Suicide Of The Loony Left

 Well, I hope they're committing suicide because they are definitely loony! They want the Federal Government to move the Washington Monument out of DC!

From The American Conservative

By Rod Dreher

The city of government of Washington DC is oh so woke:

via Spencer Brown, who comments:

The Washington Post reports the details here.

I know that many liberals hate it when us reactionary troglodytes point this out, but this is exactly what you get when you let the loony left run things. Seriously, folks, this is a panel appointed by the Democratic black mayor of the District of Columbia recommending that the federal government move the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial (among others) out of the city!

Remember three years ago, when some on the Right — including, if memory serves, Donald Trump — said that if we start taking down Confederate statues, it won’t stop there. That it would very quickly move to the Founding Fathers. Liberals said that was groundless fear-mongering. And here we are.

Of course this is not going to happen; Congress administers these things, not the DC city government. But you watch: Joe Biden will not denounce this. I am sure it appalls him, but he will not be able to muster the courage to unambiguously and forcefully denounce this garbage. The woke have too much power in his party. If Biden were looking for a Sister Souljah moment, this is it. If a man who wants to be President of the United States cannot defend — without equivocation — the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial from the woke iconoclasts of his own party, he doesn’t deserve to be president.

Americans know that the Democratic Party elite (which includes the media) is in the grip of extremists to whom proposals like this are within the realm of the discussable. They betray themselves all the time. Bret Stephens noted in his Times column today the wacko interview NPR ran the other day with the leftist crackpot who has written a book titled, In Defense Of Looting. Excerpt from Stephens’s piece:

The book makes the case for looting because it “attacks some of the core beliefs and structures of cisheteropatriarchal racial capitalist society”; “rejects the legitimacy of ownership rights and property”; and “reveals all these for what they are: not natural facts, but social constructs benefiting a few at the expense of the many, upheld by ideology, economy and state violence.”

To judge by the NPR interview, “In Defense of Looting” is not an interesting book. It speaks for almost nobody beyond the fringe left — and certainly not for looters who hadn’t thought about “cisheteropatriarchalism.” The fact that the publisher is an imprint of the international conglomerate Hachette (2018 revenues, approximately $2.7 billion) compounds foolishness with hypocrisy.

Nonetheless, the book is symbolically important.

It sure is. NPR is not some outfit of the fringe left. It is, well, National Public Radio. The fact that a major national media outlet felt that it was perfectly normal to give over a lot of radio time to a radical speaking in favor of looting, at a time when the ruins of businesses were smoldering in Kenosha.

Here is a couple whose 40-year-old family furniture business was burned to the ground by Kenosha rioters. Here you go, NPR. You go tell these sobbing, brokenhearted people that what was done to them was right and just, because blows against racism and cisheteropatriarchalism must be struck:

What this family, the Carpenters, need to understand as well is that the Democratic government of the nation’s capital wants those disgusting monuments to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin taken out of the city limits. Maybe NPR will tell them so, or The New York Times, which, as we know, has set out to “reframe” American history — its word — by teaching that it is based on white supremacy and slavery. The news hasn’t yet reached the Carpenters, I guess, that they ought to be ashamed of their country and its founders. But it will. The media and the Democratic Party, one way or another, will see to that.

No, I don’t think Joe Biden personally feels this way, and I don’t believe that most grassroots Democrats see it that way either. But I also believe that Biden is a weak old man who does not represent the elites of his party, and does not represent the activist base that’s driving this train. People see, and people hear. Despite its many sins and failings, the Republican Party does not have to suffer its elected leaders of major cities calling for monuments to the Founding Fathers to be taken down. This is a massive symbolic issue, and I think Democrats are insane not to see its power.

I received this letter from a reader who lives in a Midwestern state. He asked me to remove his name and identifying information. I slightly rewrote a bit of it to protect his identity:

Most of the time, I imbibe your words with silent appreciation, but something you said in one of your most recent columns resonated with me such that I felt the need to share my thoughts with you.

First, a bit of context. I am a Caucasian male, and an active member of [church] here in deep-red [state]. I am a registered Republican, but I consider myself more as a classical liberal. Unlike many of your recent warnings of the threat of wokeness in corporate America, I continually count my blessings and thank God that wokeness has not yet infiltrated my company’s HR department (keyword, “yet”). Thus, I currently feel no fear in expressing my dislike for numerous aspects of Trump’s policies and antics at work; though most of my co-workers are pro-Trump, my classical liberalism provides enough coverage for me to be viewed as eccentric, but mostly harmless.

In spite all of that, I have always considered Trump to be an inept buffoon incapable of governing with competence. I voted for Johnson in 2016, and I have watched with increasing dismay the decline of the presidency under Trump. Yet, even with all the Trumpism surrounding me, to remotely consider voting for him in 2020 had been nigh impossible for me.

But, this, from your column today:

In my own little bubble, I have been surprised this past week by how many Republican friends I have who had planned either to sit the presidential election out, out of disgust with Trump, or were thinking about voting Biden — but who have said to me that they’re all in for Trump now. Kenosha was what flipped them. I’m not exactly sure why, but my sense is that there is a sense of, “If it can happen in Kenosha, it can happen here too.”

Mr. Dreher, it is as if you laid me bare before all of your readers!

Back in May, I was steeling myself to vote for Biden, rationalizing that just as the early Christians had to endure the persecutions of Rome for the sake of their witness to Christ, so I as a Christian in America may have to endure a Rome of my own. Surely, this was the price I would have to pay so as not to inflict further damage to my Christian witness?

Then, there was George Floyd and the subsequent protests and increasing tensions. My wife and I have close black relatives, so I have much sympathy for the origins of the Black Lives Matter movement. But, I could see that the original movement was morphing into a woke-fest and spiraling out of control and that Biden was not the solution. I was seriously considering not voting, not even third-party as has been my wont in the past four election cycles. Just washing my hands of it all, a modern-day Pontius Pilate.

Then, Kenosha.

“If it can happen in Kenosha, it can happen [in my town] too.”

It’s not that I have ceased to believe Christians will have to endure our own Rome in America. As you rightly say, soft totalitarianism is coming; indeed, it already has its foot in the door. It’s that I no longer see this election as defense of American Christian virtue as much as it is a defense of America herself. Our country is literally going up in flames, and I will not sacrifice my own community on the altar of wokeness to appease some ethereal sense of personal guilt in casting my vote for Trump.

Besides, legitimate martyrs are not suicidal. I will not feed myself, my family and my fellow Christians to the proverbial lions, which I increasingly believe is what those well-meaning Christians — and even orthodox Jews and Muslims — who vote for Biden will be doing. Biden himself is and will remain toothless; his woke leftist bureaucracy certainly will not be.

So, I have come to the uncomfortable conclusion that I must vote for Trump. I now believe that any other action would likely be a form of societal suicide.

Here is my parting thought to you. I am currently reading through Gregory Wolfe’s biography of Malcolm Muggeridge, originally published in 1995 (I’m reading the 3rd edition, 2003), and just last night I read this as Wolfe attempts to fit Muggeridge’s dogged anti-Communism within his (Muggeridge’s) wider critique of liberalism:

“Liberalism, [Muggeridge] began to think, was driven by a death-wish, a profound alienation from the Western tradition that led its adherents to worship those who would pull that order down. “

I have long been an admirer of Muggeridge as a luminary and prophetic voice in the 20th-century political wilderness, but I doubt seriously that Wolfe could have imagined how this succinct encapsulation would apply to our current societal upheaval 25 years after his words first appeared in print.

And, I wholeheartedly believe that Muggeridge stands tall among the giants of our collective faith who, indeed, would not live by lies, as do you.

Thank you for all you do. Don’t give up. Don’t relent. Not one bit.

It does not sound like this man needs to be convinced about how bad Trump is. He can’t stand Trump — but he fears what the Democrats are going to do to America.

A reader in Los Angeles writes:

By happenstance, this past weekend my wife and I met a couple in our apartment courtyard and ended up having an “interesting” evening with them on our patio over a glass or two of wine — socially distant, of course.

The woman was just falling all over herself to display her progressive credentials to my wife, who is black.  She was a stereotype of the ultra progressive — wealthy, white, Master’s degree, living in the hyper-wealthy beach enclave of Pacific Palisades, home of Whoopi Goldberg and other medium weight celebrities.

She explained in about the space of two minutes that it’s “ridiculous” to imagine that there are just two genders, that organized religion was the bane of human existence, “no human is illegal” or should be subject to immigration restrictions — especially Latinos whose entire reason for wanting to come here is the shambles American foreign policy had created in their lands.  She was a “radical feminist” and thought any resistance to #MeToo tactics — not just its aims — was evidence of misogyny, that wars wouldn’t happen is we had female leaders, blah, blah.

Then she went on to explain how the “peaceful protesters” only targeted the businesses of “big corporations,” and don’t worry, because they are insured and some eggs have to be broken to make a Justice omelet, and so on.  It was almost as if, meeting my wife, she felt she had to perform, to show she was one of the Good Guys.

And yes, she has been a public school teacher for the past 15 years.

Before I could open my mouth, my wife launched into an excoriation of BLM, about how it has ruined its own, once-popular mission to reform police, that it’s a bullying, authoritarian Marxist organization which has simply traded in an obsession with economic class for racial identity.  She explained how BLM’s “peaceful protest” on June 5th in LA (which we attended for the first hour, a model of peaceful, even respectful civic dissent before it went to hell) savaged our neighborhood, and destroyed a beloved cafe which had been a neighborhood anchor for more than a decade. The female owner, who had put so much blood, tears and pride into it, had just hanging on during the Covid until her place was wrecked beyond recognition.  She ended up closing down and moving back to Manila. Justice!

My wife explained that nobody wants to see police reform vis à vis black people more than she does, given that her son, an outstanding veteran, husband, father and citizen, could barely walk home in his own neighborhood as a clean-cut boy, without being sprawled on the sidewalk and frisked by Culver City police for no reason at all.  (His Junior Sheriff’s ride-along ID kept him safe.)

“BLM has set us back three decades, easily,” she stated.  My wife is not the political type, and not inclined to debate, especially idiots.  But this performatively woke, silly woman trying to impress her with her progressive bona fides was simply too much for her.  Mind you, my wife is much further to my left on politics, a lifelong New York Democrat who proudly wore a pick in her ‘fro back in the day.  She’s no right winger and has a visceral loathing of racism in this country.  But she loves it.

Our guest, who had been verbose up until then, mumbled something under her breath about Trump (she knew by then we are vociferously against him) and basically shrunk for the rest of the night.This is just an anecdote, of course.  We’ve been married 25 years, and as much as I love her, her shutting down that nitwit was among the moments I’ve been the proudest of her.

And if BLM has lost my wife, they have lost.  Period.  I just hope that Biden can make the genuine pitch that he’s not going to be pushed around by them, or it’s another four years of Trump.

This L.A. Democrat understands what’s going on. Does Joe Biden?

UPDATE: Well, done, Black Lives Matter. Nothing wins hearts and minds like vandalizing Graceland.