The Knish brilliantly dissects the Trayvon Martin case and writes that we have seen this movie (actually theater) before in the Jena 6, Howard Beach and Bensonhurst cases and so many others. The same actors – Sharpton, Jackson, Spike Lee aided by wannabes such as Jazzy X and the whole MSNBC crew i.e. the whole plethora of race hustlers and baiters – have the drill down pat. It is not “justice” that they want (that is a concept they have no idea about), but power and money.
by Daniel Greenfield
The Trayvon Martin case is a wholly familiar one to residents of any major urban city. If you live in Chicago, New York or Los Angeles, then it’s only a matter of time until an incident between a law enforcement officer, or more rarely a civilian defending himself, and a member of a minority group flares up into a citywide grievance theater complete with angry reverends on the steps of City Hall, women with stony faces holding up banners calling for justice and a media-driven debate about police tactics and racism.
This sort of thing happens with depressing regularity in cities where even the most liberal residents have to choose between police overreach and being murdered. It never leads to meaningful debate or a resolution. Instead it peters out with the best actors in the grievance theater picking up money and influence, the media selling a few more papers or ads for nasal polyp relief on the drive time news and everything going back to the way it was.
The grievance theater is never really about the specific case, the specific shooting, it’s about the links between the social problems of the black community, the compromises of civil liberties necessary to keep entire cities from turning into Detroit, and the inability of the media to address the sources of crime as anything but the phantoms of white racism. It’s about a black leadership that is more interested in posturing as angry activists and shaking loose some money, than in healing their own community’s problems. And so the same story repeats itself again and again without an honest dialogue or anything meaningful coming out of it.
But grievance theater has been going national. It’s no longer just extraordinary cases like Bernie Goetz’s Death Wish moment on the number 2 train that briefly catch hold of the national conversation. The obsessive coverage of the so-called Jena 6 case, an incident of so little internal meaning, signaled that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would no longer just be able to drive a local controversy, they now had the freedom to drive national controversies any time they wanted to.
Trayvon Martin is their big moment. It’s no longer just grievance theater being used to influence the political fortunes of a municipal election, the way that Howard Beach was used to bring down Mayor Koch and replace him with the execrable David Dinkins. Now it’s being used as part of a presidential campaign on a national level.
The fortunes of too many black politicians have been tied to white guilt and black rage
The fortunes of too many black politicians have been tied to white guilt and black rage. The worst sort of black politician channels black rage to score points with black supporters while playing on the guilt of white voters, promising to heal the social conditions that bring about that anger and protect them from its ravages. But never before has that game been played out of the Oval Office.
The last two Democratic presidents were Southern governors, but the current occupant is a veteran of the corrupt urban political machine where there are only two games in town and when the money runs out, this is the one you play. The money is running out, the polls are running down and accordingly we have been treated to an episode of grievance theater, with our beloved leader in the role of healer and inciter.
[.......]
It’s Community Activism 101 to divide and conquer the electorate by breaking them down and feeding local anxieties
It’s Community Activism 101 to divide and conquer the electorate by breaking them down and feeding local anxieties, whether it’s about birth control or racial injustice. And it’s a win-win for Obama, who at worst gains a distraction from economic turmoil and a few thousand guilty voters and at best, upends the national dialogue by asserting the dominance of the racial narrative. While his associates wield the bullhorns, he carefully plays healer and if there is violence, then his currency as racial healer increases.
[.......]
Our racial dysfunction has always been secondary to our political dysfunction, and now our political dysfunction is second to none
Our racial dysfunction has always been secondary to our political dysfunction, and now our political dysfunction is second to none. We have the best government that Warren Buffett’s money could buy and that ACORN’s election fraud can achieve. And we have a national government that is starting to look like the dysfunctional urban governments at the center of the grievance theaters.
Chicago nearly went bankrupt in 1930. New York nearly went bankrupt in 1975. But states have bailed out cities and the federal government has bailed out states. When there isn’t enough money to keep the dysfunctional political machine built on corruption and subsidies going, there’s always some larger entity to foot the bill.
[........]
That is the lesson that has yet to be learned from the cities whose dysfunctional politics have been transplanted to the national government. Along with the politics has come the grievance mob, the outrage machine, the outpourings of self-righteousness, the class warfare fought by corrupt pols and the rest of the bread-and-circuses show that have blighted the American city for a century and a half.
Grievance theater isn’t about race, it’s not about slavery, police brutality or separate lunch counters, it’s about power and money. Black politicians are not fundamentally different from white ones. They have more in common with their white colleagues than they do with their own communities. The only difference is that they are playing with the race cards they have been dealt.
[........]
The ghetto farms black communities for votes and more importantly for subsidies
When you look closely at where the school property tax money goes, why health care is so expensive, and why so much money has to be spent on housing, a big chunk of it goes here. It’s the hole in our budget ozone layer and it can never be filled, because it is designed never to be filled. For a sizable number of influential people, both black and white, the black community’s social problems are a cash cow. The grievance theater is their way of collecting protection money and making sure that no one pays too much attention to what’s really wrong.
The problem isn’t limited to the black community. The same phenomenon crosses over different minority communities and some white ones as well, but the race card is still the best card in the deck. It carries too many emotional triggers, too much guilt and too much hope not to use it over and over again. The moral power of the civil rights movement still isn’t exhausted as long as hopeful white people smile at the sight of a black man in the White House as if his political power testified to their innocence.
[........]
Grievance theater, like light-hearted musicals, is one of those forms that works best when the economy is bad and everyone has trouble making ends meet. But while people voluntarily go to see musicals, or at least they used to, they have to be dragged to attend the latest grievance theater, the production numbers broadcast live on CNN and MSNBC, the programs printed in every paper that still hasn’t gone out of business, and breathless announcements of the latest developments broadcast in between Dunkin Donuts commercials.
The local productions of grievance theater have gone national and we are all compelled to watch it play out. No matter what happens to George Zimmerman or what we learn about Trayvon Martin, the country has been turned into unwilling participants in a national drama that places a distorted idea of race at the center of our identity for the benefit of the same hucksters and politicians who have destroyed the city and are hard at work destroying the country.
Read the rest - The Bankrupt Race Card
Tags: Al Sharpton, Daniel Greenfield, Jesse Jackson, Sultan Knish, Trayvon Martin
These people are the real racists. They seek to divide the nation based on race for their own personal benefit. They seek to cast everything into racial terms, see the entire world through the prism of race.
I believe that in the Trayvon Martin incident the race card is being used to facilitate an argument for gun control.
Nothing grabs headlines and attention like a “race issue,” with all of the usual suspects screaming bloody murder (in this case literally) until the entire nation is paying attention to the tantrum.
In fact, the race card is often used this way nowadays, as a sort of springboard for the Progressive agenda.
@ Bumr50:
Yeah, they want ot go after “Stand your ground” laws and concealed carry laws. The Left are anti-Self Defense and objectively pro-criminal. Even here, there is little dispute that Martin attacked Zimmerman. They would like to dispute how badly Zimmerman was injured, but the police reports will confirm the extent of his injuries. But that really doesn’t matter. Nothing in th elaw says you have to wait until you are severly injured before you can defend yourself. Nothing that I have seen really disputes that Zimmerman acted in self defense. They just alledge that it was bad of him to defend himself. Fuck that shit. Self defense is a right in this country. Criminals do not have a right to assault people, rob people, or otherwise carry on in their criminality. One thing is clear: Martin would still be alive if he hadn’t assaulted Zimmerman. As far as I am concerned, that means things have worked the way they should. Zimmerman shouldn’t be prosecuted. He has done nothing wrong.
Iron Fist wrote:
An obsession with race fits the definition of racism.
Make that international.
They covered it on BBC radio yesterday while I was driving to and from Camp Buehring, and it was on France 24 today.
The fact that Al Sharpton was given a Cable TV show on PMSNBC is disgraceful.
I am glad that the British have nothing better to worry about.
@ Bumr50:
@ Iron Fist:
I think one their objectives in gun control is to make normal law abiding citizens more vulnerable to the mobs they so easily whip-up and manipulate. Thereby enhancing their power.
@ Speranza:
Some British are upset about the double standard:
It’s not like Obama gives a rat’s ass about the UK.
@ citizen_q:
It is also to protect the Elites from the Citizenry. Nobody believes that criminals will obey gun control laws. Nobody really believes that gun laws can have a positive impact on violent crime. They are concerned with keeping the peasantry unarmed, because an armed peasantry can only be oppressed so much. They have the tools to rise up and cast off their oppressors. An armed citizenry doesn’t guarantee liberty, but it does have an impact on how far the government can rationally go in oppressing the populace. That is why I draw the line at gun control, and say that if you are going ot have to fight, then fighting to keep your weapons is a rational point to choose to take up arms. Once you’ve surrendered your right to be armed, it becomse more difficult to resist the State in whatever else it choses to persue.
Speranza wrote:
Really? I guess everyone needs a break from Jew-hatred and Israel bashing now and then. /
Speranza wrote:
I quit watching Sky News and switched to France 24 after they spent multiple segments covering the trial of some MP’s wife who kidnapped a cat from her husband’s mistress.
The British media are even more absurd than our own.
and in the mean time young black men
a killing each other left and right.
there is no political capitol in that!
@ Iron Fist:
I agree with you in general, but I do run into people who actually believe that the solution to violent crimes is for stricter gun control laws. They are useful idiots to be sure and tedious to debate with their unassailable talking points who ignore all facts on the subject.
@ citizen_q:
Oh, I am sure that they’ll manage to carry on with the Israel bashing and Jew-hatred while worrying about the indignities that poor Treyvon Martin endured at the hands of his chosen victim.
lobo91 wrote:
That’s a pretty tall statement. I don’t doubt it, but our MFM sets that bar rather high.
lobo91 wrote:
As a daily reader of the British press -- I cannot disagree with you.
citizen_q wrote:
Their whole idea is based on an impossible goal, though.
Sure, they’re right when they say that if there were no guns, nobody would get shot, but unless they invent some sort of magic wand, there will always be guns in the hands of criminals.
People still get shot in the UK, and that’s a friggin’ island!
mawskrat wrote:
Exactly.
Blacks kill each other (and they kill whites) every day in our major cities, and it barely makes the local news.
Only when a white person kills a black is it “newsworthy.”
@ lobo91:
Not to mention the fact that there are multitudes of ways to killl and maim people other than guns. Getting rid of guns would at best simply cause murderers to turn to other weapons, but it is really worse than that. With a firearm, an 80 year old frail woman can defend herself from a 17 year old thug. She can’t do that with a knife, but the thug can kill her with a knife or strangle her with a bed sheet or lamp cord. People that want to get rid of guns simply aren’t thinking, if reducing crime is truly their goal. With most of them, though, it is about power in the hands of the State, and real concern about crime is non-existant.
Iron Fist wrote:
Yup, The founding father’s of this great republic did not include the Second Amendment in our Constitution so that American Citizens would be guaranteed the right to go hunting or engage in sports shooting. They included it specifically so that the Citizens would retain the power over the nation as opposed to the Government having that power. It was placed their very specifically as a guarantee that the government they type of tyranny or totalitarian government that they has just freed themselves from under British rule.
lobo91 wrote:
That notion is based on the logic fallacy that “Guns” kill. Guns do not kill, human being kill, and history is filled one bloody page after then next for 10,000 years with examples of how human being kill without the need to resort to guns.
Guns only make the job of killing quicker and easier, they do not change the dynamics of what is psychologically required to kill another human being.
@ doriangrey:
That was why I said that if there were no guns, nobody would get shot, not that nobody would get killed.
lobo91 wrote:
Not only that, but what about force imbalances and capabilities of the intended victim. They want to take firearms, the most efficient effective method of self-defense away. Many attacks are by multiple individuals and against elderly. There are those who believe that citizens, which to them is a euphemism for victim, should take their lumps. They should eventually heal-up.
Here is a link to an example in DC. I posted a link to a article from more verifiable source here before, but I am working this is first I found with my limited google foo.
http://offgridsurvival.com/dcantigunpoliticiancitizenvictim/
@ Iron Fist:
Another thing the anti-gun crowd always likes to bring up is suicides.
They’ve apparently never looked at the suicide rate in Japan, which is three times the US rate--with zero private firearms ownership.
doriangrey wrote:
That’s why it drives me nuts when even pro-gun folks use the hunting/recreation argument.
It trivializes the argument, IMHO.
citizen_q wrote:
We have that in spades in the Martin-Zimmerman case. The Left obviously feel that he (Zimmerman) should have just let Martin beat the shit out of him and let it be done. This is exactly the kind of case that “Stand Your Ground” was intended for. Otherwise, you give a pass to criminals to be criminals as long as they are unarmed. This is wrong on so many levels.
Yet another endorsement for Romney. A biggie, this time:
I generally agree with this. Romney is the nominee. There is really no point in continuing to fight it. We have to try and win with him, which is going to be a very steep order. I think it can be done, but I don’t know that Romney has it in him to do what is needed to do it. Certainly he has shown no willingness to reach out to the Tea PArty or conservatives in general. That is a losing hand if he continues to play it. To win the Presidency you have to maximize your base. Romney has to date done just the opposite.
Al Sharpton’s network is Amos ‘n’ BC.
Iron Fist wrote:
Interesting take on that over at AT yesterday.
@ Iron Fist:
This case came up during several breaks in the class I was teaching up north this past week.
One of the black students said just that, that Zimmerman “should have been able to take a beating.”
Iron Fist wrote:
Dogwhistle!
lobo91 wrote:
At which point you should have asked him how he likes taking a beating.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
Oh… Is that what that was…. I thought that was a Train Horn…
@ doriangrey:
It was a woman, actually.
lobo91 wrote:
Trevon should have been able to take a bullet.
/
What morons.
@ lobo91:
Hey, I don’t believe in sexual discrimination. How does she like to take a beating?
lobo91 wrote:
Ahhhh I see…..
citizen_q wrote:
+ elev1111ty Trillion
Iron Fist wrote:
ROTFLMAO…
A) Black
B) Woman
C)…. Yea, better not go there…
@ doriangrey:
Yup
Good morning. Sharpton & Jackson are idealist warriors
for the people.
They were right about Tawana Brawley & the Duke LaCrosse
case, weren’t they?
oh wait, they were wrong, but they just move on.
RIX wrote:
In a sane world they would’ve both been thrown in jail.
RIX wrote:
Dot org.
Speranza wrote:
The progressive/Liberals drove the sanity train off the track’s, and if that wasn’t bad enough they did it while the train was crossing the highest trestle bridge in the entire Universe. Currently said Progressive/Liberals are in the dining car enjoying a LSD Slurpee as the rotational velocity of the downward plunging train twists reality into something resembling the Aurora Borealis.
@ Speranza:
Instead they are treated as credible people by the
MSM.
You wonder what either one of them would list as”occupation”. Maybe ‘Rabble Rouser”
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
Did you ever hear anybody rhyme more incomprehensable
crap than Jesse Jackson?
RIX wrote:
Jesse Jackson is an even worse orator than Barack Obama—but, in Jesse’s defense, he doesn’t cling to a Teleprompter the way a drowning man clings to a lifering.
RIX wrote:
Perhaps Vanilla Ice?
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Jackson is annoying, but he can work without a net.
BHO is a stumbling, bumbling fool without the teleprompter.
Daffy Duck wrote:
I think that it’s a jump ball.
The perpetrators should be executed for blasphemy! How dare someone presume to marry a five year old when mo-ham-head himself waited until aisha was six to marry her!
Notice, this is in Great Briton, not afganistan.
Primary schoolgirl aged five could be UK’s youngest victim of forced marriage
citizen_q wrote:
Oh, BTW I wonder what the real number of child marriages was. This is the number they are assisting with.
Further in the article:
The words islam or muslim do not appear in the article.
@ citizen_q:
Isn’t this a Methodist practice?/
@ citizen_q:
Wouldn’t want to offend the MOhammedans. They get violent when they are offended. Barbarians. Britain should deport all of them, but they won’t. Indeed, they really are taking over Britain. I expect them to have Shari’ia law in 20 years.
It didn’t take long that they blamed the Jews. Zimmerman’s dad is called out as a Jew as well as the prosecutor who didn’t charge him.
@ Guggi:
link please?
Guggi wrote:
Figures. Who are they?
RIX wrote:
It’s all over the net: facebook, comment section of newspapers and blogs etc. If Jewish sites have to deny that Zimmerman is Jewish you know you’re in trouble.
@ Guggi:
I forgot youtube and liveleak.
@ Guggi:
Thank you
There is a whole educational system supported and paid for by local government to reinforce to the black community that they are victims and are constantly being discriminated against. Then these educated people are given government jobs where they proceed to rape,loot, and pillage what they perceive as white bank accounts.
It’s an Obama approved message.
It is time for all of us to recognise the fact that the Left are enemies of Humankind and for us to deal with them as such.