RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/11/if-reparations-are-due-the-great-society-crowd-should-pony-up/
Nationwide, it is estimated that more than five out of every six black children lived with both parents in 1950, a figure that had been fairly stable since Reconstruction. Then everything changed.

In no sane part of this great country are reparations really due, but no one has ever accused California of undue sanity. Last week, as Kurtis Lee of the New York Times reported with a straight face, a California panel approved recommendations “that could mean hundreds of billions of dollars in payments to Black residents to address past injustices.”

By “injustices,” Lee means things like slavery, Ku Klux Klan violence, and Jim Crow. As unjust as they were, these Democratic institutions did not cause the wealth disparities between blacks and whites that reparations boosters like to cite. No, the real damage was done much later by still another Democratic invention, the so-called “Great Society.” 

Growing up in Newark, New Jersey, I had a ringside seat on the change the Great Society wrought. In my forthcoming book, Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America’s Cities, I describe what I and others saw. 

Among the more instructive stories I tell is that of the late black radical Amiri Baraka, the father of current Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. In 1951, Baraka graduated from my integrated neighborhood high school, Barringer. He was one of four blacks in a homeroom of 29 students. 

“His carefree and jovial manner has lighted many of our classrooms,” wrote the editors of Baraka in his senior yearbook. At Barringer, Baraka ran track and cross country and belonged to the science club and the Latin Honor Society. Upon graduation, he was offered a four-year scholarship to Seton Hall University and lesser scholarships to Holy Cross and Rutgers University-Newark.

In mid-century urban America, Baraka’s success was not unusual. In his 1987 memoir, The Autobiography of Leroi Jones, Baraka unwittingly made the case against reparations. Despite slavery and Jim Crow, his friends from the neighborhood were doing just fine—“auto plants, utilities, electronic tube factories, mechanics, white-collar paper shuffling, teachers, small businessmen, security guards, commercial artists.” 

His classmates at the historically black Howard University were doing even better. “At least five of us became generals,” he wrote, “and many more at lower levels. An admiral or two. [Ronald] Reagan’s top Negro. [Spiro] Agnew’s top Negro. Negroes at all levels of state bureaucracy and madness.” 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/all-this-failure-is-deliberate/

I recently had a reader ask, “Why is Joe Biden still President?”  While I’m sure there was some facetiousness in his query, it’s actually worth pondering.  The simple answer is, he was elected (ahem) for a four-year term and still has about a year and a half left.  So, he is President because our Constitution allows him to be, and he hasn’t died yet.  But let’s examine the question a little deeper.

Everything Biden has done has been a disaster.  The economy is teetering.  The border is non-existent.  The banking system and the dollar are crumbling.  Our enemies are taking advantage of the weakness they perceive in the White House.  Crime is out of control in most of our once-great cities.  Traditional morality and decency are in the toilet.  Our children are being butchered and groomed for the hedonistic pleasure of a cadre of sexual deviants.  Women athletes are losing hard-earned rights because of the “transgender” movement, something that almost no one had heard of five years ago.  Government spending is without restraint and, as a result, inflation has soared, and America’s middle class is being squeezed into near oblivion.  The education system continues to produce semi-literates who will do—what?—in the future.  No patriot wants to join the military anymore.  The list of Joe Biden’s cataclysms is endless, but my space in this column isn’t, so I mention only a few of the most egregious catastrophes this man and his ideology have foisted upon the nation.  Why is he still President indeed?

Biden is President, but he is far from in control.  The Marxist, Leftist global movement, whatever groups are ultimately behind it, are using Biden and the Democratic Party as pawns in the supreme game of human domination.  Biden does everything he is told to do.  He is nothing but a puppet, a “useful idiot” as I explained recently—totally unable to think for himself.  The Far Left, the Marxist Left, manipulates him and his ideological band.  Biden doesn’t realize it, but some Democrats do.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-case-of-jordan-neely-stay-seated-and-do-nothing/

Imagine, for a moment, a different scenario in the Jordan Neely case.

Let’s say that Neely, a homeless individual and part-time Michael Jackson impersonator with a record of 40-plus arrests, had not been apprehended and put into a choke-hold by 24-year-old Marine vet Daniel Penny on the Manhattan-bound F-train on May 1, 2023.

Let’s also imagine that Neely’s mental breakdown rant on that same subway train went from threatening violence – “I’ll hurt anyone on this train” – to actual violence in which he attacked several passengers.

Imagine Neely turning on passengers by pushing, shoving, punching and kicking – as Daniel Penny observed the mayhem from the sidelines.

Imagine the press coverage after this fact.

“Passengers watch as homeless man terrorizes train and injures many. Who was there to defend the 80-year-old woman who died of a heart attack as Neely threw kicks and punches?”

The article would give an overview of the able-bodied passengers on the train who could have done something but didn’t.

“On board was a 24-year-old Marine vet who sat and observed as 80-year-old Mrs. O’Rielly fell to the floor and died” – one can envision news stations proclaiming.

The Jordan Neely incident could have easily gone this way.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/why-we-need-behavioral-vigilantes/

Jordan Neely’s death on May 1, 2023 by a Marine veteran who placed him in a chokehold after the 30-year-old, homeless African-American appeared on a New York subway train allegedly hurling garbage and verbal abuse at passengers is one extreme end of a social malady plaguing our society today: individuals who treat the public sphere as an extension of their private sphere (or lack thereof), and who subject others to their obtrusive behaviors.

Neely had been arrested over 40 times previously for various crimes ranging from lewd behavior to assaulting senior citizens. As one commentator noted: This guy has been arrested dozens of times and he is back on the subway causing people to be scared for their safety; either get some law enforcement on the subway or give citizens authority to protect themselves without recourse.

Other recent incidents include two women blasting music from their phones on a plane in flight (pictured above). The women gave the middle finger to annoyed fellow passengers. As the article points out, one of the alarming trends in travel is the rise of people using personal speakers in public and carrying on loud phone conversations without using headphones.

Another recent article describes a woman voted off a Frontier Jet for lobbing a barrage of vulgar expletives in an argument she started with a couple seated rows in front of her.

People who use their phones as personal speakers are polluting every pocket of the public sphere; their boisterous behavior indicates they believe they are entitled to treat shared public space as their own private space—indeed, as an extension of their disheveled bedrooms.

Why is it that so many people have no understanding of their responsibility not to dominate the public sphere, monopolize it, or even make themselves highly conspicuous and obtrusive in it?