‘Lie Back And Think Of Diversity’

The above title was a bit of advice from the inestimable Mark Steyn, encapsulating nicely the attitude of our betters, safely sealed away in the lavishly appointed box seats of Western governments across much of Europe, Canada and the US. The truth however is that such little admonishment — which itself is quite illuminating — is the fallback position, or Plan B, if you will.

Plan A, as I explained to my friend Whiskey Dave on the radio a couple weeks back, can be summed up in five words: “Don’t believe your lying eyes.” This is the advice from those whose prescriptions for every societal ill they encounter or perceive require us to suspend all reason (and all five senses) in assessing the actual results of their handiwork.

The type of person to which I’m referring was marvelously epitomized by Barack Obama (Peace And Many Mansions Be Upon Him) prior to his immaculate assumption of office. The Constitution according to Obama was:

… a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.

Of course the Constitution doesn’t say what the state “must do on your behalf,” because the whole point of the American Revolution was to roll back the ability of the state to exert its capricious and volatile power over a free people. But if history has taught us anything, it’s that progressives view their role in public office in much the same way Bill Clinton views a roomful of new interns; as an invitation to unending mischief.

And when the starry-eyed mischief of Barack Obama, or Joe Biden and Kamala Harris yields its inevitable harvest of grief and despair, they instruct us not to believe the catastrophes blooming — like anti-semitic protests all around us. The primary poster dorks for this approach can be found, as usual, in state media.

A few weeks back we had Don Lemon interviewing a guy on the street about his view of the economy, to which the bloke replied that inflation was eating more of his paycheck than even he could eat. This triggered Lemon, who lectured that official government statistics disproved the lived experience of the interviewee, who laughed in Don Lemon’s exasperated face and walked away.

And let’s not forget ABC’s Martha Raddatz, who accused JD Vance and Donald Trump of making much ado about Venezuelan gangs taking over apartment complexes in Aurora, CO. “The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes,” said Raddatz, who declined to specify the requisite number of apartment complexes that must be taken over by illegal migrant gangs before we can acknowledge that the Biden/Harris decision to obliterate our southern border didn’t exactly qualify as a Mensa moment.

But what happens when the sheer magnitude of the disasters is as obvious and heartbreaking as American casualties at Abby Gate; or as numerous as the marauding recidivist murderers and rapists terrorizing our streets; or as counterproductive as the suicidal antisemitism of radical Islamic fanatics freshly emboldened by American weakness and appeasement?

Well, that’s when all the cerebral demagogues and soapbox orators explain to the knuckle-dragging masses that it’s better to address the “root causes” of illegal immigration and criminal behavior than it is to walk safely across the street. We should accept “settled science” and come to terms with limitations on our freedom to travel economically or to affordably heat and cool our homes. We should learn to consume bugs rather than meat, and cede our gas stoves to the elite class in order to save the planet. We need to stop worrying about men pretending to be girls in order to compete in girls' sports and accept that severe injuries to women and girls are the price of enlightenment. And we best get used to ceding our right to free speech if we mean to keep our jobs. It will be one hell of a heaven that progressives are forcing us into, so we might as well lie back and think of diversity.

You see, in the view of progressives like Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and their little henchmen, centralized government’s function is that of an all-seeing and all-knowing presence, monitoring and regulating virtually every facet of a citizen’s existence, so as to produce a societal paradise. It’s a compulsory version of the old “Coca-Cola” song in which the entire world sings “…in perfect harmony.”

Except that humanity isn’t really like that and not everyone wants to be a member of this metaphorical choir, like interchangeable pawns on a chess board, subject to the whims and dictates of some choir director they didn’t elect. The sad fact is that the pet ideas and dictates of these anointed social maestros usually fall hardest upon those least able to pay the toll.

In his Letters from the Earth, Mark Twain wrote sardonically of the Puritan version of The Almighty as the, “Eye that never sleeps.” This would be the same Eye who watched as untold numbers of men, women and children perished in the Flood. Taking a rather sarcastic view of events, Twain wrote:

The poor children are under the Eye that never sleeps, you see. They have had that ill luck in all the ages. They and “the Lord’s poor” — as the sarcastic phrase goes — have never been able to get away from that Eye’s attentions.

Events under The Almighty’s control may very well be out of our control, but we still have some power over how much of our own sovereignty we will hand to the self-anointed elite who mean to expand the sphere of their power at the expense of us, our children, and our grandchildren. This is no time to lie back and think of diversity.