Trump and the Black Vote
I was fascinated by this interview by Stephan Molyneux (who, and I am sure he will be perturbed by the comparison, sort of reminds me of me) with Donald Trump’s harbingers, Diamond and Silk.
I vowed for Advent to give up the harmless vice of arguing politics, which starts Nov 27th, so this is the last comment I am likely to make for a while.
Please note the difference between the analysis on the cause of Trump’s victory offered by two of the campaign’s spokesmen interviewed here, and the analysis offered by any and all ‘White Lives Matter’ sophists, who are trying to put across to the unwary the fraud that Trump represent a white backlash, and a victory for the new and growing field of white identity politics.
The idea that identity determines ideology is not merely ahistorical and logically incoherent, it is stupid on the order of geocentrism levels of stupid.
One has to throw out all the discoveries and progress made since the Middle Ages in the science of jurisprudence, and to undo the Enlightenment idea of a classless society of free and equal men in order to adopt it.
Theories in the field of politics that were as revolutionary and brilliant as the theory of Kepler was among astronomers, and which constitute as gigantic advance in the economy of politics and human nature as Newton’s ideas among physics, including the ideas of the rights of man, rule of law, equality before the law, and franchise open to the lower classes, all have to be abandoned.
Whether the partisans of identity politics admit it or not, all the political advances of the West since before Aristotle must be thrown overboard in order to resurrect the idea that tribalism-by-race supersedes national identity, religious faith, loyalty to political party, love of liberty, and so on.
Like geocentrism or flat-earther thinking, the way the modern race-tribalist works is he disconnects his brain from history, science, logic. He ignores any facts that disagree with his theory, and selects only those which support his theory.
A lawyer who used this method could prove John Wilkes Booth did not shoot Lincoln, merely by throwing out as inadmissible the testimony of the two thousand witnesses in the audience of Ford’s Theater who saw him do the deed, and heard his cry of triumph confessing it.
A scientist could prove the universe rotated around a fixed and motionless Earth merely by throwing out all the evidence which proves otherwise.
In both cases, the matter is simple enough: all you have to do is demonize, mock, and belittle the majority opinion, and tell the true believers in your cult that you and they share the esoteric knowledge of the elite. You and you alone have taken the Red Pill. Only you can see the Matrix for what it is. A man’s pride will do the rest: his ears will cease to hear whatever he wishes not to hear. His eye will not see. His heart goes dark. His soul goes dead, and he regards his fellow men are instruments or obstacles, but never again sees them as people.
Since the method of “argument” in all such cases is to ignore evidence before it is heard, obviously no argument can be made to someone already baptized into the cult. They use rhetoric rather than dialectic, and answer any argument with a witticism or a curt dismissal.
For those lured to the cult but not yet joined, however, certain facts should give them pause.
If, as Diamond and Silk say, Donald Trump got 12% of the black vote this go round, the old identity politics shtick used by the Dems is losing its grip.
That percent is not much, but considering how the Democrat campaign and the news media (but I repeat myself) dropped every H bomb in their arsenal, released every can of mustard gas and unleashed every deadly microbe, to try to convince the dullwitted that Trump was racist, and considering the stranglehold the Left has on academia and the popular arts and every bullhorn of public communication except the internet, it is a minor miracle that Trump got any black votes at all.
If identity defines culture defines politics, then that cannot be happening. The model does not fit the facts.
Now, the race of this twelve percent did not change. So the argument that race of the voter must determine how they vote cannot be true.
Why the change?
Several causes are proposed: Hillary radiated a sense of entitlement; Blacks were impressed that Trump was walking the streets of the inner city, approaching them, whereas Hillary was hiding under a rock; Blacks were sick of Obamacare; sick of losing jobs; and wary of the foreign wars to which so many soldiers were being sent to die.
This last point might have more punch for Blacks than for Yankees, because joining the Army and getting a scholarship is one way out of the death trap of ghetto life still open to the poor. It is one of the few bottom rungs of the economic stepladder that the Dems have not sawed off. Starting a business? Regulations will strangle you. Getting a job? Minimum wage, Union monopolies, and Obamacare kill that dream pretty quick.
So many a black family with a soldier overseas might be disgusted at the habit of Dems to fritter away victories that GOP with such a high cost of blood and treasure win; and then to see the Dems banging the war drums at every opportunity (WWI, WWII, Vietnam … all began under Democrat administrations) and playing Poke-the-Bear with Russia might cause a black man, race or no race, to consider crossing the aisle to vote for Trump.
If identity trumps culture trumps politics, then why are these two black ladies talking about issues rather than, as the Dems talk, race, race and more race? The Cultural Fascist will say they are statistical outliers, and this is a good point.
On the other hand, the first time Irishmen stopped voting in lockstep with the Democrats was when they stopped seeing the Democrats as their friends and allies and their way up out of poverty and into power. Nowadays, the Irish are counted as “Whites” and their identity is no longer even mentioned when identity politics comes up.
Let me emphasize that. The racial identity of the Irish in America, which, at one time, was all important in the politics of New York and Chicago, and even had significant influence in the election of John F Kennedy, was not mentioned by a single political commentator, recorded by a single pollster, or noted in a single column. No one cares. It has no political influence. It was not even mentioned.
Are the Irish of this generation genetically different from the Irish of 1960 and 1930 and 1890? Really? Has enough inbreeding and genetic drift occurred in so few generations to turn the Irish from being solidly and reliably Democrat into no longer being so?
The history of immigration in America does not bear out the identity trumps culture trumps politics argument.
The argument also contradicts itself.
If identity trumps culture trumps politics, then men will usually, perhaps always, side with a man of the same cultural background over against another man of shared politics but different culture.
By that logic, an English Catholic, if he find two men at odds, will usually help an English Communist rather than help a Chinese Catholic, because race and culture comes first.
By that logic, a German globalist will usually adhere to a German nationalist before he will adhere to a French or English Globalist: because race and culture comes first.
But here is a pretty paradox! If identity trumps culture trumps politics, then Globalism cannot exist.
Globalism by definition is composed of men who disdain nationalism, downplay ethnic identity, and regard all races as equal.
The other problem with the race-trumps-politics argument is that it simply is not true. It not only contradicts itself and history, but it rests on an ambiguity.
It conflates natural human traits, such as love for one’s own kind, with artificial tactics employed by the enemies of God and Man.
It confuses the normal behavior of humans throughout history,when the word “race” referred to the differences of Greek and barbarian, Christian and pagan, French and German, and started referring to continental divisions, Red, Yellow, Black and White.
It confuses “racism” in the sense that Welshmen like Welshmen and Chinamen like Chinamen, with the racism in the modern sense of a Darwinian competition of mutually exclusive groups that, for some mystical reason only clear to Aryans, MUST go to war whenever they are put in proximity with each other.
The difference between the races, even the differences of where the highest point of the Bell Curve for intelligence falls, do not and cannot influence matters of political economics which are younger than the thousand generations required for Darwinian evolution to work. There are just as many smart Dems as dumb Dems. High IQ does not quell the sin of envy, which, ultimately is all the Democrat political philosophy boils down to.
Identity politics is a big deal in the last century and a half between then and only then has it been a convenient excuse for the Left.
Before that, men have always been proud of their family, clan, nation and race: that is only natural. Men have always laughed at the oddities of foreigners, or been suspicious of the unknown. That too is natural. It was not racism, not what we now call racism, for the Greek to dismiss the non-Hellene as a barbarian, because (pay attention to this point, please, dear readers!) it was not being used as a political weapon to undo the democracy of Athens or the military government of Sparta.
The Roman Empire was notoriously cosmopolitan: even Jews could become Roman citizens. Christendom was even more notoriously cosmopolitan: the universal church that reached around and beyond all national boundaries and kingdoms was called catholic, that is, universal.
Only with the coming of the Reformation and the Enlightenment did race become a political issue: an excuse was needed to justify the African slave trade, which the Moors had convinced the Spaniards to adopt, and, from them, the rest of Europe. Slavery of Christians by Christians was, by that point in history, unknown and dead and beyond living memory. The idea of racial superiority and inferiority, of innate differences of races requiring innate differences of laws and customs, that was brand new. The Romans and the Medievals had nothing like it. Roman slaves could be teachers and professionals, and they could buy their freedom, like an indentured servant could; antebellum Black slaves had to be restricted by law from entering certain trades or learning letters. They were usually freed only when they were two expensive to keep.
The hypocrisy of this peculiar institution scarred the West for generations. In America the bitterness of the hypocrisy was particularly gross, since the slavedrivers were also the men who penned the glorious lines declaring all men to be created equal.
In England, by the grace of God, the institution was ended by the stroke of a pen. In America the guilt was greater, and the Democrats, since their great founder Jackson had driven away the Indians in the trail of tears, was firmly in Democrat hands. Being Democrats, nothing but fire and bloodshed and the burning of their cities could force the whips and fetters from their hands. The North was not free of guilt, either, and had cooperated with the slave trade and profited by it. History demanded blood to wash the sin away.
In any case, the preference of each man for his own kind, the tendency of people to segregate themselves, especially the newly arrived into Germantown and Chinatown and so on, is natural. This does not require the Anglosaxon to dominate nor be dominated by the German or the Oriental. Because the tendency of shared philosophy, shared religion, shared language, share rituals and rites to overcome this segregation is also natural. It naturally happens after a generation or two.
It naturally happens unless the Left deliberately and artificially prevents it from happening. The Left can prevent assimilation in several ways: multiculturalism teaches all Americans to hate their own nation and bow to the foreign.
Newcomers are discouraged from learning English in school. The numbers of the incoming are increased beyond the carrying capacity of our society to absorb them.
The newcomers are carefully selected for their violent criminality, their Mohammedan terrorism, their low intelligence, and their inability to mingle with Christians. This means the newcomers will be stupid, weak, scared, and therefore dependent on the Nanny State, and vulnerable to the stupid lies of identity politics.
All these hindrances to assimilation are artificial. Without these artificial props, identity politics cannot linger, and has no foothold. The different races still exist. The differences between the sexes still exist. The different characteristics still are seen, and the different stereotypes, by and large, still apply.
What is missing is any political fallout from this.
What is missing is the Democrat machine-politics turning every incoming, illiterate Irishman into a loyal client of the Democrat patron, gangster-boss-style.
What is missing is the envy.
What is also unnatural and artificial is the paranoid conspiracy theory needed by the Left in order to justify their sense of endless outrage and in order to justify their endless crimes, lies, mass-theft, mass-murder.
With Marx, the scapegoat was the investment activity, which he said were all done by one group of secret evil rulers of society called Capitalists. Religion was also scapegoated as the opiate of the masses. Jewish bankers were blamed. The Church was blamed.
The Nationalist Socialists, or Nazis, picked Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and Catholics as the evil scapegoats: but mostly their scapegoat was their twin brothers, the Communists. Jewish bankers were blamed.
After Marxism was laughed into irrelevance by history, the Cultural Marxists picked the Caucasian male as the scapegoat, and invented mythical white privilege and cisgender patriarchs as the invisible oppressors.
These oppressors somehow keep the victim classes in a state of continual exploitation and oppression, even though not a single letter of a single law in any law book in America erects any barrier to any of them. It is all carried out by elf magic.
Likewise, this modern group we might call Cultural Fascists have adopted the same tactic of being the enemy of their twin brothers, the Social Justice Warriors, and offered the same solution to the problem: not justice for all, but injustice.
Not equality under the law to correct for the affirmative action which has made a mockery of the American say of life for two generations, but inequality.
Not a return to the wounded principles written in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the sentiments expressed on the based of the Statue of Liberty or in our patriotic anthems, but contempt and mocking laughter for all these great things, and a weary, holier-than-thou shake of the head, as the works and words of the Founding Fathers have long ago been overturned by a more enlightened and scientific modern proof about the nature of man.
And somehow that proof is never actually provided.
It is merely referred to, as if all the members of the cult, who wink at each other and nod knowingly, pretend each man to know the secret that proves equality before the law, the rights of man, and the core concept of justice are childish playthings or mere weak-minded sentiment.
The Cultural Fascists talk a good game of protecting the West from the invaders, just as the National Socialist Fascists before them talked a good game of saving the folk from the communists and the Slavic under-races. But they are collectivists like the rest of the collectivists, and want you to adopt their ideology, no matter what your identity.
The fact that their ideology says you should and inevitably will adopt the ideology determined by your identity, and that this saying directly contradicts both itself, and history, and this posture of welcoming non-Aryans into the fold, does not bother them.
Like their twin brothers on the Left, logic is not their strong suit.
If they actually believed that identity determined culture and politics, then they were cease to try to urge Whites to adopt such a belief. Whites, starting with the ancient Greek, uphold an notion the Greeks called isonomia, a notion the Romans represented by showing the goddess of Justice blindfolded against any man’s birth or rank, a notion the English had of God-given rights, the Germans had as Folk Law, the Gallic had as Right Reason, and the Americans have as Equality Under Law.
If you believe that the White Race has a genetically determined political nature to it, then the one characteristic the European, both pagan and Christian, has always displayed is this individualism which is the opposite of racism and the opposite of collectivism.
Antiracism is a racial characteristic of the White Race. The only people trying to propose such nonsense to the Whites are non-Whites, half-breeds, mulattoes, and so on.
Trump’s victory was not a white backlash against black rule, or a white reactionary reaction against black insubordination. It was a victory of black and white together against an enemy whose only path to power over us is to sever and separate the minorities from our common humanity, and demonize half the nation to tempt the other half to envy and wrath and hate.
It was a victory of the poor and excluded against the globalists, a victory of America against the anti-Americans, a victory (for better or worse) of protectionism over free trade, a victory of pro-military isolationism over anti-military adventurism, and on and on.
This election was about the issues, not about races. The only people talking about race were the Cultural Marxists, who hate our nation and falsely accuse it of being racist, and the ultra-tiny minority of Cultural Fascists, who hate our nation and falsely accuse it of being not racist enough.
They are Tweedledum and Tweedledee: mirror images of the same blasphemous and antiamerican error. Whether they know it or not, the two stand at opposite sides of the same error, so that any soul fleeing from one will fall into the other. Both have the same father, who is the father of lies.
I say to perdition with your ideas, cultists and hatemongers. I savor the defeat of the ideas that poison your soul, because I wish for those ideas to die, that your soul may live.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
