New loony leftist flavour of the month

"Pandemics, race riots are part of the price we pay for having big cities"

The headline is adapted from a line in "The City is Killing America: America's real problem are urban problems", by Daniel Greenfield, in Frontpage Mag, 21/10/20. Mr Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

In this lengthy and thoughtful article, Mr Greenfield traces the rise of American cities, and their problems, from the early days through the Civil War and the industrial age into the urban decay and despair which blight the once-great cities of todays Disunited States.

He concludes that cities like New York and San Francisco, not to mention Seattle and Portland -- all of them run by Democrats -- are the breeding grounds and incubators for pandemics (Covid-19 is just one) and "mostly peaceful protests" (read: race riots) which are destroying America, literally.

The photos above were taken in Seattle in June. 46 more can be found in "Seattle Riot: 46 devastating photos of Downtown destruction, vandalism", a photo gallery posted on mynorthwest.com, 1/6/20. By why pick on Seattle? Google images for Chicago, Buffalo, Newark, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Boston or virtually any US city, especially those on the "blue coasts".

And then there's Detroit. You may remember seeing "Quiz: Which American city has been occupied 3 times by the US Army?" on WWW 3/12/19. Walt shared a positive review of Detroit: An American Autopsy, by Charlie LeDuff, Penguin Press, 2013, along with just two of the excellent photos to be found in an excellent photo essay at the end of that book. It's depressing but compelling reading.

Mr Greenfield writes: Pandemic maps of the death toll show the deaths concentrating around major cities before making the slow trek from urban into suburban and eventually rural areas. The urban lockdowns didn’t stop the spread of the virus. What they really did was trap poor and middle class residents in urban areas, while the wealthy fled, and the virus spread to urbanites with the least mobility.

The people with the worst immune systems, in the densest living conditions, and the least ability to get up and leave, suffered the most, from nursing home patients to minorities with large families. The general pattern was historically familiar from the Middle Ages, and the only thing that our public health experts proved is that they weren’t any smarter than medieval peasants.

But the coronavirus is an urban problem and all the official solutions to it are urban solutions. And the urban problems and their solutions are killing us and taking down the whole country.

Urbanization has become a pyramid scheme taking over entire states, while hollowing out the more conservative rural areas, turning red states blue, and leaving everyone except those at the top of the pyramid scheme poorer with each generation.

America is no longer divided between the old geographies of North and South, but the new geographies of density, between cities and their suburbs, and rural areas and small towns. The latter represent the old American communities, while the former showcase the new feudal order in which great suburban wealth and urban poverty combine into radical political alignment. 

That’s the so-called “resistance”, not by the disempowered, but by the politically privileged....

The urban model hasn’t worked for America in sixty years. The pandemic has put it on the verge of collapse as the wealthy industries that made cities their base flee into virtual workspaces. It’s time to rethink and defund cities as the hubs of our economy and our nation....

Envisioning a less dense and more open country will heal many of our social and economic ills. Urban areas have concentrated political radicalism and blight. Universities have become their own radical cities. Municipalities have built networks of crony companies around themselves. Density has destroyed communities and families while depriving people of a meaningful life.

Reducing immigration can slow down population growth to sustainably match our economy and replacing cities with communities can allow our society to heal from its urban wounds. America was built around communities, not cities. It can be rebuilt around communities again.

The city is too big to fail and that means that the country is dying of its failures. We can either keep the city alive at the cost of the country, or let the city fail so that the country can live.

Walt regrets that limitations of space keep us from sharing the whole article. Please, dear readers, click on the link at top or here to read the whole thing.

VIDEO: Trailer for "Trump Card", by Dinesh D'Souza & Bruce Schooley

The Dempanic has resulted in the closure of almost all the cinemas ["movie theaters" to Americans. Ed.] in a hundred-mile radius of Walt's cabin in the pines. Even if they were open, I'm guessing they wouldn't be showing Trump Card. Written by Dinesh D'Souza and directed by Mr D'Souza and Bruce Schooley, it's an informative, provocative and thrilling documentary exposé of the ideas but also the tactics of the socialist left. Here's the trailer.

   

Dear American readers, I urge you to watch Trump Card if you can find it showing anywhere. It's a horrific vision of the future of America, as described in "The American Nightmare: Go Trump or go lockdown!", Michael Matt's latest video, posted here earlier today. This is what you can look forward to... guaranteed... if you don't go to the polls (don't trust your ballot to the USPS!) and do the Right Thing. God save the United States of America!

VIDEO: Fr. Ed Meeks: 5 things Catholics should know about Joe Biden

Father Ed Meeks is a Catholic priest of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, and the founding pastor of Christ the King Church in Towson MD. After many years as a priest of the Charismatic Episcopal Church, and then the Anglican Church in America, Fr. Meeks was ordained a Roman Catholic priest on 23 June 2012.

Excerpts from Fr Meeks' homily (11/10/20) on the issues of the 2020 election and Catholics' civic responsibilities are featured by Michael Matt in his video "The American Nightmare: Go Trump or go lockdown!", reposted here a few minutes ago.

 

It requires great courage for a Catholic priest to speak out against the liberal establishment, especially now when that liberal secular humanist establishment has, as its chaplain, none other than the Marixst Jorge Bergoglio, whom some still call "Pope Francis". Fr Meeks' warning should be taken to heart not just by Catholics, but by patriotic Americans of all faiths.

VIDEO: Rex Murphy tells why he won't be silenced by the cancel culture

Ed. here. I've told Walt that I am coming to grips with the new Blogger GUI and that, for the time being, we can still use the "legacy interface". I've also passed along messages from a number of readers [How many? Walt] saying they will be disappointed if we give up now, so close to what may be a pivotal moment in American (and therefore world) history.

Walt has suggested that we put up some videos until he feels like writing again. Fortunately, the premiere episode of Season Two of the True North Speaker Series went live yesterday. In this hour-and-a-quarter video, TN founder Candice Malcolm sits down with the legendary Rex Murphy, whose videos and writings have been featured on WWW several times over the years.

Mr Murphy can be counted on to provide a much needed dose of common sense in a world where good sense is anything but common. In this exclusive interview, he discusses with Ms Malcolm a wide range of issues including the COVID-19 pandemic, the changes in the media landscape over the past several decades and the totalitarian impulses on the left. This is primarily for Canadians, but our American friends should find it even more relevant.



Walt here. This interview has been a great inspiration to me. If Rex Murphy won't be silenced, neither will I!

White antifa anarchists have taken over the BLM "protests"

Ed. here. Poor Len thinks that Walt left the picture we posted yesterday where it could be seen easily as a way of putting us off his trail. In reality, Len thinks, Walt is not in the wilderness, but inside the bubble around the Scotiabank Centre in Toronto, where Canada's team (the Montréal Canadiens) are trying to get through the NHL "play-ins", to advance to the Stanley Cup playoffs. Only the hockey players, their support workers and a handful of media types are allowed inside, so if Walt has found a hiding place in the rafters -- "The Phantom of the Arena"? -- he's not about to tell us! Stay tuned...

Meanwhile, it falls to me [and Poor Len! Len.] to fill this space, and not with irrelevant funny stuff, as Walt made clear in a rather scathing message two days ago. Today I've chosen "How white radicals hijacked Portland's protests", by Michael Tracey, on the UnHerd blogsite, 4/8/20. As before, space doesn't allow us to repost the whole article, so I've selected a few trenchant excerpts. If you wish to read the whole thing, click on the link above.

The overwhelmingly white, anarchist activists who populate the ongoing protests in Portland...[have] discovered a work-around to arrogate moral cover for whatever insurrectionary upheaval they would have been ideologically committed to fomenting anyway. The Left/liberal political and media class is deeply invested in preserving the untouchable sanctity of "BLM". So by fusing themselves in the public mind with this ambiguously-defined protest movement, or even putting themselves at the vanguard, the anarchist whites insulate themselves from the type of scrutiny that might ordinarily be prompted by activists whose ultimate goal is the overthrow of the state....

To characterise what's gone on in Portland as a traditional "protest" is a misnomer, however. Pay a visit to the area around the Federal Courthouse in Downtown after midnight and you are greeted by brigades of black-clad "Antifa" foot soldiers — geared up in full body armour, complete with industrial-grade gas masks, shields and even customised radio systems. Being overwhelmingly white, they are strategic about public presentation: the speakers appointed to address the nightly "rallies" are almost exclusively black, as "amplifying black voices" to whom whites must dutifully "listen" is a central tenet of the Summer 2020 protest ethos.

If there is any foundational idea operative in Portland, it's to keep a frenetic confrontation with the state going for as long as possible, so as to maximise the chances that an incendiary incident might occur and catalyse a larger insurrectionary uproar — similar to the killing of George Floyd in May, which sparked nationwide riots. One fateful tear gas canister fired into the temple of a "protester" could reverberate rapidly across the country; "Portland solidarity" actions have already sprouted up as far away as Richmond, Virginia....

When protesters chant "NO GOOD COPS IN A RACIST SYSTEM", the "system" to which they are referring is the foundational system of governance of the United States — again, deemed inherently "fascist" and "white supremacist", and therefore impossible to reform. As one sign wielded by a protester declared: "The Revolution will not come by asking or voting"....

A strange feature of this protest movement is that one would barely know Barack Obama, a black man elected president in a majority white nation, ever existed. Not that Obama's mere election was supposed to have eradicated every last trace of racial inequities in the United States: of course it wasn't. But you'd think it would at least inform popular conceptions of the role of race within the nation's elite power structure. Instead, Obama seems to have been simply "erased" — the significance of his tenure not even worth mentioning. Are we to believe that a country so intractably defined by "white supremacy" — a totally uncontested truism among protesters and their media allies — nonetheless elected a black man not once, but twice? Apparently....

Further reading: "Riotous BLM Protesters Suddenly Realize They're All White People", Babylon Bee, 5/8/20. Don't forget, folks, that the BB is "Christian satire", to be taken cum grano salis... but not too large a grain. Truth is stranger than fiction!