Midnight in the Republic – Volume 1

 

The Ricochet Member Feed has been on fire for the last 48 hours or so and I just haven’t been able to keep up.  But there are a lot of thoughts building up in my head that I have wanted to put out there under this header, of which I clearly borrowed from the book I just finished: Midnight in the Century by Victor Surge. (If you are not familiar with Serge, you should be.) As a preface to later volumes, I just want to throw this topic out on the table since I haven’t seen it here yet. (Apologies if I missed it.)

I first saw it this morning on Instapundit:

PROFESSOR WILLIAM JACOBSON: There’s an effort to get me fired at Cornell for criticizing the Black Lives Matter Movement.

[Quoting Jacobson]: We are living in extraordinarily dangerous times, reminiscent of the Chinese Communist Cultural Revolution, in which professors guilty of wrongthink were publicy denounced and fired at the behest of students who insist on absolute ideological orthodoxy. It’s a way of instilling terror in other students, faculty, staff, and society, so that others shut up and don’t voice dissenting views. We are seeing monuments destroyed in Taliban-fashion because they represent an uncomfortable history, movies and TV shows cancelled, and individuals disappeared from employment due to even the slightest deviation from the prevailing political culture.

This is not going to end well unless people of good concience, who support black lives but not the Black Lives Movement as it was founded and currently operates, to speak up and refuse to cower in fear.

Now I see it at Powerline: THE FASCISTS ARE AFTER WILLIAM JACOBSON in which Mr. Hinderacker takes skillful aim at the spineless, intellectual dishonesty of the dean:

Bul[wark]. In a reasoning contest, Jacobson would run circles around this limp academic. And of course, he didn’t “cast aspersions on the goals of those protesting for justice for Black Americans.” Rather, he criticized the corrupt, far left and racist (my characterization) Black Lives Matter organization, which is now rolling in dough and doing absolutely nothing for black lives or for America in general. BLM is a fraud on a par with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. (Again, my words, not Jacobson’s.) To be fair, it is a lucrative fraud.

Academic institutions from high schools to graduate schools are awash in “educators” who explicitly advocate rioting, violence and arson. (Last night, I watched a commencement speech at a ritzy Twin Cities private school delivered by a young African-American that extolled the virtues of rioting and arson. It was one of many.) Are institutions like Cornell Law School denouncing such absurd calls to violence? I hope so, but so far I haven’t seen a single instance.

The fabric of American society is being ripped apart.  This is not the stuff that results in a “healing.” 

The abyss is no longer on the horizon, it is all around us now.  Be very careful, folks.

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  1. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    I watched about 15 minutes of several different networks’ news for yesterday June11th 2020.

    You would never know that over a dozen cities in the USA have had urban and inner city areas trashed and burned out by riots over the past two weeks.

    There were film clips of numerous crowds of citizens in peaceful protests, with their fannies in the air as they attempted to vanquish at the feet of African American cadre the great guilt they feel for the past  history of black people in America. Healdsburg, a tony town nestled in the vineyards north  of San Francisco, had a throng of angry people of color denouncing the mayor for her not having done better with the local police force in terms of how they treat minorities. So she apologized.

    The overtones of the peaceful protesters indicate they  are there in the protests for the great love they hold for the people of color.

    The undertones are a different matter. One thing I noticed about the protest film footage of the tony burbs is that there are a small group of chosen leaders of people of color, and a much larger group of people who are white. But the whites bow down to the African Americans.

    Right now, it is easy to imagine that hundreds of once unknown black activists are now vying for  the central stage position of an Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. If this movement lasts thru the summer, it will splinter, just as the Bolsheviks did with people who chose between Lenin and Trotsky.

    Hopefully the entire nation will not splinter along with it. Your essay explains who it is that is being attacked. However, there does not yet seem to be any game plan on how the 58% of all Americans who want this nonsense to stop can bring the curtain down on this theater of the absurd.

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    • #1
  2. Joe Boyle Member
    Joe Boyle
    @JoeBoyle

    I’m looking all over my neighborhood for a black butt to kiss. I can only find Mexicans. Is it OK to substitute.

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  3. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):
    However, there does not yet seem to be any game plan on how the 58% of all Americans who want this nonsense to stop can bring the curtain down on this theater of the absurd.

    Bolsheviks and Mensheviks from Wikipedia; emphasis added.

    In 1907, 22% of Bolsheviks were under 20, 37% were 20–24 and 16% were 25–29. By 1905, 62% of the members were industrial workers (3% of the population in 1897). 22% of Bolsheviks were gentry (1.7% of the total population), 38% were uprooted peasants, compared with 19% and 26% for the Mensheviks. In 1907, 78.3% of the Bolsheviks were Russian and 10% were Jewish (34% and 20% for the Mensheviks). Total membership was 8,400 in 1905, 13,000 in 1906 and 46,100 by 1907 (8,400, 18,000 and 38,200 for the Mensheviks). By 1910, both factions together had fewer than 100,000 members.

    Within 8 years, the Bolsheviks ruled the country.

    • #3
  4. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):
    However, there does not yet seem to be any game plan on how the 58% of all Americans who want this nonsense to stop can bring the curtain down on this theater of the absurd.

    Bolsheviks and Mensheviks from Wikipedia; emphasis added.

    In 1907, 22% of Bolsheviks were under 20, 37% were 20–24 and 16% were 25–29. By 1905, 62% of the members were industrial workers (3% of the population in 1897). 22% of Bolsheviks were gentry (1.7% of the total population), 38% were uprooted peasants, compared with 19% and 26% for the Mensheviks. In 1907, 78.3% of the Bolsheviks were Russian and 10% were Jewish (34% and 20% for the Mensheviks). Total membership was 8,400 in 1905, 13,000 in 1906 and 46,100 by 1907 (8,400, 18,000 and 38,200 for the Mensheviks). By 1910, both factions together had fewer than 100,000 members.

    Within 8 years, the Bolsheviks ruled the country.

    What your indicating is very true. The implications for the USA are not reassuring.

    People who study demographic trends have long stated that the political, social and consumer beliefs held primarily on US college campuses become a dominant societal force 15 to 20 years later, if not sooner.

     

    • #4
  5. ToryWarWriter Coolidge
    ToryWarWriter
    @ToryWarWriter

    If anything history teaches us is that the vast majority of these revolutionary groups are crushed almost instantly and that the party of Law and Order whens 99 percent of the time.

    The lefty profs dont teach that in school.  They prefer to talk about the 1 percent than win.

    Every person cancelled is just one more person who ends up in our ranks.

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  6. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    A few voices of sanity and intellectual honesty are still allowed to speak:

    Racist Police Violence Reconsidered by John McWhorter

    Police officers are too often overarmed, undertrained, and low on empathy. Some police officers are surely racist and act like it. But it does not follow that white cops routinely kill black people in tense situations out of racist animus. This scenario may seem plausible—I believed it until only a few years ago. But there are times when facts are counterintuitive, and it is important to get the facts right and to analyze them with clear eyes and a clear mind … . Rhetoric has a way of straying from reality, and to get where we all want to go, it is reality that we must address.

    Do Black Lives Matter? by Paul A. Rahe

    A thought experiment is in order. Consider what would happen if someone showed up for such a march carrying a sign that read, “Black Lives Matter! All Lives Matter! End Abortion!” Would such a person be welcome?

    I think not…

    … One can argue that a disproportionate number of black men die at the hands of the police only if one bases one’s calculations on the relative size of the black population and not on the relative number of crimes committed by black men. If a radically disproportionate number of criminals are black men, then, if the policing is done properly, the police will be far more likely to have unpleasant encounters with black than with white men – and that is what happens in every tolerably well-run city in the land. On most occasions, when a black man dies in the course of such an encounter, the policemen involved are in no way at fault. What happened in Ferguson is the norm. What happened in Minneapolis is the exception.

    I am surely wasting my effort here – for black lives do not matter to the vast majority of the self-satisfied liberals and radicals who have been marching in our streets, and I doubt that they ever will. What we have witnessed is not an upsurge in the desire for justice. What we have watched is a display of childish self-indulgence on the part of people who want to be seen as just.

    CANCEL YOURSELVES, YOU LOUSY TWITS by Scott Johnson…who links to this:

     

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