The Toxic Race-Mongering of the Left

Imagine a world in which leftists, by some magic, were unable to accuse their political opponents of racism. Racism, sexism, all of the various make-believe phobias — these charges were suddenly somehow off-limits during political discussion. Instead, at all the leftist venues — The New York Times, the TV network news departments, CNN and the rest — the commentators had to accept that their political opponents were people of good will with the best interests of the country at heart. They had to ask themselves — and even possibly ask actual conservatives — what it was about border security that seemed important to them, why social spending might be destructive, why Islam might be incompatible with western thought, why teachers' unions were impeding the rise of the poor and so on.

If that magical moment ever occurred, we might start to have an intelligent political debate in this country. But don't hold your breath.

The current status quo serves the short-sighted power aims of the worst of the Democratic party, that is the far left, too well for them to abandon it. Scream racism at every disagreement and you might convince meaning-seeking millennials that leftism provides them a cogent moral framework, you might scare blacks out of noticing that they are thriving under Donald Trump's policies, you might convince women that Trump's boorish words are somehow worse than Bill Clinton's actions.

But the long-term costs of these political gains are great. The constant cries of racism have kept race at the center of the American political discussion long after most Americans would happily let the subject go. The attacks on anyone who demands reform from Islam have allowed radical Islamists to range free in their communities while moderates are unprotected. The anti-male cries of sexism have reduced women to perpetual victims, perpetually dissatisfied with life.

And, perhaps most importantly, leftist race mongering turns leftists into political idiots. It isn't until you engage with your political opponents that you learn the strengths and weaknesses of your arguments and can therefore adjust them or even change your mind entirely. If all you do is scream racism at people, you pump yourself full of self-righteousness and become increasingly radicalized and therefore increasingly at odds with reality and common sense.

A perfect example of the left-wing dynamic occurred on Fox News, of all places, the other day. Conservative political activist David Bossie — a man I know and like — was in a fierce debate with Democrat strategist Joel Payne. As things got heated, David told Payne, "You are out of your cotton-pickin' mind." Payne took immediate exception to the term and left-wing venues immediately declared it a racial slur. As a result, David was temporarily suspended from commentating on Fox and was forced to apologize before he could return.

A short-term victory for leftists, no doubt. It plays into their decades-long project of depicting right-wingers as inherently racist, of making them double-think every word that comes out of their mouths, and of winning arguments, not through reason, but through diversion and personal attack.

But the long-term costs are enormous. "Cotton-pickin'" is a 1950s American euphemism for "damn" that has no racial connotations I'm aware of. It's just something people of the Bossie-Klavan generations say. By using the term to Payne, David demonstrated he wasn't thinking about Payne's race in the least. If he had been, he would have been more careful with his words. Instead, he spoke to Payne as he would speak to anyone. It was man-to-man stuff, one American to another. Payne has now lost the right to be treated like that. He must be — what the left wants him to be — black above everything. Bossie treated him as an equal human, a brother American. Leftism made it so he can't be treated that way. Congratulations, leftism.

On top of this, fake charges of racism give real racism a kind of panache. Since only good non-racist people can be cowed into silence with false charges, nasty real racists, willing to speak their minds, come across as bold and honest instead of like the jerks they are. When you cry Racist Wolf long enough, you leave the real wolf free to roam.

Eventually, one hopes that insightful black Americans will begin to see that while the left's race mongering may offer them the short-term political power of victimhood, the long-term costs in inequality and social exclusion are too high. On that day, the left will have to get by on the strength of their ideas alone. That will not be pretty.

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It’s Not Socialism, It’s Racism

The myth of the media’s new Socialist It Girl

After the ’10 census, New York lost two congressional seats. Overpriced, lacking any growth industries except tourism and community organizing, the state just couldn’t keep up with the rest of the country.

New York had been bleeding congressional seats since the rise of the suburbs. After the massacre of ’10, its congressional delegation was the smallest since 1823. And it’ll lose more seats after the next census.

But the ’10 massacre also forced Rep. Joe Crowley out of the 7th Congressional District and into the 14th. The 7th became gerrymandered a district built like a Frankenstein’s monster out of parts of Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens that had nothing geographically in common except Puerto Rican populations who will keep voting for Rep. Nydia Velázquez, a Democrat, until the city sinks beneath the waves.

Crowley, who is paler than birch trees, had no shot at the new 7th. But he settled down comfortably in the 14th, winning 70% of the vote by just showing up, without the fuss of a primary challenge. While representing a Hispanic district in Queens, he was allegedly living comfortably in Arlington, Virginia.

That was never going to last.

New York City’s working class white population is an endangered species. If you’re not on welfare or earning well in the six figures, you can’t afford to live there. Crowley’s district was 46% Hispanic. It had the second highest share of Latino voters in New York. The machine pol was living on borrowed time.

It’s hard to imagine a more vulnerable politician than doughy Joe, the echo of a 19th century political establishment of barstools and crony government jobs, used to winning ¾ of the vote in safe districts and who had forgotten how to compete in an election (if he ever knew how) facing a Hispanic district.

Of course that’s not the story you see in the media.

Instead the media thrills to its own fake news of how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the "girl from the Bronx", a Socialist candidate and “giant-slayer”, impossibly defeated Rep. Crowley. And that’s accompanied by analysis of how her victory is proof of the inevitable triumph of Socialism. The media has even begun trying to ‘Obamaize’ her with stories about her brand of lipstick selling out.

The fake news narrative has nothing to do with the truth about Cortez and the reality of the 14th.

The simple truth is that the Democratic Socialists of America and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put in time and money into a district that the Democrats hadn’t bothered to protect because Republicans couldn’t win it. The secret to Cortez’s victory wasn’t socialism. It was her last name.

Nor is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a “girl from the Bronx”. She’s the daughter of an architect from a pricey suburb in Westchester County. Her father, a Pratt Institute grad, was a founder of KOR which stood for Kirschenbaum & Ocasio-Roman Architects. The Ocasio (rather than the Kirschenbaum) part of the name meant that it operated as a “certified minority business enterprise” which came with assorted privileges.

MBEs are able to cut in line and get all sorts of lucrative government contracts. All it takes is having a minority grandfather and your company is entitled to drink from a river of government cash flowing only to MBE companies. And if your ancestry is whiter than that of Senator Elizabeth Warren, you can always find a minority partner and then let the good times roll. At the expense of the working tax-paying stiffs.

After her father cashed in on affirmative action while living in Westchester County, his daughter cashed in her minority card in a New York City election even though she has far more in common with the white hipster Bernie Sanders supporters who provided the muscle for her campaign than any of the minorities living in a housing project in Queens or the Bronx. But that’s also why the media loves Cortez.

She’s one of them: a suburban leftist with a bio consisting of studying International Relations at Boston U, working on immigration issues for Ted Kennedy, serving as the National Hispanic Institute's Social Entrepreneur in Residence, producing a web series, shuttling between trendy lefty protests and founding what appears to a defunct social justice publishing house.

This isn’t the biography of an urban minority politician, but an upscale lefty hipster drifting after college from one activist gig to another, developing the contacts that put her in the right place at the right time. These are the bios of ten thousand professional lefties who infest the non-profit sector. They’re all angry, self-righteous and interchangeable. The minorities among them hail from wealthy areas.

And like all upscale lefties, they love putting on as much working class cred as they can get away with.

The media is using Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to push the Democrats even further to the left. But her victory is no argument for socialism. It is evidence that the left can win an election if the turnout is really low and a Hispanic district is being represented by a boring white Democrat who lives in Virginia. Since the 14th is a minority district, Cortez will probably be able to hold on to it until she’s older than Maxine Waters. Or unless the coming redistricting after New York loses more seats changes its racial composition. And Cortez and her Socialism will go down hard in an Asian or African-American district.

The unspeakable truth is that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez didn’t win because of her views but because the Democrats have created a political racial tribalism that is as bad as that of any third world country.

It’s not Socialism that will send Cortez to Congress. It’s racism.

The 14th district has the second highest share of Latino voters in New York. The 13th has the highest. Before Crowley bit the dust, Rep. Rangel, an elder statesman of the Congressional Black Caucus, barely survived a 2012 challenge by Adriano Espaillat, a Dominican former illegal alien, when his Harlem district’s racial demographics shifted. Frantic efforts were made to dig up Rangel’s “Latino roots.” Rangel finally eked out a victory by a little over 1,000 votes. He didn't show up in 2016. And Espaillat beat Rangel's chosen African-American successor but not after some embarrassing race-baiting by both sides.

Nobody in the 13th or 14th needs Socialism. They’re already living it. Their phones, food, education, medical care, transportation and, their jobs (if they have them) all come from the government.

The 14th dumped the old white guy for the same reason that the 13th dumped the old black guy. They were the wrong color. And the 13th, 14th, and the other multicultural voting districts of Dem strongholds can’t be satisfied with getting their free phones from a political representative of another race.

The media has been marketing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the new Obama. And that’s what she is. Her lesson isn’t that socialism works. The details of her politics were as incidental to the voters of the 14th as Obama’s policies were to his most dedicated base. It’s that racism works. Just ask a Democrat.

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White Millennials Are Leaving the Democratic Party as 'Walk Away' Campaign Picks Up Steam,/b>

White millennials are equally divided between supporting Republicans and Democrats in this year's critical midterm elections, as a campaign urging people to "Walk Away" from the Democratic Party has picked up steam online.

Young people do not like President Donald Trump, but whites between the ages of 18 and 34 said they are equally likely to vote for a Republican as for a Democrat in the elections for Congress this November. A full 39 percent said that "if the election for U.S. Congress were held today," they would vote for the Republican in the district where they live. Another 39 percent said they would vote for the Democrat.

This represented a nine-point shift away from Democrats since 2016. That year, only 33 percent of young white voters said they would elect a Republican to Congress, while 47 percent said they would choose a Democrat.

Young white men made the greatest shift toward the GOP. In 2016, nearly half of them (48 percent) said they would vote for a Democrat, while only 36 percent said they would vote Republican. This year, 46 percent said they would choose a Republican, while only 37 percent said they would vote Democrat — a 21 percent shift in favor of the GOP.

The poll surveyed 16,000 registered voters between 18 and 34, with a 1 percent margin of error.

Democrats have been hoping for a "blue wave," resulting from Americans across the country voting against Republicans as Trump's party. Indeed, midterm elections tend to favor the party out of power, and Republicans do hold the House, the Senate, and the presidency.

However, there are signs that Republicans may win the 2018 midterm elections as the anti-establishment underdog. How? By campaigning against the excessive Trump derangement syndrome across the media, Hollywood, and college campuses.

This is the premise of the "Walk Away" campaign. Brandon Straka, a gay man from Nebraska, identified himself as "The Unsilent Majority" and launched a campaign urging people to reject the Left — for the same reasons he became a liberal.

In the "Walk Away" viral video, Straka denounced racism, misogyny, "tyrannical group think," junk science, "hate," and "a system which allows an ambitious, misinformed, and dogmatic mob to suppress free speech, create false narratives, and apathetically steamroll over the truth." He said he became a liberal for these reasons, and he "walked away" for the very same reasons.

"For years now, I have watched as the left has devolved into intolerant, inflexible, illogical, hateful, misguided, ill-informed, un-American, hypocritical, menacing, callous, ignorant, narrow-minded, and at times blatantly fascistic behavior and rhetoric," Straka declared.

#WalkAway Campaign Urges Fed-Up Democrats to Leave the Party
Straka's video has racked up more than 492,000 views on YouTube and nearly 2 million views on Facebook.

Some millennials might be rejecting the Left as it pushes for control over the way people think, but others merely prefer the economic growth associated with the Republican Party.

Terry Hood, a 34-year-old African American who works at a Dollar General store in Baton Rouge, La., told Reuters that while he voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, he will consider a Republican for Congress this year.

"It sounds strange to me to say this about the Republicans, but they're helping with even the small things," Hood said. "They're taking less taxes out of my paycheck. I notice that."

President Trump powerfully turned the "blue wave" narrative on its head last month, predicting a "red wave." Perhaps he was on to something.

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Boycott Fail: Chick-fil-A Rules

For a third year in a row, Chick-fil-A has been crowned the top fast food chain in America.

Endless boycott campaigns led by liberal activists against the company haven’t slowed down Chick-fil-A’s pure dominance.

“Chick-fil-A was named America’s top fast-food restaurant for the third year in a row in the 2018 American Customer Satisfaction Index’s Restaurant Report, which surveyed more than 22,500 American consumers,” as reported by the Ledger-Enquirer.

Chick-fil-A beat Pizza Hut, Arby’s, Taco Bell, Subway, and Starbucks to claim the number one slot.

With a satisfaction score of 87, Chick-fil-A dominated the next 3 closest chains in Panera Bread (82), Papa John’s (82), and Subway (81).

The report also notes, “The chicken specialist dominates the rankings with the highest score across both restaurant categories, and its food quality continues to rate higher than the competition. Chick-fil-A maintains a wide lead over chicken rival KFC, as the Yum! Brands chain slips 1% to 77.”

The Atlanta-based company has held the top spot for three years now, which means their popularity only climbed following the backlash over CEO Dan Cathy expressing support for traditional marriage. The controversy reached such a fever-pitch that even city mayors tried to ban them from doing business.

Just this year, the Left became venomous in their war against the fast-food chain, with at least two major publications begging people to boycott the business: the New Yorker and Huffington Post.

Chick-Fil-A’s support of our military, willingness to say ‘Merry Christmas,’ stringent franchise requirements, incredible food, and friendly service continues to set the bar high for fast food chains.

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