RUTHFULLY YOURS

This election cycle is dominated by Democrat race-baiting as usual.  Trump’s massively popular nationalist platform to stop illegal immigration and suspend Muslim immigration is labeled racist.  What is new are perfidious Republican leaders and pundits rushing to join Democrats in their false accusation against Trump.  Democrats have called every Presidential candidate for decades racist.  They have to.

Telling blacks that Republicans wish them ill keeps Democrats in power.  They don’t care about the damage they are doing to the country and to black lives.  Blacks are cannon fodder in the Democrat war for power.

There is something profoundly depressing and pathetic that until Trump, our Republican leaders have been willing to write off the black vote and accept the Democrat poison that our party is made up of racist white people.

As I wrote on AT at the height of President Obama’s race-baiting on the Zimmerman trial:

Democrats have successfully re-written history to give themselves the starring role in the fight against racism — something they didn’t earn in the Civil Rights era and are not earning now. (snip)

Democrats cynically inflame racial fear and anger for political gain.   They create false dramas of racial injustice, such as the Zimmerman trial, even though it wounds and damages blacks and the entire the country.

(snip) When the War on Poverty programs backfired, mortally wounding black families and creating nightmarish conditions for black children, Democrats found their party couldn’t do without the federal money, and the power and control it gave them over black voters.

The most recent polls on the Trump-Hillary fight show the crucial importance to Democrats of making blacks and Hispanics feel Trump, and all Republicans, are against them.  Without a hurt and angry black and immigrant electorate, there would be no Democrat party, according to this analysis by John Hinderaker of why race relations in our country have deteriorated.

Trump holds a ten-point lead among white voters, 50%-40% … a near landslide margin among …a majority of the electorate. Not many years ago, that would have assured him of victory.

This is why Democrats are so anxious to “fundamentally transform” the United States through mass immigration from Third World countries. Only by building up the minority population do they have a chance to stay competitive. But that still wouldn’t be enough, (snip) if minorities voted in anything like a normal pattern. In order to win, the Democrats need to roll up ridiculous margins, like the 90%-8% lead that Clinton holds with blacks in the ABC/WaPo poll.

This is why the Democrats seek every opportunity to stir up racial conflict. They need to keep minority voters constantly riled up and fearful of a phantom “racism.”

Hinderaker’s words about the Democrat need for racial conflict brought back a searing childhood memory of what it is like to learn of the very painful history of your people.  I was watching a TV documentary on World War II with my Dad, who had served with the U.S. Army Signal Corps as a combat photographer, initially attached to the US 1st Army under the command of Lt General Bradley. He filmed the front line from Omaha Beach to Berlin.  I was very proud of him.   Watching WWII footage with my Dad was usually a positive experience, especially when he would shout out, “That’s my footage.  I took that!” This day was different.  Suddenly we were seeing a pile of dead, naked bodies from a death camp and my father began to cry.  It was the only time I remember him crying.  When he went into assisted living at age 92 and I went through his old army papers that I learned he had been at the liberation of Dachau. (He was commended for footage of a POW beating up a German prison guard.)  So that is my memory of learning the horror of the Holocaust.

As all children do, I immediately applied it to myself and my family – there were people who hated Jews enough to hate and kill us.  Fortunately, I had a positive context bigger than the horror of the Holocaust.  I knew America had faced down the Nazi foe and won.  Importantly, I already knew from Passover about evil people wanting to kill Jewish babies.  I knew Moses and the Jewish people were saved, knew we were loved and protected by God.

Learning about antisemitism was still scary.  It really helped knowing I lived in a wonderful country, America, where everyone was treated equally, based on inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – the same for all of us.  I felt that Jews were fully accepted, except by a nasty few.  A place where good people (with guns) would protect me from the few evil ones who might want to come after me.  I loved being Jewish and nothing could make it a negative.  So the Holocaust, while extremely painful and even life changing, was not a crushing trauma for me. (It is for irreligious liberal Jews. See my article, “Are American Jews Traumatized?”)

What if I didn’t have Passover as a child to give me a solid bedrock to stand on for life?  What if my parents and my school had fed me lies that America’s founding principles were rotten, based on genocide and slavery?  What if they told me that most Americans hated me?  This is the abuse handed out by liberals to black children.

Thanks to liberals’ cruel drive for power, few black American children today – and even adults – have any protection from the pain and fear of learning about slavery and racism.  They are not given the context that slavery was a universal institution and did not solely target people who look like them.  Civil War history is not taught in a way to give them the emotional comfort that the majority of white America – because of their Christian beliefs and our founding principles – became morally disgusted and ashamed of slavery and fought fiercely to end it.  They are cheated of the full joy they should take in the Civil Rights Movement.  They do not know they are fully accepted by their fellow Americans following the revolutionary cultural change brought about by that Republican minister, the Reverend Martin Luther King –especially in the South.  They are not taught that the Civil Rights movement was bi-partisan, though mostly Republican.  They do not know that America redeemed itself.  They are not allowed to put the pain of slavery behind them. They do not know they won.

Instead, blacks today are taught that most fellow Americans secretly hate them and wish them harm.  That their efforts to succeed are doomed, or at best damaged by racism.  That every institution in America is against them, even liberal institutions like colleges.  They are force-fed self-pity and rage as their heritage and their portion and their due.  Most horribly, they are taught to mistake rage and self-pity and paranoia for pride.

These falsehoods are toxic.  They eat up people from within, sabotage their potential and break their hearts.

They are taught all this by Democrats because Democrats need blacks to be angry, paranoid and dysfunctional in order to monopolize their vote.  If any black voter succeeds in thinking things through and becoming conservative, they are vilified and ostracized – a despotic tactic for keeping people in line.  Like all    despotic movements, Dems need a scapegoat.  We are the goat.

For too many years Republicans have acted helpless in the face of Democrats scapegoating us as racist.  Because we are then rejected by blacks, we allow Dems to claim that we are against blacks.  In reality, it is our values and our policies that would benefit blacks, while Democrat policies destroy them.  Blacks who join Republican or Tea Party ranks are welcomed with almost delirious enthusiasm.  We would love blacks to join us in our defense of freedom and prosperity for all, but scapegoating works.  We have let ourselves be marginalized as racists.

Without their constant, cruel incitement of racial pain, Democrats would be a minority party, because their incompetent bloated government, their lust for and abuse of power, are rejected and rebuked by a majority of white Americans.

The Republican elite follows this wrong-headed approach voiced by Charles Krauthammer:

I think that when you’re accused of being a racist, you don’t even dignify the accusation with a response because then you’re conceding the premise. I have to prove I’m not a racist. I oppose the president because of his policies, I have since the beginning of his administration. If someone wants to imply on account of his race, I will not give them the dignity of a response.

Krauthammer should know better.  In the face of Holocaust deniers, you do not maintain a dignified silence.  Jews have defeated Holocaust deniers because we had zero tolerance for the lies. Of course you do not dignify your opponent by debate, any more than you would wrestle on the street with an aggressive panhandler – the goal is not to get covered in dirt, it is to end the attacks.  Letting the falsehood stand is not an option.  First you attack back and label the Holocaust denier as what they are – haters.  Then you flood the public arena with true information.

The same approach is needed for any malicious libel, like the Democrat accusation that Republicans are racist.  You identify their ugly motives and the uglier consequences of their libel, and you fill the public space with the truth.

If you remain silent in the face of libel, the accusation sticks.  If you become defensive, you are judged guilty.    You must go on the offensive.  You affirm your own positives, and you attack the other person hard for telling hateful lies about you.

Here’s an example of going on the offense:  How dare you accuse Republicans – half of America – of racism, when it is so harmful, so heart-breaking to blacks?  This country is not racist.  That is a horrible, destructive lie.  Except for a tiny minority, who are equally Democrat and Republican, all white Americans want the best for blacks. We Republicans believe blacks are perfectly capable of making it in America.  You are the ones who see blacks as lesser and incapable.

Or a positive offensive: Every Republican I know personally, every Republican writer or politician or leader, our most famous Republcans Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, want blacks to make it in America, to succeed and live their dreams.  We believe in a fair playing field for every American.  Yes, we disagree with Democrats.  We have remained loyal to King’s vision.  We believe in equal treatment for all and equality before the law, in excellent schools and safe neighborhoods for all citizens, including blacks.

Here’s another example of how to fight back, from Scott Adams blog.  Adams has made a lifelong study of techniques of persuasion in a business context.  He also believes in going on the offensive, in a positive way:

While the Clinton campaign itself has been notably weak with its persuasion game, the folks on her side have been viciously effective at branding Trump a crazy racist.

Nothing else in this election matters. I now update my prediction of a Trump landslide to say that if he doesn’t give a speech on the topic of racism – to neutralize the crazy racist label – he loses. There is nothing he can do with policy tweaks, debate performances, advertising, interviews, or anything else that would remove the tarring he received from the Clinton side. But a persuasive speech could do it.

How?  Trump needs to convince Americans of all types that he loves them and plans to protect them from outside forces. Here’s a simple and persuasive formulation for that:

Example: “If you are an American citizen – of any color, ethnicity, gender, or religion – I love you, and I’ll fight for you. I support the melting pot of America, and I will fight to protect each of you from crime, terrorism, and economic risks.”

That’s the basic idea. Talking about policies won’t be enough. To become president, Trump has to embrace the melting pot. And he has to embrace the value of American diversity, loudly.   If Trump doesn’t directly address the elephant in the room – the accusation that he is a crazy racist – he loses. If he makes a case for the value of American diversity – and does it persuasively – he wins in a landslide.

Republican pundits sit around lamenting that our candidates from McCain to Romney are accused of racism.  Fred Barnes said crying racism works because “it neutralizes an attack and then (Dems) don’t have to answer it.”    Krauthammer again:

The accusation of racism is a sign of desperation by people who know they are losing the national debate, and they want to hurl the ultimate charge in American politics.  … It’s done as a way to end debate. The minute you call somebody a racist, the debate is over.

Wrong.  The debate is not over when Dems race-bait.  That should be a catalyst for the debate to heat up.

It is time for Republicans to call out this race-baiting for what it is – a Democratic scourge on our country.  It is a dishonor and a disgrace.  It must stop.  No more ignoring race-baiting.  Each of us must go on the offensive when a Democrat calls Republicans racist.  Our politicians and our pundits should stop whining that it is a ludicrous charge and start punching back.  Instead, Ryan and McConnell recently joined our opponents and disgracefully called Trump racist.

There’s been a lot of nonsense written about Trump’s temperament.  Trump is the first Republican candidate we have ever had who has the temperament to fight back against the Dems shameful racial lies and ask blacks and Hispanics for their votes.  He has already begun.