I lifted a graphic from last weekends’ Powerline Week in Pictures, and posted it on my Facebook feed (where I post only anodyne stuff and things to do with my books, home improvements, and social schedule) which pretty much sums up how I’m feeling this week. Kermit the Frog stares out a rain-drop-misted window, and says, “Sounds Like Thunder Outside – But With the Way 2020 is Going, It Could Be Godzilla.”

Even before one could draw a breath of relief that the Chinese Commie Crud had not ravaged the US population anything like the 1918 Spanish Flu did, and that life was returning to something like normal, what with businesses slowly reopening – here came the stomping behemoth of violent protests and race-riots, in the wake of the death (possibly caused by drugs rather than the apparent mistreatment) of a long-time violent criminal of color at the hands of a white police officer.

This entire brutal and grotesque encounter was on video and understandably condemned as unacceptable overreaction on the part of the officer by just about every reasonable person of any color who watched it. Serious concerns regarding the militarization of police have been raised for at least a decade among thoughtful citizens, what with so many instances of police barging into houses in no-knock and full SWAT mode (often the wrong house, and opening fire indiscriminately), of abusing civil forfeiture statutes and traffic fines as a means of making budget. This concern was exacerbated by resentment during the Chinese Commie Crud lockdown enforcing social distancing – like pursuing a solitary paddle-boarder, all alone on the ocean, and going all-out on parents tossing a softball in a park with their kid.

There might have been a genuine interracial consensus about the proper role of police in a community, in protesting George Floyd’s death (as most everyone would prefer a law enforcement presence more like Mayberry’s Sheriff Andy Taylor than Dirty Harry Callahan) … but alas, the opportunity for Black Lives Matter activists to metaphorically wave the bloody shirt was too rich to ignore.
“Black Lives That Can Be Used To Wave The Bloody Shirt Are Useful is a more accurate, if unwieldy, name for that group,” was an acerbic comment at Sarah Hoyt’s place in a long discussion thread, to which another replied,

“Black Lives are an asset of the Black Collective and only they have the privilege of disposing of them. Thus the fifty or so Black Lives discarded in Chicago any given month are acceptable while the (in average) one Black Life terminated in conflict with a police officer (all of whom are White by virtue of upholding the Power of The Man) constitutes a form of poaching and is therefore an unlawful taking.”

And so the urban core of certain cities is burning … again. Curiously, just about every one of those cities – Minneapolis, Chicago, Baltimore, Boston, New York, Seattle – are reliably, progressively Democrat, in many cases have been for decades. Such shining beacons of toleration, frequently with mayors, city councils and police chiefs of color, all ostentatiously dedicated to the appearance of social justice! Really, a cynical observer such as myself might very well wonder why conditions for inner-city residents have not improved in the slightest; half a century of activism, of desegregation, of political consideration, of affirmative action, of incessant sensitivity training, election of People of Color (is that the current favored term among the Wokerati?) to every office in the land (including the Presidency), and incessant lectures on race relations … and in just about every respect, urban black populations are worse off than before, and correspondingly more resentful. It is a puzzle, indeed.
Perhaps and purely as an experiment we might try just ignoring race altogether. Alas, the Wokerati are demanding more apologies, more loud demonstrations of concern about our own lamentable racism are demanded, on pain of everything from social shunning to firing of the uncooperative, adding racial injury to Covid-19 insult.
Everyone on the paler side of the human spectrum is being hectored on social media, by overpaid academics, socially-conscious actors, and grandstanding news personalities about having to do more to confront our own inner racism, or at the very least, solemnly informed by emails from various corporations, that the societal unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s death is a Very Serious Concern, and they are all Deeply Committed to Voicing Concern … to which I reply, in rising irritation – look, when I want a sermon, I’ll go to church services. I’m in the fortunate position of being able to say no to the demands of the Wokerati to take part in some kind of perverted public struggle session. No, I will not bow, take a knee, apologize for something that my ancestors never had a part in. I already know enough about racism, thank you, as well as human history. I will not be browbeaten into compliance by the Wokerati, and I am pretty sure that I am not alone.

1 Kings: 19:18 – “Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”