Cobb

Why Liberals Hate Me

Because I'm an asshole. I deserve to be hated. I'm happy to own that. So there. End of story. Oh wait. I was a black Conservative, and I voted Republican. That can never be forgiven or forgotten. So I guess the better question is why do Liberals hate black Conservatives. Even though I'm not a 'black Conservative', I have been one and I know how they operate. So I'll just pretend that I am one and answer that question in the present tense.  

Why? Because we're assholes who know more about black people than they do and we dispute the veracity their worldview. Our persistent existence shortcuts the advantage they have in moral persuasion. Due to a typical lack of imagination, they must exemplify 'minorities' as victims of the system whose powers they seek to control. So they find loud minority individuals whose sentiments against the system they share and then extrapolate the net good that would accrue to all such victims would the electorate only hand over the reigns of power to their liberal vanguard. 

Like gay men who truly cannot stand women, Muslims whose preferred laws are antithetical to humanism, and strong Christians who embrace secular pluralism, black Conservatives remind American Leftists of the failures of  the multiculturalist  agenda that has sustained their political popularity. But what truly makes them seethe is the fact that these factions owe them no particular debts, and have no reason to concede their power.  So they jump from marginal group to marginal group, ever seeking to convince. This tactic is called 'throwing a dead cat on the table'. Well if blacks are doing ok, what about migrant farmworkers? Well if the farmworkers are not called 'illegal' then what about transgenders? Well if Caitlin Jenner is ok, what about Syrian refugees? They are in a race to dominate the conversation by finding some example that is so horrific that it gives them the upper hand, because surely Liberals care more for such people. In this way they both gain a potential foothold in that newly defined 'natural' constituency and demonize people who honestly don't know and don't care about the impoverished natural sponge fishermen of northern Florida who have been put out of business by the evil Koch Brother's domination of the cellulose fiber industry.  And what kind of kitchen sponge do YOU use, my brother? 

The difficulty is that Liberals seek to rule by consensus, they still have the brains to recognize the contradiction of appropriating power by coercion. So they choose sophisticated duplicity instead. This is why Political Correctness requires new vocabulary every three years. "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit."  They are required to use doublespeak in order to elide that they are doing more for the people than the people could possibly do for themselves. Tell me really, when was the last time somebody was 'empowered'? Liberals want to take all the credit by saying everything good that happens does so because it was their idea. And so they project back and forth through history (revisionism being their nuclear weapon) to establish what they believe to be a hegemonic moral narrative. Only Howard Zinn, they say, can deliver a true People's History. And so the Liberal orthodoxy is established through clever wordsmithing and anything that tinkers with that is nothing more or less, they say, than the work of the devil. It is something the new Social Justice Workers know very well. 

I leave it to you to ask a Liberal to describe with scientific precision the difference between justice and 'social justice'. There is actually no clearer answer than this. "Justice is what the current system provides. It is actually injustice. Social Justice is what Liberals will provide once we run the system. It will be true justice". 

Liberals hate me because I am immune to their seductions and I recognize their naked lust for power.

What's more is that I am a has been conservative, but now I am a Stoic and relatively disinvested in democratic politics in the US. I care more about the function of society, those things that cannot be appropriated or negotiated by electoral politics and the posturing that passes for debate. I'd much rather talk about food, because, although they're trying to apply their Liberal revisionism to the propriety of gluten (aka wheat), there is still room in America to talk about what is actually good food and what food stinks.  Yet I suspect it won't be long before people take more of their faux-hegemonic classifications of food more and more seriously. Then they'll really hate me. 

The Wolf

I am thinking about shooting. Probably not in the way you think I am thinking about it. I am thinking about shooting as an exercise in discipline over power never before held in my hands. Two weeks ago as I enter my third year as a pistol shooter, I nailed a one foot circle about 25 yards away six or seven times in a row. I hesitate to raise my own assessment from "I don't suck" to "I'm pretty good". I think I'll say that "I'n not bad at all". But it's an entirely new skill, and I'm a sophomore. 

In my approach to becoming a shooter, I was as my readers may know, powerfully affected by Bill Whittle and Eric S. Raymond. Whittle let me know I was a sheepdog, one not afraid of meeting violent offense with violent defense. Raymond let me know I take responsibility for life and death into my own hands. I have yet to be tested in the streets of the town where I live, and because of some regulations I am restrained from an avenue of defense, but I have decided to take the path towards these skills and responsibilities seriously. That was for me. But it's not all about me.

The most important thing about gaining this skill is the appreciation I have for other people who have it and the recognition of us as a force. Essentially, I can recognize other people who see the same foolishness in video portrayals of shooting pistols and rifles. I can separate the fact from the fiction and determine how much plot narrative of our entertainments depends upon entirely magical powers of weapons. I'm not the only one who sees through the curtain. And so I have a new brotherhood. The brotherhood of those who have the obligation to take the shot, and not miss. I don't want to be one obligated to make the shot. So I have not sworn an oath to defend the Constitution against all foes. I have not trained to stand on that wall. But I am in their minds and they are in mine. We are united in purpose, it is only our duties that separate us. 

The night is dark. 

Today I am trying to express something that is both private and should ultimately be shared. It is the encounter within my family on three separate occasions of The Wolf.

• My niece encountered The Wolf in a dark alley in Washington DC. She had no time to be clever although she clearly is. She is a raven, the cleverest of all birds, and although she was in his jaws by random fortune or Providence, managed to escape. I have not yet spoken to her and yet I know her feathers are back in place. 
• My mother has been entertaining The Wolf over the telephone. He calls from Nigeria and keeps her dreams of unimaginable wealth alive. She has beggared neighbors and friends in service to these dreams and has decided that we, her children, are spoiling things. Her bills remain unpaid and we must intervene when the lights get turned off next month lest she freeze to death. 
• My brother wrestled The Wolf to the ground last week and injured his right hand. I saw him last night and he is recovering nicely and has returned to duty as an LAPD officer. 

You have certainly been transfixed by the brazen and deadly actions of The Wolf in Paris as the world's media went on full alert and piped high definition narrated video into your devices. Suddenly people are remembering Boko Haram. Then Mali had its moment yesterday. Some college kids are pissed that murder and mayhem has shouted down their whining. November is a remarkable month you might say.

Is it? I say it is not. The Wolf is always with us and it doesn't matter which guise he takes, what manner of attack he plans or fulfills. What matters is what we are prepared to do when he visits his hungers upon us. My poor mother doesn't even recognize him for what he is, but her blindness is not unique. It is the same blindness that administrators have to the actions of The Wolf on and near college campuses. It is the same blindness that blames America for being such a delicious piece of mutton, hiding as it does behind our massive force of GPS coordinated, nuclear tipped, shock and awe sheepdogs. That blames their discomforts and fears on the very fact that sheepdogs exist, not sheepdogs but fearmongers, warmongers and who uses 'monger' but those upon soapboxes? 

Because of the close call with my niece, I've been thinking of Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks all week. These are stories we know well, but perhaps not so well as we think. Did Little Red's grandmother get eaten? Wasn't Red told not to go through the woods or talk to strangers? Did Goldilocks get eaten, or wasn't there a rescuing woodsman in both stories? I definitely remember a woodsman with an axe. That was the story I told my children, assuring them that I was wearing the red plaid and holding the blade for our family. I can do that for my children, but I don't think there's a woodsman in every nursery rhyme, and The Wolf does manage to eat enough to reproduce.

I am thinking about shooting as an exercise in discipline over power never before held in my hands and in particular in appreciation I have for other people who have this skill and the recognition of us as a force in defense of the Constitution. I wonder if I will ever have to swear that oath. The Wolf has not suddenly appeared but I have only recently, gradually and practically prepared.

So there's the abstract. Here are three branches of a specific tree you can nail me to if you so choose.

Point One: Fluency
It is motivated last night by Doc speaking as he unwrapped his injured hand. He said that the gun is a language he doesn't have to use 99.99% of the time. But he is fluent. I'm not even going to say that we all should be. The Grey Tribe knows who it is. When the saliva drips from the fangs and the breath is hot on their necks, the fluent will speak up. I'm a free man and I love to write and speak and communicate, it is my life force. The overwhelming majority of my life, English and French and Spanish and a half dozen computer languages have sufficed.  But make no mistake, I'm literate and fluent in Gun.  I'll sign up and speak Gun under oath if I am called. I don't think it's likely, and I don't watch The Walking Dead for fun. I simply practice.

Point Two: Survivability
Here's the second point in reiteration of Eric Raymond's point #3: The Universe doesn't care about motives. We recognize The Wolf by his behavior. Not his philosophy, nor his religion, nor his facial features or place of origin. Like Little Red Riding Hood, we walk through the woods with no preconceived notions in our basket of goodies. It is only at the last and final moment, upon the declaration that we are about to be eaten, do we act. I simply refuse to be eaten. I simply am not thinking about naming the enemy. My enemy is The Wolf, he needs no further introduction. I will be the good that survives.

Point Three: Perpetuity
The greatest thing about the poem by Lewis Carroll is that it begins and ends on the same note. 'Twas always brillig. 'Tis brillig today. This is human experience and always has been and always will be. Carroll's is a tale of the men who warns his son to take up his sword against this world's dangers. Yes people need to be reminded, but maybe people decide to be blind and deaf. One can pretend to be confused by the nonsense words,  but they don't obscure, they universalize. What remains is the simple human responsibility. My niece must watch her back. I must take care of my mother. My brother must arrest the bad guy, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. 

Now I have my vorpal sword in hand, not seeking any manxome foe, I rest by my Tumtum tree and stand a while in thought...

 

An Open Letter Regarding the Claremont Protest

I was accepted to Pitzer in 1978, but chose USC instead. I have always held Claremont in high esteem. I am truly surprised to see that such a place has come this sad state.

Like a lot of black folks in my generation, I felt that it was my responsibility to become more attuned to racial sensibility - to achieve a higher level of sensitivity to those people and conditions that might lead to oppression. It was a constant theme in my youth during which the very term 'black' was coined and people questioned having been 'Negro'. During that time as well, many of us went from passive observation to active participation in both directions. In 1967 many of us were adamant about looking for 'safe space' and determined that could not be found anywhere at all in the USA. We looked to Cuba, to Brazil, to Ghana. Similarly during the Vietnam war, many looked to Canada as an escape route. But in the end we found, even through assassinations and jailing, that racial integration in America was the far superior road for practical and moral reasons. It was not simple, it was not easy. It was worth it.

Leaving my community to attend Catholic School outside of my school district was not easy. I wasn't Catholic. But I wasn't afraid and I was willing to test my skill against people of the sort I'd never known. I never sat in a classroom with white suburbanites until I was 14 years old. The experience was full of surprises. It didn't take long for me to recognize the greater priority I could put on Christian similarities than racial differences. That was, after all, the spirit of integration over separatism. But it wasn't only religion there was also sports, music and most importantly, learning, the reason I attended school in the first place.

If your studies of history have been satisfactory you would know that around the time of the first Star Wars film, affirmative action regimes were in flux and the Bakke decision came down. It expressed something of the common sense we already knew from experience, race should not be the sole factor in choosing whether someone does or does not belong. We were proud of our ability to find common purpose in achieving athletic, academic and character excellence at my Catholic school, even though I was not and am not a Catholic. I did not integrate my prior self into nothingness but into common purpose. We were a solution, in the chemical sense. Mixed yet distinct. We kept stirring, we stayed infused. We understood that it took effort. Over time, many of us became bonded and changed.

It is frighteningly disturbing that this generation of students has chosen to ignore the achievements of crossover and gone to greater extremes of racial sensitivity in their demands for resignations. I can't imagine college universities now having the stomach to even listen to Richard Pryor or George Carlin, two of the many whose humor brought us together in the 70s. Indeed today's students seem to have lost all sense of humor. I can only speculate this comes from a poor interpretation of what they expected that we went through or what others before us did. We sought the guarantees of the Constitution and we also wanted to escape small places and move about freely. Listen to the students at Little Rock High School. Remember Charlayne Hunter. Study James Farmer. They worked to end segregation, not to hide from insults or even injuries. What is clear to me is that far too many Americans expect from oppositional politics what can only be achieved from actual friendship, which is mutual respect and admiration. What a sad result. Finally calling someone a 'racist' has nothing to do with what someone actually believes, but one's position in an artificial political war. This fight is not about crime and punishment, it's not even about the law. It's a tawdry catfight over bourgeois privileges between bourgeois actors who desperately seek to inherit the imprimatur of Civil Rights struggle. My ass. 

I understand and respect that every generation may decide how to conduct themselves and shape their immediate society, but nothing I'm seeing from campus protests of the sort at Claremont resonate with my upbringing. So clear is this distinction between our integration and your separatism that I am almost willing to dismiss it. But I understand that it has successfully drawn from a deep well of youthful ambition and strident self-righteousness. This is the stuff of violent conflict of the sort one would naturally expect college administrators to avoid at all costs, even the cost of the integrity of the institution. If you students have learned from Eldridge Cleaver, you have learned well. 

Our times had Hair. Our times had The Warriors. Every time has rebels. Every time has heroes. Every time has fools. Take your time and figure out what the stakes actually are. We are watching now.  I for one, am not impressed.