Daily Archives: 10 May 2021

The Party of Systemic Racism

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Recall that the chairman of the Lamar County Democratic Party, Gary O’Connor, called Senator Tim Scott (R, SC) an oreo over Scott’s speech responding to President Joe Biden’s (D) speech to a sparsely populated joint Congress.

In response to the backlash to his blatantly racist and deliberately cast slur, O’Connor tendered his resignation from his position in the party.

Now we have the truth of those Progressive-Democrats:

Representatives of the Lamar County Democrats met Tuesday to consider the resignation of Gary O’Connor, the Lamar County Democratic Party chair. However, the party said in a statement that they decided not to accept the resignation after taking the “last few days to reflect upon this incident.”

O’Connor has apologized to Scott. The Lamar County branch of the Progressive-Democratic Party has its own, nominally parallel, claims regarding O’Connor’s racist slur:

Lamar County Democrats recommit ourselves to conduct our private conversations and our public social media discussions with anti-racist, pro-reconciling attitudes and language. We strongly condemn bigotry of any kind and will continue our historic efforts to work for justice and equality for all our fellow citizens.

Leave aside the fact that “anti-racist…language” includes such racist moves as attempting to force the 1619 Project into children’s school curriculum and into college and university required coursework, trying to force children to “deconstruct” their racial status and “privilege,” trying to force children and their parents explicitly to support “anti-racism” and activists like BLM, and so on.

Apologies, however sincere as O’Connor’s seems to be, at least in its construction, are nothing but empty words, though, absent sustained and observably changed behavior. Such a thing takes open, improved behavior over a considerable amount of time. Especially, it requires that behavior; simply going to ground and being silent and hidden doesn’t cut it.

Recommittals like the Lamar Progressive-Democrats’ are meaningless unless they’re accompanied by sustained, measurably improved performance. Such a thing by an organization takes changed behavior over an even longer period, and it’s best accompanied by a change in management personnel, including here those Representatives of the Lamar County Democrats.

The Lamar Progressive-Democrats’ statement, though, is especially noncredible given their decision actually to do nothing: their refusal to accept O’Connor’s resignation as their chairman. Insisting he stay on is simply their empirical (as opposed to rhetorical) demonstration that the branch, as a body, condones racism. Had that gang valued O’Connor’s contributions while decrying his racist spew, they would have accepted his resignation as chairman and reassigned him to another, lesser position within the branch.

Allen West, Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, has the right of it. He said he was

sick and tired of the duplicitous hypocrisy of the true party of racism.

And

He said he would be sending a box of Oreos to the Texas Democratic Party.

Wrong Assumptions

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An anonymous writer for the Associated Press summarized the views of some in the operational (as opposed to the political) side of our Federal government regarding our pending withdrawal from Afghanistan.

An unclassified report released Tuesday by the Director of National Intelligence says the Taliban remain “broadly consistent in its restrictive approach to women’s rights and would roll back much of the past two decades’ progress if the group regained national power.”
It’s the latest US warning of the consequences of the Afghan withdrawal now underway, two decades after an American-led coalition toppled the Taliban. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday that there would possibly be “some really dramatic, bad possible outcomes” for Afghan forces left on their own to counter the Taliban, but also noted, “We frankly don’t know yet.” And CIA Director William Burns told Congress in April that the American ability “to collect and act on threats will diminish.”

That’s bad enough.

The really dangerous aspect of our withdrawal—for our nation and our friends and allies, as well as for Afghanis—is this from our Secretary of State:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has acknowledged that a Taliban takeover of the country is possible after the withdrawal. But he has also maintained that the group does not want to be a pariah and will have to embrace or at least tolerate the rights of women, girls, and minorities if it wants to be viewed as legitimate by the international community.

These are dangerously unfounded premises; Blinken is assuming the men [sic] of the Taliban think like we do. He’s assuming these men care about any pariah status from outsiders. He’s assuming these men care about what the international community thinks of them. He’s assuming these men are outward looking in any way.

Such blithe self-centered attitudes blind us to our enemies’ capabilities, and worse, blind us to their intentions.

The National Intelligence Council’s unclassified report can be seen here.