Black Lives Matter doesn't matter any more!

Looks like last night was comparatively peaceful across the Excited States of America. Not so much rfioting and looting as on the weekend and Monday. I expect today we'll see images of good citizens pitching in to clean up the debris left behind by even peaceful "protesters". I predict that 90% of those shown in such photos will be white. Lifetime pct .976.

You realize, gentle reader, that all the commotion in America's cities is not about George Floyd, police brutality, or even racial inequality, about which the SJWs have been moaning for two centuries.

Black lives do not matter! At least, not to antifa types, the mostly white leftists who are the real "protesters". What we are seeing is a well-organized, well-funded, violent campaign to overthrow the government of the USA. Well... not the whole government... just the man at its head, Still-President Trump.

The bad news for them -- good news for the USA -- is that the protests-cum-riots are having the opposite effect from that intended. They have all but insured the November re-election of the Donald! (Lifetime pct still .976.) I have to admit that Mr Trump hasn't come through the Covid-19 Dempanic covered with glory. But the rioters have effectivelyl ended the lockdown by defying it, and the rest of us figure that if they can take to the streets without worrying about getting the virus, we can take to the beaches!

As well, the media hysteria about "anti-black racism" has all but totally displaced the media hysteria about the Dempanic. And in this chapter of the soap opera that is American politics, President Trump is the one who looks like a hero -- the only one standing up for law and order, while dozen of weak-willed and weak-kneed Democratic politicians fall all over themselves to signal virtue and pander to the anti-American agitators.

I am now the only one who thinks that the "protesters" will succeed in keeping President Trump in the White House. Let me share a few well-chosen words from "Seven Thoughts on the Civil War the Other Side Wants So Badly", by Scott McKay, in The Spectator, 2/6/20.

The police can handle these rioters if they're allowed to. If the police can't, in some circumstances, the National Guard certainly can. This isn't some invading army; it's the dregs of society who have been induced into the streets for free air fryers from Target. The slightest application of law enforcement muscle will put this rioting down.

[On why the areas trashed by the riots won't ever be rebuilt] At the end of the day, everybody figures this is an area where the locals were so stupid and so disrespectful that they looted and burned down the very shops that kept the neighborhood going. And who wants to do business with such people?

You don't have to go any further back than 1968 to know that when America gets its fill of domestic violence and insurrection, it votes for the most conservative candidate it can find. How do you think Richard Nixon, who was the political version of a broken-down claiming horse who had lost an election for the governorship of California just a few years earlier, rolled into the White House like a tsunami? Nixon was the law-and-order candidate. It didn't really matter what else he was; the Silent Majority gave him the job and a mandate to put an end to The Sixties.

Democrats have been trying to recreate The Sixties ever since, and the public has been trying to tell them The Sixties weren't all that awesome.
Trump is going to law-and-order this all the way home. It’s an easy play for him. Trump’s response hasn’t been perfect, but he’s going to dominate the discussion the longer this goes. Do Democrats really think they’re going to beat him without even denouncing the riots? Are they that stupid?

Of course they are. Of course they are.

Well said, Mr McKay. Couldn't have said it better myself. [You got that right! Ed.]

Can America ever be united again?

The Glorious War of the Secession (aka the War Between the States or the Civil War) ended 151 years ago, at which time America was proclaimed once again to be the United States. Now, in the twilight of the Obama presidency, which was supposed to bring all Americans together at last, regardless of race, colour, etc etc, the people of America (if not the states) find themselves more disunited than at any time in the last century-and-a-half.

That is the theme of Rick Perlstein's Nixonland, recommended here on Sunday. Mr. Perlstein dates the present polarization American culture and politics from the hippy-dippy 60s, which saw the disintegration of the liberal consensus of the Kennedy-Johnson years and the division of the "United" States into two mutually antagonistic nations -- the Red Nation and the Blue Nation. That division is not just geographic. There are plenty of "Reds" (not the Communist variety) to be found in Massachusetts and California, and "Blues" in Kansas and -- dare I say it -- Texas.

Hellery Clinton claims that she is the one and only candidate for POTUS who can bring the country together again, and make the American states and people united. This is laughable. About the only thing that unites the Reds (and large numbers of Blues) is the belief that Ms Clinton is a phony and a crook. Even if Hellery were sincere and (God forbid) elected, the task of uniting the country is beyond the power of any more mortal. Here's what Mr. Perlstein says in the closing paragraphs of his book:

What Richard Nixon left behind was the very terms of our national self-image: a notion that there are two kinds of Americans. On the one side, that "Silent Majority", the "nonshouters". The middle-class, middle American, suburban, exurban, and rural coalition who call themselves, now, "values voters", "people of faith", "patriots", or even, simply, "Republicans" -- and who feel themselves condescended to by snobby opinion-making elites, and who rage about un-Americans, anti-Christians, amoralists, aliens.

On the other side are the "liberals", the "cosmopolitans", the "intellectuals", the "professionals" -- "Democrats". Who say they see shouting in opposition to injustice as a higher form of patriotism. Or say "live and let live." Who believe that to have "values" has more to do with a willingness to extend aid to the downtrodden than where, or if, you happen to worship -- but who look down on the first category as unwitting dupes of feckless elites who exploit sentimental pieties to aggrandize their wealth, start wars, ruin lives.

Both populations -- to speak in ideal types -- are equally, essentially, tragically American. And both have learned to consider the other not quite American at all. The argument over Richard Nixon, pro and con, gave us the language for this war.

Do Americans not hate each other enough to fantasize about killing one another, in cold blood, over political and cultural disagreements? It would be hard to argue that they do not. How did Nixonland end? It has not ended yet.

A reader has objected that Rick Perlstein wrote those words in 2008, before the election of Barack Hussein Obama, the first black (or African-American, whatever) President, the one who has healed America and brought all Americans together. Has the Prez himself not said that race relations in the USA are better now than at any time in history? Well yes, that's what he said, but the claim that the war of which Mr. Perlstein writes ended somewhere between 2008 and 2016 is nonsense. If anything, the cracks in the American body politic have widened, and the war has intensified.

The 2015 American Values Survey, conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, is titled "Anxiety, Nostalgia, and Mistrust". It found that about three-quarters of Republicans believe that the federal government looks out for the interests of blacks, Hispanics, gays and women. But not quite half of Republicans think that the government looks out for Christians or middle-class people. Democrats, on the other hand, overwhelmingly think that the federal government looks out for the rich and big business.

Writing in the Economist this week, "Lexington" asserts that the distrust between groups exposed in the survey means that "it is not useful to say that most Americans support policy X or Y. The real question fo ask voters is: Do you think this policy helps or hurts 'people like you'? The query reliably exposes deep gulfs between different races, generations and parties." Which is just what Mr. Perlstein said, eight years ago.

Footnote and caveat: When I recommended Nixonland, I should have included a warning that Mr. Perlstein is badly in need of an editor/proofreader. [Does anyone, anywhere, employ proofreaders any more? What's wrong with Spiel-Chequer? Ed.] His book runs to 748 pages of fairly dense type, and that's not counting the endnotes. And where, I wonder, does the author get words like "inspirit" (for "inspire", I guess)? If you want to finish Nixonland before you vote, start now.

Phil Robertson back on Duck Dynasty -- a WIN for the silent majority!

Walt has some great breaking news, an update on "Enough, already! Pushback against LGBT agenda gains momentum", published here just before Christmas.

Yes, folks, Phil's back on Duck Dynasty!

A&E made the announcement this afternoon. They didn't say "by popular demand" or "as a result of popular outrage". But clearly, expressions of ridicule and disgust by millions sick and tired of pandering to the "LGBT community" had their effect. Let's call it a win for our side!

Yet the pandering coninues. According to the report on the abcNEWS website, A&E couldn't resist adding that they would "use this moment to launch a national public service campaign promoting unity, tolerance and acceptance among all people, a message that supports our core values as a company, and the values found in 'Duck Dynasty.' These [ads] will air across our entire portfolio." Pass the sick bag.