Posted on 06/26/2020 6:58:00 AM PDT by Kaslin
The Black Lives Matter movement is not a majority. It’s radical agenda can be resisted and defeated. But not if ordinary Americans stay silent.
The daily spectacle of angry mobs pulling down statues, taunting police, attacking passersby, and taking over entire city blocks makes it seem like Black Lives Matter is a mass movement, that pretty much everyone except knuckle-dragging Trump supporters is on board with its radical agenda, and that the new national consensus is that you’re either anti-racist or racist.
Under these conditions, many ordinary Americans feel disoriented and discouraged. Confusion abounds. When did it become racist to like the national anthem and Mount Rushmore? At what point did we decide George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were moral monsters, or that all police are racist thugs? Why are rioters and looters allowed to terrorize people and destroy property with impunity? Why aren’t local elected leaders enforcing the law?
If you think what’s happening in America right now is crazy, you’re not alone. It’s true that something’s changed, that we’re in the middle of a crisis, that a cultural civil war is underway and escalating.
But it’s not true that this is a majoritarian movement. It’s not true that America fundamentally changed overnight. The hordes of protesters, impressive as them seem, don’t represent the country at large. According to Pew, only about 6 percent of U.S. adults have participated in a rally or protest in the past month, and they skew young, urban, and Democratic. That’s less than 20 million people—a lot, to be sure, but nothing close to a majority.
In some sense this is entirely psychological. A relatively small group of radical left-wing activists is using classic cult psychology to wage psychological war against the rest of us. They are the vanguard of what can only be described as a religious movement in America.
Indeed, Black Lives Matter and its attendant ideology contain all the elements of a religion: it promulgates doctrines that are explicitly normative, it has a cosmology and a morality, its claims are not subject to or consistent with scientific proofs. James Lindsay has gone further and described it as a cult, with recognizable and well-established features of a cult such as initiation, indoctrination, and cult reprogramming.
But this is a religious movement unlike any we’ve seen before, because unlike established religions it’s formally secular enough to be allowed into purely secular institutions of public life. This is why the Black Lives Matter agenda and The New York Times’ 1619 Project are being taught openly in our public schools. It’s why corporate America and professional sports have embraced the cult of wokeness. It’s why Hollywood is scrambling to figure out and adhere to the new doctrines, often in embarrassing and overtly racist ways.
It’s long past time to fight back. That won’t be easy, in part because the radicals are largely in control of messaging. They have the sympathies—if not the outright allegiance—of the mainstream media, big tech, and corporate America. They also more or less control the Democratic Party and much of the petty bureaucracy, including public schools.
That seems like a lot, and it is. But it’s also less than it seems. This is a movement conceived and sustained mostly by elite white progressives. Some 20 million may have shown up to BLM rallies in the last month, but the hardcore activists behind these rallies—the true-believing cult members and leaders—are relatively small in number.
They have been successful thus far in part because their strategy relies on making everyone else feel alone, overwhelmed, afraid, and resigned. They have been able to do this because, unlike the rest of us, they’re highly organized and coordinated, which makes their efforts at psychological manipulation highly effective. That in turn erodes resistance to their tactics at every level. If you don’t believe others will fight alongside you, that you’re alone, then you’re less willing to fight. This is true even of police, as we’ve seen.
The problem to be solved, then, is one of coordination. It’s a big problem and not easily solved. If everyone in America who is horrified and outraged by the mobs pulling down statues and smashing storefronts could coordinate to stop all of it, to strip the mob of their power, they would do it in a heartbeat. The madness would stop overnight.
But the energy, momentum, and mood control lies with the radicals right now. They are optimistic, and optimism makes people aggressive and creative. Pessimism, which is what everyone else is feeling, does the opposite. We feel scattered and helpless—and for now, we are.
It’s time to change that. We have to do it, each one of us. The Democrats who run our cities will not lift a finger to stop any of this. Some of them are sincere initiates into the cult of wokeness, others just think the chaos will help them win the White House in November. Either way, they are willing to go along with it.
Some Democratic members of Congress even said this week that federal authorities should not interfere with mobs pulling down statues. Blue-state governors have likewise ordered law enforcement to stand down in the face of the mob.
President Trump has at times sounded like he would stand up and fight. He has blustered and made threats, as usual. This week he announced that anyone caught trying to topple a monument on federal land would face up to ten years in prison. That’s a start, but it’s not enough.
It’s up to every one of us, in our towns and cities and communities, to pressure our local officials to enforce the law and stop the bedlam. We have to demand it. We have to insist on law and order, insist on due process, insist on equal treatment under the law. These are bedrock American principles, and they have majority and bipartisan support across the country. At least for now, we can be confident of that.
We also have to be optimistic about our country and our institutions. We have to be energetic and creative. We have to defend our Founding principles unapologetically. America is the greatest country on earth, where liberty and prosperity and equality have blossomed as never before in human history. We can recognize our faults and shortcomings without apologizing for all we have achieved. We can defend what is necessary, and what is best, without giving one inch to the radicals who deny the promise of America’s Founding and want to see it transformed into something unrecognizable.
We had better do so, and quickly. The future of the republic depends on it.
To start with we need a mass movement, preferably led by black Conservatives, dedicated to the proposition that ALL LIVES MATTER.
Most people out there embracing BLM have no idea that they actually believe that ONLY black lives matter. That philosophy is just half a tick from Hitler’s. It needs to be pushed back against, and hard.
It is time for LE to stand down and let conservatives fight back. That goes for the judicial as well
Agree. If LE wants to help they would all stand down so all the rats can come out of their holes and be dealt with.mJust the deer hunters in the country outnumber the 10 largest standing armies combined.
First we have to get RINOs and Never Trumpers out of our foxholes. They are collusionist traitors far more dangerous to us than the actual enemy.
Who did more damage to the real interests of American patriots. AOC or GWB?
Thank you. I could not have said it any better.
TRUMP IS NOT COMING TO SAVE YOU!
You want to save your cities?
You want to save your nation?
You want to save your civilization?
....Do it yourselves.
And deer-hunters practice shooting, unlike 95% of our bureaucracy bound military. You want money for bullets for training - a trivial cost and probably the most important part of training an armed force, but the one most easily suppressed by the bureaucracy.
Now we know how the people of Iran feel, they want to rise up but are afraid. They want to fight back but don’t dare.
They want their country back from the anarchists and everyone tells them to go for it, but they have no cover, no backup.
We could rise up as a people but the media and BOTH political parties would reject us.
Bookmark
exactly.... pretty scary, eh... when it’s real life and not a Netflix movie.
No American alive has ever been in this kind of crisis before save the extreme elderly who knew what was at stake during the darkest days of WW2, but in my opinion, the current situation is much more acute than even that.
We are totally leaderless and while Trump may have been the guy to get us to this ultimately necessary point, he isn’t the one to get us out of it, imho.
The GOP is spineless. They do not want the 'bad' optics of being anti-blm during an election year. It just gives the opposition more fodder to play the race card. No matter how ridiculous we know this is; there are too many simple-minded people who blindly accept the narratives they are fed.
Most of the GOP is unable to weather the negative PR storm that would come with actually taking a stand against these anarchists who are being portrayed as "freedom fighters".
Yeah and what will Third party members do? Don’t make me laugh
p
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The Commie/BLM/Radical Dems have moved so far.
Maybe it's time for a little subterfuge on a LARGE scale.
Maybe it's time for the Capitol Building to disappear.
It is worthless as it is now!
Yeah and what will Third party members do? Don’t make me laugh
LOL. That’s funny.
Third party voters won’t be aiding and abetting a coup against a duly elected POTUS. Sadly, the same can’t be said of those who vote GOP in 2020. I’ll “hold my nose” and vote GOP in 2020 due to Trump but that is it. This life long GOP party ticket voter has interest in supporting a political party that engages in coupist activities.
so, does this follow the path of the OWS nova ? Started in 09/2011 and petered out before mid 2012 but had a lingering, lasting impact which we are seeing today.
I don't want the George Wills or Paul Ryans of this world in my foxhole.
Because being pro Marxist is such a winning strategy for the GOP.
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