I might be a good example of the kind of “independent”, “moderate” white voter Glenn and John refer to. One who was and is shaped indelibly by an antipathy to divisive and often bigoted GOP racial politics. Except, for those wondering just how big that semi-invisible, silent cohort of voters is, and who wonders just how intensely some of us oppose, are appalled by, frankly feel betrayed by, this newer Dem/ideological left style of grossly racially-divisive lies in service of a narrative and agenda, I might be an even more notable example. I made a campaign poster on school supply poster board in support of Jesse Jackson when I was a kid. I was president of the College Dems chapter of my large Midwestern state university. Jumping ahead a number of years, I was enough of a super-volunteer for the 2012 Obama re-elect, I was offered a paid staff position based in the suburbs west of Philly. What was I arguably most proud of? Helping lead several voter outreach/registration/ballot access troubleshooting/volunteer recruitment trips to West Philly. Not far from where Rizzo dropped a bomb on the MOVE HQ. you know what else I did? Virtually lived (during working hours) in NYCHA buildings in Brooklyn to listen to and help organize residents rightly concerned about things like racially disparate enforcement of minor nonviolent drug offenses, and official indifference re: a pattern of wrongful convictions. I spoke with damn near everyone in Red Hook Houses (much nicer people btw than in Park Slope where last I heard Charles Blow lives, quite comfortably I’m certain).
Now? I am pissed. I am so angry and alienated at the corrosive racialist if not actually racist lies and blanket smears which have become the go-to left of center and partisan Dem playbook for sliming and ruining anyone who call them on their rampant BS, I am open for the first time in my life to voting for reasonable Republicans. If you’ve ever, say, mangled an earlobe by pressing a Donkey lapel pin into service as an earring, you’ll know how jarring a change that is. But I’m not someone who was a hardcore partisan of one side who either through wholesale ideological conversion or David Brock-style mercenary cynicism flipped 180 degrees to the other side. I’m a vegan animal rights activist for chrissakes. I’m on many issues still what, as recently as the end of Obama’s first term, we might’ve called a mainstream liberal Democrat. I’ve lost two 20+ year close friends merely for not being willing to continually 100% toe the line and echo the same jargon, the same lazily sweeping assumptions and smears, the same vicious dehumanization of anyone who disagrees politically as an “insurrectionist” or “white supremacist”. I worked a bit for a Dem congressional candidate as recently as 2018. But I’m beyond exhausted with the disastrously clueless, counterproductive far-left identitarian policies of “my side”. The near-total triumph of sneering ideology and partisanship over a good faith defense of a program remotely suited and effective at even addressing the needs of the preferred intersectional caste members they claim to care about. I am so tired after all I’ve done to put other groups ahead of me - regardless of my own needs - that my response to attempts to bully and gaslight me into accepting 2022 is somehow worse for all of my black fellow citizens than 1980 or 1950 or maybe even 1920 - due to unwoke and on that basis alone supposedly white supremacist deadenders like me, my weariness has begun to calcify into contempt. I am so tired of being lied to. I am so tired of being expected to join in with the liars and echo and the lies - or else. My curiosity as a flawed but well-meaning and truth-seeking human being is offended at this lockstep deceit and refusal to have adult discussions about complex and difficult issues of great public import. I didn’t flip to anything or become anything. I’ve still never voted for a Republican and the idea still makes me uncomfortable. But on these critical issues and so many others, in both style and substance Dems and the broad left of center have become so willfully unmoored from reality, so giddily ready to condemn and consign to misery on the flimsiest basis half of the country, and so ideologically self-indulgent and incompetent their policies seem to sow destruction and chaos at every turn, I am now a gettable voter for at least some more moderate, reasonable, and competent Republican candidates. And I am so sick of the lies and extortionist smears and demands of the BLM-style hucksters, so tired of the industry of race-baiting grifters who chime in without fail to try to blame every single problem in the world on everyone with a similar skin pigmentation to mine - no matter how we’ve lived our lives and invested our time energy and passion to actually stand up for equal dignity, equal opportunity, and equal standing - I feel more and more motivated to push back.
I'm a lifelong conservative, but I am disillusioned with the republicans. This phenomenon is not exclusive to the left of center, just FYI. I suspect I am much more right leaning than you, but we are otherwise twins in this context. I am so sick of being lied to by both sides of the political aisle. We need to completely trash both parties, and then we can get back to a healthy discussion of the issues.. how do we fairly and humanely deal with immense numbers of people who want to come into our country without documentation? How do we walk the delicate balance between secular government and tightly held religious beliefs? How do we best help people who do not have enough access to money, food, housing, etc? ... It's time to drop all the hyperbole and lies around racism, different sexual preferences, etc and just focus on the meat of what we can improve together.
I feel like we could sit down, however many issues we might view differently, and figure out what we have in common and also zero in on some of the tensions and major trade offs that can keep issues polarized. I’m sure there are still plenty of more traditional liberal Dems with whom I could so that, too. It’s the jargon-spewing, name-calling people who have developed hardened ideological views around identity which they seek to import into and enforce in every context who seemingly refuse to have reasonable discussions. For instance, my old running club has been seized by aggressively sanctimonious millennials - people who were happy making bank themselves while speaking exactly zero truth to power at places like Citibank - who have been relentlessly trying to shame really kind, generous, welcoming older members of the club - truly community-minded people of all backgrounds - for daring to hold or attend events, due to their pernicious “whiteness”. Actually privileged (credentialed) people sending multiple long messages full of hyperlinks to tedious whiteness studies journal articles and lambasting everyone in the club who is white for their intolerable whiteness while smugly claiming they’re not attacking human beings for daring to be part of the positive inclusive community they built - just critiquing an oppressive construct - to the entire membership of what was already a very diverse and welcoming running club. Those people are impossible to talk with. They’ll literally try to tell you these are all closed issues - there is a consensus among relevant academics that they apparently need to recreationally invade community hobby groups and clubs and bully people like a softer Cultural Revolution. But I simultaneously consider a more traditional conservative Republican like Mitch McConnell as slyly cynical and dishonest as they come. There is seemingly a huge disjunction between the broader tenuously working and middle class base of the Republican Party (which is gradually diversifying- good news) and the leadership which is still in my view far too wedded to a brand of corporatism which primarily benefits the kind of big capital and very wealthy individuals who are in practice if not rhetoric no more connected or committed to the interests of this country and its people than ideological left-wingers who think having and being part of a country is racist.
Immigration is such a fascinating and challenging topic. I run into trouble with people left of center when I ask basic adult questions: how many people? and according to what criteria? If people can’t answer that or won’t at least try, they’re fundamentally unserious. I just saw a post by Freddie de Boer about the damaging dynamic between insider centrists and culturally and media-ascendant lefties in the Democratic Party, in which he stated he was a “let everyone in who wants to come guy”. This is a sort of pragmatic yet sincerely materialist Marxist writer and I have no clue how “let everyone in” (how is this not tacitly more or less latest the current Admin’s policy?) coexists with a functioning welfare state, environmental protection and trying to slow resource consumption and pollution fueling runaway climate change? I’m sure there are smart people who have come up with rhetorically appealing arguments. But trying to combine support of effectively if not overly open borders and a push for DSA-style social welfare state, and trying to protect and preserve our natural inheritance, including wildlife, is just fundamentally incoherent to me. But then most Republicans in leadership seem happy to demagogue about immigration while never actually being serious about cracking down on the demand side and their business allies’ demands for ever cheaper and pliable labor. Bloomberg of all places actually covered trafficking networks using migrant minors to fill jobs in slaughterhouses across the South. One of my favorite (and for some reason least popular) arguments is that mass illegal immigration is being used (abused, exploited) to prop up the worst cruelty of Big Ag’s indefensible business model. To go a step further would it really be shocking if the people who run slaughterhouses (and other cruel, dangerous, dirty businesses) didn’t have some kind of business relationship with the cartels, who are essentially being heavily subsidized by current federal government policy, so that they can in a sense order supplies of the most desperate workers with the least leverage to complain about anything. I feel like the Tucker Carlson types would be intrigued - until pivoting to: wait, are you one of the unAmerican weirdos whose against cheap meat mass-produced by any means. And most everyone on the left would only want to accuse me of “victim-blaming” inherently holier than thou immigrants. I don’t know if we’ll see the fruits of a true party realignment in our lifetimes. As Ruy Teixeira keeps writing, most of the voters in both parties - and in all racial and ethnic groups - are economically somewhat more liberal (is anyone really against allowing the federal government to bargain for lower drug prices, or for adding a dental benefit to Medicare?) but socially/culturally more moderate. I’d like to see a big tent, explicitly transracial working class coalition that’s culturally moderate but defends shared liberal Enlightenment values. I think countries matter as shared polities in which citizens can at least exercise some sort of participatory democratic role. But the elites in both parties seem increasingly detached from even supporting a notional idea of belonging to a common place and political nation.
Yeah, exactly. You and I are fundamentally opposites on the actual political spectrum it sounds like (which is ABSOLUTELY fine), but we have plenty in common in just, good old fashioned common sense and, probably, decency and respect for others. I want to shrink the government out of existence. I absolutely don’t want people to go without food, housing or medical care, and I don’t want to waste the earth’s resources, but i completely believe that the government is actually in the way of us improving these things. I also don’t think i have any right to control the choices anyone else makes, as long as those choices are within the bounds of the law. However, I do insist on having the same respect and deference shown to me and my rights in regards to my choices as a person and as a parent. We can debate the best solutions for these issues, like adults, exactly as you said. But when either side (or both) of the two controlling political classes are bent on causing division, not lessening it, they need to go. Along with their supporters (those intolerant millennials you speak of, and the GOP old guard). The sooner the better.
This has been fascinating reading, and I appreciate the everyone's going at it so respectfully. I doubt, however -- this is for Tyler -- that a "reasonable discussion," can be had by someone who sees the social-democratic policies of the mid-20th century as a good thing and someone who wants to "shrink the government out of existence". If there's reasonable middle ground there, I'd be happy if you could point me in its direction. Some disagreements, I'm afraid, will forever remain heated -- or irresolvable, absent political power.
E.W.R.: Your critique resonates with much of what I've come to see, courtesy of Thomas Frank (LISTEN, LIBERAL) as the flawed approach of the current Dem ascendency. While giving lip-service to working people the DNC has since Carter embraced a neoliberal technocratic "meritocracy" that has created an educated, hereditary upper middle class that has left working people in the dust while still pretending to embrace traditional liberal values. This is the dirty secret I think you're suggesting when the hard left doesn't want to hear that economic frustration and resentment of entrenched elites, not merely racism, accounts for Trump's appeal; nor does the Dem political class want to hear that's it's lip service to working people is evident to anyone paying attention.
But there is also a growing cadre of reasonable people seeking exactly the kind of return to fact-based debate you seek: Yascha Mounk at Persuasion is one example. George Packer at the Atlantic has written about it recently. Catherine Liu's VIRTUE HOARDERS goes after the whole self-congratulatory notion of the left that it represents "the good people." Jonathan Rauch's The Constitution of Knowledge attacks the extremist pieties and anti-democratic impulses on both right and left. But I don't think we're getting out of this particular political moment without more ugliness, because it's just so much easier to strike a virtuous pose than it is to actually try to solve problems. But even here on this forum, there's often more heat than light. Meaning there's no "safe place" for folks like us, and we shouldn't want one.
P.S. Richard Rorty made many of the same critiques of the elitist left in ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY:
“Members of labor unions, and unorganized and unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots… Once the strongman takes office, no one can predict what will happen.”
About this: "that my response to attempts to bully and gaslight me into accepting 2022 is somehow worse for all of my black fellow citizens than 1980 or 1950 or maybe even 1920."
How does someone say that with a straight face, let alone insist that others accept it. I started grade school at the dawn of desegregation in Alabama looking not quite like either of the two dominant racial groups. There were classmates who parents saw "colored only" this and that up close. For someone to claim their life today is more difficult is not just a blatant lie, it's insulting those who lived through the sorry chapters of the past.
This is baked-in flaw of activism: the inability to accept any measure of progress, no matter the issue. Perhaps that's by design. Too often, it seems activism is designed to perpetuate problems, or the appearance of problems, because the activist is personally invested in that. People make a living or draw political power from grievance; no one actively seeks to undermine his/her livelihood. Staying in the past means being free to ignore the present. It applies to women, gays, and other groups as easily as to those involved in racial politics.
For the sake of comparison, the 25 million at Berkeley is less than one percent of that institution's total budget, but it's still 25 million dollars. To do what exactly? THAT is the great unknown. You get a lot of qualitative statements on the relative value or lack thereof with this spending, but not much in terms of quantitative effects.
man, this really hit home for me, so well done and on point (cue Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly"):
"I am so tired of being lied to. I am so tired of being expected to join in with the liars and echo and the lies - or else. My curiosity as a flawed but well-meaning and truth-seeking human being is offended at this lockstep deceit and refusal to have adult discussions about complex and difficult issues of great public import."
I am also a former lifelong liberal who is exhausted with the constant emotional blackmail and moral bullying and the endless bigotry accusations of the modern Left. I haven't lost any friends (yet) because I bite my tongue and because whenever politics comes up I just yell "A pox on both their houses!" and change the subject.
But this inability to have adult discussions about complex issues, to take a step back and detach yourself from your political opinions instead of being on a hair-trigger alert for a wrong word, just this entire cynical weaponization of thought where any good-faith disagreement has to be about "privilege" or "racism"--not only is it stupid and hateful, it's become standard M.O. for the people who consider themselves the educated, enlightened, tolerant defenders of democracy!
I think Twitter then Trump then Floyd broke liberals' brains and I don't see them recovering anytime soon.
I agree with most of what you say, except that I question whether it was Trump (and his mean tweets) or the media hype about Trump that contibuted to breaking liberals' brains. I suspect it was the latter. Looking back at my own long history of being a liberal, I realize, reluctantly, that for many years I was a member of a Dem cult who believed we were the good people. For me the shock came in 2017 when I and my closest friends, all of us judges, were discussing Russiagate, and I dared ask why everyone was so quick to accept the narrative of the Clinton campaign when the FBI wasn't even given access to the DNC's server. I said I didn't know what the truth was, but I couldn't think of any circumstance where someone could even be tried for an alleged crime, without law enforcement gaining access to the alleged weapon and investigating the crime scene. I still recall the looks on my friends' faces: their eyes went cold and their voices clipped. I had done the unthinkable: I had questioned a narrative that they knew was unsupported by evidence, and in doing that, I had demonstrated that I was no longer a true believer.
Hey, whether it was Trump or the political/media class' massive hysterical allergic reaction to his victory, either way here we are. I am in the same boat as you and find it very sad, disorienting and infuriating.
My lifelong friends who were always cynical libertines are now all transformed into pious scolds! Is like Invasion of the Body Snatchers!
I can only hope the fever passes soon...keep on growlin'!
It's social media, the algorithms pushing outrage to trigger engagement in pursuit of profit. Trump just leveraged the new tech, but the underlying problem is social media.
Call me a racist but as a former resident of Sanford, this story stunk from day one. Something to ponder. . .
The notion of "equality" was used to depose kings. It has devolved into an ideology of covetousness, bribery, entitlement and WOKE oppression, undermining the very notion that America is a place where you can "get ahead." Virtually all the celebrated black victims of recent note were punks, plain and simple, who almost certainly got what they had coming to them. I would feel the same if they were white. And the exception proves the rule. The great puzzle is why do people who identify as "black" see them as their heroes. People who identify as "black" are being played by power-hungry, phony whites and blacks in politics and the media. Wake up, if you can.
Zooming out. What we are seeing is what the founding fathers predicted. Any republican or democratic form of government is doomed to failure outside of a common culture. In a multicultural nation, especially a growing one, there are simply too many cultural differences to resolve and not enough time or efficient patches to fix them. And the notion that we would all become pals as things went along, has been clearly disproven, outside of television and the movies. Be honest. With war, pestilence and starvation on the horizon, does anybody seriously believe that things are going to get better. Food for thought.
Tray von thought Zimmerman was gay. Tray von was on his phone talking to his girlfriend and calling Zimmerman a punk. He said a punk was following him around. While talking to his girlfriend on the phone he decided to go back and put on a show for his girlfriend and beat the crap out of Zimmerman. The punk. Tray von probably thought why would some white guy befalling him around at night. He had to be gay. He said as much to his girlfriend by calling Zimmerman a punk. However, that doesn't fit the narrative of the media. Just like poor Michael Brown. The media kept pushing hands up don't shoot. That was another lie. Unfortunately, the media never tells you that poor Michael Brown was according to his friends and witnesses claiming he had been talking to angels in the days leading up to him getting shot while fighting with the policeman. I'm not a doctor but I think poor Michael Brown was having schizophrenic episodes which would explain all of this odd behavior. But you will wait a long time for the media tell you anything about that at all. It doesn't fit their narrative. The media has been hell-bent on starting a race war in America ever since 2010 when half the country was focus on the excessive greed in Wall Street and our banking system. The people of the top decided to make sure we would not look at them anymore and focus on the bogeyman of race. Why worry about Wall Street when the country is full of white supremacist. It's all a big distraction. We are being played.
I used to work with Mr Zimmerman. He was , in fact , a liberal. He was definitely slandered by the liberal media.
Back then , he was young and a very good guy. I enjoyed his company.
When the facts finally came out , the acquittal was not surprising. I remember seeing Zimmerman in a news clip being brought to the police station. You could see the top of his head was bloodied and his nose was swollen. He didn’t look like I remembered. This was self defense whether the other side sees it that way or not.
Zimmerman took a black girl to the prom and started a company with a black partner. His black neighbors who he met with on watch reported no issues. His 911 calls, though high in number, spanned the spectrum in terms of the races of the people he reported.
The unrecognized tragedy of the incident is that police budgets were dropping in the town and the county at the time, and things were getting worse (though not as bad as now). An elderly couple in that neighborhood reported that when they asked the police to help protect them the officers told them to get an alarm and a big dog. Zimmerman was reacting to these conditions, which is not to say whether his actions were reasonable or not - but rather that if the state abandons the provision of safety, bad things happen.
I have been working on a rebuttal to that horrible series, Rest in Power. Work in Progress, would love to hear your opinion. Everything is based on evidence I have found and will eventually be fully sourced.
This is terrific. The thing that was so maddening to me, and it's because I knew Z, is the media TOTALLY dehumanized the guy. He was in his low 20s when I worked with him.
He was easy to work with and definitely collaborative at work. We often went to lunch and always had a good time. I felt bad for the guy for some of the events that happened after acquittal--but who knows how a guy would act or feel after being railroaded in so many media avenues? I'm sad to say I only spoke to him once while some of the events were happening. Told him I would just pray for him and that was the last time we spoke. I simply have good memories of the guy.
What is amazing to witness is how badly so many can not conceive of admitting right wingers are correct on how to manage society. Like the nuclear family is a chemotherapy treatment or something to accept, except worse? At least chemotherapy might heal you. Data says you may go into remission if caught early, yet no one on the Left can ever admit a GOP'er has a good idea. I frankly have stopped caring about society as a whole. Society is a perpetual Catch-22, with no one from either side ever daring to call a spade a spade. Oops sorry, not allowed to say that? When someone on the Left is ready to start admitting that two parent families, regardless of race, with both a mom and a dad are good for society, maybe then progress will ensue. Oh and Karl Marx is poison. Weird how an entitled white guy is the bedrock saint of the Left, but its 'white supremacy' of the GOP that is ruining the world? Excuse me if I've withdrawn my consent of being governed by anyone but myself from now on. The entire public sphere has gone mad.
What John is describing in the last paragraph is the definition of "Cognitive Dissonance". It has become popular to hurl that around as another dismissive of those with whom you disagree, but few take the time to truly understand what it is, how we are all subject to it to some degree.
The idea that, in order to accept or believe a piece of information, would require the undermining of a great deal of one's foundational beliefs, then that information is rejected out of hand, without consideration.
As stated, all are subject to this, and only by being willing to challenge what we believe can we hope to rise above it.
Currently, due to the preponderance of liberal views in media, government and academia, it is the liberal viewpoint which is most frequently associated with this malady.
It manifests itself in a "The Emperor's New Clothes" style of willful, even cheery, rejection of obvious truths in favor of "narrative" supporting falsity's.
A lot of the narrative is down to electioneering, I fear. The Obama team was looking for a racial incident to highlight early in 2012 to help motivate African-American turnout. Trayvon was in the wrong place at the wrong time in Florida, but in the right place (a swing state) at the right time for the Obama campaign. Ferguson in 2014 (right before midterms) confirmed this pattern of campaign activity. Jump on a well-timed incident and create a narrative that need not pay much attention to fact. They tried it again in 2016 in Charlotte, once again picking an incident where facts really didn’t support the narrative. The traffic stop shooting in Minnesota around the same time had much more egregious and narrative-supporting circumstances, but Minnesota isn’t a swing state and there were plenty of progressive activists already on the ground in North Carolina and ready to go. Needs must. Of course we had George Floyd in 2020, where at least the facts of this horrific incident fit the narrative. The reality, though, is that nationwide protests were already planned (as was the “defund the police” meme)….merely waiting for the trigger incident that would be used as the focal point. What the police did to Mr. Floyd was horrible and unforgivable, but there are a half a dozen incidents like this every year with more innocent victims (remember the boy on the swing in Cleveland?) that don’t trigger a year of riots….at least not in a year without an election. Obama proved that getting people riled up with hate was a winning strategy. No surprise that Trump and Biden copied this with their supporters. Pols may not be very bright, but they know what works. Cooler heads can prevail only in odd-numbered years.
Unfortunately so many cases can be described as "when idiots collide."
As much as I'd like to accept what Glenn and John say here, I always come back to the fact that Zimmerman got out of his car when specifically advised not to by the police dispatcher. That was the fatal choice.
And for anyone suggesting that Martin ought to have just said "my dad's place is right there" and defused the situation--why should he have? What right of information did he owe Zimmerman? If I'd been walking lawfully to the home of a parent--or a friend or relative--and a stranger demanded to know who I was and what I was doing there, I'd be pretty pissed off myself.
For me the only "why didn't he just" is Zimmerman staying in his car and waiting for the lawful authorities.
He remains with that culpability, morally, even if by law and fact he was properly acquitted, and if the full picture is as Glenn and John say, then I support that acquittal in law and fact.
Still wrong. He was already out of his car trying to answer the dispatcher's question and following when the dispatcher asked if he was following, and then said it wasn't necessary, to which Zimmerman acquiesced. Absolutely no evidence to support that he kept following after that.
Nope. Zimmerman exited the car in response to a dispatcher's query. And he had every right to do so. And Zimmerman didn't drag Martin back to the T to fight him. Martin left and came back looking for a fight. All by his lonesome.
Professor Loury, thank you for your important work. - The PEW Center just put out new findings titles “ Black Americans’ views of race and identity”. Could you possibly comment on the PEW report in your show. Thank you.
Ah, yes; the incident that introduced us to the term "white Hispanic" from the chief hustler of the day, Reverend Al. A wholly avoidable situation all around. As I recall, Martin's father lived in the subdivision. How hard to say, "My dad's house is right around the corner. Follow me."
In fairness, an ARMED community watch person is not the norm. The job is to be eyes and ears, not an enforcement mechanism. Again, avoidable, except that cannot happen with the activist wing of any cause. When possible, an incident must be framed through the lens of the cause. Perpetuating grievance is a livelihood for too many and a source of political power for others. No one is jumping off the gravy train when the grift remains in play.
It appears that when viewed through the Loury-McWhorter lens, the whole Emmett Till narrative should be revisited. Clearly the young teen wasn't accosted and then killed because he whistled at a White woman (which later proved false by her own admission), but rather the Mississippian husband went after Till because he was "young and ain't from around here." It makes sense, then, that Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney were murdered because they weren't respectful of authority in the middle of the night in Mississippi. Similarly, we should look again at the middle 1960s antics at the Pickrick in Atlanta. Lester Mattox had every right to brandish ax handles because after all, the people who fried the chicken were Black. Now tell us, (1) why was a young Black 17 year old walking from the convenience store reason for alarm? (2) Why would it be necessary to get out of your truck with a firearm, especially when advised not to do so by authorities? (3) Why was it necessary to walk upon Trayvon Martin, to demand that he stop and divulge why he was in the neighborhood and where was he going? (4) The fact is that Trayvon Martin could have been on weekend release from a juvenile detention center (which he was not) yet George Zimmerman had no right to impose himself in Trayvon Martin's space. It is seldom "truth" that Loury and McWhorter are after. It clearly is appeasing and or giving the benefit of the doubt to those whose actions are blatantly bigoted.
You are making something very clear, but it's not what you think. Not only are some of us clear-eyed enough to realize Glenn & John were after the truth re The Trayvon Hoax, but also that they found and exposed it. If you watched the trial, start to finish (as I did, as did the jury that found Zimmerman not guilty) you can't unlearn the facts of the case - unless you wish to protect your own willful ignorance at any cost. And then there are the facts not even presented at trial - their absence actually favored Travon, but still, the defense won without them because of the facts that were presented.
John & Glenn (heard their original 2 videos on this, not yet this current one) didn't even really delve into what Florida's "Sunshine" (transparency) laws revealed about Trayvon, which didn’t match the sweet, innocent victim we kept hearing was all we should associate with him - the other side of him that wasnt laid out at trial. But I will. Trayvon had fallen into badass teen, doing bad things, violent things. He only crossed paths with Zimmerman because his mother, in desperation, sent him to stay with his dad during his latest of several school suspensions. Now if this truth offends, so be it: he was a troubled teenager who did troubling things and they were escalating - his texts show he actively sought out physical fights, bragged about it, was trying to get hold of a gun, etc. I am not saying that was ALL Trayvon was, but whatever else he was on the positive side of the ledger, he was also THAT.
And it was that which put him where he was and caused him to double back and violently confront Zimmerman. So Trayvon jumped him and relentlessly pounded his head into the cement. You could hear Zimmerman’s cries for help recorded and played at the trial as neighbors called 911. But the pounding continued and he logically thought he might die before help arrived. So he shot and killed Trayvon with his legal gun. In self defense.
That’s the truth, tragic though it may be, and here’s something else I find to be true: When you intend to make yourself a danger to others, you end up being a danger to yourself, as well. Trayvon. Others. Far, far too many others.
As a sidenote: It's plausible that Trayvon was angry that the "creepy cracka" (as a witness claimed he called Zimmerman while on his cell with her) was a lurking 'perv', who was interested in him sexually. Feels like somewhere on the spectrum of recent news of Kidd Creole of Grandmaster Flash/Furious 5 fame, who just got put away for manslaughter, for stabbing a homeless man to death who he thought was digging him “that way”. The guy called out a greeting to him, no threat at all, and Glover (aka Kidd Creole) should've, could've, just continued on his way to work instead of choosing to confront the man and violently 'defend' his 'manhood'. How tragically absurd. If he had really been a man, he wouldn't be a killer, locked up in prison, and his victim wouldn't be dead.
I know you’re trying to be clever but your analogies distill to: Trayvon Martin = Emmett Till (and you wouldn’t want to try to victim-blame Emmett Till, would you?)
This is no different than what’s been implied if not stated as nauseam since this incident was wildly misrepresented in the media and by many politicians and activists both appalled by what happened - and eager to exploit it: Trayvon Martin = Emmett Till. Except not much of what we were told about that tragic encounter turned out to be true.
“George Zimmerman had no right to impose himself in Trayvon Martin’s space”.
What pray tell does that mean? How does that work in practice? Zimmerman better not dare look in Martin’s direction? Better not betray any concern about the spate of burglaries which had taken place at that complex? Better intuit where Martin would ambush him so as to avoid that area? Better leave the entire area rather than risk offending a teenager comfortable with using his fists who might be willing and able to pin him to the ground and bash his head into the concrete? Look, I think we all wish Zimmerman had shown caution and discretion and not even gotten out of his car. No sane or decent person isn’t sick at a teenager dying - however legally justified it was. But that’s part of what you’re ignoring: if it had been Zimmerman and not actually Martin who had insisted on imposing himself on the other’s space - by jumping him and beating his head into the concrete, or, if it it had been Zimmerman who had even so much as persistently stalked and cornered and accused Martin and plausibly made him feel like he might need to defend himself to get away from this man, wouldn’t that have been recognized and weighed appropriately at some point in the trial? Martin initiated the fight and Zimmerman was in real trouble. A person can black out or even die from having to the back of his head pounded into the concrete. One narrative was ascendant and it was clear what verdict the public had been primed to demand and expect. And yet the discernible facts said otherwise.
I might be a good example of the kind of “independent”, “moderate” white voter Glenn and John refer to. One who was and is shaped indelibly by an antipathy to divisive and often bigoted GOP racial politics. Except, for those wondering just how big that semi-invisible, silent cohort of voters is, and who wonders just how intensely some of us oppose, are appalled by, frankly feel betrayed by, this newer Dem/ideological left style of grossly racially-divisive lies in service of a narrative and agenda, I might be an even more notable example. I made a campaign poster on school supply poster board in support of Jesse Jackson when I was a kid. I was president of the College Dems chapter of my large Midwestern state university. Jumping ahead a number of years, I was enough of a super-volunteer for the 2012 Obama re-elect, I was offered a paid staff position based in the suburbs west of Philly. What was I arguably most proud of? Helping lead several voter outreach/registration/ballot access troubleshooting/volunteer recruitment trips to West Philly. Not far from where Rizzo dropped a bomb on the MOVE HQ. you know what else I did? Virtually lived (during working hours) in NYCHA buildings in Brooklyn to listen to and help organize residents rightly concerned about things like racially disparate enforcement of minor nonviolent drug offenses, and official indifference re: a pattern of wrongful convictions. I spoke with damn near everyone in Red Hook Houses (much nicer people btw than in Park Slope where last I heard Charles Blow lives, quite comfortably I’m certain).
Now? I am pissed. I am so angry and alienated at the corrosive racialist if not actually racist lies and blanket smears which have become the go-to left of center and partisan Dem playbook for sliming and ruining anyone who call them on their rampant BS, I am open for the first time in my life to voting for reasonable Republicans. If you’ve ever, say, mangled an earlobe by pressing a Donkey lapel pin into service as an earring, you’ll know how jarring a change that is. But I’m not someone who was a hardcore partisan of one side who either through wholesale ideological conversion or David Brock-style mercenary cynicism flipped 180 degrees to the other side. I’m a vegan animal rights activist for chrissakes. I’m on many issues still what, as recently as the end of Obama’s first term, we might’ve called a mainstream liberal Democrat. I’ve lost two 20+ year close friends merely for not being willing to continually 100% toe the line and echo the same jargon, the same lazily sweeping assumptions and smears, the same vicious dehumanization of anyone who disagrees politically as an “insurrectionist” or “white supremacist”. I worked a bit for a Dem congressional candidate as recently as 2018. But I’m beyond exhausted with the disastrously clueless, counterproductive far-left identitarian policies of “my side”. The near-total triumph of sneering ideology and partisanship over a good faith defense of a program remotely suited and effective at even addressing the needs of the preferred intersectional caste members they claim to care about. I am so tired after all I’ve done to put other groups ahead of me - regardless of my own needs - that my response to attempts to bully and gaslight me into accepting 2022 is somehow worse for all of my black fellow citizens than 1980 or 1950 or maybe even 1920 - due to unwoke and on that basis alone supposedly white supremacist deadenders like me, my weariness has begun to calcify into contempt. I am so tired of being lied to. I am so tired of being expected to join in with the liars and echo and the lies - or else. My curiosity as a flawed but well-meaning and truth-seeking human being is offended at this lockstep deceit and refusal to have adult discussions about complex and difficult issues of great public import. I didn’t flip to anything or become anything. I’ve still never voted for a Republican and the idea still makes me uncomfortable. But on these critical issues and so many others, in both style and substance Dems and the broad left of center have become so willfully unmoored from reality, so giddily ready to condemn and consign to misery on the flimsiest basis half of the country, and so ideologically self-indulgent and incompetent their policies seem to sow destruction and chaos at every turn, I am now a gettable voter for at least some more moderate, reasonable, and competent Republican candidates. And I am so sick of the lies and extortionist smears and demands of the BLM-style hucksters, so tired of the industry of race-baiting grifters who chime in without fail to try to blame every single problem in the world on everyone with a similar skin pigmentation to mine - no matter how we’ve lived our lives and invested our time energy and passion to actually stand up for equal dignity, equal opportunity, and equal standing - I feel more and more motivated to push back.
I'm a lifelong conservative, but I am disillusioned with the republicans. This phenomenon is not exclusive to the left of center, just FYI. I suspect I am much more right leaning than you, but we are otherwise twins in this context. I am so sick of being lied to by both sides of the political aisle. We need to completely trash both parties, and then we can get back to a healthy discussion of the issues.. how do we fairly and humanely deal with immense numbers of people who want to come into our country without documentation? How do we walk the delicate balance between secular government and tightly held religious beliefs? How do we best help people who do not have enough access to money, food, housing, etc? ... It's time to drop all the hyperbole and lies around racism, different sexual preferences, etc and just focus on the meat of what we can improve together.
I feel like we could sit down, however many issues we might view differently, and figure out what we have in common and also zero in on some of the tensions and major trade offs that can keep issues polarized. I’m sure there are still plenty of more traditional liberal Dems with whom I could so that, too. It’s the jargon-spewing, name-calling people who have developed hardened ideological views around identity which they seek to import into and enforce in every context who seemingly refuse to have reasonable discussions. For instance, my old running club has been seized by aggressively sanctimonious millennials - people who were happy making bank themselves while speaking exactly zero truth to power at places like Citibank - who have been relentlessly trying to shame really kind, generous, welcoming older members of the club - truly community-minded people of all backgrounds - for daring to hold or attend events, due to their pernicious “whiteness”. Actually privileged (credentialed) people sending multiple long messages full of hyperlinks to tedious whiteness studies journal articles and lambasting everyone in the club who is white for their intolerable whiteness while smugly claiming they’re not attacking human beings for daring to be part of the positive inclusive community they built - just critiquing an oppressive construct - to the entire membership of what was already a very diverse and welcoming running club. Those people are impossible to talk with. They’ll literally try to tell you these are all closed issues - there is a consensus among relevant academics that they apparently need to recreationally invade community hobby groups and clubs and bully people like a softer Cultural Revolution. But I simultaneously consider a more traditional conservative Republican like Mitch McConnell as slyly cynical and dishonest as they come. There is seemingly a huge disjunction between the broader tenuously working and middle class base of the Republican Party (which is gradually diversifying- good news) and the leadership which is still in my view far too wedded to a brand of corporatism which primarily benefits the kind of big capital and very wealthy individuals who are in practice if not rhetoric no more connected or committed to the interests of this country and its people than ideological left-wingers who think having and being part of a country is racist.
Immigration is such a fascinating and challenging topic. I run into trouble with people left of center when I ask basic adult questions: how many people? and according to what criteria? If people can’t answer that or won’t at least try, they’re fundamentally unserious. I just saw a post by Freddie de Boer about the damaging dynamic between insider centrists and culturally and media-ascendant lefties in the Democratic Party, in which he stated he was a “let everyone in who wants to come guy”. This is a sort of pragmatic yet sincerely materialist Marxist writer and I have no clue how “let everyone in” (how is this not tacitly more or less latest the current Admin’s policy?) coexists with a functioning welfare state, environmental protection and trying to slow resource consumption and pollution fueling runaway climate change? I’m sure there are smart people who have come up with rhetorically appealing arguments. But trying to combine support of effectively if not overly open borders and a push for DSA-style social welfare state, and trying to protect and preserve our natural inheritance, including wildlife, is just fundamentally incoherent to me. But then most Republicans in leadership seem happy to demagogue about immigration while never actually being serious about cracking down on the demand side and their business allies’ demands for ever cheaper and pliable labor. Bloomberg of all places actually covered trafficking networks using migrant minors to fill jobs in slaughterhouses across the South. One of my favorite (and for some reason least popular) arguments is that mass illegal immigration is being used (abused, exploited) to prop up the worst cruelty of Big Ag’s indefensible business model. To go a step further would it really be shocking if the people who run slaughterhouses (and other cruel, dangerous, dirty businesses) didn’t have some kind of business relationship with the cartels, who are essentially being heavily subsidized by current federal government policy, so that they can in a sense order supplies of the most desperate workers with the least leverage to complain about anything. I feel like the Tucker Carlson types would be intrigued - until pivoting to: wait, are you one of the unAmerican weirdos whose against cheap meat mass-produced by any means. And most everyone on the left would only want to accuse me of “victim-blaming” inherently holier than thou immigrants. I don’t know if we’ll see the fruits of a true party realignment in our lifetimes. As Ruy Teixeira keeps writing, most of the voters in both parties - and in all racial and ethnic groups - are economically somewhat more liberal (is anyone really against allowing the federal government to bargain for lower drug prices, or for adding a dental benefit to Medicare?) but socially/culturally more moderate. I’d like to see a big tent, explicitly transracial working class coalition that’s culturally moderate but defends shared liberal Enlightenment values. I think countries matter as shared polities in which citizens can at least exercise some sort of participatory democratic role. But the elites in both parties seem increasingly detached from even supporting a notional idea of belonging to a common place and political nation.
Yeah, exactly. You and I are fundamentally opposites on the actual political spectrum it sounds like (which is ABSOLUTELY fine), but we have plenty in common in just, good old fashioned common sense and, probably, decency and respect for others. I want to shrink the government out of existence. I absolutely don’t want people to go without food, housing or medical care, and I don’t want to waste the earth’s resources, but i completely believe that the government is actually in the way of us improving these things. I also don’t think i have any right to control the choices anyone else makes, as long as those choices are within the bounds of the law. However, I do insist on having the same respect and deference shown to me and my rights in regards to my choices as a person and as a parent. We can debate the best solutions for these issues, like adults, exactly as you said. But when either side (or both) of the two controlling political classes are bent on causing division, not lessening it, they need to go. Along with their supporters (those intolerant millennials you speak of, and the GOP old guard). The sooner the better.
This has been fascinating reading, and I appreciate the everyone's going at it so respectfully. I doubt, however -- this is for Tyler -- that a "reasonable discussion," can be had by someone who sees the social-democratic policies of the mid-20th century as a good thing and someone who wants to "shrink the government out of existence". If there's reasonable middle ground there, I'd be happy if you could point me in its direction. Some disagreements, I'm afraid, will forever remain heated -- or irresolvable, absent political power.
E.W.R.: Your critique resonates with much of what I've come to see, courtesy of Thomas Frank (LISTEN, LIBERAL) as the flawed approach of the current Dem ascendency. While giving lip-service to working people the DNC has since Carter embraced a neoliberal technocratic "meritocracy" that has created an educated, hereditary upper middle class that has left working people in the dust while still pretending to embrace traditional liberal values. This is the dirty secret I think you're suggesting when the hard left doesn't want to hear that economic frustration and resentment of entrenched elites, not merely racism, accounts for Trump's appeal; nor does the Dem political class want to hear that's it's lip service to working people is evident to anyone paying attention.
But there is also a growing cadre of reasonable people seeking exactly the kind of return to fact-based debate you seek: Yascha Mounk at Persuasion is one example. George Packer at the Atlantic has written about it recently. Catherine Liu's VIRTUE HOARDERS goes after the whole self-congratulatory notion of the left that it represents "the good people." Jonathan Rauch's The Constitution of Knowledge attacks the extremist pieties and anti-democratic impulses on both right and left. But I don't think we're getting out of this particular political moment without more ugliness, because it's just so much easier to strike a virtuous pose than it is to actually try to solve problems. But even here on this forum, there's often more heat than light. Meaning there's no "safe place" for folks like us, and we shouldn't want one.
P.S. Richard Rorty made many of the same critiques of the elitist left in ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY:
“Members of labor unions, and unorganized and unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots… Once the strongman takes office, no one can predict what will happen.”
LOL. Claims to be moderate and independent. Next line is the Liberal "Racist Republican" trope. Too funny.
For what it’s worth, it wasn’t Frank Rizzo who bombed MOVE, it was Wilson Goode, the first African American mayor of Philadelphia,.
You sound like Bari Weiss.
Thanks?
About this: "that my response to attempts to bully and gaslight me into accepting 2022 is somehow worse for all of my black fellow citizens than 1980 or 1950 or maybe even 1920."
How does someone say that with a straight face, let alone insist that others accept it. I started grade school at the dawn of desegregation in Alabama looking not quite like either of the two dominant racial groups. There were classmates who parents saw "colored only" this and that up close. For someone to claim their life today is more difficult is not just a blatant lie, it's insulting those who lived through the sorry chapters of the past.
This is baked-in flaw of activism: the inability to accept any measure of progress, no matter the issue. Perhaps that's by design. Too often, it seems activism is designed to perpetuate problems, or the appearance of problems, because the activist is personally invested in that. People make a living or draw political power from grievance; no one actively seeks to undermine his/her livelihood. Staying in the past means being free to ignore the present. It applies to women, gays, and other groups as easily as to those involved in racial politics.
Are there data reflecting what percentage of various universities' budgets are spent on DEI administrators and their staffs?
This is a tough one and here are three examples of attempts to figure it out. At UC Berkeley, it is an enterprise that employs about 400 people: https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/uc-berkeley-spends-25m-a-year-pays-400-employees-to-advance-equity-and-inclusion/article_65d5a4ec-9894-11eb-b349-4324d0736e41.html
This is an attempt at more far-reaching data, including an attempt to figure out where the money goes: https://cspicenter.org/blog/cspi/the-black-hole-of-dei-spending-at-public-universities/
And there is this, which reads more like an advocacy piece than actual scholarship: https://www.insightintodiversity.com/an-insight-investigation-accounting-for-just-0-5-of-higher-educations-budgets-even-minimal-diversity-funding-supports-their-bottom-line/#:~:text=DEI%20spending%20often%20accounts%20for,four%2Dyear%20public%20institutions%2C%20according
For the sake of comparison, the 25 million at Berkeley is less than one percent of that institution's total budget, but it's still 25 million dollars. To do what exactly? THAT is the great unknown. You get a lot of qualitative statements on the relative value or lack thereof with this spending, but not much in terms of quantitative effects.
man, this really hit home for me, so well done and on point (cue Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly"):
"I am so tired of being lied to. I am so tired of being expected to join in with the liars and echo and the lies - or else. My curiosity as a flawed but well-meaning and truth-seeking human being is offended at this lockstep deceit and refusal to have adult discussions about complex and difficult issues of great public import."
I am also a former lifelong liberal who is exhausted with the constant emotional blackmail and moral bullying and the endless bigotry accusations of the modern Left. I haven't lost any friends (yet) because I bite my tongue and because whenever politics comes up I just yell "A pox on both their houses!" and change the subject.
But this inability to have adult discussions about complex issues, to take a step back and detach yourself from your political opinions instead of being on a hair-trigger alert for a wrong word, just this entire cynical weaponization of thought where any good-faith disagreement has to be about "privilege" or "racism"--not only is it stupid and hateful, it's become standard M.O. for the people who consider themselves the educated, enlightened, tolerant defenders of democracy!
I think Twitter then Trump then Floyd broke liberals' brains and I don't see them recovering anytime soon.
I agree with most of what you say, except that I question whether it was Trump (and his mean tweets) or the media hype about Trump that contibuted to breaking liberals' brains. I suspect it was the latter. Looking back at my own long history of being a liberal, I realize, reluctantly, that for many years I was a member of a Dem cult who believed we were the good people. For me the shock came in 2017 when I and my closest friends, all of us judges, were discussing Russiagate, and I dared ask why everyone was so quick to accept the narrative of the Clinton campaign when the FBI wasn't even given access to the DNC's server. I said I didn't know what the truth was, but I couldn't think of any circumstance where someone could even be tried for an alleged crime, without law enforcement gaining access to the alleged weapon and investigating the crime scene. I still recall the looks on my friends' faces: their eyes went cold and their voices clipped. I had done the unthinkable: I had questioned a narrative that they knew was unsupported by evidence, and in doing that, I had demonstrated that I was no longer a true believer.
Hey, whether it was Trump or the political/media class' massive hysterical allergic reaction to his victory, either way here we are. I am in the same boat as you and find it very sad, disorienting and infuriating.
My lifelong friends who were always cynical libertines are now all transformed into pious scolds! Is like Invasion of the Body Snatchers!
I can only hope the fever passes soon...keep on growlin'!
It's social media, the algorithms pushing outrage to trigger engagement in pursuit of profit. Trump just leveraged the new tech, but the underlying problem is social media.
I did a review of Rest in Power and thought I would share. Doubt Glenn and John read the comments, but for others:
https://salsassin.wordpress.com/2022/03/01/paramounts-rest-in-power-the-trayvon-martin-story-review-10-years-after-his-death/
Call me a racist but as a former resident of Sanford, this story stunk from day one. Something to ponder. . .
The notion of "equality" was used to depose kings. It has devolved into an ideology of covetousness, bribery, entitlement and WOKE oppression, undermining the very notion that America is a place where you can "get ahead." Virtually all the celebrated black victims of recent note were punks, plain and simple, who almost certainly got what they had coming to them. I would feel the same if they were white. And the exception proves the rule. The great puzzle is why do people who identify as "black" see them as their heroes. People who identify as "black" are being played by power-hungry, phony whites and blacks in politics and the media. Wake up, if you can.
Zooming out. What we are seeing is what the founding fathers predicted. Any republican or democratic form of government is doomed to failure outside of a common culture. In a multicultural nation, especially a growing one, there are simply too many cultural differences to resolve and not enough time or efficient patches to fix them. And the notion that we would all become pals as things went along, has been clearly disproven, outside of television and the movies. Be honest. With war, pestilence and starvation on the horizon, does anybody seriously believe that things are going to get better. Food for thought.
Tray von thought Zimmerman was gay. Tray von was on his phone talking to his girlfriend and calling Zimmerman a punk. He said a punk was following him around. While talking to his girlfriend on the phone he decided to go back and put on a show for his girlfriend and beat the crap out of Zimmerman. The punk. Tray von probably thought why would some white guy befalling him around at night. He had to be gay. He said as much to his girlfriend by calling Zimmerman a punk. However, that doesn't fit the narrative of the media. Just like poor Michael Brown. The media kept pushing hands up don't shoot. That was another lie. Unfortunately, the media never tells you that poor Michael Brown was according to his friends and witnesses claiming he had been talking to angels in the days leading up to him getting shot while fighting with the policeman. I'm not a doctor but I think poor Michael Brown was having schizophrenic episodes which would explain all of this odd behavior. But you will wait a long time for the media tell you anything about that at all. It doesn't fit their narrative. The media has been hell-bent on starting a race war in America ever since 2010 when half the country was focus on the excessive greed in Wall Street and our banking system. The people of the top decided to make sure we would not look at them anymore and focus on the bogeyman of race. Why worry about Wall Street when the country is full of white supremacist. It's all a big distraction. We are being played.
I used to work with Mr Zimmerman. He was , in fact , a liberal. He was definitely slandered by the liberal media.
Back then , he was young and a very good guy. I enjoyed his company.
When the facts finally came out , the acquittal was not surprising. I remember seeing Zimmerman in a news clip being brought to the police station. You could see the top of his head was bloodied and his nose was swollen. He didn’t look like I remembered. This was self defense whether the other side sees it that way or not.
Zimmerman took a black girl to the prom and started a company with a black partner. His black neighbors who he met with on watch reported no issues. His 911 calls, though high in number, spanned the spectrum in terms of the races of the people he reported.
The unrecognized tragedy of the incident is that police budgets were dropping in the town and the county at the time, and things were getting worse (though not as bad as now). An elderly couple in that neighborhood reported that when they asked the police to help protect them the officers told them to get an alarm and a big dog. Zimmerman was reacting to these conditions, which is not to say whether his actions were reasonable or not - but rather that if the state abandons the provision of safety, bad things happen.
Thank you for that.
I have been working on a rebuttal to that horrible series, Rest in Power. Work in Progress, would love to hear your opinion. Everything is based on evidence I have found and will eventually be fully sourced.
https://salsassin.wordpress.com/2022/03/01/paramounts-rest-in-power-the-trayvon-martin-story-review-10-years-after-his-death/
This is terrific. The thing that was so maddening to me, and it's because I knew Z, is the media TOTALLY dehumanized the guy. He was in his low 20s when I worked with him.
He was easy to work with and definitely collaborative at work. We often went to lunch and always had a good time. I felt bad for the guy for some of the events that happened after acquittal--but who knows how a guy would act or feel after being railroaded in so many media avenues? I'm sad to say I only spoke to him once while some of the events were happening. Told him I would just pray for him and that was the last time we spoke. I simply have good memories of the guy.
What is amazing to witness is how badly so many can not conceive of admitting right wingers are correct on how to manage society. Like the nuclear family is a chemotherapy treatment or something to accept, except worse? At least chemotherapy might heal you. Data says you may go into remission if caught early, yet no one on the Left can ever admit a GOP'er has a good idea. I frankly have stopped caring about society as a whole. Society is a perpetual Catch-22, with no one from either side ever daring to call a spade a spade. Oops sorry, not allowed to say that? When someone on the Left is ready to start admitting that two parent families, regardless of race, with both a mom and a dad are good for society, maybe then progress will ensue. Oh and Karl Marx is poison. Weird how an entitled white guy is the bedrock saint of the Left, but its 'white supremacy' of the GOP that is ruining the world? Excuse me if I've withdrawn my consent of being governed by anyone but myself from now on. The entire public sphere has gone mad.
What John is describing in the last paragraph is the definition of "Cognitive Dissonance". It has become popular to hurl that around as another dismissive of those with whom you disagree, but few take the time to truly understand what it is, how we are all subject to it to some degree.
The idea that, in order to accept or believe a piece of information, would require the undermining of a great deal of one's foundational beliefs, then that information is rejected out of hand, without consideration.
As stated, all are subject to this, and only by being willing to challenge what we believe can we hope to rise above it.
Currently, due to the preponderance of liberal views in media, government and academia, it is the liberal viewpoint which is most frequently associated with this malady.
It manifests itself in a "The Emperor's New Clothes" style of willful, even cheery, rejection of obvious truths in favor of "narrative" supporting falsity's.
Ok, all well and good, now discuss George Floyd.
Shoot Trayvon Again.
Does McWhorter have the guts to make this case in the NYT?
A lot of the narrative is down to electioneering, I fear. The Obama team was looking for a racial incident to highlight early in 2012 to help motivate African-American turnout. Trayvon was in the wrong place at the wrong time in Florida, but in the right place (a swing state) at the right time for the Obama campaign. Ferguson in 2014 (right before midterms) confirmed this pattern of campaign activity. Jump on a well-timed incident and create a narrative that need not pay much attention to fact. They tried it again in 2016 in Charlotte, once again picking an incident where facts really didn’t support the narrative. The traffic stop shooting in Minnesota around the same time had much more egregious and narrative-supporting circumstances, but Minnesota isn’t a swing state and there were plenty of progressive activists already on the ground in North Carolina and ready to go. Needs must. Of course we had George Floyd in 2020, where at least the facts of this horrific incident fit the narrative. The reality, though, is that nationwide protests were already planned (as was the “defund the police” meme)….merely waiting for the trigger incident that would be used as the focal point. What the police did to Mr. Floyd was horrible and unforgivable, but there are a half a dozen incidents like this every year with more innocent victims (remember the boy on the swing in Cleveland?) that don’t trigger a year of riots….at least not in a year without an election. Obama proved that getting people riled up with hate was a winning strategy. No surprise that Trump and Biden copied this with their supporters. Pols may not be very bright, but they know what works. Cooler heads can prevail only in odd-numbered years.
Unfortunately so many cases can be described as "when idiots collide."
As much as I'd like to accept what Glenn and John say here, I always come back to the fact that Zimmerman got out of his car when specifically advised not to by the police dispatcher. That was the fatal choice.
And for anyone suggesting that Martin ought to have just said "my dad's place is right there" and defused the situation--why should he have? What right of information did he owe Zimmerman? If I'd been walking lawfully to the home of a parent--or a friend or relative--and a stranger demanded to know who I was and what I was doing there, I'd be pretty pissed off myself.
For me the only "why didn't he just" is Zimmerman staying in his car and waiting for the lawful authorities.
He remains with that culpability, morally, even if by law and fact he was properly acquitted, and if the full picture is as Glenn and John say, then I support that acquittal in law and fact.
Only
“ the fact that Zimmerman got out of his car when specifically advised not to by the police dispatcher.”
Never happened.
OK, you are correct.
"And after having been told by the radio dispatcher that they didn't need him to get out of his vehicle, he nevertheless got out of his vehicle."
I'm sorry that they spoke so courteously to him when the situation called for an imperative.
Still wrong. He was already out of his car trying to answer the dispatcher's question and following when the dispatcher asked if he was following, and then said it wasn't necessary, to which Zimmerman acquiesced. Absolutely no evidence to support that he kept following after that.
https://youtu.be/efEl02Q8ml4
So Martin dragged him out of his car?
Nope. Zimmerman exited the car in response to a dispatcher's query. And he had every right to do so. And Zimmerman didn't drag Martin back to the T to fight him. Martin left and came back looking for a fight. All by his lonesome.
Collision of idiots- good one! But what right did TM have to jump on a guy and pound his head onto the sidewalk? That is what got him shot.
I agree.
Professor Loury, thank you for your important work. - The PEW Center just put out new findings titles “ Black Americans’ views of race and identity”. Could you possibly comment on the PEW report in your show. Thank you.
Ah, yes; the incident that introduced us to the term "white Hispanic" from the chief hustler of the day, Reverend Al. A wholly avoidable situation all around. As I recall, Martin's father lived in the subdivision. How hard to say, "My dad's house is right around the corner. Follow me."
In fairness, an ARMED community watch person is not the norm. The job is to be eyes and ears, not an enforcement mechanism. Again, avoidable, except that cannot happen with the activist wing of any cause. When possible, an incident must be framed through the lens of the cause. Perpetuating grievance is a livelihood for too many and a source of political power for others. No one is jumping off the gravy train when the grift remains in play.
There is nothing wrong with a NW member being armed. What we are told is not to engage. And there is no evidence that George did.!
McWhorter has a pretty big megaphone at NYT. He could lay this all out there, could he not?
I doubt NYT would publish.
It appears that when viewed through the Loury-McWhorter lens, the whole Emmett Till narrative should be revisited. Clearly the young teen wasn't accosted and then killed because he whistled at a White woman (which later proved false by her own admission), but rather the Mississippian husband went after Till because he was "young and ain't from around here." It makes sense, then, that Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney were murdered because they weren't respectful of authority in the middle of the night in Mississippi. Similarly, we should look again at the middle 1960s antics at the Pickrick in Atlanta. Lester Mattox had every right to brandish ax handles because after all, the people who fried the chicken were Black. Now tell us, (1) why was a young Black 17 year old walking from the convenience store reason for alarm? (2) Why would it be necessary to get out of your truck with a firearm, especially when advised not to do so by authorities? (3) Why was it necessary to walk upon Trayvon Martin, to demand that he stop and divulge why he was in the neighborhood and where was he going? (4) The fact is that Trayvon Martin could have been on weekend release from a juvenile detention center (which he was not) yet George Zimmerman had no right to impose himself in Trayvon Martin's space. It is seldom "truth" that Loury and McWhorter are after. It clearly is appeasing and or giving the benefit of the doubt to those whose actions are blatantly bigoted.
You are making something very clear, but it's not what you think. Not only are some of us clear-eyed enough to realize Glenn & John were after the truth re The Trayvon Hoax, but also that they found and exposed it. If you watched the trial, start to finish (as I did, as did the jury that found Zimmerman not guilty) you can't unlearn the facts of the case - unless you wish to protect your own willful ignorance at any cost. And then there are the facts not even presented at trial - their absence actually favored Travon, but still, the defense won without them because of the facts that were presented.
John & Glenn (heard their original 2 videos on this, not yet this current one) didn't even really delve into what Florida's "Sunshine" (transparency) laws revealed about Trayvon, which didn’t match the sweet, innocent victim we kept hearing was all we should associate with him - the other side of him that wasnt laid out at trial. But I will. Trayvon had fallen into badass teen, doing bad things, violent things. He only crossed paths with Zimmerman because his mother, in desperation, sent him to stay with his dad during his latest of several school suspensions. Now if this truth offends, so be it: he was a troubled teenager who did troubling things and they were escalating - his texts show he actively sought out physical fights, bragged about it, was trying to get hold of a gun, etc. I am not saying that was ALL Trayvon was, but whatever else he was on the positive side of the ledger, he was also THAT.
And it was that which put him where he was and caused him to double back and violently confront Zimmerman. So Trayvon jumped him and relentlessly pounded his head into the cement. You could hear Zimmerman’s cries for help recorded and played at the trial as neighbors called 911. But the pounding continued and he logically thought he might die before help arrived. So he shot and killed Trayvon with his legal gun. In self defense.
That’s the truth, tragic though it may be, and here’s something else I find to be true: When you intend to make yourself a danger to others, you end up being a danger to yourself, as well. Trayvon. Others. Far, far too many others.
As a sidenote: It's plausible that Trayvon was angry that the "creepy cracka" (as a witness claimed he called Zimmerman while on his cell with her) was a lurking 'perv', who was interested in him sexually. Feels like somewhere on the spectrum of recent news of Kidd Creole of Grandmaster Flash/Furious 5 fame, who just got put away for manslaughter, for stabbing a homeless man to death who he thought was digging him “that way”. The guy called out a greeting to him, no threat at all, and Glover (aka Kidd Creole) should've, could've, just continued on his way to work instead of choosing to confront the man and violently 'defend' his 'manhood'. How tragically absurd. If he had really been a man, he wouldn't be a killer, locked up in prison, and his victim wouldn't be dead.
I know you’re trying to be clever but your analogies distill to: Trayvon Martin = Emmett Till (and you wouldn’t want to try to victim-blame Emmett Till, would you?)
This is no different than what’s been implied if not stated as nauseam since this incident was wildly misrepresented in the media and by many politicians and activists both appalled by what happened - and eager to exploit it: Trayvon Martin = Emmett Till. Except not much of what we were told about that tragic encounter turned out to be true.
“George Zimmerman had no right to impose himself in Trayvon Martin’s space”.
What pray tell does that mean? How does that work in practice? Zimmerman better not dare look in Martin’s direction? Better not betray any concern about the spate of burglaries which had taken place at that complex? Better intuit where Martin would ambush him so as to avoid that area? Better leave the entire area rather than risk offending a teenager comfortable with using his fists who might be willing and able to pin him to the ground and bash his head into the concrete? Look, I think we all wish Zimmerman had shown caution and discretion and not even gotten out of his car. No sane or decent person isn’t sick at a teenager dying - however legally justified it was. But that’s part of what you’re ignoring: if it had been Zimmerman and not actually Martin who had insisted on imposing himself on the other’s space - by jumping him and beating his head into the concrete, or, if it it had been Zimmerman who had even so much as persistently stalked and cornered and accused Martin and plausibly made him feel like he might need to defend himself to get away from this man, wouldn’t that have been recognized and weighed appropriately at some point in the trial? Martin initiated the fight and Zimmerman was in real trouble. A person can black out or even die from having to the back of his head pounded into the concrete. One narrative was ascendant and it was clear what verdict the public had been primed to demand and expect. And yet the discernible facts said otherwise.