Society has coarsened greatly in the last 30 years. Behavior that would be considered unacceptable behind closed doors is now conducted openly in the streets of nearly every major city. Violence in furtherance of political goals is becoming mainstream as rioters and other “aggrieved” populations are given “space to destroy” by elected politicians.
The entire #blacklivesmatter movement has been an un-American endorsement of racial discrimination – valuing one set of people over all others due to race – yet it has been granted legitimacy by elected officials and other high-profile members of the pandering class.
The rhetoric employed by these race-hustling charlatans is explosive and a clear incitement to violence and we are seeing that poisoned tree bearing fruit in the form of Dylann Roofs and Vester Flanagans.
Roof, the Charleston church shooter, and Flanagan, the former reporter who murdered two former co-workers live on the air yesterday, are both products of the same hateful mindset. Both are motivated by a desire to more starkly draw the lines of separation between us rather than erase them.
We used to have a common ethos that bound us together despite our differences, a concept that we could rely upon as a backstop to hatred when political or religious differences became too raw. We used to believe in America, and the ideals of individual liberty and personal responsibility.
Through decades of counter-cultural re-education by the Left, we no longer share a common respect for each other based upon the immutable truths our forebears once held dear. Now, after the steady and calculated erosion of American values, the backstop has been vandalized and there is nothing behind us but our own grievances wailing for ascendance.
In this climate men like Roof and Flanagan can easily make the leap from disgruntled to deadly. A quick scan of the manifesto left behind by the race killer in Roanoke Virginia reveals precisely the same twisted logic that sees every slight as a premeditated expression of racial hatred toward the oppressed black man.
The same word tracks and concepts are also present in the rhetoric of the #blacklivesmatter movement and in the speeches and ramblings of those race-hustlers extraordinaire, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
When you’re a hammer, everything appears to you as a nail. This pernicious mindset of racial elevation above all others is the blacksmith’s forge where an entire generation of young Americans are being heated and pounded into hammers, with no end in sight.
Is this an unstoppable trend in the body politic? That depends on us. The forge is useless without fuel, and that fuel is created by the burning of the rules of civilized existence. Political correctness has warped the discussion to the point of absurdity. Even a far left-wing politician like former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley was forced to backtrack after saying “all lives matter.”
You see, unless you bow to the gods of division, you are part of the problem in the eyes of the professionally aggrieved. In days past we used to tell these people what they needed to hear…”Grow up, shut up and look to yourself before blaming others.”
Now, we coddle their sensitivities in order to harvest their votes. One party has made an entire platform out of this, but the other party isn’t blameless either. Both have sacrificed truth and honesty for political gain, eschewing plain-speaking for focus-group tested “messaging” that is the political equivalent of a jar of strained peas.
America is hungry for the truth, for straight-forward talk about the problems we face. We can no longer afford to tolerate nonsense as a substitute for discussion. #blacklivesmatter is nonsense. Racism of any stripe is nonsense, and indulging these “grievances” merely serves to fuel the forge, to make more “hammers” to drive more “nails.”
The blame for the deaths of the reporter and her cameraman yesterday in Virginia lies squarely at the feet of those who spew their racial animus in furtherance of their political goals. Make them own it.