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Salvo 06.09.2020

Quiet Riot

BRITAIN-US-RACISM-UNREST-FLOYD

Among the silent majority.

A belated congratulations to those of you who had “Global Race War” on your 2020 Bingo card!

I was almost finished with a clutch of new pieces for this esteemed publication when Civil War 2: Eclectic Boogaloo broke out, rendering my musings instantly obsolete. Pandemics and lockdowns, R naughts and CFRs: all mere fragments from the beforetimes now.

Today we find ourselves in Year One: the Year of Oh Lord.

A new world has dawned!

God help us all.

Mayhem by the Sea

I spent many blissful afternoons as a kid romping along the streets and beaches of Santa Monica, California. In the 1980s, Santa Monica was a sleepy Mayberry with soda fountains, surf shops, and vintage clothing stores. The ’90s and 2000s brought bars, high-end retail, and swanky hotels that catered to wealthy locals and tourists. I got engaged in Santa Monica, married in Santa Monica, and had several children at the hospital there.

Last Sunday, Santa Monica’s business district was looted. Picked clean, the ashes salted, the empty Vans shoe boxes dumped in alleys. I watched via livestream as hordes crashed through stores I knew well, ruining livelihoods and running out with armloads of goods, in full view of police and media who stood around outside, neutered and paralyzed.

In the end, more than 250 Santa Monica businesses suffered an estimated $11.5 million in exterior damage alone—not including the cost of the stolen merchandise. The marauders even hit the pharmacy in the E.R. of the local hospital.

Over a week later, the plywood remains up at every window. Why? Because thanks to so much peaceful protesting, there is now a shortage of plate glass in Los Angeles.

Then, as soon as the looting was over, it was barely discussed. Even now I wonder, did it really happen? A local reporter on the scene covered the Rape of Santa Monica in detail, but her account is filled with convulsive handwringing as she berates herself for even reporting such a thing.

This week my Instagram feed was full of Santa Monica residents celebrating fellow locals who arrived the next day with brooms to clean up the thousands of pounds of shattered glass. Some posted glowing tributes to crude BLM-themed graffiti art all over the plywood nailed to the broken windows.

Not one word about the destruction of their own neighborhood.

One protestor who witnessed the looting was quoted as saying “It’s a rude awakening for Santa Monica natives,” adding that, “with all the pain and suffering Black people have gone through, the looting and damage doesn’t compare.”

Beware the Anti-Racists, My Son!

Let’s say you are a good-hearted person, perhaps even a person of faith. You strive always to do the moral thing. After all, you want to help your children become saints in heaven! Racism is not a part of your worldview and never has been, so you’re good, right?

Eh, not so fast. Have you done the work? Apparently, we all have a lot of work to do. For now you must strive to become anti-racist!

But Peachy, you might say, of course I’m anti-racist! I hate racists! Heck, I don’t even know any, and I definitely go out of my way to not say anything offensive! I strive to see each human being as an equally valued and worthy soul!

You poor, ignorant racist. You think that’s gonna help you in the Justice Tribunals run by the woke children you put through college? Think again! No matter how well you dance on command, or how quickly you kneel, or how long you lay on your stomach on the hot asphalt with your hands behind your back, it won’t protect you from taking the walk of shame.

Diversity, tolerance, fairness, inclusion, race-blind admissions: those are bad now, Grandpa.

I can’t believe the dozens of unsolicited emails and posts I am seeing about “anti-racism” from my liberal friends. For example, I just learned that “inclusive parenting” has now been replaced with “anti-racist parenting.” Looks like I’ll be working through their anti-racist reading list all summer, and watching lots of anti-racist movies with my children as we confront our despicable privilege.

An organization called Curious Parenting also recommends buying dolls “that are representative of all races.” (Please do not bring up the fact that these same people told us last year to toss out our dolls in favor of gender-neutral ones.) Whew, I feel better about giving my toddler the complete collection of Disney Princess Barbies! Wait, those don’t count? Hm, I think we still have one of the Fat Barbies, but she’s a little too white-presenting to be of any help.

As a last resort, we have three American Girl dolls: a blonde one, the only Jewish one, and a black one. Maybe I’ll nail all three to the front door and hope the angel passes over us.

Or maybe I can get a yard sign like some of my neighbors have. Mine will say: “IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE: in being left the hell alone.”

Battle of Britain 2

“Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear greatly that the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar ever more loudly, ever more widely.”

That’s Winston Churchill of course, who knew a thing about history. You’re forgiven if you’re young and haven’t heard of him, because he was just canceled in the U.K. His memory and legacy are being erased from the British history books as we speak, and his statues defaced in full view of the British bobbies, whose behavior represents a Seligman-worthy example of learned helplessness.

But it’s not the cops’ fault! They’ve been staying up late learning choreography for the next day’s peaceful protest. If your dance displeases them, the “mostly peaceful” mob will be ready to hurl glass bottles and bricks at your head. What a jolly new British tradition! Like yelling in Parliament or trying to get a reaction from one of the guys in the fuzzy black hats at Buckingham Palace! Too bad you got brained by a pint of Guinness—just keep working on those Cha-Cha Slide moves and nobody else gets hurt.

LOL that the current royal family has nothing to say about any of this. They don’t see that they, of course, are next at the guillotine. I wonder what clever slogans they’ll graffiti on the Queen’s tomb.

The Struggle Session is Real

Tired yet? How dare you be tired. You better not be tired—you have a lot of work to do if you want to survive as a white in America.  As New York Times columnist Charles Blow recently put it, “equality will feel like oppression” to non-POCs.

Brush up on those marketing skills, Mr. Blow—you’re not exactly selling past the close. You’re supposed to hide your plans to painfully re-educate people. Some of us already saw The Killing Fields and yeah, no thanks. I used to joke that my guards in the gulag would be fierce drag queens. I’d prefer that to the hysterical, screaming children holding America hostage.

Think I’m exaggerating? An executive I know at a big Hollywood talent agency is being ordered this week to attend “mandatory unconscious bias training.” What happens if you don’t want to attend? What happens if you, God forbid, say the wrong thing in your struggle training session? What happens if you refuse to kneel?

If you do that, you will be re-educated even harder, and like it. You’re going to dance, kneel, open your mouth, bend over, and do the work, or else.

Historically, what happens when a lot of angry, powerful people decide to pin all of the world’s ills on a single racial group? My great-grandmother in Belorussia escaped by getting on a ship and fleeing to America.

Where will I go when they come for me?

The American Mind presents a range of perspectives. Views are writers’ own and do not necessarily represent those of The Claremont Institute.

The American Mind is a publication of the Claremont Institute, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, dedicated to restoring the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life. Interested in supporting our work? Gifts to the Claremont Institute are tax-deductible.

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