Editor’s Note: The Last Redoubt Continues with his “Lies and Consequences” posts.
As I started pointing out in my last post, we already know the Left doesn’t care about truth. As good little post-modernists, they only believe that power exists. One consequence of that is that pointing out the hypocrisy of the left is usually a waste of time, except as leverage to point out what their true motives are, or that they are lying through their teeth.
“But you believe in principles, right?”
Yup. And I believe in reciprocity. The unpacked Christian Golden Rule, or what Taleb would call the silver rule. If someone shows me he has no intention of following the principle he’s hammering me with, then I ignore his pleas to principle. Including new and future ones. There is no need to stay within the bounds of honor after an opponent shows himself dishonorable – though it may still be useful to do so at times (4th gen warfare and moral warfare).
An excellent overview how the left doesn’t care about truth is over at Decline and Fall, via Men of the West. If I have a nitpick, it is only that dedication to power is a principle, just not the principle the left claims to be enforcing as they beat us over the head with our own morals. It is worth every minute. It also reinforces the point that the left isn’t kidding. It doesn’t even believe in, much less care about, truth, only power. Of course they’re lying about what their principles are.
And a lot of useful idiots who are supposedly educated fall in line and buy the stories. Dialectic won’t phase them, and rhetoric is not my forte. The dialectic here is for you, for me, to provide the foundation we stand on.
These posts are not here to convince normies, until they are ready to see.
From what I’ve seen, Men of the West serves much the same purpose. Take the recent post on “White Privilege.” It starts out with a rundown of his background. You and I looking at this would recognize that this is relevant, but not statistical. The leftist refrain in opposition is that whites have systemic advantages, no matter how poor one may be individually. Yeah, I know. Per their rhetoric it shouldn’t be possible, for racism is a virus all whites have, but as we’ve observed, they are liars. By itself, because of the “systemic” factor slathered on in the last few decades, any bigotry on the part of blacks is absolved and excused. Nevermind that, as major power centers bow the knee to them, they now have the institutional power.
The end, however, is where I hope we can get some effective rhetoric.
60% of black girls will report sexual abuse before the age of 18, and for every one that reports her abuse, it is estimated that there are 15 who never report it. Most experts believe that black boys have an even higher rate of sexual abuse, but it is impossible to tell because it is seldom reported.
72% of black children are born into single family homes.
With an extraordinary rate of child physical and sexual abuse, and an obscene absence of black fathers, it is little wonder that when black children go off into the world to learn survival from other black children, who are themselves victims of physical and sexual abuse, that black mothers have come to live in such fear. But the thing that they fear does not mostly come from white people or even the police. In 2016, of 3,156 black murder victims, 81% of them were murdered by other black people.
All of these frightening statistics are things that black people have done to themselves. There is no systematic racism that has forced black people to do these things. So what then is this privilege that I have?
My parents did not savage me as I was growing up. They did not sexually abuse me or allow me to be sexually abused. And even though there were a lot of broken homes in my family history, even a few absent fathers, most of the fathers in my family stuck around, or other good men took up the responsibility. We were not raised to have a chip on our shoulders. We were not raised to think that the world owed us something. Our neighbors were not 100x more likely to murder us than anyone else.
If this is my privilege, then I will accept that I do in fact have “white” privilege. But I will never apologize for it. I will thank God every day for it.
Colin Flaherty has an oft-told story of a lady in – as I recall – Baltimore, who took to complaining that she had been mugged while walking her dog. Instead of sympathy, she was excoriated for not checking her privilege. How dare she expect to walk down the sidewalk without getting mugged? Didn’t she know how privilaged she was?
Why do most “white” people expect to walk down the street without getting mugged, or to be able to leave their bike or lawnmower in the front yard without them being stolen? Because, like themeselves, other white people are far more likely to leave other people’s stuff alone.
Even in poor communities.
Contrast this with Miami. Even homes in wealthier areas frequently have security gates close around front doors and patios, or fenced and gated front yards and driveways. One well-off family member had a metal plate in the middle of the foyer floor for a brace bar to wedge the front door shut. Electronics retailers, Lowes, and many others check your receipts as you walk out, not common in those same retailers in other parts of the country.
And obviously, Baltimore. The lady intended to shame people, to make them consider, “why is crime so out of control,” and instead got “well of course it is, how dare you assume otherwise?”
Ask another question – does poverty drive crime? Sure, a man who’s starving may steal bread, or clothes for his kid, and it certainly increases temptation, but turn an eye to the looters, and I bet even if you looked closely and carefully, the number of people limiting themselves to staple groceries and a couple outfits for their kids were few and far between.
If they existed at all. The looters weren’t looting for what they needed, they were grabbing things they wanted.
On the other hand what is the impact of theft and destruction and violence on the community? Does the criminal build anything to entrust to the future? We are told that vandalism is just stuff that cannot be replaced, but each thing broken and defaced represents a chunk of a life working to pay for it , to plan it, to build it. Worse – even as we are sanctimoniously told by liars that “stuff can be replaced, they are angry,” they neither acknowledge that the time and effort already put in cannot be replaced, nor the lives, like David Dorn’s, that were taken.
The disruption, the hospitalizations, the loss of transportation, family mementos, rape, emotional trauma, and chaos all make it harder to build and pass on. Living in a community where this always happens is living in a hell.
Hell is indeed other people, when you’re surrounded by criminals.
Privilege is growing up with far less of that in your life because you live with and among people far more mindful of their neighbors.
I don’t know good rhetoric here. Is there a pithy way to say embrace “white privilege” and say “yeah, because I grew up with people who thought stealing, murder, and rape is wrong?”
