Charlottesville : Societal and Political Violent Confrontation and Revisionist History

IT ISN'T NEWS, BUT AMERICA IS DIVIDED AND GETTING WORSE. • Admiral Mike Mullen, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would not criticize President Donald Trump for his response to the violence this weekend in Charlottesville, but called for all leaders to stand up for unity. Admiral Mullen told NBC Meet the Press : "It’s not just about the President from my perspective. I think political leaders, community leaders, leaders throughout the country need to start standing up to unify this country.” Several people, including Republican Senators Cory Gardner of Colorado and Marco Rubio of Florida, criticized President Trump on Saturday, saying his comments following the riots and after a car crashed into several protesters did not attack the white supremacists involved directly. But on Sunday, Mullen commented that the people of the United States are "divided, and we are becoming more divided. We need to work together as a country, within the differences that we have, but we cannot let this kind of incident or what feeds this kind of incident continue to grow. In fact, the opposite has to happen.” • JUST HOW DIVIDED IS AMERICA? Let's look at recent division and Dividers. • • • OBAMA IN DALLAS AFTER 5 POLICE WERE KILLED. On July 12, 2106, the Washington Times reported that "President Obama defended the Black Lives Matter movement at a memorial service for five slain Dallas police officers, saying bigotry remains a problem in police departments across the US." While President Obama paid tribute to the fallen officers for sacrificing their lives to protect anti-police protesters from a sniper, Obama also called on law enforcement agencies to root out bias that he said is contributing to violence on the streets of America. • His words at the time were seen as callous because they were spoken at a memorial service attended by the families of the slain police officers. Obama said : “We have all seen this bigotry in our lives at some point. None of us is entirely innocent. No institution is entirely immune. And that includes our police departments. We know this.” The Dallas police officers were killed during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas by a black sniper who told police he targeted white officers. At the interfaith service, photographs of the slain officers were displayed on the stage. Five empty seats in the arena were adorned with folded US flags and duty officer hats to signify their loss. But, that did not stop President Obama, who has been criticized by law enforcement officials for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. Obama doubled down on that theme in front of the slain officers’ colleagues and families, saying Americans “cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid. We can’t simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism. We also know that centuries of racial discrimination, of slavery and subjugation and Jim Crow, they didn’t simply vanish with the end of lawful segregation.” • President Obama was immediately and heavily criticized on social media for taking an event that was ready-made for national unity and turning it into a lecture for his agenda items of criminal justice reform and gun control. Josh Kraushaar, politics editor of the National Journal, tweeted : “Agree or disagree, the second part of Obama’s speech polarizing. Felt like a State of the Union for a moment based on who was applauding.” Fox News commentator Katie Pavlich added : “Worst part of Obama’s lecture about racial bias today? He did it at a memorial for 5 officers who were killed because they were white.” • • • PRESIDENT BUSH TRIED TO CALM THE DALLAS SITUATION HYPED BY OBAMA. Former President George W. Bush, a resident of Dallas and a speaker at the memorial service, provided a less political message that focused on unifying the country out of grief. President Bush said the nation is proud of the slain officers : “Our police chief and police department have been mighty inspirations for the rest of the nation. These slain officers were the best among us. They defended us even to the end [and] we will not forget what they did for us.” Referring to racial divisions roiling the country, Bush said Americans must work at “finding our better selves. Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions. At our best, we know we have one country, one future, one destiny. We recognize that we are brothers and sisters, sharing the same brief moment on earth. We do not want the unity of grief, nor do we want the unity of fear. We want the unity of hope, affection and high purpose.” • President Bush's comments were a plea for unity, as opposed to President Obama's, who said the killer committed “an act not just of demented violence, but of racial hatred. It’s as if the deepest fault lines of our democracy have been exposed, perhaps even widened. We wonder if the divides of race in America can ever be bridged.” • Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said the past few days “have been some of the darkest in our city’s history. I’ve asked ‘why us?’ In my moments of self-doubt, I discovered the truth -- that we did nothing wrong. Our police are among the best in the country. I’m in awe of our Dallas police officers. We set the standard where policing can both be strong and smart.” Indeed, Dallas has been held up by federal officials as a model of police departments engaging in criminal justice reform and using the latest technology tools such as body cameras to foster better relations with civilians. • • • BLACK LIVES MATTER. President Obama spoke about the debate between Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter for CBS News in October 2015, saying : "I think that the reason that the organizers used the phrase Black Lives Matter was not because they were suggesting that no one else's lives matter...rather what they were suggesting was there is a specific problem that is happening in the African American community that's not happening in other communities." He also said "that is a legitimate issue that we've got to address." • In 2105, the US population's perception of Black Lives Matter varied considerably by race. According to a September 2015 PBS/Marist poll on race relations, 66% of African Americans mostly agree with BLM, while 42% of white Americans are unsure or do not have an opinion about Black Lives Matter. Of white people surveyed, 41% thought that Black Lives Matter advocated violence, and 59% of whites thought that BLM distracted attention from the real issues of racial discrimination. By comparison, 82% of black people polled thought that Black Lives Matter was a nonviolent movement, and 26% of blacks thought that BLM distracted attention from the real issues of racial discrimination. On the question of whether "Black Lives Matter" was mostly a movement or mostly a slogan, 46% of whites and 67% of blacks thought that it is mostly a movement. A similar poll in June 2016 found that 65% of black American adults supported Black Lives Matter and 40% of white American adults support it, and 59% of black Americans thought that Black Lives Matter would "be effective, in the long run, in helping blacks achieve equality," while 34% of white Americans thought so. • The Daily Wire on July 18, 2016 published what it called the worst anti-cop signs at Black Lives Matter rallies. (1) "Oink Oink Bang-Bang!" This was a sign at a Black Lives Matter protest just before a Baton Rouge police officer was shot and killed. (2) "Assata Taught Me." "Assata" is a reference to Assata Shakur, also known as Joanne Chesimard, who was sentenced to life for murdering a policeman but escaped prison and is currently in Cuba. (3) "Dear Pigs: What goes around comes around." This sign was reportedly held by somebody named Jason Ozolins at a Black Lives Matter rally at Park Central Square in Springfield, Missouri. He later held up a second sign that was also horrible, thanking Johnson for his "sacrifice" in murdering the five Dallas police officers : "Non-violence isn't bad," Ozolins told the media, "But it only works if people listen." (4) "Cop Criminals of Permission" was on a sweatshirt worn by a protester at an April 2015 Black Lives Matter rally in Springfield, Massachusetts. (5) "Prisons Are Slavery Police Are The Slave Trade" was a sign held at the Springfield rally. (6) "Abolish Police Smash The State Liberate the HOOD!" was another sign held by a protester at the Springfield rally. Standing next to her is a lady holding a sign saying, "ABOLISH PRISONS DISBAND POLICE." • But, leaders of the Black Lives Matter took to Twitter in July 2106 to condemn the shootings that took place in Dallas that resulted in 12 officers being shot, five of whom died. Buzzfeed compiled some tweets from Black Lives Matter denouncing the violence : "Prayers for the victims of all violence tonight." / "I hate police brutality. I don't hate police. This violence is wrong on every level. It is as American as apple pie, but wrong nonetheless." / "This is not a time to play the blame game it is the time to stand together." / "My heart hurts for the dead. We must end police & vigilante violence, before it destroys what democracy we have left." • • • BLACK LIVES MATTER AND BLACK SUPREMACY. Black Lives Matter's most infamous chants were : "Pigs in a blanket fry em' like bacon!" and "What do we want? Dead cops!" • The Daily Wire on February 13, 2017, reported that one of the founders of Black Lives Matter in Toronto says white people are "genetic defects" and should be "wiped out." Yusra Khogali posted the controversial calls on her Facebook page, including another that says whites are "sub-human" and “Whiteness is not humxness, in fact, white skin is sub-humxn. All phenotypes exist within the black family and white ppl are a genetic defect of blackness.” Khogali says white people are inferior because they "have a higher concentration of enzyme inhibitors that suppress melanin production. They are genetically deficient because melanin is present at the inception of life. Melanin enables black skin to capture light and hold it in its memory mode which reveals that blackness converts light into knowledge. Melanin directly communicates with cosmic energy. White ppl are recessive genetic defects. This is factual....Do you ever wonder how black ppl after centuries of colonial violence, genocide and destruction—no matter what systems created to make us extinct...How we keep coming back? It is because we are superhumxns.” • • • WHITE SUPREMACISTS. Yusra Khogali's claims didn't impress one of America’s leading scholars of the history of eugenics. Daniel Kevles, a professor at Yale University, wrote to the Toronto Sun : “The document mirrors the racism of American eugenicists who claimed in the first third of the 20th century that native whites were genetically superior not only to blacks but also to immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Their claims were without any scientific foundation and added up to expressions of naked white racism.” The Sun noted that Kevles’ book “In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity” is considered a leading text in the field. Kevles wrote to the Sun : “The anger and frustration that animates the Black Lives Matter movement is altogether understandable, but the way to contest pseudo-science and white prejudice is not with an alternative pseudo-science and black prejudice. It is with moral argument and political action.” • Wikipedia defines "white supremacy" or "white supremacism" as "a racist ideology based upon the belief that white people are superior in many ways to people of other races and that therefore white people should be dominant over other races. White supremacy has roots in scientific racism and often relies on pseudoscientific arguments. Like most similar movements such as neo-Nazism, white supremacists typically oppose people of color and people of most religions. The term is also typically used to describe a political ideology that perpetuates and maintains the social, political, historical or industrial domination by white people (as evidenced by historical and contemporary sociopolitical structures such as the Atlantic slave trade, Jim Crow laws in the United States, and apartheid in South Africa). Different forms of white supremacism put forth different conceptions of who is considered white, and different white supremacists identify various racial and cultural groups as their primary enemy. In academic usage, particularly in usage drawing on critical race theory, the term "white supremacy" can also refer to a political or socio-economic system where white people enjoy a structural advantage (privilege) over other ethnic groups, both at a collective and an individual level." Khogali has added "black supremacy" to the supremacist nonsense. • • • PRESIDENT TRUMP'S STATEMENT ON THE CHARLOTTESVILLE VIOLENCE. On Saturday, while the protests and confrontations in Charlottesville were still ongoing, President Trump responded to the violence : “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides. On many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump. Not Barack Obama. It’s been going on for a long, long time. It has no place in America. Above all, we must remember this truth, no matter our color, creed, religion or political party, we are all Americans first. We must love each other, respect each other and cherish our history and our future together." • President Trump, taking a page from President Bush at Dallas in 2106, was trying to calm the situation after leftist Antifa protesters and white nationalists clashed in a violent confrontation in Charlottesville. But, as we have come to expect, President Trump's remarks immediately drew criticism from the media and Democrats for not condemning by mane the neo-nazis and white nationalists who demonstrated in Charlottesville. The Progressive Democrats and media were joined by some Republican lawmakers such as Senators Marco Rubio, Orrin Hatch and Ted Cruz, and House Speaker Paul Ryan -- all of them seeming to ignore the preliminary reports on the ground in Charlottesville that suggest that the rally planned by the white nationalists was scheduled to protest against the removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee from Lee Park in Charlottesville, now called Emancipation Park. Outsiders from both white supremacist and BLM groups congregated deliberately to disrupt the rally and cause trouble. The irony of these protests -- this is the second of what the white nationalists say will be many -- is that the white nationalists are lucky to rally with 100 people, and thousands march in counter-protest. The media rush to cover these to proves how deeply racist America remains....when 100 racists show up along with hundreds of TV cameras. • • • PROGRESSIVES JUMP ON TRUMP. Factual analysis didn't stop Hollywood director and Progressive ranter Rob Reiner from telling MSNBC's on Saturday after a woman counter-protesting white supremacists was hit and killed by a car backing up at extreme speed from calling President Trump an "accessory" to the death for "stoking this stuff" of white resentment. When Representative Steve Scalise and others were shot at a Virginia baseball field in June, Reiner tweeted an attack on Trump : "The tragedy in Virginia has brought us together. Now we must come together over Russia's attack on our democracy. POTUS, stop obstructing!" A few days later, Reiner was at it again, preaching the need for all-out war: “When Fox says that DT colluding with the enemy is not a crime, the fight to save Democracy is now an all out war. US-Stay strong. #Treason” • A bit sad coming from an adult whose voice could be working for good, isn't it?? • A commenter noted : "Tragic events, such as the one this weekend in Charlotteville, unite conservatives in solidarity as we openly denounce the despicable slaughter of human life. But - conservatives have ALWAYS denounced such evil acts. Where are Leftists when Black Lives Matter, when radicalized Moslem terrorists, when cop killing black nationalists slaughter innocent human life?....When Black Lives Matter goes on the rampage, for example, and commits acts of vandalism and even assaults cops, where is the Left to denounce THAT, and ascribe the proper blame? Conservatives have NEVER accepted white nationalist groups such as the KKK, Neo-Nazis and the like. But that has never stopped Leftists from ascribing conservatives and conservative ideology WITH those groups....So a lunatic mowed down a group of people with his car, injuring many and killing at least one. That, according to Leftists, is the fault of ALL conservatives, and presumably, ALL whites. But - where are Leftists when a black kills a white cop? Conservatives, daily, denounce, this type of violence, even on days it does not happen. Because, that is who conservatives are. We, not Leftists, are the real peace lovers, the real peace makers, the real peace proponents. It is the Left that is ALWAYS waging war - against, whites, 'white privilege,' America, cops and ALL the usual, and usually wrong, suspects." • • • REVISIONIST AMERICAN HISTORY WILL NOT WORK. The National Review last Friday published an article about the Sterling Memorial Library on the Yale University campus, saying : "Whatever the campus mob wants, the campus mob gets. Yale’s determination to take a giant jar of Wite-Out to history has reached a new level of fatuousness. This week the Yale Alumni Magazine reported that a stone carving of an Indian and a Puritan over an entrance to Sterling Memorial Library had been bowdlerized, with the weapon the latter was holding covered up. A head librarian, Susan Gibbons, said that she and the university’s Committee on Art in Public Spaces found that the carving’s “presence at a major entrance to Sterling was not appropriate.” Yale ordered the musket of the Puritan to be covered up with a layer of stone that Gibbons said 'can be removed in the future without damaging the original carving.' " The National Review said : "It’s instructive that even as Yale’s administration rampages through history with a censor’s eye and a vandal’s paint pot, someone like Gibbons can tacitly acknowledge that the hysteria might die down in some future generation and that we should therefore make some of the cover-ups reversible.” According to the NR : "Yale’s insistence that all of history be made to conform with current political attitudes is difficult to distinguish from vandalism. After a black dishwasher imbibed campus hysteria so thoroughly he was moved to use a broomstick to knock out a stained-glass window at Calhoun College because it depicted slaves, he became a campus hero. Yale, which had initially fired him, rehired him a few weeks later. Then it pressed ahead with his work, removing other windows depicting enslavement. The principle of authorizing freelance politics-based vandalism had been established." The NR also commented that "Yale’s Calhoun College "is named for Vice President John C. Calhoun, antebellum America’s most prominent defender of slavery," and in April of 2016, Yale President Peter Salovey declared that he wouldn’t give in to critics who had called for it be renamed, saying that, “Universities have to be the places where tough conversations happen. I don’t think that is advanced by hiding our past.” But, after an outcry, Salovey reversed course within a year, saying Calhoun’s legacy of backing slavery “fundamentally conflicts with Yale’s mission and values.” The National Review concludes : "The mission of hosting tough conversations and the value of acknowledging the past were forgotten. All that mattered now was the short-term gratification of the mob. Yet campus activists are always looking for something to be outraged about. Giving in to their demands simply whets their appetite for more. Salovey insisted that campus symbols of Calhoun would remain, including a statue of Calhoun on the campus’s most prominent landmark, Harkness Tower. How long before these start being stripped away, too? There is no limiting principle in play here, at least none that I can detect. Once you establish that an artwork or artifact that gives offense to any minority must be hidden, removed, or destroyed, and that’s it perfectly acceptable for any individual to appoint herself to take on this important work of expunging and correcting, it becomes open season on history. Window-breaking and musket-covering are just the beginning....a person intimately associated with Yale was deeply involved in trading slaves. His name? Elihu Yale. He founded the place. Expunging his name from campus will take much more work than merely spackling over an image of a gun. The ecstasy of the mob that succeeded in getting the name Calhoun expunged from Calhoun College will be nothing compared to that experienced by whatever future gang of activists succeeds in getting Yale itself renamed." • • • REVISIONIST HISTORY IN CHARLOTTESVILLE AND THE REST OF THE SOUTH. TheHill saw the white nationalist rally on the University of Virginia Campus, as a demonstration by white nationalists, white supremacists and alt-right groups. Actually, what local officials declared to be an "unlawful assembly," telling demonstrators to disperse, began on Friday evening as a group of several hundred protesters holding torches and clustered on the campus in front of a statue of Thomas Jefferson to demonstrate against the political decision to remove the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The Friday demonstrators marched through walkways carrying torches and chanting "white lives matter" and "you will not replace us." Even on Friday, a group of protesters turned out in opposition to the white nationalist demonstration, chanting "black lives matter." But, Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer condemned the white nationalist protest -- not the BLM protesters -- in a statement, calling the gathering "a cowardly parade of hatred, bigotry, racism, and intolerance. Everyone has a right under the First Amendment to express their opinion peaceably, so here's mine: not only as the Mayor of Charlottesville, but as a UVA faculty member and alumnus, I am beyond disgusted by this unsanctioned and despicable display of visual intimidation on a college campus." Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe, the great friend of the Clintons, joined in, declaring a state of emergency to aid state response to violence at Alt-Right rally in Charlottesville. Governor McAuliffe declared the state of emergency after rally supporters and counter-protesters screamed, chanted, threw punches, hurled water bottles and unleashed chemical sprays on each other Saturday morning. The Virginia State Police tweeted that officers had made arrests following the unlawful assembly declaration. It was only later on Saturday that a white nationalist from OHIO rammed his car into a crowd of anti-protesters, killing a woung woman. And, while it is hard to find any objective factual reports about what actually happened in Charlottesville, the few reports I have heard from local residents all agree that the troublemakers, both white nationalists and BLM anti-protesters, were not local residents -- they were out-of-staters who had gone to Charlottesville deliberately to cause trouble. • • • POLITICIANS' REACTIONS WERE HYSTERICAL. Paul Ryan / "The views fueling the spectacle in Charlottesville are repugnant. Let it only serve to unite Americans against this kind of vile bigotry." / Orrin Hatch : "Their tiki torches may be fueled by citronella but their ideas are fueled by hate, & have no place in civil society." / Marco Rubio : "Very important for the nation to hear @potus describe events in #Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by #whitesupremacists." / The Attorney General of Virginia, Mark Herring, called out President Trump for failing to directly blame "racists and white supremacists" following the Charlottesville protests that turned violent on Saturday, tweeting : "The violence, chaos, and apparent loss of life in Charlottesville is not the fault of 'many sides.' It is racists and white supremacists." Trump had already addressed the violent protests on Saturday : "We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides." His use of "many sides" was the fuel for Progressive Democrats, who meekly seek foregiveness when BLM or any other group shoots white police officers or burns and loots during protest marches, but they blame Trump when he calls out their hypocrisy. • • • DEAR READERS, we all send our prayers and condolences to the families of the two Virginia State Police troopers who died in a helicopter crash while helping law enforcement officers monitor Saturday's white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. President Trump sent his "Deepest condolences to the families & fellow officers of the VA State Police who died today. You're all among the best this nation produces." • And, we all join in condemning the atrocious act of the 20-year-old Ohio man who apparently drove his car into a crowd and killed a young woman. • But, the folly of the refusal to stop revisionist history came through loud later on Saturday when the mayor of Lexington, Kentucky, announced that he is accelerating his plans to remove Confederate statues from key locations in the city due to violence spurred by the Charlottesville dsitrubances. Mayor Jim Gray, a Democrat, said on Twitter : "I am taking action to relocate the Confederate statues. We have thoroughly examined this issue, and heard from many of our citizens. The tragic events in Charlottesville today have accelerated the announcement I intended to make next week." Gray said he is looking to remove Confederate statues at the city's Historic Courthouse, which will be the city's new visitors center. • Using the socialist-totalitarian tool of revisionist history -- wiping out those parts of history that don't conform to the current political agenda -- did not work in Russia under the Soviets, or in China under Mao or in the Balkans under the radical nationalist leaders who tried to eliminate Moslems from Christian regions and the radical nationalist leaders who tried to eliminate Christians from Moslem regions. And, we are now watching ISIS destroy historical monuments and artifacts that represent a history of Islam that they don't support. • The Confederacy lost the Civil War. Nobody knows that better than Southerners. But, consider how it must feel to a Southerner to have his or her history erased, to have statues of their beloved leaders removed or destroyed, to be unable to romanticize their Confederate Flag. There were no marches around Confederate historical monuments until recently -- when revisionist Progressive political leaders began to cave in to the demands of BLM and other special interest groups. There were no chants of "you will not replace us." But, if human history teaches us anything, it is that people cling passionately to their history and culture. They may be beaten, imprisoned, sent to the gulags and shot for it, but they will not forget it or abandon it. It is what defines them and they will not be denied its presence in their lives. American Southerners are no different. Today, Progressive revisionists are taking away their statues and flag. Tomorrow, willl they raze the Confederate cities of Savannah and Atlanta and Richmond and New Orleans?? Think about it carefully before you say it is not possible. As the National Review said : "There is no limiting principle in play here."