TBT: Fighting Back Against Critical Race Theory

23 June 202220 June 2022 The Portly Politico11 Comments

We observed Juneteenth, the new Independence Day for black Americans, here in the United States this week. The “national” holiday is an extremely regional celebration that dates back to 1866 in Texas.

To state the obvious but controversial: the only reason we have Juneteenth is because of a summer of racial violence two years ago. Apparently, our entire political system and culture has to bend over backwards to accommodate a handful of disgruntled race-baiters.

But all of that traces back to Critical Race Theory (CRT), which I described last year as an odious blend of “identity politics, Foucaultean power dynamics, Cultural Marxism, and Nineties-style corporate diversity training.”

Race-baiting isn’t anything new in America, but now it’s taken on a quasi-systematic, pseudo-intellectual, cult-like quality that has major corporations and government entities at all levels cowed.

But appeasement clearly doesn’t work. Indeed, I’d argue it undermines CRT’s alleged goal of racial reconciliation.

I said as much in 16 June 2021’s “Fighting Back Against Critical Race Theory“:

It’s Not Bandcamp Friday

3 June 202230 May 2022 The Portly Politico15 Comments

Today is not Bandcamp Friday. According to that link, “Bandcamp Friday is over.”

However, Bandcamp sent the following e-mail to its users:

On Friday, June 17th, from midnight to midnight Pacific Time, we’ll hold our third annual Juneteenth fundraiser, where we donate 100% of our share of sales to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a racial justice organization with a long history of effectively enacting change through litigation, advocacy, and public education. Read our statement here.

Bandcamp Fridays will resume on September 2nd, and continue on October 7th, November 4th, and December 2nd.

Please help us spread the word!

Yeesh! As such, I would encourage my readers not to purchase my music and merch on Friday, 17 June 2022. I’m not surprised Bandcamp—a company dedicated to helping indie musicians sell their music—is embracing the woke agenda; personally, I don’t care. I don’t even mind if Bandcamp makes money from sales on the platform; they’re a private business, and while they’re a pretty big player, there’s nothing totalitarian in their practices (yet), and there are multiple alternatives for musicians to sell music online. It’s not like Google or Facebook, two virtual monopolies in the tech sector that dominate access to free speech and information.

Memorable Monday: MLK Day 202[2]

17 January 202215 January 2022 The Portly Politico4 Comments

In lieu of the usual movie review this week, I’m taking advantage of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to lighten my blogging load slightly. I’ll have another Midweek Mad Scientist Movie Madness post for $3 and up subscribers on Wednesday, so if you want your weekly fix of filmic schlock, check back then. An aunt of mine has requested a movie review, and as soon as I figure out how to watch the flick, I’ll be reviewing it one Monday (I’m looking out for you, Aunt Marilyn).

After a week of virtual learning and lots of time alone (well, with Murphy, at least), I’m eager to get out of the house, but I will likely spend today prepping for the abbreviated school week and getting the house in order. I’m thankful for the day off, but I’d probably appreciate it more—as I did in January 2020—if I were utterly exhausted—as I was in January 2020. I think slightly less appreciation is a worthwhile trade-off, though!

This post from 2020 delves into some of the complexity of the Reverend Dr. King’s legacy, and warns against excessive idolization of historical figures—even martyrs. Much of the inspiration from the stories of Christian Saints, for example, derives from their human frailty. Even the great Saint Augustine, when praying to God for control over his lustful nature, prayed, “Grant me chastity and self-control, but please not yet.”

From the evidence, it appears that King participated in some really debauched, even evil, sexual practices. The FBI’s suspicions that he may have been are Marxist were probably justified to some extent, even if the FBI treated him shabbily and is a despicable tool of oppression. If King were alive today, I’d wager he’d be knee-deep in the CRT foolishness that his famous “I Have a Dream” speech explicitly rejects.

Yet from this extremely imperfect vessel came ringing declarations of spiritual equality. Regardless of our race, we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. That is the part of King’s legacy we should celebrate, while remembering he was a deeply flawed individual.

In other words, let us put our faith and trust in Christ, not in men.

With that, here is January 2020’s “MLK Day 2020“:

Fighting Back Against Critical Race Theory

16 June 202111 June 2021 The Portly Politico8 Comments

In the waning years of the Obama Administration, a strident new form of race hustling emerged. Combining elements of identity politics, Foucaultean power dynamics, Cultural Marxism, and Nineties-style corporate diversity training, Critical Race Theory (CRT) emerged as a powerful ideological bludgeon with which to batter anyone with the audacity to be white.

At its core, CRT proposes a simple thesis: any person of color, in any material or spiritual condition, is automatically oppressed compared to white people, because white people benefit from inherent privilege due to their whiteness. Alternatively, black and brown people face systemic racism—racism present in the very structure of the West’s various institutions—so even when not facing overt acts of racism, they are still suffering from racism nonetheless. The source of white people’s “privilege” is that systemic racism benefits them at the expense of black people.

The problem is easy to spot: any personal accountability is jettisoned in favor of group identities, so any personal setbacks for a darker-skinned individual are not the result of that individual’s agency, but rather the outcome of sinister, invisible forces at play within society’s institutions themselves. Similarly, any success on the part of a lighter-skinned individual is due to the privilege that individual enjoys.

TBT: Disorder

10 June 20218 June 2021 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

It’s easy to forget now, but last summer was terrifying. Race riots erupted in cities all over the country as a result of the death of George Floyd, a fentanyl-addicted career criminal who has now been sainted by our elites. The summer of rioting and looting did more to undermine racial harmony and social peace in our nation than any event of the last decade.

Now that The Usurper Biden sits upon the throne, the rioting seems to have subsided, as least for now, although there was a shooting at George Floyd Square amid the one-year anniversary observance of his death. Even so, I remember how scary last summer was, with radical, violent BLM and Antifa protests breaking out even here in South Carolina.

Part of the growing homesteading movement seems inspired, in part, by the wild lawlessness of the cities. Why live cheek-by-jowl with people who hate you because of your supposed privilege—and pay a hefty premium in rent to do so—when you can live affordably and safely in the country? I have at least one neighbor who seems to be doing that, and I’ve made some half-hearted efforts of my own at the same.

Regardless, I pray for peace—and prepare for the worst. I’d encourage you to do the same.

Here is 5 June 2020’s “Disorder“:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Rule of Law Matters

24 October 202024 October 2020 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Also, the delayed Universal Studios post is now available to subscribers: “Universal Studios Trip No. 3.”

During the recent incarnation of the domestic terror organization Black Lives Matter, a group of BLM organizers in Florence, South Carolina received permission to paint a “Black Lives Matter” mural on a section of street in downtown Florence. The mural is meant to depict various scenes from African and African-American history, including some Egyptian elements.

The mural itself was a community effort, and took around three or four days to paint. In all fairness, it was a peaceful project with the full support of the City of Florence, and seemed to be an expressive way for the black community to participate in a project that isn’t overtly destructive. Creating art—even historically inaccurate, propagandist art—is generally preferable to looting stores.

However, the City of Florence has decided to remove the mural. Naturally, it’s resulted in a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth from blacks and gentry white liberals in Florence, who are accusing Mayor Wukela—a red-diaper baby and progressive Democrat—of racism, of suppressing black voices, and the usual litany of complaints.

Of course, that has nothing to do with why Florence City Council—which is overwhelming Democratic and heavily African-American—is removing the mural.

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Lazy Sunday LXXV: Forgotten Posts, Volume IV

23 August 20209 January 2021 The Portly Politico2 Comments

We’re continuing our dive into the B-sides and deep cuts of the TPP oeuvre. For this Lazy Sunday, I decided to check out September 2019.

Whoa! What a gold mine of hidden gems and nuggets, forgotten in the tide of events. I didn’t realize how many good posts I generate during that first full month of the 2019-2020 school year. There’s enough for a couple of weeks, but here are three forgotten posts to tide you over until next Sunday:

“Remembering 1519” – With The New York Times‘s 1619 Project all the rage—a retelling of American history in which racism and slavery are the only pertinent factors in our grand national story—this post examined a piece from The Federalist about Hernan Cortez’s conquest of the Aztecs in 1519. Rather than framing it as evil Europeans callously destroying the peaceful natives (any fifth grader can tell you the Aztecs were anything but peaceful), he flips the script to something closer to the Truth: the Catholic Christian Spaniards toppled a wicked regime built on human sacrifice and false gods. The Spanish weren’t angels, but they destroyed a great evil.
“Saturn: The Creepiest Planet?” – Quora inspired this post, and the site has now become a favorite of mine for people smarmily answering astronomy questions. The Solar System has always fascinated me, and Saturn in particular is alluring—so mysterious and regal, with its massive rings. I’ve even written a song, “The Rings of Saturn,” which I will hopefully record one day. The Quora post in question asked “What is the creepiest planet in our solar system?”; the answer, per a recording of Saturn’s electromagnetic waves, is Saturn. The embedded video to that recording is now, sadly, dead, but I’m sure some intrepid searching could turn it up.
“A Tale of Two Cyclists” – One of my more frivolous and cantankerous posts, this short screed denounces “spandex-festooned cyclists riding in the middle of a busy lane during rush hour.” Yet my sympathies are entirely with the second cyclist, “a black man of indeterminate age…. wearing street clothes, and riding what appeared to be a fairly rundown bike.” I have no problem with folks who use a bike as their primary means of transportation, lacking any other options. But these large groups of “cyclists” who ostentatiously hog entire lanes at 5 PM drive me batty.

That’s it for this Sunday! We’ll continue our exploration for at least another week, as there are some more goodies from September 2019 to explore.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Diversity is Our Strength!

22 August 202021 August 2020 The Portly Politico1 Comment

A couple of days before the start of the school year, my school underwent a round of ~~indoctrination~~ professional development: the dreaded diversity, equity, and inclusion training ($5 subs got a sneak peek of my handwritten notes earlier this week, which I uploaded as a digitized PDF). As these things go, it wasn’t terrible, but there was plenty of social justice buzz words, and a subtle, implied anti-white bias to it. Really, it was an anti-Truth and objectivity bias.

This Saturday, permit me to be your guide through the harrowing world of corporate-style diversity training in the Year of Our Wokeness Two-Thousand and Twenty C.E. (because “A.D.” is discriminatory against non-Christians, even though the B.C.E./C.E. dating system is still based on the Birth of Jesus Christ!).

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Rest in Peace, Herman Cain

31 July 202030 July 2020 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Yesterday, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and 2012 Republican presidential primary candidate Herman Cain passed away after a long struggle against The Virus. Cain was 74.

Breitbart calls Cain a “Conservative firebrand,” which was apparent to anyone following the crowded 2011-2012 Republican presidential primaries. Like 2016, that was a crowded primary field, with tons of conservative darlings and Establishment types alike jumping into the field. Back in those days, everybody thought Barack Obama was going to be the next Jimmy Carter—an ineffectual, overly-progressive one-termer. The economy stunk, Obama seemed out of his depth, and conservatives were united and motivated to get out and vote.

Herman Cain quickly set himself apart from the rest of the crowd, though—he wasn’t a career politician, but a successful businessman (according to John Derbyshire, Cain is also somewhat a mathematical genius). He put out his bold “9-9-9 Plan“—flat, nine percent national sales, income, and corporate tax rates. Cain’s reasoning: “If ten percent is good enough for God, nine percent is good enough for the federal government.” Yes, it was a bit far-fetched, but it was catchy, and in an era of high corporate and income taxes—both of which undermined American business competitiveness domestically and abroad—it resonated with voters. The implicit reference to the biblical tithe also let voters know Cain was a devoted Christian, which was a welcome change from the open hostility of the Obama administration to religious liberty.

The Portly Politico

One Southerner's unique, erudite, conservative perspective in a hectic world

Tag: race relations

Memorable Monday: MLK Day 202[2]

Lazy Sunday LXXV: Forgotten Posts, Volume IV

Rest in Peace, Herman Cain