Sunday morning music

This morning's article is an unusual combination.  I'm going to introduce you to a song, then talk at some length about its very profound meaning for me.  Call it an extended meditation on God, life, the universe and everything, if you will.

A couple of weeks ago I happened upon an album released in 1999 by country and bluegrass musician Ricky Skaggs, titled "Soldier of the Cross".

I'm not a big fan of either music genre, and I don't normally bother with "commercial" Christian music, but somehow I felt led to click through to a couple of the tracks and listen for a few moments.

One of them was titled "Seven Hillsides", composed by Texas native Walt Wilkins.  It describes the dilemma of a preacher who's to deliver memorial services at the graves of seven soldiers, killed in action overseas.  How is he to comfort their families, particularly their mothers?  How is he to make sense of their deaths in the context of the Christian message?  Since that's something I've had to do for myself, first from the perspective of my own faith, and then for others as a pastor and chaplain, you'll understand that this song struck me very powerfully indeed.

Walt Wilkins has recorded this song himself, on his 2001 album "Rivertown".

However, Mr. Wilkins has said he loves Ricky Skaggs' version of the song, and who am I to argue with the songwriter?  Before I go on, let's listen to it.

As a pastor, I can assure you that's a very good description of the moral and spiritual dilemma we face every time we have to do something like this.  How can we make sense of tragedy and loss in the context of our faith?  To me, it's blasphemous to suggest that everything that happens is God's will.  I refuse to believe that God points at someone and says, "I'm going to kill you now, to see how your family copes with your death, and test their faith!"  That's not the God I've come to know over the years.  Rather, I recall that God never once promised us a life of wine and roses, or milk and honey, or whatever.  Instead, he promised us grace to cope with life, whatever it throws at us.  In my experience, he keeps that promise - if we're prepared to accept his grace on his terms.

Regular readers will know the background to my faith, and how it's been formed and tested over the years.  I make no claim to be some sort of Christian hero - I'm anything but.  I've made more than my fair share of mistakes, and committed far more than my fair share of sins.  I fear God's justice when I face his judgment for my life - almost as much as I hope in his mercy, which is the only thing that will save any of us.  Nevertheless, as best I can, I try to live what I've come to believe through my experiences.

For those of you who aren't familiar with my background, here are a few blog articles I've written over the years, in chronological order.

Remembering Mike

The night Christmas became real

My heroes

For context on South Africa and events there during those years, see my articles "Remembering Inyati" and "Was apartheid South Africa really that bad?"

My faith grew out of those experiences, and remains formed by them to this day.  I try to express it in the pages of this blog, particularly when writing about modern tragedies such as terrorism and war.  However, a lot of people who haven't seen such destruction at first hand seem to approach such issues with a much simpler, black-and-white perspective that doesn't allow much in the way of "gray areas", where ethics, morality, attitudes and actions are less clear-cut and more complicated.  Far too many people seem to see the world - they prefer to see the world - in terms of "us" and "them":  and we're all right, and they're all wrong, because that's the way it is.

That attitude is the cause of so much death and destruction that it's almost impossible to tabulate.  I've seen it in more than one war zone in sub-Saharan Africa, and I'm seeing it now in these dis-United States.  I wrote about it at some length after the Paris terror attacks of 2015, in an article titled "Paris and the pain of being human".  I meant every word I wrote there;  but my words clearly didn't satisfy many readers, as the more than 60 comments the article attracted will make clear if you read them (I hope you do).

Here are the salient paragraphs from that article.

Those aren't the worst aspects of violent conflict. To me, the worst is what it does to the human psyche. You become dehumanized. Your enemies are no longer people - they're objects, things, targets. You aren't shooting at John, whose mother is ill, and who's missing his girlfriend terribly, and who wants to marry her as soon as he can get home to do so. You're shooting at that enemy over there, the one who'll surely 'do unto you' unless you 'do unto him' first. He's not a human being. He's a 'gook'. He's 'the enemy'. He's a thing rather than a person. It's easier to shoot a thing than it is a person.

. . .

And in the end, the bodies lying in the ruins, and the blood dripping onto our streets, and the weeping of those who've lost loved ones . . . they'll all be the same.  History is full of them.  When it comes to the crunch, there are no labels that can disguise human anguish.  People will suffer in every land, in every community, in every faith . . . and they'll turn to what they believe in to make sense of their suffering . . . and most of them will raise up the next generation to hate those whom they identify as the cause of their suffering . . . and the cycle will go on, for ever and ever, until the world ends.

We cannot 'kill them all and let God sort them out' (and let it never be forgotten that those obscene, inhuman instructions were reportedly issued, not by a Muslim fundamentalist, but by an Abbot and Papal Legate of the Catholic Church).  There are too many of 'them' to kill them all, just as 'they' can never kill all of 'us'.  We cannot kill our way out of terrorism.  We cannot kill our way out of the dilemma of being human, with all the tragedy that entails.

May God have mercy on us all.

That article, looking at the pain of loss suffered by so many in those terror attacks, strikes very close to the heart of what I felt when I listened to "Seven Hillsides".  Right now, I'm seeing the same hardness of heart felt by Americans towards each other.  Those on the left demand their version of utopia, and regard all who stand in their way as "reactionaries" or "conservatives" or "rednecks" or "deplorables" or whatever the "label du jour" might be.  Those on the right regard their opponents as "progressives" or "socialists" or "terrorists" or "thugs" and the like.  However, neither side refers to their opponents as "human beings".  They objectify them as something to be rejected, perhaps feared, certainly destroyed in respect of their positions, if not their actual lives.  They won't accept them as fellow Americans who happen to hold different opinions.

The Christian faith that's supposed to animate this country, according to so many of the Founding Fathers, is conspicuous by its absence on both sides.  The right may complain about openly anti-Christian sentiments on the left, but their own attitudes display as much disregard of the Golden Rule as do their opponents'.  Pot, meet kettle.  Kettle, pot.

And so, pastors such as myself are again dumped straight into the old dilemma.  How can we make sense of suffering, pain and loss in the context of our faith, when both sides fail to recognize their opponents - political, electoral or otherwise - as fellow human beings for whom Christ died?  In war, it's common for allegedly "holy leaders" to claim that "God is on our side" or "God is with us".  It's always struck me as incongruous that both sides make that same claim.  It must be awfully schizophrenic for God to find himself divided like that, two halves of himself working against the middle!  Clearly, that sort of religious propaganda won't fly.  Mothers on either side mourn the loss of their loved ones . . . so how can we put that loss in the context of what it means to be Christian, and human, and real?  How can we preach God's truth, rather than our partisan, one-sided, limited perspectives?

I have no answers that will satisfy everybody.  All I can do is point out that we are called to judge ourselves by God's standards, not to judge him by our standards.  Sadly, most of us fall into the latter error;  and if pastors try to point that out, we're derided and rejected for not taking sides.  We can't win.

And that's the pain of being human.  We are called to be more than human;  not just natural, but supernatural - yet we insist on remaining in the mud and the mire, and refusing to "lift up [our] eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh [our] help".  We won't find God's answers by looking down at the human condition, but by looking up, to see what he intends human beings to become.

How should we behave towards each other?

The prophet Micah put it in a nutshell.

He has showed you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

That, right there, is a pastor's calling;  to remind and help people to lift up their eyes, and their lives, and "walk humbly with our God".  That's not an optional instruction, to be observed only if others do the same to us.  The Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you") and the eleventh commandment ("Love one another as I have loved you") are spiritually synonymous.  However, as pastors, we need not be surprised if reminding people of that reality leads to rejection by some.  After all . . . look at what they did to Christ, who embodied that teaching.

And, thus, today . . . we face our own "Seven Hillsides".


* Sigh *


Peter
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Doofus Of The Day #1,062

Courtesy of Gun Free Zone, we find this photograph (clickit to biggit).  Compare the slogan on the T-shirt with the slogan on the placard.

Behold, a moonbat!




Peter

The plot behind the riots is now clear

It remains true, as it has throughout history, that if one wants to understand an event or a series of events, look for a pattern.  If there's no pattern, it was probably spontaneous and unplanned.  If a pattern emerges . . . it was almost certainly planned, premeditated, scripted and directed, to at least some extent.  It may not have been 100% intended - the "spark to the flame" may have been accidental or spontaneous - but the pattern will reveal those who were ready, willing and able to jump on a bandwagon or take advantage of the spark.  They were prepared for it.

The same is true of the current riots across America.  The pattern is now becoming much clearer, and anyone with two working brain cells to rub together can see it for themselves.

The clearly intended, pre-planned nature of the riots is itself a give-away.  Sure, the tragic death of George Floyd was the spark that lit the fire.  That could not have been planned, but the plans to take advantage of any such incident were laid long ago, and preparations were made.  You don't think the riots were prepared in advance?  You're deluded, to put it mildly.

• Riots in scores of cities, breaking out simultaneously?
• Pallets of bricks distributed in advance, and rioters advised of their location through megaphones?
• Activists handing out Molotov cocktails and improvised explosives?
• Identical signs printed, T-shirts worn, and slogans chanted across thousands of miles?
• Solemn, almost universal left-wing proclamations of white American guilt, black American innocence, and the need for "healing", "reconciliation" and "justice for all" - all while allowing the injustice of brutal, thuggish, indiscriminate riots to continue, to intimidate the electorate?

Need I go on?  The evidence is overwhelming.  This response was pre-planned, awaiting only the right incident to activate it.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying through their teeth, and takes you for a fool.

I have no doubt that racism exists in America.  Anyone can see it in news reports from day to day.  The recent, tragic deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and (most recently) George Floyd are graphic illustrations of that reality.  However, note the fuss that's been made about those three deaths in particular.  What about the hundreds - literally hundreds - of black deaths at the hands of other blacks, in crime-ridden cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, and many others?  They happen daily, with big "scores" almost every weekend - and no liberal or left-wing or progressive politician says a single damned word, or does anything effective to stop them.  It's a strangely blinkered outrage that ignores the many tragedies for the few.

As Larry Elder, himself black, has pointed out:

In 2018, according to the FBI’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were about 600,000 nonhomicide violent black-white crimes each year, with 90% involving a black perpetrator and a white victim. According to economist John Lott, writing in 2014: “Based on the most recent available FBI crime numbers, black male teenagers were nine times more likely to commit murder than were their white counterparts. That’s right, nine times, and the gap in these urban areas is undoubtedly even larger.”

Blacks kill twice as many whites (500 in 2015) as whites kill blacks (229 in 2015). Blacks, at 13% of the population, commit 50% of murders, and 90% of black murder victims are killed by other blacks. The Wall Street Journal‘s Jason Riley wrote in 2014: “Blacks commit violent crimes at 7 to 10 times the rate that whites do. The fact that their victims tend to be of the same race suggests that young black men in the ghetto live in danger of being shot by each other, not cops.” The No. 1 cause of preventable deaths for young white men is accidents, like car accidents. The No. 1 cause of deaths, preventable or otherwise, for young black men is homicide. In absolute numbers, Chicago often has more murders than any other city in America. The population of Chicago is approximately one-third black, one-third white, and one-third Hispanic. Yet, blacks account for over 80% of the city’s homicide victims.

As to this narrative of blacks being “hunted,” several recent studies found cops more hesitant, more reluctant to shoot a black suspect than a white suspect. One such study was conducted by black Harvard economist Roland Fryer, who called his conclusion the most “surprising result of my career.”

There's more at the link.

Why aren't we hearing those facts from commenters across the political spectrum?  Because they don't favor the politically correct narrative, that's why.  Political capital can be made from white or police killings of black people, but not from black-on-black violence.  It's the ultimate in cynical exploitation.

Sundance sees it that way, too.  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

Once you see the strings on the grievance marionettes, you can never watch the pantomime without seeing them; thus the playbook is transparent. Team Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Team AME Church have again aligned, exactly as we expected.

. . .

All of the activist grievance leaders, in addition to the politicians, have been instructed to reign-in the protests in coordination with the 5:00pm Obama remarks. That timing allows the media to present the ‘healing Obama’ narrative; riots and looting stop etc.

Meanwhile, attorney Ben Crump will deliver the same healing message with the added demand that all police officers must be arrested by the time the first memorial takes place at 1:00pm tomorrow.

The “all we want is an arrest” approach, comes directly from the BLM/AME playbook as executed in Orlando/Miami (Trayvon Martin), Ferguson (Mike Brown), and Baltimore (Freddie Gray). Now that both networks have come back together and aligned, all of the coordination is much easier.

. . .

The actual goal is far less about racial healing and more specifically about how to obtain political benefit and paint President Trump as the problem ... Everything within the strategy is coordinated and planned carefully. The script is how the political value is maximized. In the larger background the goal is activism based on race for 2020 to avoid the problem that was encountered in 2016. Joe Biden, and the DNC apparatus writ large, are the intended beneficiaries.

There's more at the link.

The drumbeat of anti-Trump, anti-police, anti-establishment rhetoric is constant, incessant, and almost identical across platforms and people.  Open, blatant lies are disseminated without blinking, and without correction.  The same talking points are being parroted by politicians, clergy, community leaders - anyone who can command a microphone for a few moments to hammer home the agreed talking points.  They don't criticize the rioters, except in the most general terms.  Instead, they criticize the system that has produced the conditions that engendered the riots, and blame everything on President Trump.  It's all his fault.

(No-one ever seems to add up the number of years in political office of all the Trump critics, and compare the total to the President's number of years in political office - three, to be precise.  Have you ever wondered why all those critics - including former Presidents - didn't manage to fix the problems they're currently bewailing, after all those years when they were in positions of authority and could have done so?  Nobody seems to want to ask - let alone answer - that question.  Funny, that . . . )

These riots are being used to obtain the maximum political advantage.  That's why Democratic-Party-controlled cities and states are not cracking down on them, are not using the National Guard and/or federal government assistance to control them, and are wringing their metaphorical hands and bewailing the evil Trump administration instead of doing something effective.  That's why even some anti-Trump Republicans are doing likewise.  It's all a setup.  They want more chaos and destruction, because in it they see a path to electoral victory in November 2020.  They are relying on their allies in the mainstream media to see to it that a majority of voters blame President Trump for the chaos, and vote against him (and for them) in the elections.  This is nothing more or less than an attempt to tear down the entire country.

We need to draw a sharp, clear distinction between the righteous anger of many people at institutionalized racism and police brutality on the one hand, and the thuggery and nihilism of the rioters on the other.  I have no problem standing against the former issues:  indeed, I'll gladly join any public demonstration against them, and demand investigations and answers.  However, I will have nothing to do with any attempt to excuse, tolerate or justify the riots, the destruction being wrought by gang-bangers, thugs and looters in the name of racial justice.  They need to be brought to heel, as quickly and as expediently as necessary.  If violence is necessary to accomplish that, I believe it's fully justified.  They've brought it upon themselves.

What many of the liberal, left-wing and progressive commenters are missing, I think, is that a great many Americans in the "silent majority" - Democrats as well as Republicans - are thinking along those lines too.  I'm hearing from many of my contacts in other cities and states that there's a growing groundswell of anger, resentment and determination among "average" voters - a determination to vote for law and order in November, irrespective of the party concerned.  If President Trump can capitalize on that, particularly if he can find a way to crack down on the violence despite all the obstacles put in his way by his political opponents, I think he may benefit from it.

In many ways, current domestic US politics reflect 1938 European politics.  In that year, Hitler at last took the mask off his aggression and naked ambition and demanded compliance from his opponents.  Cravenly, they caved in.  Appeasement was the order of the day.  Neville Chamberlain came back to Britain from Munich waving a piece of paper and proclaiming "peace in our time".  September 1939 proved how misguided and foolish he was.  In the same way, we have appeasers trying to persuade us that only by knuckling under to the forces of violence and destruction can we stop them.  If we do, we're rapidly going to find that they'll be back for more, taking advantage of our weakness to wreak yet more havoc on our society.  Appeasement won't stop them.  Only determination and the reimposition of the rule of law will do so.

It's long gone time the riots, and the rioters, were stopped.  If the government won't do it, it'll be up to ordinary Americans to do so.  I don't think the rioters have figured that out yet . . . and certainly the politicians, activists and agitators who are using them don't appear to have taken that into account.  In particular, they don't seem to realize how many Americans are now ready and willing to do that, if it becomes necessary.  As Kim du Toit asks:  "What if we - we, the suffering middle classes who form the backbone of this nation - just say, 'F*** you, and your conversation'."

By demonizing ordinary Americans, accusing them of racism, deriding them as "bitter clingers" and "deplorables", and characterizing them as "vigilantes" if they dare to protect their livelihood and property against rioters, the left is making them angry enough to turn them into activists.  Perhaps that's overdue.

Peter

Organizing the riots, fake news, and other matters

It seems that the organizing effort behind the current, allegedly "spontaneous" riots is extensive, well-planned, and very well coordinated and equipped.  More and more evidence is coming to light.  As just one example, here's part of their instructions, dropped by a riot organizer and publicized on Twitter.  Click the image for a larger view.

Note that every page has to be initialed by recipients, and strict discipline is imposed on them.  I ran that image past my law enforcement contacts in a few states and cities.  Several replied that they'd seen the same sort of thing in their areas.  One pointed out that the handout shown above was 26 pages long, and that enough other pages had been found in various places (mislaid, or on the person of arrested organizers) to reconstruct almost the whole document.  The radio frequencies and encryption used by the riot coordinators are also known by now, and interceptions are happening in real time.  There's a massive effort underway to coordinate intelligence and information, in the hope that this will lead to a crackdown on those responsible.  It can't happen too soon for me!

Be aware that much of the news about these riots is false.  Many in the mainstream media are deliberately tailoring their output to reflect the "party line", shooting TV footage from specific angles to maximize the social justice perspective and minimize the thuggery.  Quotes are selective, images unfavorable to the politically correct narrative are simply not used, and reporting is biased in the extreme.

I'll give you just one example of biased reporting.  Here's a headline from BET (Black Entertainment Television) yesterday:

Beloved Louisville Restaurant Owner

Who Provided Free Meals To Cops

Killed By Police

David McAtee was shot by law enforcement

early Monday morning during a protest for Breonna Taylor.

Sounds terrible, doesn't it?  How could those brutal, heartless police kill such a wonderful man?  Well . . . turns out the reality was rather different, as Fox 19 reported (also yesterday).

LMPD says new video

shows David McAtee firing gun

before he was killed by law enforcement

You'll find other reports out there.  They agree that at least two surveillance cameras, at different businesses, showed Mr. McAtee firing at police before they returned fire and killed him.  Compare and contrast the two headlines.  Which sounds closer to that reality?  Which report is more accurate?  (By the way, the same information was available to both outlets before they published their articles.  Note what BET left out!)

The problem is, most BET viewers and readers will never see another report from a different perspective.  They'll be outraged by what they perceive - what has been implicitly portrayed - as police brutality.  This, I suggest, is precisely the effect BET journalists and editors are trying to achieve.

I wouldn't trust a single report about the rioting in the mainstream media.  I'd check, double-check and triple-check everything, using input from all sides of the political and media spectrum, before making up my mind.  News - accurate news - is too important to be left to journalists and editors, who have all too often proved to be biased, dishonest and corrupt.

I think the ever-thought-provoking Heather Mac Donald has the best input on what we're seeing on our streets.  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

Savagery is spreading with lightning speed across the United States, with murderous assaults on police officers and civilians and the ecstatic annihilation of businesses and symbols of the state. Welcome to a real civilization-destroying pandemic...

. . .

This pandemic of civil violence is more widespread than anything seen during the Black Lives Matter movement of the Obama years, and it will likely have an even deadlier toll on law enforcement officers than the targeted assassinations we saw from 2014 onward. It’s worse this time because the country has absorbed another five years of academically inspired racial victimology. From Ta-Nehisi Coates to the New York Times’s 1619 project, the constant narrative about America’s endemic white supremacy and its deliberate destruction of the “black body” has been thoroughly injected into the political bloodstream.

Facts don’t matter to the academic victimology narrative. Far from destroying the black body, whites are the overwhelming target of interracial violence. Between 2012 and 2015, blacks committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial violent victimizations (excluding interracial homicide, which is also disproportionately black-on-white). That works out to 540,360 felonious assaults on whites. Whites committed 14.4 percent of all interracial violent victimization, or 91,470 felonious assaults on blacks. Blacks are less than 13 percent of the national population.

If white mobs were rampaging through black business districts, assaulting passersby and looting stores, we would have heard about it on the national news every night. But the black flash mob phenomenon is grudgingly covered, if at all, and only locally.

The national media have been insisting on the theme of the allegedly brutal Minneapolis police department. They said nothing as black-on-white robberies rose in downtown Minneapolis late last year, along with savage assaults on passersby. Why are the Minneapolis police in black neighborhoods? Because that’s where violent crime is happening, including shootings of two-year-olds and lethal beatings of 75-year-olds. Just as during the Obama years, the discussion of the allegedly oppressive police is being conducted in the complete absence of any recognition of street crime and the breakdown of the black family that drives it.

Once the violence began, any effort to “understand” it should have stopped, since that understanding is inevitably exculpatory. The looters are not grieving over the stomach-churning arrest and death of George Floyd; they are having the time of their lives. You don’t protest or mourn a victim by stealing oxycontin, electronics, jewelry, and sneakers.

There's more at the link.  Highly recommended reading.

Finally, in response to several queries from readers following my two articles on Monday, I remind you that last year I published an article titled "An interesting look at urban defense".  It contains links to several other articles on the subject.  All are thought-provoking and worth reading.

Peter

These riots are the latest round in an organized attack on our republic

If anybody thinks the current riots erupting around the United States are just a reaction to the tragic death of George Floyd, or an uprising against racism in this country, they're worse than fools.  They're deluded idiots.  They're blind to reality.

No "spontaneous riot" sees pallet-loads of bricks mysteriously dropped off in major city centers, precisely where rioters will be passing in a very short time.  (There are innumerable reports and videos of them - see here for one on-the-spot recording.)  You couldn't possibly ask for stronger evidence of planning and organization behind the riots.  I also note that almost every city where rioting has broken out has been Democratic Party-controlled, with administrations that will reliably leash their police and security forces to give the rioters more or less free rein.  Out of 39 cities I've seen reported, there's only one exception that I can identify so far.

(One does wonder what Organizing for America has been up to.  I've heard from some of my cop friends in cities beset by unrest - the same friends who gave me the "straight dope" about cartel difficulties caused by the coronavirus - that OfA activists in their areas are behaving very suspiciously indeed.  They also report that some OfA activists are already known to them from their activities and sympathies in support of Antifa, as well as organizations connected to and/or funded by the Open Society Foundations.  Here's one example.  What price cross-pollination of activists?  My informants have proved accurate before, and I'm willing to bet they're accurate again.  I'm also informed that their reports are being forwarded to a very high level indeed.  Let's hope suitable action will result.)

Almost every TV station, newspaper or other mainstream outlet has tried to tie the riots to President Trump, blaming him for them (or for making them worse).  The same goes for opinion and editorial columnists.  It's even extended to fake pictures, seeking to tie the Minneapolis police officer to the Trump campaign.  (On the other hand, I can't recall a single picture of the President throwing a rock, or taking a swing at a police officer, or breaking a window, or starting a fire in a business, or looting.  Makes you wonder who the real criminals are, doesn't it?)  What's more, social media appears to be allowing rioters and criminals to coordinate their activities, selecting targets and encouraging others to attack them - while those same social media are flagging the President's social media posts as untrustworthy.  Makes you think, doesn't it?

This incessant propaganda drumbeat makes it obvious that the mainstream media are taking their talking points from a central source, and parroting them like the obedient slaves to ideology that they've become.  If there's no smoke without fire, the mainstream media are a raging conflagration, a progressive holocaust.  You can't accept anything they're saying about the riots without first examining it very carefully, to strip away the partisan political rhetoric and get to the underlying facts.  If you think that's merely an aberration, you have no idea what's going on.

(Want an example?  Look at what Van Jones had to say on Friday about racism in America.  Note his background, particularly in the Obama administration.  Then consider Rahm Emanuel's [another leftist] oft-quoted dictum about never letting a serious crisis go to waste.  Put two and two together.  If you don't get four, you need math classes.)

Accusations that endemic racism in American society being to blame for the riots are nothing more than a pretext, an ideological fig-leaf to cover the planning and organization behind these events.  To anybody with two working brain cells to rub together, the lie is obvious.  As Sixties-era leftist activists knew (and recited repeatedly), "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows".  "Spontaneous" protests are not this well arranged, so long in advance, needing only a spark to kindle the flame.  The death of George Floyd provided that spark, and those behind the riots are fanning it into a roaring conflagration for all they're worth.

"But why now?" I hear readers ask.  Why is this violence erupting at this time, rather than earlier or later?  The reason isn't hard to find.  Attorney-General Barr has been overseeing an investigation into the actions of the so-called "Deep State" and the Obama administration in the non-existent scandal over Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.  The more that comes out about that scandal, the more it appears that very senior figures in the previous administration, and very senior officials in the executive branch, conspired to pervert the course of justice and overturn - or at least obstruct - the result of a democratic election.  It appears very likely that criminal charges will result.  The latest Senate inquiry into elements of the scandal is to open today.  What better way to divert attention from the indefensible, almost certainly criminal actions of the progressive Left than to start a riot or three?  If there's no connection between those elements, I'll go out and buy a hat so that I can eat it!

Heads need to roll over this series of events.  Those heads should be those of the people who planned and organized this violence, and are still pulling the strings.  If their heads roll in a literal sense, as well as a figurative one, I won't be upset.  They deserve nothing less.  They have blood on their hands - the blood of the victims of the riots - and should be treated accordingly.

The situation also has grave implications for our personal security.  I'll address those in another article in a few hours' time.  Meanwhile, "trust in God and keep your powder dry."  You may need it.




Peter

Strip away the civilized veneer, and human beings are still capable of anything

I'm obliged to American Partisan for posting a video of the rebellion and civil war in the Congo in 1964, when white mercenaries and Belgian paratroopers had to restore order across thousands of square miles of equatorial forest and bush.  The video is explicit:  you'll see bodies and parts of bodies, all of them real, and most of them casually discarded or even used as decorations by the fighting men.  That's what such absolute disregard for human life does to those who encounter it.  Eventually, it grinds you down.  You become numb, inured to it, no matter how deep your faith or developed your conscience.

I'm not going to embed the video here, because it's very graphic in its depiction of brutality and horror.  Nevertheless, if you want to see what Africa can be like at its worst, I recommend you watch it.  You'll find it at this link.  When you've done so (or if you'd rather not watch it, for which I don't blame you), read on below.

The thing is, nothing's changed in Africa.  Precisely that same brutality is going on right now in the east of the Congo.  The terrorist groups who oppose (and sometimes attack and kill) the medical teams trying to deal with Ebola?  They're the descendants of the same people who slaughtered so many thousands in the sixties.  It's not just the Congo, either.  The Rwanda genocide, the Burundi civil war, the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, the South Sudan civil war, the Sierra Leone conflict, the First and Second Liberian civil wars, the Rhodesian conflict, South Africa under apartheid . . . the list goes on and on.  Nor is it just Africa.  The Killing Fields of Cambodia, the East Timor genocide, the Nicaraguan Revolution, the Salvadoran Civil War . . . need I name more?  For another example of this sort of casual brutality in action, see the documentary "Cry Freetown" about the civil war in Sierra Leone.  You'll find it at this link.  The same warning applies to that video as to the earlier one - it's brutal.

This is the reality of more primitive societies when the thin veneer of civilization is removed from them.  Decades of colonial rule, followed by independence and decades of alleged "education" and "development", have not changed that basic reality.  I know.  I've been in many of those countries, and seen that at first hand for myself.  Nor is it only allegedly "primitive" societies.  Our First World nations are just as vulnerable to such savagery.  Consider the Holocaust, or the lynching of black people during the civil rights struggle in the American South.  It's just that we (usually, but not always) take longer to strip away our slightly thicker veneer of civilization.

Many people in the First World today have become so insulated from this sort of reality that they literally can't conceive of it.  Yet . . . it's not very far from us.  Consider cartel violence in Mexico, or the worst of the crime-ridden inner-city ghettoes in the United States.  Precisely the same savagery is evident there.  It's almost indescribable to a Western audience, because their educated, civilized minds just can't wrap themselves around such things.  Yet . . . it's true.

We may degenerate more slowly than others, revert to savagery more gradually than others:  but in all of us, civilization is only so deep.  Pushed far enough, some - too many - of us really are capable of reverting to the most primitive savagery.  I hate to acknowledge that, and I don't want to believe it, but I've seen too much to doubt it.

Peter

Just for once - don't be shocked! - I'm actually going to recommend a Michael Moore movie

In the past I've had very little time for Michael Moore and his deliberately confrontational, far-left-wing perspective, expressed in his movies (Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 being probably the best known).  I still disagree profoundly with his politics:  but I must, however grudgingly, doff my hat to his willingness to slaughter sacred cows in his latest documentary, Planet of the Humans.

The New York Post, hardly a left-wing rag, says of it:

Memo from Moore to those who think they are driving green: You may indulge your illusions if you prefer. But all you’ve really done is transfer your emissions from the tailpipe of your car to the smokestack of the local power plant.

Maybe you think solar power is the answer?

Moore treats you to a visit to a showy solar array that covers an entire football field. The power-company executive present admits that it can only power ten homes, and then only when the sun shines.

Powering the nearby city of Lansing, Mich., he says with a grin, would require 15 square miles of panels. You want to talk about “footprints?”

We follow local environmentalists as they hike up a mountain where a site has been clear-cut for 21 mega wind turbines. They deplore the destruction of the natural beauty of the landscape and the scattering of the wildlife it once supported.

The engineer in charge ticks off the hundreds of tons of concrete, steel, aluminum, carbon and other products that go into the construction of each and every mega wind turbine. Industry requires huge inputs of energy to produce such things, a total energy deficit that the spinning blades of the wind turbine will not begin to pay back over its projected lifetime.

Moore ends the segment with a shot of broken and rusted wind turbines littering the landscape.

We visit plants that generate electricity by burning “biomass” rather than fossil fuel. But as we see one diesel-powered machine after another felling, hauling and chipping logs for burning, the absurdity of the entire enterprise comes into focus. In the final scene we see a clear-cut forest and learn that we would need to burn every tree in America to power the country for just one year.

By the midpoint of the movie, Moore has already revealed that each and every form of green energy is a fraud, surviving on popular naivete, government subsidies and the products of industrial civilization.

. . .

He ... [takes] us to a green concert, where the organizer has just announced to cheers from the crowd that it is powered by “solar energy.” Going backstage, however, we learn that the tiny solar array is only for show. The actual power for the lights, amplifiers and electric guitars comes from a portable diesel generator.

Then he moves on to the big boys. He exposes the massive funding that the Sierra Club, 350 and other environmental groups receive from the energy industry, and exposes the connections between leading environmentalists like Al Gore and Wall Street financiers.

For now, you can still watch Moore’s epic take-down of “green energy” on YouTube, but you’d better move fast. There’s a campaign underway to remove it from that service as well.

If you do tune in, bear in mind that Moore is no friend of free markets or individual liberty. His “solution” to reducing humanity’s use of energy is a throwback to twentieth-century population control ... But you can fast forward through that part. Otherwise, it’s a joy to watch Moore skewer one “renewable energy” fantasy after another.

There's more at the link.

On April 21st, Moore put the movie on YouTube, free to watch for 30 days.  We're about halfway through that free watching period right now, so you've got about two weeks to see it at no expense, if you wish.  I highly recommend that you do.  Like the reviewer above, I don't hold with Moore's proposed solution:  but the documentary nevertheless provides an honest look at the frauds and confabulations of the eco-warrior clique, and shows how many of their most favored projects and plans are essentially nothing but frauds.  Meanwhile, of course, they're making a very great deal of money out of them.  "Follow the money" remains a very reliable method to find out what's really motivating almost any agenda or policy.

Here's a teaser trailer for the movie.

And here's the movie itself.  Enjoy it while you still can!

Kudos to Mr. Moore for his objectivity and honesty in this documentary.  Frankly, I wouldn't have believed him capable of it, based on his past movies.  I still don't agree with his progressive views, but I'll gladly give credit where credit is due.

Peter

The whole USA may be "Virginia'ed" on gun laws

Those of us who value the United States Constitution and its Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, were profoundly depressed, earlier this year, to see the speed and efficiency with which left-wing and progressive forces in Virginia rammed through a swath of anti-gun legislation within weeks of taking office there.  They ignored the wishes of almost half the electorate, dismissed out of hand protests, declarations of "Second Amendment sanctuaries" and other objections, and shoved through a series of laws that emasculated important parts of the right to keep and bear arms.  They haven't finished yet, either - expect more such laws to come down the pike within the next year or two.

I have friends who are in a position to follow developments there "behind the scenes".  They informed me this week that Michael Bloomberg (who bankrolled the Democrat electoral victory in Virginia) and his anti-gun organizations have taken their victory in that state to heart.  They told me that, according to their sources, anti-gun lawyers are drafting national legislation that's intended to be rushed through Congress and the Senate as soon as Democrats have (they hope) taken control of both houses early next year.  Basically, they'll reshape US federal law concerning firearms in the image and likeness of what's already been done in Virginia - and just as quickly, if not faster.

You know, and I know, that this is unlikely to be constitutional, particularly in the light of the Heller, McDonald and Caetano decisions.  Lawsuits against the new Virginia anti-gun laws have only just begun wending their way through the courts, and won't be decided for years yet.  Nevertheless, I'm informed that the anti-gun forces in this country have been greatly encouraged by their "success" in Virginia, and are determined to follow it up on a national scale by the same sort of swift legislative fiat that they accomplished there.

I'm informed that this will probably happen regardless of who wins the Presidential election in November.  I understand the calculus is that, if a Democrat wins, the laws will be signed without difficulty (certainly, Joe Biden's policy positions on guns are enough to gladden the heart of the anti-gun movement, and presumably any other Democratic presidential or vice-presidential candidate will adopt them or something similar).  If President Trump wins re-election, but the Democrats win control of the House and Senate, he'll be confronted with an ultimatum:  sign the new anti-gun laws, or risk seeing every one of his policy priorities ignored or rejected by the legislature unless and until he does so.  My correspondent pointed out that Mr. Trump is a New Yorker at heart, and has never felt as strongly about the Second Amendment as many other Republicans.  Who knows if this sort of pressure might not lead to some sort of political accommodation, where at least some gun rights are sacrificed on the altar of other legislative priorities?

Such laws will, of course, criminalize a large swath of Americans.  Similar anti-gun legislation has been largely ignored in states that tried to enforce it;  in New York and Connecticut, to mention recent examples, owners of so-called "assault weapons" have very largely ignored the legal requirement to register their firearms.  I'm sure civil disobedience like that will occur on a national scale if such legislation is passed;  after all, the promise of such action is partly responsible for Virginia Democrats deferring (but not taking off the table altogether) their own proposed assault weapons ban.  Nevertheless, those citizens who react by exercising civil disobedience will have made themselves felons according to the letter of the law, simply by standing up for their Second Amendment rights as they see them.  If they get into trouble with the law for any other reason, that will almost certainly be used as a reason to prosecute them for firearms "offenses" as well.  After all, won't their "deliberate defiance of national laws" in one area be argued to be proof of their basically criminal nature in other areas?

I think this may be a make-or-break moment for gun rights in America.  I have little doubt that many of our fellow citizens will talk a good fight, but relatively few will be willing to take action - just as the vast majority of the original colonists did not actively participate in the American Revolution, despite their passive support for it.  Those who are prepared to actively resist such laws, no matter what the cost, will be relatively few.  Will they be enough to make a difference?  I don't know.

What I do know is that talk is cheap.  "Actions speak louder than words", to quote the old idiom.  If you value your Second Amendment rights, you've got the rest of this year to do something to express and protect them before the crunch comes.  Express them by buying what firearms you need, plus enough ammunition to keep them fed and yourself in practice.  (In particular, I'd encourage you to buy one or more of the sort of firearm likely to be proscribed by such laws, plus enough ammunition and accessories to make them useful.  Vote with your wallet!  Also, I'd take steps to dispose of at least some of the guns you own that are recorded in your name, in favor of guns that are "off-paper".  Private sales or swaps are still entirely legal in most of the country.  If anti-gun authorities don't know you've got it, it's a lot trickier to trace it or demand that you surrender it.)  Protect your rights by allying with other gun owners to put pressure on our politicians to defend the Second Amendment against such attacks, and to elect those who will uphold it.

One important point:  in allying with others, choose your friends wisely.  I no longer regard the National Rifle Association as worthy of support.  Wayne LaPierre and his cohorts at the head of the NRA appear to have converted it into a benefit society for themselves, at the expense of its mission and its members.  They are utterly discredited.  Unless and until they have departed, and the NRA has been entirely cleansed of their odious influence, I shall no longer support it in any way.  I'd rather work with more honest organizations such as (on a national level) Gun Owners of America or the Second Amendment Foundation.  I recommend both to your attention.

Finally, look to your local politicians, law enforcement agencies and officers, and local regulations.  Most of the counties in Virginia have declared themselves to be Second Amendment sanctuaries.  I'd like to see a lot more of that.  Without local cooperation, regional and national gun regulation and confiscation will be a lot more difficult.

Peter

The current lockdown might help to reshape American education

As the lockdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic continues, it's highlighting fissures in the monolithic education establishment, and giving parents and students fresh reason to question whether or not they're getting the best value for their education dollars.

First, the American Spectator points out that "We're All Homeschoolers Now".  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

Kids go to school for six-plus hours a day, but a lot of that time is wasted. In most cases, you could run through the lessons in about two hours. Parents are seeing that now.

The pandemic quarantine is showing us that schooling is basically state- or parent-sponsored babysitting with some ABCs, 123s, dodgeball, and the prom thrown in.

This highly credentialed child care costs taxpayers a lot of money ... now that we’re out the money and have to take care of the kids, reassessment is going to happen.

. . .

The sector of education that is in real trouble is higher education. Costs have gone nothing but up as schools have used the money from student loans to do things like build more buildings, hire an assistant to the assistant to the assistant of the president — basically anything but put that money back into the classrooms.

. . .

Colleges and universities are keeping the money flowing in right now with online courses. Students who would never have considered distance learning have gotten a taste of it. Many will decide they prefer that to the in-person experience.

Schools will try to hold per-credit prices up, but it won’t work. Economies of scale for in-demand online learning are significantly lower than classroom learning, and there are enough credentialed competitors in that space that this will finally bend the higher-ed cost curve down.

There's more at the link.

(As I've said in these pages before, every one of my four university qualifications was earned through part-time and/or correspondence education.  I could never afford to go to university full-time.  I don't think my education suffered through doing it that way, and I saved a bundle!)

Heather Mac Donald agrees that US higher education is basically a Ponzi scheme.

Many college presidents are terrified that the coronavirus pandemic will devastate their schools’ finances and enrollment. Anyone who cares about a revival of serious learning can only hope that they are right.

Higher education today resembles a massive Ponzi scheme. Colleges desperately recruit ever more marginal students who stand little chance of graduating. Before their inevitable withdrawal, those students’ tuition dollars fuel the growth of the bureaucracy, which creates the need to get an even larger pool of likely dropouts through the door to fund the latest round of administrative expansion ... Tuition at private four-year colleges grew 250 percent from 1982 to 2012, while the median family income rose about 18 percent, adjusted for inflation, according to ABC Insights. Since the 2008 recession, tuition at four-year public colleges rose 35 percent.

. . .

The primary concerns of college leaders are developing new sources of revenue and competing for students, according to a 2019 Chronicle of Higher Education poll. Even before the coronavirus sent a spasm of fear throughout the enrollment bureaucracy, colleges were nervously eyeing their sinking enrollment yields ... And now, the coronavirus threatens tuition dollars, government support, and alumni giving.

. . .

Already-enrolled students have been sent packing and told to hook up their laptops for distance learning. Almost no college is considering a tuition rebate, which implies that online learning should be valued at the same rate as an on-campus class. Students and their parents may start to ask why they should pay astronomical fees for a campus experience if they can get the same instruction over the web.

. . .

For years, as tuitions climbed to ever-more obscene levels, observers predicted that the higher-ed bubble was surely about to burst. That never happened. Now, however, the long-overdue correction may be near.

Again, more at the link.

Even technically-oriented education can benefit from the online learning environment, as a recent study confirms.

A new study led by Cornell University researchers shows that STEM students learn just as much in online classrooms as they do in traditional in-person classes. Online courses might be less satisfying than in-person classes, but many more students can access them and they are much cheaper to facilitate.

Last, but by no means least, home schooling and education means that left-wing and progressive indoctrination of students is being exposed for what it is - and, for the first time, many parents are doing something about it.

Needless to say, now with my kids home and me overseeing their daily e-learning, this is a great opportunity to take a deeper look at the left-wing theories on race and gender, not to mention climate change, that public schools are pushing on my children.

. . .

Over the last several years, my children’s schools have pushed for “equity,” which usually starts with a survey or audit about “school climate.” Of course, the ideologues hired to do the surveys always find that certain groups feel oppressed, and thus interventions are necessary to create what they deem as safe learning environments where everyone feels welcome. But only certain dimensions of identity politics, particularly race, gender, and sexuality, are measured.

. . .

Equity at its core is based in left-wing critical race theory that assumes institutional racism and oppression pervade every corner of society and necessitate the redistribution of resources based on “oppressed” status. It is sold as a warm, fuzzy idea of helping kids succeed, but it serves as a gateway for training teachers on how racist they are, reducing academic standards, exchanging traditional curriculum with more “culturally relevant” material, and fomenting resentment between groups rather than promoting the safe school climate these equity plans say they so desire.

. . .

Schools are likely to continue e-learning efforts in the upcoming weeks as we continue through the pandemic. Parents, use this time when your children are home to find out what they are learning. It will be interesting to see how many parents discover that kids do not have to be in a classroom to learn, and that they have options, especially if the curriculum in their schools is pushing fringe race and gender theories on their kids.

More at the link.

That last article illustrates why so many "special snowflakes" are encountered at our colleges and universities, demanding "safe spaces" and protesting vehemently at being exposed to any other point of view but those in which they've been indoctrinated.  After twelve years of that sort of schooling, why should they be any different?  And, since parents have willingly abandoned much of the responsibility of raising their children to such school systems, they have no right to complain.

The question is, how can we snap our children out of such indoctrinated nonsense?  I honestly don't know whether that's possible in the short term.  At least, if the current shutdown shows parents what's going on and motivates them to do something about it, that can only help the younger generation - even if some of their older siblings are effectively write-offs until they learn better in the School of Hard Knocks.

Peter