Communist governments loved to find people to blame. Since their system was so starkly unproductive when compared to their promises, blame was a full time game in the Worker's Paradise. Wreckers were those who were said to be intentionally bending the system and was conveniently flexible in the hands of the authorities. If you planted a little kitchen garden (instead of tending a collective plot), you were a wrecker. Stalin had millions of these shot.
Here, that's been flipped on its head. The wreckers aren't everyday people trying their best to navigate a hopeless system, it's an intrenched, professional dependency/grievance industry that bends a system, making it hopeless for everyday people. I'd go so far as to say that at the top of this list are the race hustlers like Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson, who tell everyone who will listen that racism is endemic in our society - because after all, you can't change your skin color, and there's a lot of money to be made by the Al Sharptons and Jessie Jacksons of this world in issuing racial indulgences to appropriately contrite parties (read: paying customers).
What is kryptonite to this view is the idea that culture matters, and that in the America of 2012 (as opposed to the America of 1958), culture is likely the prime determinant of success. Because if this idea gets around, you might find cultural examples like this (warning: this video is very disturbing):
There is a culture of violence in the inner cities, and this video shows a mother forcing her toddler to fight with another toddler. You need to subject yourself to the screaming of the children to hear the mother's shouted "encouragement":
"Got some action! Got some action!"
"Y'all better ball up some fists!"
In the side bar of this blog is a recommended reading post, one that I've highlighted a number of times before: The Wealth And Poverty Of Nations. The entire point of the book is that culture matters. The book talks about the issue at the macro scale, and the video here demonstrates it at the micro scale.
The professional grievance industry has given us this, step by step. Since nothing can ever be the fault of the individual (it's all institutional racism, remember), whole populations are left to essentially go feral. And I guess I better say something here that poor white areas can be as scary as this part of St. Louis - just typically more rural, and so not as concentrated. It's not the race, it's the culture.
Likely the most important reason that I will no longer call myself a Liberal is because I see my old comrades comfortable hanging out with Wreckers. Happy to march shoulder to shoulder with those bending the system to skim off filthy lucre, while the poor suffer. Willing that the sins of the Father are visited on the Son, yea to the seventh generation - so long as their tribe gets a momentary tactical advantage. Happy to see those little girls in that video grow up the way we all know they will, provided another Democrat wins an election.
I don't expect some of you understand the depth of my contempt for my old comrades. I know that some of you have taken that same journey as I, and feel this same contempt in your bones.
This is the Cold Civil War.
Good post, good points!
ReplyDeleteThis is a great post, and one dear to my heart. This hypothesis was suggested to me by fellow merchant mariner and captain who happens to be black, which is something rare in the US. He had said to me that concentration of people of a common low class is easy to identify when color and density are obvious, but ethnicity isn't as relevant as class in people of low behavior given the total numbers. I found the idea pretty plausible.
ReplyDeleteCouple years back, I got into a discussion with a Person of Authority who tossed out the standard "it's racism" and "it's poverty" lines (the PoA was black and a card-carrying Member of the Aggrieved Class). I pointed out that America had spent nearly 6 trillion dollars on "poverty programs" since the mid-1960s, and since that obviously wasn't enough, what amount would he suggest was the right amount, and since he interacted with offenders on a regular basis - most of whom were black - did he see anything cultural in their background that might be having an impact on their behavior, or were all of them "victims of racism"?
ReplyDeleteAfter informing me that I obviously did not understand "the way things were" he walked away.
I've reached the point where I'm convinced there are cultural enclaves in our country that are hopelessly beyond salvation or redemption. Should we be fortunate enough to figure out how to turn that around, it will take generations to flush out the rot and repair the destruction. What I really worry about is what happens between here and there.
Wow, telling your kid to fight back, (instead of letting the child curl into a fetal ball and wait for outside help) is disturbing now?
ReplyDeleteDamn, I have fallen into a parallel universe.