Perfect Karma

Shelby Steel discusses the Left and its propensity to control our culture by identifying real menaces and then demanding that they be remedied. That was okay and resulted in important cultural change. But today, the Left creates imagined menaces and then promotes them in an effort to develop broad support for its ideological position. Steel writes:

The left had important achievements. It did rescue America from an unsustainable moral illegitimacy. It also established the great menace of racism as America’s most intolerable disgrace. But the left’s success has plunged it into its greatest crisis since the ’60s. The Achilles’ heel of the left has been its dependence on menace for power. Think of all the things it can ask for in the name of fighting menaces like “systemic racism” and “structural inequality.” But what happens when the evils that menace us begin to fade, and then keep fading?

It is undeniable that America has achieved since the ’60s one of the greatest moral evolutions ever. That is a profound problem for the left, whose existence is threatened by the diminishment of racial oppression. The left’s unspoken terror is that racism is no longer menacing enough to support its own power. The great crisis for the left today—the source of its angst and hatefulness—is its own encroaching obsolescence. Today the left looks to be slowly dying from lack of racial menace.

A single white-on-black shooting in Ferguson, Mo., four years ago resulted in a prolonged media blitz and the involvement of the president of the United States. In that same four-year period, thousands of black-on-black shootings took place in Chicago, hometown of the then-president, yet they inspired very little media coverage and no serious presidential commentary.

White-on-black shootings evoke America’s history of racism and so carry an iconic payload of menace. Black-on-black shootings carry no such payload, although they are truly menacing to the black community. They evoke only despair. And the left gets power from fighting white evil, not black despair.

Today’s left lacks worthy menaces to fight. It is driven to find a replacement for racism, some sweeping historical wrongdoing that morally empowers those who oppose it. (Climate change?) Failing this, only hatred is left.

Maybe, but the Left continues to find legitimate problems in our culture and then amplifies them into a faux menace that causes otherwise rational people to think and act irrationally.

For example, in recent months elements of the #MeToo movement has evolved from a legitimate attempt to stop men like Harvey Weinstein from praying on and degrading women to a thuggish cult that denigrates all men (but particularly "old white men"). Activists within #MeToo now suggest that all but "woke" members of an entire gender (men) cannot be believed when accused and should not be treated fairly when accusations arise.

In the case of SCOTUS nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, the Left uses the cover of politically correct thinking while it weaponizes innuendo, unsubstantiated allegations, and the demand that every woman's claim of sexual harrassment or abuse MUST be believed. I suspect that because Christine Blasey Ford's original allegation is so thin and evidence-free, the Democrats looked hard for a second "victim." Sure enough, out popped Deborah Ramirez, who attended Yale with Kavanaugh. Despite denials from witnesses who she herself named to substantiate her claims, we now see news reports that a young Kavanaugh exposed himself, causing Ramirez trauma. In a scathing critique of The New Yorker piece in which this allegation first surfaced, Charles Cooke writes:

Judge Kavanaugh labels The New Yorker’s report a “smear, plain and simple.” He should be applauded for his restraint. I am struggling to remember reading a less responsible piece of “journalism” in a major outlet.

Even the New York Times (certainly no friend of Kavanaugh) refused to print a story on Ramirez' specious claims writing:

Ramirez herself contacted former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the incident [they did NOT] and told some of them that she could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself.

To its credit, the NYT decided this was news that was NOT fit to print.

It's useless to question the veracity of Ramiriez's or Ford's allegations or to point out that arguendo, they were the actions of a drunken high school or college kid that occurred 30+ years ago and have little bearing, if any, on a life and career that have been by all accounts exemplary. After all, belief is all that matters to the Left. Democrats believe these allegations because they want to believe them. They view Kavanaugh as a "menace" and will do anything, no matter how repugnant and vicious, to bring him down. Their trained hamsters in the media are doing everything possible to help (think: The New Yorker piece on Ramirez).

But it's the professional politicians in the Democratic party who bear the most blame. Their behavior has been and continues to be cynical, hypocritical, and sanctimonious (no big deal, that's common currency among all politicians). But it also has been and continues to be vicious, despicable, and damn close to evil. There used to be limits that even the most partisan hack never crossed. No more.

The only justice that might come out of this is if the Democratic party pays a price in November. I doubt that will happen, but it would be perfect karma if it did.