Black lives matter

'While Biden was in his basement, @realDonaldTrump had 5.3 MILLION+ viewers tune in to his rally,' wrote GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel last week. It's a variation on a theme for the Republican party of late: take the vacant airwaves left by a subdued Biden campaign and fill them with spurious claims about the whereabouts of the presumptive Democratic nominee. Sure, Biden has been quiet, relative to Trump — who isn't? — but he hasn't been totally basement-bound. The former vice president has been venturing out for socially distanced local speeches. He gave one on healthcare in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on Thursday, stopped off in the Pennsylvania towns of Yeadon and Darby the week before, and hosted an economic round table in Philadelphia on June 11.

'Protest' often feels inadequate as a characterization for the public exhibitions that have erupted nationwide over the past several weeks. The term 'protest' carries a connotation of actions carried out in opposition to existing structures of power; hence, you 'protest' against forces that are arrayed against you (even if some municipal bureaucrat might have reluctantly granted you a permit). However, at least in many jurisdictions, events which were presented as 'protests' should more rightly be labeled as something along the lines of 'state-backed demonstrations.' For instance, in my otherwise sleepy hometown of Caldwell/West Caldwell, New Jersey, high-school students organized what turned out to be an astonishingly large protest march.

It is a strange habit, the American one of making talk-show hosts into preachers. There is no good reason, after all, why a comedian should be any kind of arbiter of morality or anything much else. Yet in America the court of public opinion accepts the right of the jester to preach the homily too. So it was that, in a period not short on ‘personal takes’ and celebrity messaging, one night in early June on his Late Late Show, James Corden delivered a teary monologue about race relations in America. Lots of people thought he did well, and praised Corden’s talk of ‘white guilt’ and all manner of other sins. But one phrase stood out for being especially bogus. It was a phrase that was widely quoted.

Structural, systemic, systematically — we’re hearing these words a lot at the moment. Racism isn’t individual. It is structural or systemic. So are poverty or injustice. People aren’t just oppressed or tortured; they are systematically oppressed or tortured. This is the language of Black Lives Matter and some of the noisier Democrats, and it’s telling. It comes from Marxist academia and the Black Power activism of the 1960s, and it evokes the radicalism of that time, which is generally now regarded as having been on ‘the right side’ of history. These words are also helpfully vague — nobody knows precisely what they mean — which means you can stress them without being contradicted.

The left is demanding 'defund the police' in the wake of George Floyd’s killing. President Trump’s allies are hunkering down with calls for 'law and order.' Both miss the plot. When pressed, the left really wants a new Great Society. Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza told NBC's Meet the Press that 'defunding police' is really about 'increased funding for quality of life of communities who are over-policed and over-surveiled.' But the Great Society didn’t work, and a new one would also be ill-fated. For its part, the right fails to acknowledge real problems with our criminal justice system. President Trump addressed some of them in a much-praised federal sentencing reform bill last year.

Thanks to the nature of digital media, the last 10 days can be seen in entirely different ways. On one feed rioters turn urban centers into scenes from a Purge movie, indiscriminately attacking people and property, advancing the cause of racial justice by burning down immigrant-run businesses and murdering a retired black police captain. On another feed, it is the cops who are running amok. Festooned with tactical gear and high-tech weaponry (or old-fashioned clubs), the police appear to attack people indiscriminately — from old men to young women out buying groceries to homeless guys in wheelchairs — apparently for the crime of being in their way.

The most memorable footage of the Black Lives Matter protests, and perhaps the creepiest, doesn’t capture any acts of violence, any looting, any chanting of slogans or — so far as I can make out — any black faces.Instead, we see hundreds of mostly young people sitting in the parking lot of a public library in Bethesda, Maryland, raising both pasty-white arms in a gesture that suggests both surrender and worship.An invisible speaker is reciting a list of promises that the crowd repeats. This is what we hear: Speaker: '… about racism, anti-blackness or violence.' Crowd: '… about racism, anti-blackness or violence.

Washington, DCLast night, I took my usual evening stroll in Friendship Heights, only to realize that it could have an insalubrious outcome as I saw a group of 'protesters', as they are known, huddling on Wisconsin Avenue. Discretion appeared to be the better part of valor: I made a swift left to avoid them only to detect another group of about 20 young men and women wearing ski masks and holding what appeared to be sticks and batons. No police were around. A quick calculation suggested that a reversal would be interpreted as fear. I strode ahead and about 10 seconds after I passed the group, I suddenly heard them rush toward me, yelling and laughing. Their target turned out not to be me but the stores on the business strip in Friendship Heights.

We are witnessing glimmers of the full insurrection the far-left has been working toward for decades. The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis was merely a pre-text for radicals to push their ambitious insurgency. In a matter of hours, after the video of Floyd began circulating the internet, militant antifa cells across the country mobilized to Minnesota to aid Black Lives Matter rioters. Law enforcement and even the state National Guard have struggled to respond in Minnesota.Portland, Oakland, Los Angeles, Dallas and Atlanta are just some of the other cities waking up and finding smoldering ruins where businesses once operated. Nearly 30 other cities experienced some form of mass protest or violent rioting. At least three people have been killed so far.

If you have been following the Minneapolis riots on Twitter or Facebook, you may have come across an edgy new media channel called Unicorn Riot. The company is five years old and describes itself ‘viewer-supported’, ‘independent’ and ‘alternative’. In fact, it thrives by circulating images and videos of social unrest with indisputable glee — on riot porn, in other words. Unicorn Riot's Twitter channel has about 150,000 followers. The account specializes in fanning the flames of racial aggravation. It also helpfully informs viewers where the National Guard blockades are in case anyone might want to avoid or attack them.