrepancy in basic knowledge of history or geography with which students came to me. Most didn’t know a country from a continent. They could not point to Maine on a world map, nor did they have even a cursory understanding of what the United States even was.

The scope of my curriculum included US History from Indians to the present, weaving in geography, economics, civics, the US Constitution, and current events. I was prepared to deliver it, but after the first year I realized that most students had no framework of space (geography) and time (history) into which this material could be assimilated. Without such a structure, my students would not retain much. Some 5th grade teachers taught US History, but most did little more than cut out turkeys and Pilgrim hats at Thanksgiving. I had to fill huge gaps before delivering my course because without a mental framework of time and place, what I had to teach would go in one ear and out the other.

Because of an enrollment bulge one year, I had to give up two sections of history to other teachers and pick up a couple of writing classes instead. Though I gave one teacher the scope and sequence of my 20th century US history curriculum (the scope had narrowed by then), she taught nothing but slavery all year. That’s it. Students emerged from her classes knowing nothing else of US History but that black slavery was practiced here. I was appalled, but there was little I could do except bring it to the attention of administrators. I’ve since learned this was not usual. According to Assistant Professor Duke Pesta at the University of Wisconsin, it’s much more widespread than I ever realized. Pasta offers one telling anecdote:

I started giving quizzes to my juniors and seniors. I gave them a ten-question American history test... just to see where they are. The vast majority of my students - I'm talking nine out of ten, in every single class, for seven consecutive years — they have no idea that slavery existed anywhere in the world before the United States. Moses, Pharaoh, they know none of it. They're 100% convinced that slavery is a uniquely American invention... How do you give an adequate view of history and culture to kids when that's what they think of their own country - that America invented slavery? That's all they know.

Most Americans have no idea that Arab Muslims enslaved more than a million white, Christian Europeans between 1500 and 1700, and as many as 2.5 million more whites from the Black Sea region. Touring the Greek Gulf of Corinth in 2014, I asked our guide why all the villages were located up on steep hillsides instead of on the coastal plain, she said it was to escape Muslim slavers. Arab Muslims practiced black slavery long before and long after Europeans or Americans did and still enslave black Christians in Sudan.

Simon Deng - black Christian slave I met in 2010.

When my curriculum included US History from Indians to the present, I had students reenact pre-Civil War congressional slavery debates in class. Southern congressmen like John C. Calhoun were correct when arguing that slavery was approved in both the Old and New Testaments as well as in virtually every other culture throughout history. College students today, however, think slavery a uniquely American institution.

Consider what their misconception — that Americans invented slavery — does to their understanding of their own country. Consider that leftist professor control academia — and make sure students hear a continuous drumbeat about what an evil country this is — founded by evil, capitalist, white, racist men. It’s no wonder so many flock to Bernie Sanders rallies and support dubious organizations like Black Lives Matter. No wonder they’re so willing to believe that racist cops shot Michael Brown in the back while he had his hands up — which never happened. And, it’s getting worse. According to a report by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA):

The overwhelming majority of America’s most prestigious institutions do not require even the students who major in history to take a single course on United States history or government. Disregard for the importance of United States history in the undergraduate history major is matched by the overall disappearance of United States history requirements from general education…

In the Ivy League, it’s not much better. mindingthecampus.org reports:

When ACTA commissioned a Roper survey of seniors at the "Top 50" colleges and universities, those holding the most prestigious positions in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, it found that only 29% could identify—in a multiple-choice survey—the definition of "Reconstruction.”

Don’t count on an informed electorate going into November.

The New Telescreens

Sunset over Portland Maine from Bug Light Park July, 2016

My wife and I often take a seaside strolls evenings around Bug Light Park in South Portland, Maine. Others enjoy that too and most look to be in their twenties and thirties. I can’t help noticing how many stare at their cell phones and one night I decided to count exactly how many. It was a lovely evening with a warm breeze. Planes were gently descending toward the Portland Jetport, ferries were coming and going, the salt air was sweet and Portland’s lights twinkled across the harbor. About twenty young people were standing around the lighthouse in small groups, while others sat on benches facing the water. All were looking at their cell phones — every single one.

Moonset over Portland, Maine from Bug Light Park 2013

That must have diminished their appreciation of a special time and place. That night we saw no one in our sixties demographic, but when I do happen to see some they don’t have a phone in their hand. Some may occasionally talk on one briefly, but I almost never see them just staring at the screen. There’s definitely a generation gap in use of cell phones. While nearly everyone my age I know has one, they use them about as they would use a handkerchief — taking it out only when they need it.

Tanker from Bug Light Park 2012

I’d like to know exactly what those young people were doing with their phones. They weren’t talking to anyone on them and they weren’t talking to the others who were physically present either. It was as if they were in an airport where no one knew each other, but clearly those at the park did know each other even if they were not conversing. They weren’t texting either: I saw no thumbs moving. They were just staring at screens. It would have been rude to go up and stare over their shoulders to see what so engrossed them, so I can’t say what the were looking at.

Sunrise at Bug Light Park 2013

We were holding hands as we sauntered along the paved walkway next to the water. I run the same path mornings and have to keep an eye out for dog poop, but at night I’m not able to see it. Most dog people are good about cleaning up after their pets, but occasionally I’ve had to dodge a turd. I’m thankful that so far I have not felt that sickening squish underfoot during our evening stroll.

Flying kites at Bug Light Park

I shouldn’t let other people’s cell phone behavior trouble me but it does, and it has for a long time and I’m still not sure why. It bothered me the first time I noticed it while walking on a sidewalk in Boston years ago and I wrote about it. Today, phones do many more things and their use had greatly increased. That is changing us in some basic way because, after all, we are what we do every day. I’m not sure if the change is good or bad. We’re communicating more, but in a more indirect way. People used to write letters, then letters morphed into emails. Now texts predominate. Volume of communication has increased, but quality has diminished.

Another sunset at Bug Light Park 2012

Sometimes I take my evening walk there alone. Smell of the sea brings with it memories of nighttime adventures with my teenaged friends in Newburyport and Gloucester, Massachusetts fifty years ago. We were part of a loosely-organized Sea Scout troop in the sixties and spent weekends sanding, painting, and varnishing pleasure boats while they were on dry dock in late winter and spring. Doing so, we earned the privilege of using those boats to cruise around Cape Cod Bay, Martha’s Vineyard and Provincetown. Pleasant memories, those.

My demographic at Bug Light alone with his thoughts

People pass by but I’m alone with my thoughts and it’s nice, very nice, but it just wouldn’t be the same if I were staring at a screen. What’s the point of being in a special place like that if I’m looking at something else while there? Yet I see young couples walking along each staring at a screen. They’re there, but they’re not there. They’re together, but they’re not together. Something very basic has changed for them.

A poignant youtube video called “I forgot my phone” has gotten nearly 50 million views in three years. It depicts a 20-something feeing isolated as she goes through her day without her phone. All with whom she comes in contact are glued to theirs and she seems to have an epiphany, an insight into what her demographic has become.

Orwell described Winston Smith’s resentment of the ubiquitous telescreens in his novel, 1984. Unlike cell phones, those screens were fixed to a wall. Smith’s fellow citizens stared at them and Big Brother could monitor them as they did. Our cell phones go around with us and are equipped with GPS, so our whereabouts can be known by anyone with the desire to track us. That’s concerning, but not so much as what I see young people doing every day of their own free will.

UPDATE 8-3-16: Bar owner in England blocked cell phone signals in his establishment. The BBC reported: "He said he was tired of people coming in and not socialising with each other or with anyone else in the building. 'I've seen it progressively get worse and worse and I thought, "I want to stop this,"'Mr Tyler told BBC Sussex.'I want people to socialise with the people they are with, rather than the people they are not with.'"