There is a piercing intellect and a magnificent mind behind the keyboard in this piece, America Needs To Rediscover Tact, by Peggy Noonan.
You may have noticed in the US over the last little while and particularly the last week or so, the word ‘racist’ is being hurled at anyone by the 4 Horse-women of the Apocalypse, the three witches from Macbeth from Congress, who disagrees with them on anything. Even those on their own side. It’s become as predictable as it is comical as it is dangerous.
Initially I thought it was just a lack of intellectual capacity and shallow inability to communicate ideas and argue their point of view. It’s not dissimilar someone calling you a Nazi when they’ve run out of ideas and as they slam the door behind them.
It’s designed to shut down the conversation and it’s the only talking point weapon they have.
When you splutter denials that you’re a racist it allows them to continue to beat you and question your motives and morality and so, in effect, it becomes one of those ‘have you stopped beating your wife’ type of debating tactics.
It becomes one of those gotcha moments.
In Australia, Richard Di Natale, Sarah Hanson Young and the rest of the Greens do something similar by accusing anyone who disagrees with them on anything, of ‘hate speech’
But then I read this column by Peggy Noonan (Ronald Reagan’s speech writer) and she explained that there’s more to it than that. It’s designed to trap even non racists into the racist bubble, hold you up for ridicule or bend you to conform just to get them off your back.
The tactic is a central component and a crucial piece in the Rubik’s Cube of identity politics.
The standout few paragraphs that describes the tactic and what is really going on is below.
READ ON —–
“..In the past, whether you were racist could be judged by your actions. You held ugly biases, you said or did things that were definitionally discriminatory. The bad news is that you were this way, but the good news is that you could change. You could widen your lens, let some love in, say, think or do better things. You could improve.
And as you did, so would the nation. So there was hope.
Which was pretty wonderful. You could think, “I will help establish full civil rights for all.” You could commit yourself and succeed. You had agency.
Now the idea has taken hold that the charge of racism doesn’t derive from thoughts and actions, from what people say and do, but from who they are. If you are white that accident of birth left you racist, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You’ve got white privilege. You are unconsciously favored, and unconsciously assign disfavor. Either way you’re guilty. No action or word can turn this around.
So change is not possible; improvement will not happen. There’s no way out..”