As Minneapolis (and three dozen other cities) burns and is given over to lawless thugs because, evidently, it is politically correct to do so and politically incorrect to arrest looters and arsonists and vandals, the United States has to face some uncomfortable truths, and resolve to believe them, since they are, well… true.
Here is one: sixty years of federalized welfare has destroyed the lives, hopes and attitudes of many blacks. It has also destroyed the black family unit which had been gaining ground at an accelerated rate for two decades prior to the Great society, and at an uneven, but relentlessly upward direction for seven or eight decades prior to that.
Here’s another: government cannot “fix” racism, nor can it “make” people love one another, or desire to integrate with one another. What government, through the adjudication of INjustice can do, is set standards and make clear the police, judicial and penal consequences for the mistreatment of any individual, whether civilly or criminally.
We have enough laws. We have the most beautiful Constitution and amendments that create a legal structure of equality of opportunity for every individual, and of equality under the law for every individual. But the rights guaranteed on paper do not belong to the government nor do they come from government; they belong to United States citizens who have formed governments to ensure, protect and enforce those rights. And, when those rights are abrogated by institutions or by individuals, those same governments, who are formed by and paid by we the people, and who are obligated to defend, protect and serve US, must take correct, legal, swift action against the offender(s).
Unfortunately our political structures have failed, largely in order to serve themselves, to treat individuals as deserving of every right and freedom as sovereign individuals, but rather as members of groups – groups who can be defined by either victimhood or unfair advantage. Identity politics is the underlying acid that has eaten away at the foundations of success for Americans. It is the same acid that leaves us, nationally, nearly destitute, as we constantly borrow from future generations to make ourselves more comfortable or politically powerful (and wealthy) today. For shame.
The long-term political structure in Minneapolis and in Minnesota, generated and managed the police and judicial environments that left large numbers of people so distrustful of authority that a spark like a bad police action ignited the pent-up hatreds that politicians have pretended for years have nothing to do with them. Their reaction is to blame President Trump. He’ll react, somehow, and almost no one will be happy with what he does or doesn’t do. Under the Constitution, under our federal system of 50 sovereign states, and under hundreds of years of common law and morals, it is not the president’s job or duty to resolve the grievances suffered by an individual in Minneapolis, Minnesota, except that he must direct the Department of Justice to ascertain whether federal laws or Constitutionally protected rights have been abrogated.
He cannot override the government of Minnesota or of Minneapolis. Yet as the office of president has become as much one of celebrity as of competence or leadership, people, and the press, expect every problem to be federalized. Competing political forces are attempting to gain advantage by spewing their own hates and dislikes in efforts to gain power from a bad even that, under group identity politics, is portrayed as a national problem. It is an individual problem, allowed to fester by incompetent local police management and union politics, which played out against an individual, whose family, without question, deserves justice and probably substantial compensation for wrongful death at the hands of the city of Minneapolis.
If the political “leaders” of that city had any vision, they’d be having every other police officer in that department hand-deliver notes of regret and sorrow to Mr. Floyd’s family, with promises to prevent any such event.
The problem is that the utterly corrupt political cabals that generated the equally utter hopelessness that engenders the bottomless hatred for “white” society and control systems – like police – is not the group we should expect to propose a solution for utter corruption. Just saying. These are human conditions, created by humans. Humans can, if armed with the right attitudes and beliefs – philosophies, if you will – prescribe right policies and applications of law and freedom that will unleash the creative, constructive power of inner-city citizens regardless of color. If you are unable to believe this is possible, then you cannot help form the new structure… can you?
To help the irresolute, Prudence can provide a “coral fact,” as they say in Hawaii, to wit: increasing welfare payments to anyone is nowhere part of the solution. So, let’s think fresh thoughts. Actually, they need not be all that fresh, since the mechanisms of success and personal independence are rather well known. “Oh, c’mon, Prudence! These are complex problems. Blacks have been repressed and discriminated against for hundreds of years in this country. The solutions will take time.” Words to that effect will be tossed across important looking meeting rooms for months after these riots are almost forgotten by the “press.”
Some very serious person who “sees the big picture” is certain to say, “We can’t just cut people off from their EBT, can we.” It should be a question but the speaker isn’t seeking any other answer… at all. She (most likely a she who feels great sympathy for the downtrodden) is part of the welfare industry, not so very well paid, but paid above average, plus state benefits and pension. And she cares a whole heck of a lot. She always votes Democrat because they do the most to help the poor. Ultimately the meeting breaks up after resolving to petition the state for massive reconstruction funds and new housing upgrades, and to have the entire congressional delegation file and back legislation to provide tax breaks to industries to invest in the riot-torn neighborhoods across the country. They all feel very good about their answers to the problems. Why, it could be 8, 9 years before there is any unrest in those cities.
People are made weaker from handouts, sympathy and low expectations. Strength, self-esteem and purposeful living come from attainment. Having someone tell you that even though you are a personal failure, full of hatreds and resentment for having accomplished nothing of value to others, that you are important and “entitled” to the same “equality” that others have, only weakens the listener. He or she knows that his or her status and independence have not improved one iota since the last time a social worker told them they were just as worthy as any white person. After a couple of generations of welfare subsistence, the “white” system is an enemy, not an example; the armed defenders of an obviously racist country and society are merely armed enemies whose actions are invalid at every police, judicial and penal level. There is no possibility of compromise.
“Piss me off enough and I’m gonna’ burn your house down.”
It simply is not Prudent to attempt to fix the problems, now a mere membrane away, with the policies of the last 60 years that created them. What have we got to lose?
One can observe the feckless reactions of mayors and governors to the transformation of “loving” protests into coordinated riots across the country. Are these failures based on political motivations? They certainly are not based on executive decision-making. What fools these liberals be. Have we decided, politically, that there is more than one America? That model has placed some of these nincompoops into power. Do they fear losing their political influence so much that they will allow the destruction of their jurisdictions so as not to “offend” destructive mobs? If there were ever an un-American group/organization it is Antifa, and these are the people who must not be offended? For shame.
The neighborhoods where welfare is the largest source of income, and any family now in its second or later generation of welfare as its source of income, must be transformed. This won’t happen by building nicer public housing, nice as it may be. Even for those who have come to terms with never being independent of welfare handouts, they must be directed, guided, rewarded for and, ultimately, forced onto a path of attainment. What does that mean?
First, responsibility. This requires moral judgment on the part of the welfare industry, something for which current policies and employees thereof are incapable. We have created a process of handing out monies by people who are just as resentful of “white” attainment models as are the increasingly hopeless clients of the system. More welfare yields more resentment, so it’s not a solution model. Public assistance must reward attainment, not mere acquiescence. That is, recipients need to be taught to believe in their own ability to be responsible for themselves and, despite everything they’ve been taught or heard for 60 or 150 years, that their efforts will succeed.
This won’t be done through “training programs,” “computer literacy” classes or voter recruitment drives. Some form of “responsibility boot-camp” is required, operated by people who believe in free-enterprise capitalism and in “e pluribus unum.” What have we got to lose? Political influence?
Our existence as a nation depends on the ideas that make us a nation. We are not a nation because of shared ethnicity, but because of shared ideas and ideals, the main one of which is “Out of many, One” – e pluribus unum. This is the American dream: that all kinds of people, recognizing that people are NOT all the same, but are all entitled to equality of opportunity – to make the most and best of themselves – and to equality under the law, can live as one people! There is little else that a government “of the people, by the people and for the people,” can honestly do… or should do. The breakdown of order in multiple cities here in late May of 2020, is the result of attempting to dishonestly do for people not because of their equality under the law, but because of their inequality under the law.
The socialist outlook is to disperse responsibility for failure and to force sharing of success. And, they teach this fallacy, having assumed control, politically and actually, of the government education monopoly. Without changing the belief of all of our citizens that there is a “sub-class” of people who are incapable of being responsible unto themselves and their families, the end result will fail to strengthen society. We cannot “pay off” people who hate the concepts of America and thereby get them to suddenly love this nation.
Every single program going forward must be designed in accord with the principles of personal responsibility and of the opportunity to attain to ever greater success and status.
Attainment is not about getting rich, although money can, with the right attitudes, be part of the measure of it. Getting richer in many more ways than money is the truer measure. So far, and it’s been only about 100,000 years, so it’s not yet proven, humans have found only one way to advance: by attaining to every level of advancement, which is to say, by striving for each. So far, and it’s been only about 100,000 years, no one has been able to give attainment to anyone, only the opportunity to reach for it.
It would seem that no government has ever been able to grant anyone the rewards obtained by striving and earning a certain level of attainment, only money – which has never made anyone a better human. It follows that no quantity of sympathetic or even empathetic words has ever changed the outcome of pretending that a person is not responsible for his or her decisions, actions or feelings; likewise, those words cannot change a handout into attainment. Yet every human being has the spark of attainment from birth… until taught otherwise.
Clearly it is parents who must instill the essential morals and beliefs… and decency into their children. Clearly millions of parents have failed miserably at their duty; our governments have failed by supporting “families” that take no responsibility for themselves, and less for their children. Financing generational resentment is not a plan. As local and state governments finally recognize the need to stop rioters, the question of what to do with violent, destructive, anti-American thugs who are not interested in the path of attainment, must be answered. Do we think we’re going to coddle them enough or pay them enough to change their hatred to love? Do we intend to just send them home to apartments that we renovate to make their living conditions more fair?
Where should they go? What kind of jobs can they do – or would they do – to support themselves? Drug dealing? Gun dealing? Extortion? House painter? Roofer? Carpenter? Do we expect to incarcerate them all until they turn nice or die? In part, their state of hatred and resentment is “our” fault and we can’t continue treating them as we have under the “Great Society.” Do we try to be “nicer” to them? Those willing to riot and destroy businesses and willing to kill police, are not part of American society. They are not like you and me and our children. Should we reward their hatred for decent society because we feel sorry for them? Where should we let them live? Where should they be so that the rest of us are protected from them?
Should they get to eat if they don’t work to support themselves legally? That’s a deeper question than it sounds.