Identity Politics
I’m not sure when politics were first Balkanized in America, but I suspect it may have happened in the 1930s when FDR set about waging class warfare in order to make it possible for one man to win four consecutive presidential elections, something nobody had ever even considered, let alone attempted.
I’m not sure when politics were first Balkanized in America, but I suspect it may have happened in the 1930s when FDR set about waging class warfare in order to make it possible for one man to win four consecutive presidential elections, something nobody had ever even considered, let alone attempted.
In fairly short order, FDR created voting blocs among northern blacks, union members, Jews, immigrants, writers, artists and socialists. By creating a number of federal agencies, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, he even managed to include farmers. Like a magician, he managed to dazzle so many with his gift of gab and his stage presence that only a few people even noticed that he actually prolonged the Great Depression with his tax policies, and that it was only the onset of World War II that got America out of its fiscal malaise.
Lyndon Johnson solidified the black vote by passing the Civil Rights Act, ensuring that Democrats could count on their support for the next hundred years. But, of course LBJ, who wasn’t quite as racially tolerant in private as in public, didn’t use the word “black.”
By now, the Democrats have added Hispanics, homosexuals, college students, Asians, Muslims and those very peculiar women whose sole concern appears to be that abortions continue to be as prevalent as rice at a wedding.
Somewhere along the line, the notion of voting for those individuals who want to do what’s best for America at large by defending, and abiding by, the Constitution seems to have fallen out of fashion.
If Donald Trump brings back to the White House patriotism based on core principles and the values laid out by the likes of Jefferson, Madison and Washington, America will owe him a huge debt even if by choice or circumstance, he doesn’t carry through on every single campaign promise. As I see it, a certain amount of poetic license is to be expected when one is running for the presidency, just as there is with a young swain who offers his love the moon and stars during a marriage proposal. It’s not lying, exactly, it’s more like wishful thinking.
If we are to remain in the United Nations, I suppose Trump’s choice of Nikki Haley to be our ambassador is just fine. The question I have is why we would want to remain in an organization that not only depends on us for its financial solvency, but where we are constantly out-voted by evil regimes and in which China and Russia, as permanent members of the Security Council, have veto power? I still recall when Trump, many years ago, first captured my attention by suggesting we evict the U.N. and turn the glass building into a five-star hotel.
There is no question that professional football has taken a dive in TV ratings this year. There are various theories. Some blame it on the fact that with games televised on Monday, Thursday and Sunday, there’s just too much of it. Some blame off-field scandals involving drugs, thuggery and domestic violence. Others would like to lay the blame at the feet of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick who first set off a firestorm by dissing America and then doubled down by praising Fidel Castro.
All of these may have contributed to the NFL’s problems. But I would like to think that perhaps people have awakened to the fact that football just isn’t that great a spectator sport. For one thing, I’m amazed that people will still put up with morons prancing around in the end zone after scoring a touchdown, carrying on as if they’ve discovered a cure for Alzheimer’s.
Even the rules are moronic. A halfback runs 98 yards for a touchdown, but a flag is thrown on the other side of the field because of a penalty having nothing to do with the run, but it nullifies the touchdown. Or consider what occurs when each team commits a no-no on a play, but one is a serious infraction, a felony as it were, that calls for a 15-yard penalty; while the other team’s is at worst, a misdemeanor, calling for a five-yard setback. Logically, one team should be penalized 10 yards. In the fantasy world of football, the penalties offset each other.
The one thing that football got right was the scoring. Because each touchdown counts for six points and extra points are automatic, people see a game end 21-14 and come away with the notion they’ve seen a lot of offense. These same people will insist there’s not enough scoring in baseball, but what they’ve seen is the equivalent of a 3-2 pitcher’s duel.
The Left is up in arms over President-elect Donald Trump calling the media elite on the carpet and chewing them out over their unfair coverage of the election. The boobs are calling him a fascist who has no respect for the First Amendment, but cheered on Obama when he tried to first discredit and then banish Fox News from the White House press conferences in the early days of his administration.
It was recently disclosed that there are 21,862 retired California public employees who are receiving pensions in excess of $100,000-a-year. A half-dozen of them are pulling down more than $300,000. It adds up to $3 billion-a-year, and partially explain why we are paying roughly a dollar more in taxes for a gallon of gas than the rest of you.
I haven’t read Ali Rizzi’s book, “The Atheist Muslim,” but I did read a review of it in Commentary magazine that had me thinking I might take a break from mysteries and read it.
Rizzi cites Secretary of State John Kerry “as the archetypal regressive leftist,” noting the many times Kerry has declared members of ISIS “apostates” over their distorted vision of Islam. “Lost on Kerry,” Rizzi writes, “is the fact that branding other Muslims as apostates is ISIS’s stock-in-trade and few things are sillier to Muslims than a Catholic American diplomat of Jewish stock hectoring them on the finer points of their faith. Salman Rushdie is an apostate. So am I. Kerry’s demonization of apostasy plays right into the ISIS rhetoric.”
If I get around to buying the book, perhaps I’ll get another couple of copies and send them to George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who never got tired of telling us how wonderful Islam is, even as its adherents were beheading infidels, torching churches and slaughtering our soldiers.
Rizzi earned my admiration when he wrote that Western elites are crippled by the fear of being labeled bigots, a condition he brilliantly refers to as “Islamophobia-phobia.”
Speaking of brilliant, one of my readers, James Whitesell of Roswell, Georgia, wrote to say: “I have been thinking about the wall between the U.S. and Mexico and what America can do to keep it on our agenda. We should have a national campaign for citizens to buy bricks for the wall. Each brick would have the name of the donor on it. We could also encourage corporate contributors. We could even have 5 and 10K runs to generate money towards the purchase of bricks.”
He even has a slogan: “Don’t be a d—k. Buy a brick.”
Better yet if Trump can actually make Mexico pay for the bricks.
We have become increasingly accustomed to people — especially those swine who have been pulling down salaries paid by the American taxpayer — taking the Fifth in order not to incriminate themselves. As much as I respect the Founders and admire what they managed to create, there are times I confess to wishing they had skipped from the Fourth to the Sixth Amendment when they were cobbling the Bill of Rights together.
In the past few years, we saw Lois Lerner, Cheryl Mills, Bryan Pagliano, Paul Combetta and Huma Abedin, all resort to taking the 5th rather than tell the truth about the IRS targeting of conservative groups or disclosing what they knew about Hillary Clinton’s private server.
How refreshing it would be if everyone would either tell the truth or could honestly say, in the words of writer Douglas Adams, “I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer.”
