The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Dear Victor Davis Hanson: Racism Is A Power Pump

Posted on | April 16, 2012 | 68 Comments

by Smitty

Here’s a great essay by Victor Davis Hanson on the racial divide, epitomized by the Trayvon Martin tragedy.

And yet. . .I just don’t think the great scholar gets it, or, at least, seemed to pull his punches:

Why?
I could go on and on, but one gets the message. So why the anger at this point and not, say, in 2007, when the evil Bush was president and Obama was but a weak senator and a dubious presidential candidate? For eight years there were African-American secretaries of state. Bush, through his African AIDS initiatives, saved millions of blacks who had no access to medicine. Minorities were visible in his cabinet. No one objected to the fact that Obama garnered 96% of the black vote, or thought much about it when, in the bitter Democratic primaries, the Clintons alleged that race was used to whip up support against them. So why, then, the anger now, when things should have improved even more?

I’ll tell you why, sir: power. 2008’s Racial Healer is 2012’s Master Baiter not because he cares fig #1 about the state of racial discourse in the United States. Rather, he maximizes power on both ends. 2008 was the year when harmony was a hot stock; this year, #OccupyResoluteDesk is shorting it like Carbonite.

Here’s a principle to keep in mind: assume anyone on the Left is arguing disingenuously until proven otherwise. Sometimes they are full of crap due to simple ignorance. But that seems increasingly less likely with each crappy gambit this year (Fluke, race, Rosen).

Power is the only unifying motive at work across these disparate threads.

Category: Democrats, Racism

Comments

68 Responses to “Dear Victor Davis Hanson: Racism Is A Power Pump”

  1. Anamika
    April 16th, 2012 @ 4:49 pm

     Everyone ‘compensates’, but the issue is critical if there is mental illness. In ‘non-mentally ill’ persons, loss of compensation may occur if drunk, provoked by extreme circumstances, and so on.

    So ‘compensation’ is how we keep ourselves tidy, on all levels. The ‘proper’ thing varies from culture to culture and differs in economic classes as well.

    Low Self Esteem (LSE) syndrome, being almost universal, provokes a strange sort of compensation, which may be described as going about in disguise, in order to escape notice, even though everyone is doing it, and so it becomes meaningless, but this is of course not seen, and so the charade continues. LSE of this sort, is the tyranny of ‘interpersonal fascism’, in which ‘everyone must be the same’. Of course, ‘same’ is not ‘same’ if one moves from one social sphere to another, or if a person of one race tries to mix with those of another race, and so on. We instinctively know these things, but do not verbalize them in Aanyway which would blow the cover of our embedded LSE. The basic bottom line for LSE is found in the ‘tall poppy syndrome‘ entry of Wikipedia. It is a plague upon us all. 

    ‘Coping’ by means of decompensating is the strategy of say, chemical dependency, ala alcoholism and so on. It is sliding downhill to the very bottom. And for most of us that is a Bad Thing.

    Once saddled with installed LSE and part of the sodden club of LoSErs (Hey! Not Bad!), survival is very simple: Conform, or be tortured by morons.

  2. Garym
    April 16th, 2012 @ 4:55 pm

    Coked up maybe?

  3. ThePaganTemple
    April 16th, 2012 @ 5:22 pm

     You’re talking to a woman who came over here from Europe, a continent full of countries we’ve had to prop up for the last seventy years, yet which is still collectively in danger of going under at any given second despite all our best efforts, and who always and only want more and more from us to keep them afloat, yet never seem to be able to get their collective house in order. Yet, none of them think they should be more like us, but that we should be more like them. And you’re trying to talk sense to her? She’ll never get it. She, like most of her former fellow Europeans, are hopelessly clueless.

  4. Pathfinder's wife
    April 16th, 2012 @ 5:44 pm

    Even nutballs aren’t capable of putting 1000 – 2000 lb. animals who might protest, into pots single handedly.
    Then there is the issue of getting past the defensive barriers around said animals, which is composed of other animals that come in close to 100 lbs. and are equipped with bright, shiny, sharp teeth (one of the family hobbies was the raising and training of schutzhund dogs — fabulous animals, fantastic to work with, so many things you can learn from them).
    And shooty and stabby things, mustn’t forget those (once something comes onto my property with ill intent, well, polite society is no longer in play).

  5. Pathfinder's wife
    April 16th, 2012 @ 5:54 pm

    Well, I own working animals, not pets, and livestock — which I do kill, butcher, and eat (so I guess in a sense I beat people to the punch when it comes to throwing them in a pot).  That’s when I’m not using my working animals to hunt down wild animals for the purpose of putting said wild animals into the pot to eat (or wear).

    I believe in keeping the contract with my working animals and pets as well as with the wild animals.  Strangely, they seem to be much better off with people like me from what I’ve seen.

    And they seem to be pretty mentally and physically well adjusted; better than a lot of people truth be told.

  6. Adobe_Walls
    April 16th, 2012 @ 5:57 pm

    Probably luminescent at night.

  7. Adobe_Walls
    April 16th, 2012 @ 6:01 pm

    Those who think Obamsky is particularly intelligent astound.

  8. Pathfinder's wife
    April 16th, 2012 @ 6:06 pm

    I am not a rationalist nor anti-extremist.
    There’s the difference: I know myself at least a little (those “pets” of mine have taught me brutal honesty).

    I find that this is very advantageous in winding one’s way through demogogary (such as Mr. Hansen is wondering about in his essay) and New Age, messianic fiddle faddle and progressive tent revivalism (which is a sidebar topic which does relate to what Mr. Hanson is speaking of here).

  9. Bob Belvedere
    April 16th, 2012 @ 7:03 pm

    Indeed.  And I believe he does it beacuse he really doesn’t get it.  He believes the Left are merely the descendants of all other tyants from ages past.  VDH refuses to understand the Left is unlike any other form of Tyrants we have faced before. 

  10. Mike G.
    April 16th, 2012 @ 7:06 pm

    Can’t believe I read all the comments trying to get the gist of VDH’s article, only to realize the thread had been hijacked by “Sybil.”

  11. Bob Belvedere
    April 16th, 2012 @ 7:07 pm

    Why must you equate drunks with this troll?

    To do so is to denigrate W.C. Fields, Dean Martin, and every Irish writer – why do you hate them, Hater?

  12. Bob Belvedere
    April 16th, 2012 @ 7:09 pm

    You’re save as long as you don’t work for Rich Lowry – you know the twinkle-toed loser I mentioned in my post Rich Lowry Is A Coward.

  13. Adobe_Walls
    April 16th, 2012 @ 10:00 pm

    Would that be the coward Rich Lowry who is also an editor at NRO?

  14. Adobe_Walls
    April 16th, 2012 @ 10:04 pm

    “Sybil” was actually a person or perhaps many people tho there are some questions about that whole story.

  15. Mike G.
    April 16th, 2012 @ 10:44 pm

     ergo?

  16. Pathfinder's wife
    April 16th, 2012 @ 10:49 pm

    Ah, but our Sybil is a stunning example in real life of some of the very things Mr. Hanson is talking about.
    What better way to understand something than to see it in action?  Why, just the comment about critters is ripe for study into how these narratives Mr. Hanson is speaking of ultimately destroy any ability to look at a person as an individual person?  And then branch out from there — because if you are incapable of looking at the thing regarded (and thus don’t allow it to look at you) how will you ever be able to manage any such intangible things as freedom, liberty, justice, love, respect, et al. ?

  17. ThePaganTemple
    April 16th, 2012 @ 10:53 pm

     Yep, the whole thing might have been a big fraud-

    http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/sybil_is_one_big_psych_out_NaIEczKkVakx8ZLLi7GQPI?utm_campaign=Post10&utm_source=Post10Alpha

  18. Adobe_Walls
    April 17th, 2012 @ 12:02 am

    It is not.