“A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.” – Robert Heinlein.
After a long summer and autumn of marches, riots, burning, looting, intemperate language, political violence, monuments defaced, statues toppled, streets, parks, schools and everything from rice to pancake mixes to professional sports teams being rewritten, renamed, and rebranded, we might have expected a reaction. All of that combined with bewildering election results and fiery rhetoric from the northwestern streets of Seattle to the heart of our republic in the southeastern District of Columbia, the exasperation, frustration, and pent-up wrath of Americans culminated in a powder keg primed to explode.
And explode it did in a mindless riot with no real goal in mind, other than to express their collective fury at the demise of a country many Americans feel they may have forever lost.
Klete Keller, an Olympic gold medalist swimmer. A retired fireman from Chester, Pennsylvania. A paramedic from Florida. Two police officers from a small Virginia town. A police officer from Houston. A Bexar County Deputy Sheriff. Adam Newbold, a retired Navy SEAL. All eternally shamed now.
A graduate of the Air Force Academy who flew combat missions in the A-10 THUNDERBOLT II—the plane affectionately known as “The Warthog” by her air and ground crews—over the skies of Iraq and Afghanistan, threw away his entire life’s deposit of patriotic capital in this senseless act.
Another Air Force veteran who deployed overseas four times, lost her life after being shot by a Capitol Police officer. She bled out on the ground floor of the hallowed halls of her nation’s storied legislative body in a tragic and sickening coda to a lifetime of deeply cherishing and loving a country which she sincerely believed was plunging into a tailspin she was powerless to halt.[1]
There is no doubt there were some genuine bona fide white supremacists in the mob that hit the Federal Capitol building on the day the Congress, Senate, and Vice President were there to certify the electors who had voted in the electoral college.[2]
Yet, unlike like the anarchists, Cultural Marxists, race-baiters, academics, Social Justice Warriors, and professional activists who rampaged through Walnut Creek last summer, burned down a police precinct in Minneapolis, and even established their own autonomous zone in Seattle—and who form the core of rioters across the nation—the white supremacist agitators were a fringe that day; outcasts from the mainstream, remaining as the societal misfits they have always been. Whereas the larger group of rioters on January 6th 2021 appeared to be once productive, responsible, patriotic citizens, exercising their First Amendment rights in a show of solidarity.
What accounts for ordinary, seemingly patriotic, traditionally responsible Americans engaging in this march on the Capitol? This is the question no one is asking—not the pontificators of our academic class, not the cultural gurus of our society from Big Media to Big Tech, and certainly not the politicians, who instead of dialing back the rhetoric tripled down with accusations of racism (always racism), sedition, insurrection, and treason; indicted an enraged ragtag mob of attempting to stage a coup!
The incoming 46th President of the United States blamed the Capitol Police of racism for allowing the mob to enter the Capitol grounds because they were white—not because they were outnumbered one-hundred to one. The Speaker of the House blamed her Republican colleagues of being a Fifth Column, who enabled the rioters. And of course the entire left side of the House marched in lockstep to vote to impeach the 45th President of the United States with zero Due Process. His crime? “Insurrection,” they claimed.
Despite the fact the rioters consisted of less than one percent of the Americans who gathered that day for a Trump Rally. It didn’t matter. The focus of the new House, the new Senate, and the new Administration would be on “insurrection.”
Does this country face other more pressing issues? Massive debt. Federal debt. State debt. Personal debt. Small businesses closing. A 70-year-old restaurant like El Charro in Lafayette? Gone. Big businesses closing. Niemann Marcus in Walnut Creek? Gone.
Skyrocketing unemployment. The SCU (Santa Clara Unit) Lightning Complex fires. The plague of the Coronavirus. Vaccine distribution bungled. Churches closed. Schools closed. Weddings postponed. Facemasks everywhere. Increased surveillance of the citizenry. Deplatforming. Shadowbanning. Senators figuratively in bed with Communist China.[3] Congressmen literally in bed with Communist China.[4]
Is our leadership equipped to deal with these issues? Or would they rather distract us with something else? Something to divide us further?
The response of our elites is predictable: Half of the electorate, over 70 million Americans, are , what else? “White supremacists.” Because if you voted for Donald Trump back in November of 2020, “It puts you in the same crowd.”[5]
If you voted for Trump you may have thought you were voting for a man who promised to prevent domestic jobs from being outsourced; was ending wars overseas which were needlessly spending American blood and treasure, or who was nominating Supreme Court Justices who respect the Constitution. You may have thought you were voting for the man who managed to find a vaccine cure for the pandemic via Operation WARP SPEED. Now you know how wrong you were!
You thought you were voting for a man who wanted to make America great again because he loved, cherished and respected American history? No! You’re really just a white supremacist because America’s past always has been and always will be racist.
Wayne Allensworth writes, “My America was no hellhole of oppression. Imperfect as she was, the old America looks all the better in retrospect. An old friend. A reassuring elder. Something personal and real, not an abstraction in any sense. I miss her.”[6]
Those of us old enough to remember when California was still The Golden State—before it became a one-party oligarchy, a place where Hollywood made movies that celebrated our history (Hollywood invented the Western) and didn’t hate it; where the public schools celebrated our history rather than cancelling it;[7] where Jan and Dean and The Beach Boys sang about its glories, and the middle class flocked to California rather than flee it in unending waves of U-Hauls[8] ––are not as vulnerable to the propaganda as our younger residents. So it is our youth who are the target of the historical revisionists who insist our past was much, much worse than it is today.
“Americans educated by government today are, for the most part, hopelessly ignorant of their own nation’s history—and that’s no accident,” writes Alex Newman, “On the history of the rest of the world, or the history of communism, Americans are generally clueless as well. This was all by design, of course.”[9]
And yet, despite all of the attempts at deprogramming,[10] many Americans still remember a country that unleashed an arsenal of democracy upon Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, an America that kept the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea free from communism, and liberated Eastern Europe from Soviet Communism after a long and hard-fought Cold War. They remember an America that broke the sound barrier, built an interstate freeway system, ended tuberculosis and polio, created entertainment that the entire world read, listened to, and watched. They even remember, with pride, the America that put men on the surface of the moon. There’s was an America that championed the free expression of ideas, and where athletes stood and respected the flag. We remember that America. We love that America.
Those Americans, above all, respected the rule of law and loathed political violence—whether it was the political violence of unions, civil rights activists, genuine white supremacists, The Weathermen, The Symbionese Liberation Army, The Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, or James Thomas Hodgkinson—those Americans preferred reasoned discussion, vigorous debate, and open expression, over censorship and cancel culture. Political Correctness was unheard of. Those Americans, personified in the hopeful civic nationalism of optimistic leaders like President Ronald Reagan, believed in the principles enshrined in our Constitution and the American Dream.
Their hope is that this dark era of identity politics, a starkly divided electorate, and political demagoguery will swiftly come to an end, as a brighter future emerges where all Americans, once again, embrace freedom rather than cancel it, respect our history rather than erase it, and, above all, reject political violence and renew its dedication to the rule of law.
No longer can Americans rely on the broader culture to instill American values in their youth. Entertainment won’t do it. Professional sports won’t do it. The mainstream news won’t do it. Public schools won’t do it. Now, even our civic leaders won’t do it.[11]
The Grandfather. The Grandmother. The Father. The Mother. These are the last bulwarks our nation has. Teach our youth the facts about American history, not the myths. Teach our youth the facts about this constitutional republic. Not the myths. And above all, instill in them pride, not shame.
For to continue going in the other direction will only hasten the fall of our one nation, which is supposed to be now and forevermore indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
And the republic, for which we should all stand, shoulder to shoulder.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/storytelling/capitol-riot-mob-arrests/
[2] Robert Keith Packer: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know | Heavy.com
[3] Barbara Boxer, Now Formally Working for China | National Review
[4] Eric Swalwell should be kicked off intel committee and stripped of security clearance, experts say (washingtonexaminer.com)
[5] CNN’s Don Lemon doubles down on lumping all Trump voters with Klansmen, Nazis: ‘I believe what I said’ | Fox News
[6] https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/blog/the-twilight-of-the-usa-and-the-way-forward/
[7] State tells teachers to get rid of traditonal fourth-grade mission project | The Sacramento Bee (sacbee.com)
[8] U-Haul one-way numbers mark California as the number 50 US growth state in 2020 | News | thedesertreview.com
[9] Schools Using Fake ‘History’ to Kill America | Education News (educationviews.org)
[10] MSNBC: How Do We ‘Deprogram’ Millions of Racist, Violent Trump Supporters? | Newsbusters
[11] DA’s policy to consider looters’ ‘needs’ before charging them (nypost.com)
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