Eric Holder, persecuted martyr
This.
Used to be, long ago, Americans would have rejected this sort of whining. But in the Obama administration it’s become standard. Blame, blame, blame others, and always declare or at least imply that the criticism one receives is due to race.
This has been the most divisive, whining, blaming administration in history, in addition to all its other flaws. And this modus operandi was foreshadowed even before Obama was elected. In fact, it’s part of how he got elected. During the 2008 campaign, Obama not only cynically played the race card, but he played it preemptively:
At a fund-raiser in Jacksonville, Fl….Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said he expects Republicans to inject race into the campaign…:
Obama “The choice is clear. Most of all we can choose between hope and fear. It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”
Republicans hadn’t mentioned it and weren’t going to mention it (or even, for the most part, think it). There were plenty of other reasons to disagree with Obama and want him defeated. But Obama managed to finesse his opposition by implying that Republicans would either say it or think it, and that criticism of him was racism de facto if not de jure.
For example, “He’s young and inexperienced” was merely simple, obvious fact. But note how cleverly Obama linked it with accusations of a racist agenda on the part of his opponents. And his supporters and associates (including Eric Holder) have taken that ball and run with it very, very far.
Holder probably thinks you are all cowards because Holder smacked around white Americans before at college. Learned experience begets future personality and habit.
This is an exploitation of the popular – and indeed policy and legally validated – (one-way) premise that disparate-impact inequality is ipso facto racism or sexism that must be corrected, even when the underlying reasons for the inequality are rational and race or sex neutral.
The logical inference is that any incurred disadvantage by a protected (favored) class, no matter the reason, is by definition, taboo racism or sexism.
It’s like a mom telling big brother he must not strike back at little brother and big brother must allow little brother to win. Dads normally don’t teach their sons like that. But our society has been altered to a feminine-centric social model.
Holder, like Obama is a bully. Bullies whine when they don’t get their way. This is deflection, any criticism is categorized as motivated by racism. It is the lowest form of intellectual dishonesty. Socrates knew of it, “When the debate is lost, the loser turns to slander”
The forum at which Holder appeared was about racial solidarity. Tragically and as a group, the majority of blacks have become the very thing they hate, racists. Martin Luther King must be weeping.
According to a recent Rasmussen survey, 31 percent of black adults said they considered people of their own race to be racist.
Add: Little brother, of course, quickly learns to exploit the mom-imposed structural advantage he holds over big brother.
The corrupted formative setting created by mom poorly trains both big brother and little brother to be honorable men among men in the traditional cultural ways of men.
However, the traditional culture of men is being systematically superseded by a dominant feminized culture. When the corrupted mode of manhood has reached the White House, the highest paternal seat of our nation, then we know the fundamental cultural transformation of America has peaked.
The solution, not easy, is that traditional masculine culture must be restored to America.
Individually, paternalistic masculine values must be programmed in boys through formative education.
Socially, paternalistic masculine values must be programmed in our social culture – the zeitgeist – through activism.
Geoffrey Britain: “Martin Luther King must be weeping.”
Not true. In MLK’s 2nd stage activism, where he switched from civil rights to economic rights, MLK aggressively played the race card.
Run with it?
Spiked it, they did!
Hmm, you think Holder will investigate disparate impact in football, basketball or track and field?
Luther jr was beginning to question black economic dependence on welfare, then they killed him.
Geoffrey Britain: “Holder, like Obama is a bully.”
Perhaps, but foremost, they’re competitive activists.
Activists don’t just win by playing the game as they’ve joined it. Activists change the rules (premises, codes) of the game to the activist game, the only social-political game there is. They then play to win the game by the activist-customized rules while their non-activist opponents inflexibly abide by obsolete rules of the game and complain impotently about their growing trend of defeat, bewildered.
The activists are further aided by non-activist opponents who can even describe why they’re losing yet refuse to adapt the demonstrably winning activist method.
Rephrasing, the casino house changes the odds in their favor with fixed tables and dice, then play the game and win.
Newcomers are told by the old gamblers of how much money they made in the past.
“The activists are further aided by non-activist opponents who can even describe why they’re losing yet refuse to adapt the demonstrably winning activist method.”
What you’re describing is a race to the bottom. Murdering your opponents, for example, may be a highly effective way to win the debate. It’s no way to run a society, though. There are some lengths conservatives are not willing to go to, which is why we are morally better than the left.
“Used to be, long ago, Americans would have rejected this sort of whining.”
Yep. And we had a single word for this sort of person. Now the word’s gone and these folks occupy the highest seats in the land.
Why the hell is the Attorney General of the United States addressing a group founded by Al Sharpton? Why is the POTUS doing the same?
These guys are losing their historical race grievance advantage as society intermarries and people don’t care about race anymore. Except the race baiters and we know who they are.
Matt_SE: “It’s no way to run a society, though.”
The ends justify the means.
The only way to run a society is to dominate the nodal means to run it – legal, political, educational, cultural.
When you hold the means, all of the means that make a difference, then you can run the society the way you prefer.
Your social morality is meaningless unless and until reified.
leigh: “These guys are losing their historical race grievance advantage as society intermarries and people don’t care about race anymore.”
It doesn’t work that way. Eg, NYC Mayor de Blasio.
Modified, to leigh:
Rather, it could work the way you prefer, but that’s not the way interracial intermarriage frame has been constructed.
Eric Holder, chief coward of the United States. Fresh off of being accused of lying to congress by Louie Golmert, and being confronted honestly the first time since he’s been AG, he runs off to a friendly audience to cry racism and seek comfort. Holder is a pansy, a racist, and he should be jailed for Fast and Furious. I hope that karma catches up with him.
Eric,
Are you asserting that MLK renounced his dream that someday his children would be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin? That he advocated one set of laws for blacks (more permissive) and another for whites? If not, King is weeping.
‘Competitive activists’ cannot successfully ‘change the rules’ (premises, codes) of the ‘game’ (perception is all, among the ignorant) to the social-political memes that favor them without the assistance of ‘independent’ authoritarian figures. Confirmation [to the ignorant] of a POV by ‘independent’ authoritarian figures is what separates that POV from opinionated ‘yammering’.
The ‘independent authoritarian figures’ are of course academia and the media. But since they are actively opposed to objective facts, reason and logic in conflict with the ideology they embrace and entirely supportive of the left’s memes, ‘framing’ and narrative… upon what basis do you propose to seize the field of play from them and successfully convince the low-info voter that we are right and the left wrong? Who shall confirm that POV? FOX, conservative talk radio and blogs like this? Sorry, been there, done that. Those entities are perceived by the ignorant and duped as reactionary forces opposed to ‘progress’, opposed to social justice, opposed to fairness itself. And culpability is… a death trap.
Finally, the problem with embracing the meme that “the end justifies the means” is that it starts a society down an unavoidable and inescapable path to tyranny.
It isn’t mimicking the left’s lies, distortions and duplicity that shall carry the day but rather, clearly standing free of culpability in the consequences of the left’s premises and the policies and proposed ‘solutions’ they offer, so that when liberal America reaps what they have supported, the right can offer a credible alternative.
That is why supporting the GOP is a long term death trap, they share culpability for the coming debacle.
Oops! The sentence “And culpability is… a death trap.” should be the very last sentence.
Geofrey Britain:
He didn’t renounce it as a dream. But he did favor some programs that gave special help to blacks.
Yes, he did, neo-neocon. The problem today isn’t the same as 1965. This isn’t Selma all over again, as Jesse Jackson, Jr. loves to say. Yet, today, this afternoon, Obama claims that voting rights are under attack.
I’ve long held that the reason for objecting to picture IDs is that they may not be able to cheat as easily.
Oops, the special programs part. I wasn’t disagreeing with you.
Eric Says:
April 11th, 2014 at 7:12 pm
My boss saw MLK speak once. I’m not sure what year it was, but it was probably late in his career.
To this day he says that King’s speaking style and cadence reminded him of Hitler.
(In fairness, maybe Hitler borrowed his speaking style from preachers.)
Neo,
Yes, late in his life, King did advocate special economic programs for blacks. I maintain that however, to be entirely different from Holder and Obama’s casual racism couched in politically acceptable terms. I also maintain that it is entirely different than Holder’s selective prosecution of the law. It is the reverse racism that Holder practices and his actions that place blacks above the law for which I believe King weeps because those actions are entirely antithetical to judging someone solely by the content of their character.
leigh Says:
April 11th, 2014 at 7:59 pm
Not to pile on, leigh, but Obama is famously the product of a racially mixed marriage, and Holder looks awfully light-skinned to me.
They clearly have issues. They identify with their black sides and vilify their white sides.
Geoffrey Britain:
I’m in complete agreement.
I cannot imagine that King would approve of their use of the race card to deflect valid criticism.
The meme patrol falls into line — here’s the Wash. Post’s Dana Milbank following up on Holder’s words on race and doing an “interesting thought experiment”:
Yep, that’s what it is: an “interesting thought experiment”. Ha ha.
Obama and nearly his entire administration are affirmative action cases.
The only reason he was elected was because of his skin color. There is no other reason. Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot or a liar.
And it was just for this reason he was elected – so that any criticism of policy could be called racist and thereby deflected and discouraged.
It worked because our side is a coward. Except for a handful of women and one or two men.
Liars and fascist pigs on one side; cowards on the other. Not a good combination.
For a compare and contrast.
at minute
1:23
Sure I am …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOQwa73KXbs
rickl,
That’s my point, really. Obama and Holder are both half white or very light skinned and have benefitted from Affirmative Action programs yet continue to act as if the country were still segregated.
I agree that they clearly have issues with their self-images and their places as men. They are both bullies as stated upthread.
Skin color was icing on the cake, the skin, so to speak.
Do not disparage the importance of skin, the largest body organ.
It holds everything together.
Yet, there are the innards, the bones, and the brain/mind (we still don’t know the dif)
Remember how close it was 2000 and 2004.
Wharinit the skin as much anit the spirit.
Geoffrey Britain, Neo,
I understand your idealized image of MLK. The “I Have a Dream” King is the popular face of his legacy. The myth isn’t a lie; it’s just incomplete.
King’s 1st-stage activism was pretty and popular. Pretty, popular activism is comparatively easy, even with the occasional narrative sleepover in jail. King’s 2nd-stage activism was inspirational by showing his willingness to get ugly and abrasive as an activist.
In his 2nd-stage activism, MLK used the race card and religion card.
I don’t agree with the cause of King’s 2nd-stage activism, but his dedication to “use any means of legitimate nonviolent protest necessary to move our nation and our government on a new course of social, economic and political reform” is an inspiration to activists.
The people of the Right need King’s 2nd-stage gritty dedication more than his 1st-stage pretty popularity.
Excerpts from a term paper I wrote as an undergrad:
Eric:
Let me explain to you why the end does NOT justify they means: imperfect knowledge.
No one can be sure of anything to 100% accuracy, especially concerning events in the future.
Because you cannot be certain, you must engage in debate civilly to preserve a range of options.
The soviets did not tolerate dissent concerning their 5 year plans. The problem was, their 5 year plans didn’t work. Had they been open to debate, they might have fixed these problems. So, because they couldn’t be certain of the outcome, what really happened was the “means justifying the ends.” There’s another phrase for that: might makes right.
We abandoned that thinking at the Enlightenment.
rickl: “(In fairness, maybe Hitler borrowed his speaking style from preachers.)”
Indeed. From the OSS psych profile of Hitler:
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/oss-profile-03-02.html
As I’ve said, activism is a mercenary method. It’s a workshop of tools for different settings – sociology weaponized. Activism is not an ideology. Anyone can use the activist method to reify any social cause.
Hiter was activist in his “capacity for learning from others even though he may be violently opposed to everything they believe and stand for”. While their social causes differed from Hitler’s social cause, activists such as MLK, Ghandi, and our Founding Fathers were students of the game, too.
Matt_SE,
The standard to “run a society” isn’t about heavenly perfection. It’s about human imperfection. The standard for running a society is comparative and competitive.
The choice is either/or:
Either the Left will dominate and define our society through activism, or the Right will dominate and define our society through activism.
Unless you believe the Left’s knowledge to run a society is less imperfect (or I supposed more perfect) than the Right’s knowledge to run a society, then the ends do justify the means.
An idealistically rational, critical, thoughtful governing process would be a nice choice, if it actually existed in our social politics.
As is, in the activist game, which is the only social-political game there is, the choice is either to adapt activism and at least compete for social dominance, or decline activism and submit meekly (while whining impotently) to the Left’s activism.
The great Churchill has been instanced above.
Churchill used all the honorable means at his disposal: his eloquence, his parliamentary connections, his fiery spirit. And his integrity and his love of his country and civilization.
It was exactly his courage and integrity that made him the nucleus of the resistance: the Englishmen who were sickened at the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, the Frenchmen who were humiliated at being led to betray their ally, naturally flocked to his standard. By the end of 1938, he had a de facto shadow cabinet and was getting better intel than the Prime Minister, Chamberlain.
Think about that word “standard.” Having standards. A standard is a flag on a pole, that symbolizes what you stand for — and is a sign that others rally around to fight.
Hitler looked at the appeasers and had nothing but contempt for them; but we found out after the war that he had ALWAYS had his eye on Churchill — because Churchill was the one man who had the balls to fight him fang and claw.
In a way, they were like two warriors spotting each other in a barroom filled with braggarts and lightweights, knowing that at some point it would all come down to the two of them, fighting it out for the soul of the world.
that OSS link was fascinating:
He is a master of the art of propaganda. Ludecke writes:
“He has a matchless instinct for taking advantage of every breeze to raise a political whirlwind. No official scandal was so petty that he could not magnify it into high treason; he could ferret out the most deviously [unreadable] corruption in high places and plaster the town with the bad news.” (159)
His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
WRT Holder and Obama:
When a speaker knows he lies to a crowd whom he knows know he lies but pretend enthusiastic agreement, is that as good as convincing them?
We mostly see the end of clips showing Hitler’s ranting fulinations. Nearly hysterical.
But I’ve heard it said he started out like a respected neighbor stopping by to point out one or two things you hadn’t thought of but seem like good ideas.
He once said that three hundred years of blood and terror stand in no relation to the state of Germany today. Three hundred years back from then would be smack in the middle of the Thirty Years’ War, still a horror to even a half-educated German.
IOW, he’s reasonable, he knows the score, he’ll do everything to avoid such a thing again.
The blacks have been oppressing humans in Rhodesia and South Africa. This is nothing new.
Malcom X’s speeches were more informative on what was really going on back then, I thought.
http://www.malcolm-x.org/speeches/spc_021465.htm
It’s never a good idea to use the Holders or Hussein Os idea of what racism is, to inform your idea of history. Real history.
Without a doubt, the Obama administration is the MOST RACIST administration in my lifetime (60+ years).
Oh………… I forgot……… BLACKS CAN’T BE RACIST!!!!
Most of the cannonfodder on the LEft don’t even understand the concept of racism.
His Infantile Majesty Obama is currently in full Olinskyite form with his race hustling grift-blather on “voting rights”. Aaahhhhhhh… The Great Uniter. He and Holder x infinity don’t come up to George W’s shoe soles.
So what happened to all those people that told the families of those present, that Hussein O was going to this great American unifier?
Have they been slapped around with a counter propaganda line, made to eat crow, and forced to publicly apologize? If not, then they won’t change, now will they.
There’s no question but the whole concept of “tolerance” is made wholly out of rainbows and unicorn farts. They themselves don’t believe their own memes. Fen’s Law. The pendulum swings inexorably toward payback. And, as they say, it will be a bitch.
Joubert: I sure hope so. Trouble is, when? In 300 years? I despair of seeing payback/rectification in my lifetime.
I predict another 10-20 years, about 15 from 2012.
Ymarsakar,
Thanks for the link to the Malcolm X speech. It’s like a primer for activism.
Add: MLK and Malcolm X, as contemporaries, were not opponents. King simply drew a line at physical violence in his activism.
MLK aggressively used propaganda that was incitant and adversarial. In other words, activism “by any means necessary” (X) vs “use any means of legitimate nonviolent protest necessary” (MLK).
Indeed, the majority of the Left’s winning activism is not physically violent. War is just politics by other means, after all. Whether the means are violent or non-violent, activism is about competing to impose one’s preferred norms and marginalize/stigmatize alternative norms. There can be only one.
To understand him as an activist, note that in his 1st-stage activism, MLK did not condemn the violence that characterized the concurrent black separatist movement. Like Ghandi’s activism, MLK was not dogmatically pacifist. He understood the utility of political violence. He just believed that non-violent activism was more effective for his social movement.
When speaking to white Americans in his 1st-stage activism, MLK shrewdly wove in the implied threat of violent black unrest as the dangerous alternative to King’s social movement, which he framed as the benign alternative that would placate the justified anger of black Americans.
To wit, MLK, “I Have a Dream”:
Of course, as MLK learned within days of the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act at the 1965 Watts riots, the event that triggered his 2nd-stage activism, his benign alternative wasn’t enough.
Beverly,
Indeed, the Left’s and Hitler’s activist skillsets match up closely.
Activism is just a method, a workshop of tools. Anyone cause it to reify any cause. Either use activism to normalize your good cause, or opt not to use activism and allow activism to be used by your competition to normalize their bad cause.
* Anyone CAN USE ACTIVISM to reify any cause.
I wonder, sometimes, IF Colin Powell is privately feeling any remorse, regret, guilt. You know, for supporting this cheap race hustling Alinskyite Lefty? What was it that Powell called him some years back..? Oh, yes, “Transformational”!!
Come on Mr.National Security Advisor to President Reagan, Chief of the Joint Chiefs under Bush-41 and Sec’y of State under Bush-43… ANY SHAME felt in your gut these days,’Yo?
At the risk of being “Godwined” Hitler’s speaking style was copied in large part from Mussolini, right up to the point of practicing gestures and facial expressions in front of a mirror.
King’s speaking cadence was different, in that he spoke in a manner common to Black Southern preachers, a cadence designed to elicit a “call and response” reaction from the congregation. At points King may have moderated that cadence as he probably understood that a national audience would not respond in the same way as a Black church congregation, but in the end he was what he was and spoke accordingly. For him to have adopted a Hitleresque speaking style would not have worked, either for his congregation or the nation as a whole; it would have been alien….
Most people have not been educated on Rhetoric. So they can’t tell one Rhetorical Style from another.
Jenk: “At the risk of being “Godwined””
Godwin was just describing a usenet debate phenomenon, but its popular application, as I understand it, is a version of the logical fallacy that:
Hitler is evil. Hitler is fond of children. That guy is fond of children. That guy is evil. Or, Hitler is evil. Hitler is fond of children. Being fond of children is evil.
It’s the logical fallacy that some folks apply to activism: The Left is bad. The Left uses activism. Activism is bad.
Eric,
It’s called a false analogy. It says “Hitler was bad. X is like Hitler. Therefore X is bad like Hitler.”
It’s only a fallacy if it’s not true. Godwin was a jackass.
Godwin probably intended it for LEftists, since they would be the ones that would most likely call fascism as a way to suppress the masses.
So using Godwin as a way for the Left to win against us, is perhaps ironic.
Mike,
My understanding is that Godwin was simply making an observation. The fallacy was imputed by others.