Life In The Basket Of Deplorables

How many times have I been called a racist? Dozens at least, perhaps hundreds. How about homophobic? Yup, about as many. Islamophobic? Check. Misogynist? Check. Xenophobic? Got it. Let’s see, what’s left? How about bigot? Yeah, that too — all of which puts me right in Hillary’s “basket of deplorables.” I also qualify as one of President Obama’s “bitter clingers” and as a member of that other group Hillary doesn’t like: the so-called “alt-right.” I didn’t know what alt-right was when she said it a few weeks ago but I looked it up and yes, I qualify.

The first time I remember being called racist in print was twenty years ago after I wrote a column supporting the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), otherwise known as Proposition 209. It was a referendum question, which read:

The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

The “racist” accusations — and there were three as I recall — were in letters to both papers carrying the column, and they bothered me. I knew there was no basis, but they made me feel bad because racism is an ugly thing and I didn’t want any association with it. I’d been putting my opinions out there for three or four years by that time and I had gotten plenty of flak, but not that kind. Heck, I was writing against racial discrimination. How could that be racist?

Leftist poster from the anti-209 campaign in 1996

Proposition 209 would have made so-called Affirmative Action programs illegal because they give preference to blacks and hispanics over Asians and whites in college admissions, when hiring for teachers, police, firemen, and so forth. That’s racial discrimination, of course, but it’s the kind approved by the left — and leftists attack anyone who points that out. Since they cannot argue using facts, all they have is name-calling. They’ve flung the racist charge so often for so long, it has become a reflex. Columnist Mark Steyn calls it “Democrat Tourette’s Syndrome.” When I realized that, the “racist” charge didn’t phase me anymore. It’s continued use became an indication that I was scoring points against the left.

Though I’ve been a Christian all my life, I’ve always had difficulty with the turn-the-other-cheek thing. My natural tendency when somebody strikes me on either cheek is to strike back at both their cheeks harder and more often — and I don’t really see anything wrong with that. Such was my inclination when letter-writers insulted me with false charges of “racism.” I didn’t strike back though, neither physically nor in writing. I remembered the advice an editor at the Lewiston Sun-Journal gave me years ago: “Don’t respond,” he said. “Most readers will have read both your piece and the letter. Trust them to make up their own minds about who is right or wrong.”

It was good advice and someone should have given it to Maine Governor Paul LePage. He was enraged after a leftist legislator suggested he was racist. Lepage called him and left an obscenity-laced voicemail which the legislator sent to the media. That was dumb — very dumb. It’s one thing to feel like striking back but quite another do actually do it. LePage gave his enemies a club with which they will beat him as long as he’s in office.

Accuser and accused

I voted for LePage twice and I don’t regret it given the choices I had. I intend to vote for Trump too, even though I would have preferred any of the other Republicans who opposed him in the primaries. Against Hillary though? I have to vote for him and I will, but I wouldn’t call myself a “Trump supporter.”

So, even though I don’t support Trump, I still belong in Hillary’s “basket of deplorables.” Here are my bona fides:

I see abortion — the dismembering of babies in their mothers’ wombs — as barbaric, so I’m against “women’s health” and therefore women too according to Democrats who consider pregnancy a disease. So, I’m hopelessly “misogynist.”

I oppose importing tens of thousands of unvetted immigrants from Muslim-terrorist-dominated countries, therefore I’m both “Islamophobic” (unreasonable fear of Islam) and “xenophobic” (unreasonable fear of foreigners).

I consider it unnatural for two women or two men to “marry,” Therefore I’m “homophobic.”

I cling to both my guns and my religion, so I’m a “bitter clinger.”

I believe western civilization superior to other civilizations before or since, and prefer the melting pot model to multiculturalism. Evidently that makes me “alt-right."

I’m a heterosexual white guy who doesn’t believe there’s any such thing as “white privilege.”

All this qualifies me for inclusion in Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” and I move for summary judgement.

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.”

Democrat War On Cops

Most of us are hyper-aware of police. If we’re in a hurry and driving over the speed limit, we’re trying to avoid them. We look in the rear-view mirror or ahead of us and cringe if we see one, slowing down immediately. Cops know this. If we’re victims of a crime, however, they can’t appear fast enough. Cops know this too.

Years ago a cop knocked on my door, and when I invited him in he handed me a summons. He wore a bullet-proof vest under his shirt and I asked him why he had to wear that just going around delivering paperwork. He said cops don’t know what type of reception they’re going to get and have to prepare for the worst. It’s the same reason they don’t stand right outside of your driver’s side window after stopping you. They’re trained to stand to the rear and you have to turn your head way around if you want to make eye contact.

Regardless of what you may have heard, cops don’t like writing speeding tickets, but they do like helping people. That’s why they became cops. They also know more about the public than the public knows about them because they see us at our worst. Years dealing with people who are stealing, molesting, assaulting, killing, or just going crazy is debilitating. A retired detective recently told me he’s writing about cops partly to help civilians understand why so many become alcoholics and/or suicidal. It’s a tough job.

Gentle Giant robbing, assaulting store owner just before he assaulted a cop and got shot

I had dinner with another cop soon after the Michael Brown shooting two years ago. The media was full of stories of how a racist cop Darren Wilson shot “gentle giant” Michael Brown in the back while he had his hands up pleading: “Don’t shoot!” After a few weeks, some of us learned that none of that was true — it was all made up by Brown’s friends and completely swallowed by liberal media. He wasn’t a gentle giant. He was a thug and he wasn’t running away. He was assaulting Officer Wilson and trying to grab his gun. After the media had so saturated the public with the “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” lie, however, facts didn’t matter. Most Americans still believe Brown was shot by a racist cop.

The officer with whom I had dinner was very dismayed. He said cops everywhere were affected, even in rural Maine. The atmosphere had changed. Cops were second-guessing themselves — thinking about how public encounters might be spun by media instead of reacting instinctively to potentially dangerous situations — and that hesitation put them in still more danger. Cops know they’re the good guys and don’t like being portrayed by media as the bad guys.

Soros funds War on Cops

It didn’t help when the day after the Michael Brown shooting, Obama’s Justice Department sent teams of people to Ferguson to instruct local officials and the general public about “White Privilege” and racism. It got worse when Democrat billionaire George Soros sent $33 million to organize Black Lives Matter. My cop friend believed things were going to get worse and he was right. Black Lives Matter and other groups held demonstrations all over the country chanting: “Pigs in a blanket [body bag]! Fry ’em like bacon!” and “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want ’em? Now!”  Hillary invited BLM leaders to meet with her. President Obama invited them to the White House. Then five cops were murdered in Dallas by an angry black man. Three more were murdered in Baton Rouge by another angry black man — all just because they were cops. Individual police officers all over the country were shot as well.

According to Heather MacDonald’s new book “War on Cops,” a cop is nineteen times more likely to be killed by a black man than a black man to be killed by a cop. That’s a fact, but media portray it otherwise. Their narrative is that racist white cops like to shoot young black men and media controls public perception. In politics, perception is reality. It’s no coincidence that Michael Brown’s parents spoke at the UN. The Democrat Party hopes to benefit from public misperception so they invited Brown's mother to speak at their National Convention in Philadelphia this week.

Democrats own this

CBS reported that: “[Philadelphia Police] Union president John McNesby says Hillary Clinton should be ashamed for allowing relatives of people killed by police to speak, but not give equal time to families of fallen officers.

Many declare that President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the Democrat Party itself have created the War on Cops. Repeatedly embracing the allegedly Reverend Al Sharpton and other race-baiters as well as granting legitimacy to wild accusations about “racist” cops has created a dangerous climate.

None of this is good and cops know it. As they back off confronting black criminals, murder rates climb. Should Democrats win in November we can expect that trend to continue.

Update 8-2-16: Well, it has continued. Four cops in Pennsylvania were shot at by two young black men last week. Their mother blamed Black Lives Matter saying, "They are in jail for doing what Black Lives Matters wanted them to do: shoot at cops," she said in a written statement. "The truth is that these are two punk kids following the orders of an irresponsible organization and now they're gonna pay for it."

Blaming "White Privilege" For Black Behavior

Nobody likes discipling students. It’s unpleasant, but behavioral limits have to be defined and enforced. If that’s put off too long a teacher loses control of a classroom. Teachers can mete out consequences but sometimes students defy them, often with the support of parent(s). At that point, the teacher needs backup from an administrator, usually in the form of student suspension. That’s unpleasant for the administrator too, but if they back down under pressure and leave the teachers hanging, the whole school breaks down. I’ve seen it happen. When unacceptable behavior is not confronted it escalates. 

The same dynamic applies to a city. Police must enforce behavioral limits defined by government. If the police are not backed up by government, the whole city breaks down. America is watching that unfold across the country. Why? Because two Obama-appointed Attorneys General have injected race into the dynamic, both in our schools and in our cities.

Holder's "School-To-Prison Pipeline"

Last month, Theo Olson, a teacher in St. Paul, Minnesota was suspended because he described the above process on Facebook. Black Lives Matter, a group of racial agitators funded by George Soros, called him a racist even though Olson didn’t mention race in his post. Black Lives Matter met with the superintendent who then suspended Olson.

Attorney General Eric Holder engineered this whole mess. When teenaged thug Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Holder sent dozens of Justice Department employees to Ferguson to teach city officials about “White Privilege,” as if that were to blame for Brown getting shot. Then George Soros and other rich leftists sent millions to create Black Lives Matter, which they continue to fund generously.

To keep stoking the fire, Attorney General Holder then blamed white teachers for what he called a “school-to-prison pipeline.” According to Holder, white teachers overreact when black students misbehave causing more blacks to be suspended than whites. Then President Obama issued an Executive Order mandating racial quotas for school suspensions. Teachers around the country now get “White Privilege” instruction, including St. Paul, Minnesota.

On his Facebook page, Theo Olson posted: “Anyone care to explain to me the school-to-prison pipeline my colleagues and I have somehow created, or perpetuated, or not done enough to interrupt? Because if you can’t prove it, and campaigns you’ve waged to deconstruct adult authority in my building by enabling student misconduct, you seriously owe us real teachers an apology. Actually, an apology won’t cut it.”

Attorney General Loretta Lynch

For daring to question the race-baiting policies of Holder and Obama on his private social media account, Olson got booted from his classroom. What about Olson’s First Amendment rights? Does feigned indignation from Black Lives Matter negate them? In St. Paul it does, apparently.

And it’s getting worse. Last week, Holder’s successor, Obama appointee Loretta Lynch, warned she will be applying the same policies to 6500 municipal courts across the country because they enforce the law too much on black violators. According to the New York Post: “A strongly worded ‘guidance’ letter, written by [Lynch’s] civil rights team, warns that a local court policy of enforcing warrants for failure to pay court fines and fees can have an adverse ‘disparate impact’ on African-Americans, who are fined and/or arrested for outstanding warrants at ‘disproportionate’ rates versus whites.

And why would it have a “disparate impact”? The Post article explains: “Federal data also show that blacks tend to break both felony and misdemeanor laws at a disproportionate rate. Even if applied evenly across all races and in neutral, color-blind fashion, such policies could be found by [Attorney General Lynch] to be discriminatory… This is the same dubious legal threat the administration is using to force the nation’s public schools to back off suspending unruly — even violent — black students.”

We can expect this latest Obama Administration initiative to work out as well as the others have. So far it’s just a warning from Lynch, but can we expect another executive order to follow as Obama did with our schools? Obama said he would use his phone and his pen as much as possible, so get ready.

It’s a good thing I’m not teaching in the public schools anymore or I’d likely be in Theo Olson’s shoes. I wouldn’t, however, meekly submit. Neither should he.

Lacking Temper

Keene NH Pumpkin Festival last month

Young men can be crazy. They commit the majority of crimes. Insurance companies charge them huge premiums because they have the most traffic accidents, usually involving more deaths and more property damage. When their baseball or basketball teams win championships, they riot and destroy property to “celebrate.” A seemingly innocuous pumpkin festival in semi-rural Keene, New Hampshire triggered such behavior as young, male college students there went wild last month.

"Celebrating" Giants victory last month

They’re also aggressive because they’re full of testosterone. That makes them good soldiers as long as rigid rules within the military keep them in line. Older men, whether superior officers, fathers, uncles, grandfathers, coaches, teachers, or whatever, can temper excessive and/or destructive behavior to which young men are prone — if the young men respect them. Young women can temper that behavior too, but again — only if the young men respect them in a monogamous relationship.

Young black men are the craziest. Why? Mostly because there are few mature, older men in their lives. Back in the mid-twentieth century there were — when the black families were more intact than white families of today —  young black men weren’t any crazier than young white men or any other kind because it’s not a racial thing. It’s a culture thing, and it goes back to the “War on Poverty” in the sixties. When government started “Aid To Families with Dependent Children or AFDC, it didn’t aid families in the larger sense. It made them weaker because government effectively took responsibility for supporting children away from the men who fathered them. Millions of families were affected, but a much higher percentage of black families. Another reason is that young black men have fewer mutually-respectful, monogamous relationships with young women. Rather, they objectify women as “bitches and ho’s” to be used and abused.

When young men gather in groups, they’re even crazier. Whatever behavioral inhibitions an individual might have tend to disappear in groups. If groups morph into gangs, behavior becomes malevolent. Add guns, alcohol, illegal drugs, and degrading sexuality, should anyone be surprised when all hell breaks loose? Today’s inner cities make the wild west look tame. A typical weekend in Chicago these days has five or six killed and a dozen or two wounded - almost always young black men as both victims and shooters. For some reason, however, our mainstream media considers this a taboo subject. When a young black man is shot by a  white man, though, especially a cop, they’re all over it like flies on you-know-what.

Malignant attitudes now widespread in young, black, male subculture are glorified across America. Everywhere we see young men wearing pants low on their asses and driving around with big base woofers playing “Hip-Hop” music and shaking windows as they pass. Hip-hop “artists” who survive their destructive lifestyle into their twenties or thirties receive awards from Hollywood and fawning attention in the wider media. They’re also invited to the White House.

After two or three decades of it, Americans seem to have accepted this stuff as normal. Back in the 1960s urban riots were explained as righteous anger against racial oppression by federal study groups such as the Kerner Commission. Today’s leftists still wave that banner, but after half a century, the rest of America isn’t so quick to excuse barbarism. They’re not buying the media spin on the incident in Ferguson, especially since the facts of the case don’t support it.

Ferguson riots

Our nation’s attention is focused on what will happen when a Ferguson grand jury refuses to indict the police officer who shot a young black man. Nearby St. Louis is girded for prolonged street violence by hordes of young black men and their leftist enablers. In spite of the evidence in the case, they believe the white police officer killed him because he was racist and not because he feared for his life. That dubious claim has been fueled by liberal media outlets, by Attorney General Eric Holder, and by President Obama who met with “Ferguson activists” like the allegedly Reverend Al Sharpton on November 5th — the day after the midterm election he lost so badly.

Sharpton said the president “was concerned about Ferguson staying on course in terms of pursuing what it was that he knew we were advocating.” Hmm. “Staying on course”? On course to what? Sharpton is a notorious rabble-rouser who has stirred up riots before. Remember Crown Heights? And, he’s a close associate of both Holder and Obama. If Missouri and other areas break out in riots following the grand jury’s report, will they all be held accountable?

They should be.

King Turning Over In His Grave

If you’re a public school teacher and you’re white, you’re probably a tool of institutional racism and you need to be re-educated. Don’t fret though. The Obama Administration is issuing guidelines that will help you become more conscious of your “whiteness.”

Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder cautioned school districts about their “overly zealous disciplinary policies” that, according to an AP story: “lead to a school to prison pipeline that discriminates against minority students.” The guidelines “[tell] schools that they must adhere to the principle of fairness and equity in student discipline or face strong action if they don’t.”

Actually though, they’re telling schools they must do just the opposite of [adhering] to the principle of fairness and equity. They’re telling schools to judge students by the color of their skin and not the content of their character. Martin Luther King would be appalled.

Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have been intimidating schools, I mean “gathering data” for a while now and they claim that: “Although black students made up 15 percent of students in the data collection, they made up more than a third of students suspended once, 44 percent of those suspended more than once and more than a third of students expelled.” Neither Holder nor Duncan offer any data evidencing that racial discrimination is what causes the disparity. They assume no one will ask, I guess. To them, the numbers are enough. If blacks are disciplined more, it must be because of racism, not because of their behavior.

Around the country, the school districts being intimidated, I mean, “studied,” have tried kissing up to Holder and Duncan by spending millions re-training teachers to root out their unconscious “institutional racism” and make them conscious of their “white privilege.” According to Williamette Week “Portland Public Schools has [sic] spent millions to help stop racial profiling of students in discipline cases. [but] The problem is getting worse.” Principal Verenice Gutierrez of Harvey Scott K-8 School in Portland said the very mention of eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches could be racist, because minority students may not eat them.

I’m not making this up.

Nathan Harnden, writing in “The College Fix,” describes the extensive trainings, staff meetings, classroom observations and other workshops teachers must deal with to change their teaching methods when dealing with minority students. He quotes the “Portland Tribune”: “[T]he first day of the school year for staff, for example, the first item of business for teachers at Scott School was to have a Courageous Conversation - to examine a news article and discuss the ‘white privilege’ it conveys.”

All this comes from a company called “Pacific Education Group,” or “PEG” owned and operated by Glenn Singleton who has become rich by charging school districts huge fees. Like President Obama, Singleton is a disciple of Derrick Bell’s “Critical Race Theory” which purports that something called “systemic racism” permeates white culture. Virtually all us white people are consciously or unconsciously racist, so Singleton, Obama, Holder, and Bell are determined to cure us of it. PEG sends its trainers coast to coast on the taxpayer dime to do so.

Bell: "I live to harass white folks."

I first wrote about “white privilege” seven years ago. My wife received indoctrination while working at Tri-County Mental Health in Bridgton in the 1990s. At least one, and probably several of the student teachers assigned to my classroom was assigned Peggy Macintosh’s 1988 essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by the University of Southern Maine as are thousands, perhaps millions of other college students around the country. The 15th Annual White Privilege Conference will be March 26-29 in Madison, Wisconsin. Many, if not most, will attend at taxpayer expense.

In his first major speech after being confirmed as US Attorney General in 2009, Eric Holder said America was a “nation of cowards” when it comes to talking about race. This writer would suggest that Mr. Holder is obsessed with it. He threatens “strong action” against schools that suspend black students or turn them over to law enforcement more often then students of any other color. He wants schools to treat disruptive young black males as victims of racism at the hands of teachers insufficiently conscious of their “whiteness.” Black students need “restorative justice” delivered through “courageous conversations” (whatever the heck those are) rather than discipline.

Our race-obsessed Attorney General wants more power over public schools. He wants to reinforce the idea that all black people are victims and ramp up white guilt because that’s what put the Obama Administration, and him, in power. It got Obama reelected and insulates Obama from criticism for destroying our economy, our health-care system, our foreign policy, for spying on the press, and for using the IRS to harass his political enemies. 

Looks like I retired none too soon from my long career in the public schools. There’s no way I would sit through a training session on “white privilege” quietly.