Here we are, in the first week of the last month of 2014, and by way of good cheer, I can say that things haven’t descended quite so far into the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse territory pestilence, war, famine and death as I had feared some two or three months ago, when Ebola was all the rage in news. People are still falling sick to it, of course, but curious that such news is no longer in the News, capital-N News, run by the professional news-gatherers, whose motto and mission does seem to be comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted. Funny old world, that.
Still, certain elements of the current scene do give cause for alarm. Not new alarm, but just the same old abiding fears which spurred me to begin writing books to persuade readers of the virtue of the grand American experiment and to refit the kitchen pantry closet to allow storage of mass quantities of staple foods. At the age of 60-something, I appear to be turning into my grandmothers, one of whom conserved a box of Ben Hur brand cayenne pepper over several decades until it was nothing more than some rusty-red dust, and the other of whom had a two-year supply of on-sale-purchased canned food stashed in the garage. I am trying to advance on my grandmothers’ example, though since I have a vacuum-sealer and freezer. I do wish that I had somehow managed to get ahold of the ancestral can of cayenne pepper; it’s probably valuable now as an antique for the container, if not the rust-red pepper dust therein. Enough for pestilence and famine what about those oldie-but-goodie standbys, War and Death?
They seem to have taken up residence, or at least, renewed the lease on a number of different places in recent weeks, most notably in Ferguson, Missouri a somewhat … what’s the word? Struggling? In Transition? Pre-Gentrifying? Anyway, a relatively urban suburb of St. Louis. Which, to judge from the google-maps and the various businesses involved, is not entirely unlike my own very dear suburb as far as retail establishments go. Though it would appear that Ferguson is tilted a more towards the career-welfare-benefits-recipient person of color side of the scale as far as the general population goes, whereas San Antonio tends heavily towards the military retiree side of the scale.
In reading various reports of what is going on in Ferguson I am simultaneously troubled and reassured troubled in that the mayor, governor and federal administration, at least as much as the established media seemed to be going out of their various ways to pour more gas onto a bonfire. The various free-lance civil-rights ‘activists’ and sympathizers seem also to be doing their bit. Fortunately so far, their bit seems limited to terrorizing Christmas shoppers, alienating rush-hour drivers and pro football fans, reducing children’s Christmas-carol singing choruses to tears and otherwise alienating many of those who otherwise might rightfully entertain second thoughts about aggressive and militarized policing. The usual urban thug element have concentrated their energies on burning and looting various small businesses along Ferguson’s main drag, undeterred by any feelings of racial or community solidarity, in that a good few of them were owned and operated by persons of color living in Ferguson or nearby, and contributing to the assault and murder of incidental passersby who just happen to be of the wrong color skin…
Frankly, I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if those local businesses cut their losses and relocated elsewhere … but I also wouldn’t be surprised to see that many decided to hang in there. People tend to be stubborn about their home community, and to give up on it with reluctance and only when there is little choice left. I am reassured reading reports of go-fund-me campaigns to raise donations benefitting those businesses which have been harmed, like Natalie’s Cakes, and that local men banded together to protect a Conoco station, whose white owner had been a friend to and employed many of them. It is also reassuring to read that members of the St. Louis Tea Party are working on ways to effectively assist residents and business owners, and that volunteers from the Oath Keepers are volunteering to guard Ferguson businesses. At a guess many of the go-fund-me contributors, Tea Partiers and Oath Keepers willing to weigh in are decidedly white, which would or should argue against the cause for wide-spread white racism in America, if we had an intellectual or a news-reporting establishment with any brains, nerve, or sense of independent inquiry. We might be safe from race-war and racially-motivated death for a little while longer, not that the establishment intellectuals can take any credit for this.
It is curious that the agitation in the wake of Michael Brown’s death is even more frantically focused than that following after Trayvon Martin’s. There is no doubt that it is being deliberately fomented, and finding a ready audience in the community of the professionally offended, which slightly overlaps that of the black community. I have seen a couple of different reasons suggested for this one of them being that an all-out balls-to-the-wall race war would be to the advantage of many, not least to this Administration but the most compelling to me is that Barack H. Obama was presented to the black community as all that and a bag-o-chips, the light-bringer, the wonder-worker, the anointed one, the champion of the racially-oppressed, who would make everything better. Six years later, it’s clear that he has made things worse, and most especially for the black community which turned out for him, heart and soul and votes. All this agitation is a kind of massive psychological displacement: they can’t blame themselves for being fool enough to believe the promises of a sweet-talking charlatan telling them everything they wanted to hear, or blame him because he is (sort of) black and is The First Black President-Evah! The anger has to go someplace. And so it goes to Ferguson. Discuss.
(Cross-posted at www.ncobrief.com)
Two things at work here.
First, the folks doing Ferguson seem like the same ones who put the anti-war protests together during Viet Nam. They’re always around and always will be. I feel sorry for the good people of Ferguson upon whom they have put themselves. The people of Ferguson should sell and move. That town will never recover.
Second, The blacks have lost the big game. (Gross generalizations follow. Not all statements are true for 100% of Blacks, but for the vast preponderance I fear they are. Individuals will escape this fate.) The nightmare of the Coleman Report has come true. In addition to all the cultural forces putting pressure on American families in general, abortion and the war on drugs are putting the coup de grace to the black family. Meanwhile their own “black” President has opened the flood gates to Latinos who will take the jobs they could have had. So it’s back to the bottom rung of the ladder. And now guilty Americans can check off the box of Black President. Blacks will lose the demographic struggle and look more and more like Native Americans but without Reservations or Casinos. This was the high watermark of Black Power. I’m not sure they’ve consciously figured it out, but unconsciously they know things are headed in the wrong direction. Lots of frustration.
” The people of Ferguson should sell and move. ”
To who ? It’s like the old joke about the stock market.
If the town survives, it will be unique. All the other scenes of black riots have been very slow to recover. Los Angeles had two advantages. One, the Korean storeowners armed themselves and defended their stores from the roofs. There were some deaths among the Koreans </a.
Two, the blacks have been replaced by Hispanics. I don't know where they went, maybe to Long Beach which has a serious crime problem.
The blacks have lost the big game.
True. But they made a devils bargain. In return for promises to riot or not riot as requested by the Democrats, they don’t have to work, will get paid for doing nothing, and will get special privileges. That this has cemented them outside of the normal flow of American life and to lowest economic rungs doesn’t seem to connect with them. The really sad part is each generation of black kids grows up in that and think it’s how it’s supposed to be. That it’s normal.
“… Latinos who will take the jobs they could have had. So it’s back to the bottom rung of the ladder.” Why does that keep happening? It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. (Though I may say that my few interactions with black Americans have been entirely to their credit.)
I believe the town will be rebuilt…with millions of Missouri and Federal tax dollars. I have to think back to the sixties when entire neighborhoods were burned. The one’s that I am familiar with are now occupied (and have been) by large subsidized housing blocs. The mayor and police chief’s office will be filled permanently by race specific individuals. The main street will be renamed, quite possibly for a hero of the revolution. New public transport, new parks. Headstart, Planned Parenthood. The place will be quiet and look good for a period, and then it will be time for some more money…
Those that don’t qualify for “bailout” will lose their shirts and be advised to read the writing on the wall, cut their losses and relocate. This is a new chapter in an old story.
Dearie, it’s because over and above everything, generally the Hispanics are motivated to work, and work very hard, and not for very much. This has complicated a lot of American working-class life; generally, if it’s brute physical and semi-skilled labor in the south and southwest, you’ll find mostly Hispanics doing it – from fruit-picking, to construction of all kinds, to janitorial work, landscape maintenance — and doing those jobs reliably well and with enthusiasm, and generally having no higher ambitions for themselves than perhaps owning a tiny independent company of their own, doing constriction, janitorial services or landscape maintenance. This isn’t one-hundred percent across the board, but it happens so widely that I’m always a little started to see an Anglo doing yard maintenance, or roofing, for instance.
Not to say that American-born blacks aren’t doing that kind of work, but there’s a horrible, dysfunctional black ghetto culture that has basically hamstrung a large proportion of working-class and poor blacks for at least half a century, poisoned them with resentment and an outsized sense of entitlement, and letting them skate through school and emerge uneducated and unfit for any kind of gainful work. I expect that many of us at ‘Boyz know of or personally know exceptions: a good few of the black Americans I knew in the military had specifically joined the military to escape from this milieu. My next-door neighbors three grandsons are doing OK – but their parents are married and their gran (a serious church-going sister) would skin them alive if they even put a toe into living the thug life. The oldest is in his twenties now, but he has been working since he was sixteen. Now he is in a management track at Sam’s Club, and just this year, he was able to go out and buy a new car – he has excellent credit and had saved quite a bit. It’s not a big flashy car – just a little Mitsubishi, but it’s his, he’s proud of it, and he did it on his own. Not too many twenty-somethings these days could manage it. But he and his brothers are exceptions.
You forgot to mention that the “millions of Missouri and Federal tax dollars” [I think that you are underestimating by at least 3 orders of magnitude] will all be passed through cronies and less than 10% will actually be misused to rebuild.
If you read the ferguson deal as merely another expression of racial angst, you have missed it.
A few years ago, the occupy movement started organizing and enrolling the kind of semi-pro protesters we saw in these riots in a reserve force of people who could be called out to stage whatever kind of protest/disruption was needed, depending on the circumstances.
Since then, the same groups of leftists like Answer, and various socialist and anarchist fellow travelers, have shown up repeatedly around the country to man the barricades, and picket lines, in all sorts of causes and protests.
Ferguson was a trial run. Over the next few years, and especially in the run up to the 2016 elections, expect to see this pattern repeated.
Some incident, maybe racial, maybe some other cause celeb’, will be selected by the media directors as an important event, and the drumbeat will start. All the usual media stars who rush into any volatile situation will descend on the scene and start giving speeches and holding rallies. The police or other law enforcement groups will be scrutinized severely, and criticized relentlessly, regardless of what actually is happening in the street, or what happened in the original incident that touched things off.
Most of what the participants in the riot are doing, and who they are, and who their sponsors are, will be glossed over and discounted in various ways, to obscure what’s really going on.
Following their well trodden path, the msm will report every fabulist, liar, and grievance monger’s story as factual, building up an enormous body of inflammatory “facts”, few of which will end up being true. This has been the pattern going back to the 1960’s, and well documented in recent situations such as Katrina, the Zimmerman case, and now this Ferguson firestorm. In each case, nearly everything that was reported in the first few days was later shown to be either false or exaggerated to the point of nonsense.
We are approaching an era of such social and political turmoil that this form of street theater will become increasingly common, and increasingly violent and destructive. Unless you can look past the particulars, and see the pattern, each incident will seem random, disconnected, and incomprehensible.
The unfortunate residents of Ferguson, regardless of race, were pawns in a much larger game to determine who will control the streets, and be able to terrorize their opponents, and the society at large, into granting their demands in order to appease them, and in the hope it will prevent further violence.
It won’t.
Oh, no, VR – reading about all the professional protestors setting up camp there, and how the outrage was carefully tended and fertilized – this is something a little more special. Perhaps it is SOP from now on; carefully orchestrated civil unrest, with the local authorities wringing their hands and letting the mob do what it will.
But … how will the local small business-people and residents of such places nominated as the theatre of outrage-du-jour handle it? Local people beaten up/murdered, businesses trashed, all to add a bit of stage dressing to the traveling show?
Blocking traffic, looting and destroying local businesses, frightening children, insulting audiences at concerts and football games? I can see that really beginning to piss off ordinary, non-political citizens, after a time.
Sgt. Mom, check Breitbart article about guy named Darby who is ex-leftist involved in protests. He is saying pretty much what I said based on insider knowledge.
“dysfunctional black ghetto culture that has basically hamstrung a large proportion of working-class and poor blacks for at least half a century,”
This is the Democrats’, and their teachers’ union allies’, plan for the blacks. I won’t swear that they held a strategy meeting about it but this is it.
I am very sympathetic to black parents who want better for their kids and I like to see black kids joining the military, although they are a small share of the kids where I work. I am very pro-vouchers and have no sympathy for suburban white parents who voted down an initiative in California about 15 years ago. Of course, the present California admin would never consider such a thing. They are bound hand and foot to the teachers unions.
That was me. My browser is acting up.
I agree with “veryretired”, the riots were an Occupy operation (which was originally created and encouraged by the president and his people). This was NOT some spontaneous outpouring of grief and outrage. The folks in Ferguson have every right to be upset and to express that, but their protest was hijacked by the Occupy machine, and we will just see more and more of that over time.
I also agree with “Mrs. Davis”‘s assessment about the loss of position of Blacks in this country. Question for everyone, was this an unintended consequence of the policies of the previous 50 years? Or an intended consequence?
There are two groups in the US who have been declared, for all practical purposes, as being wards of the state—Native Americans, and African-Americans.
It would be hard to imagine how the policies enacted to support that dubious status could have done any worse damage to either group. I have often said that if you allowed the KKK a to design a set of policies whose stealth purpose was the destruction of the black community, they couldn’t have done any better.
Of course, it is worth noting that the democrat party, the party of Jim Crow, segregation, and progressive eugenics policies, were the designers of the “Great Society” and it’s disastrous effects on everything it touched.
The practical effects of the “Wars” on poverty and drugs has been to lay waste the underclass, corrupt entire segments of the business and law enforcement communities, and relegate a couple generations of black men to illegality, gangsterism, and an utterly marginalized existence cut off from a normal family and community experience.
Intended or not, that’s an impressive record of destruction. Sherman’s March to the sea pales in comparison.
Intended or not, that’s an impressive record of destruction. Sherman’s March to the sea pales in comparison.
IMHO, all intended. Remember these are “Progressives”, they want everyone to be wards of an all powerful uber-government. The Indians and blacks are merely thei first groups to be captured almost totally. The poor Appalachian whites are also largely caught up in this web. If it were not for the coal mining companies………
“Of course, it is worth noting that the democrat party, the party of Jim Crow, segregation, and progressive eugenics policies, were the designers of the “Great Society” and it’s disastrous effects on everything it touched.”
This was not a conscious effort to destroy blacks. It instead is an example of how Democrats, especially southern Democrats like Johnson, thought of them. They are children unable to make their way in the world without adults guiding them and keeping them safe from hunger, etc.
The results could have been expected and Moynihan had some inkling of what would happen. Freedom is not a virtue to Democrats.