Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fool most of the country repeatedly, and we wallow in shame. Our gullibility is a national hazard. We repeatedly accept nonsensical narratives and then blindly perform as intended with no regard to the consequences. We must connect the dots between the ring leaders, their motive, our own trip around the ring and the resultant havoc. How did free thinkers become circus animals?
A few things seem clear. Humans are habitual pack animals by nature. Allowing others to dictate our thoughts and actions becomes a habit which causes our ability and desire for critical thought to atrophy. This seems especially true with undeveloped young minds. With repeated failure to question the questionable, a negative spiral develops as critical thought continues to decline and the circus animal habit is reinforced. This allows the ring leaders to float increasingly dubious theories that increase their power and reduce ours. The beliefs and behavior spread through the pack.
This strategy to manipulate and control would fail without media compliance and censorship of competing views. Yet we give the media approval to distort the truth with our patronage. We continue to vote for politicians who deploy false narratives and support censorship to suppress views that challenge them. The secret sauce to a successful campaign, however, is our unquestioning gullibility. We are accomplices in our own bondage.
A good example of this decades long strategy is unfolding before our eyes. Social justice theory is based on the idea that racism is the sole reason some groups are less successful than others. A part of this theory focuses on decolonization or freeing the oppressed who have been colonized by racist oppressors. Do protestors steeped in social justice theories who chant “from the river to the sea” realize their words support the rape, torture, and killing of Jewish children and adults? It’s doubtful they have connected the dots between the faulty logic of the narrative, the motives of those who push it, their own behavior and the beheading of babies.
Simple logic dispels the “decolonization” theory. Every single human is a descendent of “colonists” and somewhere in their lineage experienced “colonization” peaceful or otherwise. Do we all require liberation or elimination? Humans have done horrible things in their wars. We cannot change the past, we can only impact the future. One of the best humorous take downs of this theory comes from Bill Mahar.
Let’s examine another example that is not as obvious but has had compounding destructive consequences for society. We were told George Floyd’s death was a racially motivated murder.
While it is true that instances of excessive police force and racism have occurred, is it true that George Floyd’s death in police custody was the result of racism? The body cam footage demolishes the racist cop narrative. Four officers, two white, one black and one Asian, who work for a black police chief, participated in the arrest of a 6’4” 223 lb man, repeat criminal, who was whacked on a lethal dose of fentanyl combined with methamphetamine and resisted arrest. Critically important, Floyd lied about his fentanyl intake and repeatedly said he “couldn’t breathe” before Chauvin arrived on scene. He also used the same language during a 2019 arrest. It is quite straightforward. Perhaps this is why the politicians refused to release the body cam footage initially. It tells a far different story than the politicians would have us believe.
Was it 2nd degree murder? Read the medical examiner’s autopsy, watch “The Fall of Minneapolis”, read “They’re Lying” by Liz Collin, compare to the official narrative and come to your own conclusions. Those who conduct this essential research will learn that many factors contributed to Floyd’s death not the least of which were his own choices.
It was not Floyd’s tragic death per se that caused the riots. It was how his death was characterized. The Democrat leadership, their operatives and the media presented Floyd’s death as murder by a racist white cop. As revealed in the above reference material, this packaging was a well-executed nationwide disinformation campaign.
The speed and scale of the George Floyd campaign was breathtaking. We must consider the possibility that it was ready to launch as soon as an appropriate opportunity presented itself. Plus the uniformity of the immediate reactions indicated organization at the highest levels and across multiple industries. Democratic politicians, including Biden, Harris, the Minneapolis mayor, Minnesota DA and Governor declared it a racially motivated murder immediately, well before the facts were known. Media relentlessly promoted this message. The mob harassed, threatened and canceled anyone who questioned the narrative.
The roll out of the Floyd campaign alone should have pushed our BS meters into high alarm. Instead, the pack did what packs do and followed along. It was not long before corporations poured millions into BLM and white suburbanites papered their yards with Black Lives Matter signs. People who proclaimed All Lives Matter were attacked as racists. Trips to the Panderverse were fully booked.
Floyd’s death was not a racial issue so why did Democratic operatives and their partners launch a racial narrative which was guaranteed to cause riots and harm the very people they claim to support?
“Dozens of people were killed or injured in the violent unrest, and thousands of businesses and properties, many minority-owned, were looted, torched, or otherwise vandalized.” As this FEE article explains the estimated damage of between $1B and $2B only reflects insurance claims and does not come close to estimating the long term negative impact to the communities where rioting occurred. “We must also remember that riots leave a lasting shadow on a city that haunts its economy for decades. The afflicted areas face higher insurance rates, lower property values, higher prices, reduced tax revenue, and decreased economic opportunity.”
The George Floyd campaign was likely deployed for the same reason political operatives do anything – to get votes. The 2020 election was upon us. Black voter turnout had declined in 2016 as compared to 2008 and 2012. Democratic operatives were concerned that Biden’s popularity among blacks was in line with Clinton’s in 2016 and notably lower than Obama’s. Popularity impacts enthusiasm and therefore turnout plus there was some concern that Trump was gaining with black voters. This spelled trouble in the swing states.
Progressive social justice theory had already taken root in our society. It was the basis for the battle cry that systemic racism murdered George Floyd. Meanwhile Biden and Harris positioned themselves as champions for victims of racism. The media had already tarred and feathered Trump as a racist. Voila, voter enthusiasm delivered in favor of the Democrats combined with increased Trump hate.
The numbers suggest that the Floyd campaign worked. Black voter turnout did not match 2012 at 67% but did increase from 60% to 63% from 2016 to 2020 even with Biden as the candidate.
Did Democratic politicians and operatives sacrifice lives, homes, businesses and communities with a lie to drive the vote and regain power? It certainly appears so and we let them do it. We can only wonder what will happen in 2024 considering Biden and Harris’s historically low favorability ratings. Will we aid and abet the ring leaders once again?
Donations were another likely goal. From Politico on July 1, 2020: “Online donors poured a record $392 million into campaigns and causes via ActBlue in June, a sign of surging activism and political enthusiasm on the left that smashed the previous monthly high, from just before the 2018 election, by a whopping 50 percent.” White supremacists are quite generous.
It is not clear what BLM did with the $90 million they received in donations but their website in 2020 clearly stated they were a political organization dedicated to driving people to vote in the 2020 presidential election. Somehow, someway we can assume some amount of the money found its way towards that goal. Like any good scam, we may never know what happened to the rest.
The George Floyd campaign had other results. We should carefully consider whether they were intended or unintended consequences.
· Many cities defunded their police departments during the Floyd campaign. This in combination with public policies that remove consequences to crime have resulted in notable spikes in crime and chaos in these cities. It would be a worthwhile effort to determine how many additional black lives were lost to murder as a result of the George Floyd and defund the police campaigns.
· It undermined the concept of “innocent till proven guilty”, a foundational principal of our democracy. It’s interesting how those who declared Chauvin guilty before seeing the facts are the same people who say democracy is under attack from the right.
· How many people voted for Biden because they were worried their communities would be destroyed by rioters if Trump won?
· The Floyd campaign pushed the systemic racism, oppressor/oppressed message mainstream garnering solid support especially among young people who had already been steeped in social justice theory in school and social media. This allowed Biden’s handlers to cement it into government policy soon after the election.
· Floyd’s death was tragic but he is not a hero our children should emulate. He was a drug addicted criminal given to violent behavior. As Thomas Sowell has pointed out, when a group tolerates (or worse, promotes) the bad behavior of its members, it brings the whole group down. We should ponder why the Democrats take actions that suppress poor black communities.
· One of the most damaging long-term consequence of the relentless social justice campaign is the increase in racial tension in our country. Divide and conquer is an axiom for a reason.
The aftereffects of the George Floyd campaign were disastrous for our county in general and poor minority communities in particular. We must face the fact that it is partially our own fault. We swallowed the narrative hook, line and sinker, ignored the motive, performed as desired and failed to connect our own actions to the results. People died, communities were irrevocably harmed and lives destroyed.
Unfortunately we humans have a history of ignoring our BS meters with great consequence. Remember eugenics? Thomas Sowell explains in his book “Social Justice Fallacies”: “In the early decades of the twentieth century, when Progressivism was a major new force among American intellectuals and in politics, one of Progressivism’s central tenets was genetic determinism— the belief that less successful races were genetically inferior.”
Eugenics theory was a basis for genocide. More from Sowell: “A widely read book of that era, The Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant, declared that “race lies at the base of all the manifestation of modern society”96 and deplored “a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life,” when that is used “to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community.”97 This book was translated into other languages, including German, and Hitler called it his “Bible.”98”
Unbelievably genetic determinism was quite fashionable. “There were hundreds of courses on eugenics in colleges and universities across the United States,90 just as there are similarly ideological courses on college and university campuses across the country today, promoting very different ideologies as regards race, but with a very similar sense of mission, and a very similar intolerance toward those who do not share their ideology or their mission.”
Genetic determinism and eugenics faded due to inescapable facts. The Progressives then shifted as Sowell explains: “In the later decades of the twentieth century, and on into the twenty-first century, latter-day Progressives substituted racial discrimination for genes as the automatic explanation of group differences in economic and social outcomes.”
The Democrats have absorbed Progressive theory and forced their racism based social justice vision into schools, corporations and government. Yet, just as with eugenics, this theory is fatally flawed. Why do we give it any credence when common sense suggests that many factors impact the economic and social outcomes of groups such as geography, culture, education, wars, personal choices, % of single parent homes, etc. just as many factors contributed to Floyd’s death. Racism has certainly impacted the success of various groups but so have any number of other factors.
Social justice theory will eventually collapse. The question is how much damage will be done in the meantime.
It is important to note the Floyd campaign is one of many manipulative narratives pummeling our country. We can inoculate ourselves and therefore the country via knowledge, exposure to different viewpoints, context and unparsed data which unfortunately is rarely found in traditional or social media on either side. Censorship and intolerance make this task difficult, but we must dig for truth and act on it.
We will pay a heavy price if we don’t connect the dots between the power hungry, their motives, our gullible compliance, and the resultant consequences. Let’s quit the circus and start thinking again.
DETAILS
As always, I include a details section with source material that supports the opinions above and a jumping off point for readers to do their own research. We are at a critical juncture in history. Our active participation is an absolute requirement to avoid further devastating consequences. I highly recommend starting with Thomas Sowell’s book quoted liberally above, “Social Justice Fallacies”, then watch “The Fall of Minneapolis” and read “They’re Lying” by Liz Collins.
· Consider watching “Black Wisdom Matters”, a series of videos curated by Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Carol Swain and other critical thinkers.
· To follow up, read Thomas Sowell’s “Discrimination and Disparities” and “Black Rednecks and White Liberals”. Note I recommend Sowell because he is a brilliant economist, black, grew up in Harlem and is 93 years old. He is eminently qualified to discuss racism and social justice theory.
· To gain a better grasp of the full impacts of the Floyd induced riots, please consider this FEE article.
· This Seattle Times article is an important read to understand the disastrous consequences of circus folly. Curiously the language attempts to justify their shameful actions: “The shooting, which occurred early on June 29, marked the second fatal shooting during the three-week Capitol Hill Organized Protest, which sprang up in the wake of national outrage over the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. The police-free zone was set up after the Seattle Police Department abandoned its East Precinct during the protests.” Emphasis mine. No. It sprang up because of a false narrative about race that was perpetrated and promoted by the ring leaders who remained unchecked by the people.
· Census bureau’s voter turnout charts.
· This article outlines the historic black voter turnout in Georgia, a swing state. There are many reasons for this. It is logical to assume the enthusiasm created by the Floyd campaign is one of them.
· This Gallup opinion piece includes polling information and voter turnout statistics. It concludes with this sentiment: “The challenge for the Biden campaign lies in pushing Black voters’ enthusiasm (and, hence, turnout) closer to the historical records achieved by Obama in 2008 and 2012 than the lower levels seen in 2016.”
· There are many articles that state black support for Biden has fallen since 2020. Here is one. If Democratic operatives employ similar tactics, 2024 will be hell on wheels. Their strategic and well-coordinated campaign to get Trump nominated may not be enough to ensure a Democrat victory.
· Consider this article by Nate Hochman on the history of the defund the police movement. An excerpt: “The push for police dismantlement can be traced back to this view: Abolitionists maintain that crime is the result of social conditioning rather than a permanently flawed human nature, in contrast to the more traditionally conservative notion of violence as an inescapable aspect of an intrinsically broken human condition.” It is interesting to note the abolitionist view came into fashion about the same time as eugenics.
· The WSJ editorial details the aftermath of the defund the police movement in Seattle. There is a scramble to hire more police officers to combat increased crime.
· Survey results indicate that young people have been influenced by social justice narratives. Two-thirds of Americans aged 18 to 24 said they think Jews are “oppressors’, 75% said white people are “oppressors”, 60% said Hamas actions were justified and 51% believe Israel should be eliminated and given to Hamas or the Palestinians.
· The Censorship Industrial Complex (as Michael Shellenberger, Public calls it) is a serious component of narrative deployments and a frightening development in our country. Not surprisingly the politicians who support the implementation of social justice policy also support government censorship or act like it isn’t happening. Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi have done much work on this subject. This Public article by Alex Gutentag is a good starting point.
· Eugenics and genetic determinism, the pet theory of early Progressives, had a profound impact on society. Consider this article from the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “The eugenics movement of the early 20th century was full of elite thinkers who advocated contraception and sterilization as a means of minimizing the reproduction of unwanted minorities: non-white Americans, the poor, and those deemed mentally disabled or otherwise unfit.”
““Elimination of the unfit,” Sanger argued, could not be fully achieved without widespread access to birth control.” Margaret Sanger started Planned Parenthood.
· My new favorite word is “Panderverse”. Thank you South Park.
· Thank you to the friends who helped craft the above message.
“Stupid people can create problems, but it often takes brilliant people to create a real catastrophe. They have already done that enough times— and in enough different ways— for us to reconsider, before joining their latest stampedes, led by self-congratulatory elites, deaf to argument and immune to evidence.” Thomas Sowell
