Monday, June 29, 2020

Khrushchev Was Prophetic. Republicans Are Wimps. Another Rant.


                                                                                      It has all come down to this!
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Buy American before everything is destroyed.
Remember this?

THIS WAS HIS ENTIRE QUOTE:  A sobering reminder.  Almost exactly sixty years ago since Russia’s Khrushchev delivered this  Do you remember September 29, 1959?  THIS WAS HIS ENTIRE QUOTE:

"Your children's children will live under communism, You Americans are so gullible.  No, you won't accept communism outright; but we will keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you will finally wake up and find you already have Communism.  We will not have to fight you; We will so weaken your economy, until you will fall like overripe fruit into our hands."  "The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."

Do you remember what Russia's Khrushchev said in 1959?

Remember, socialism leads to Communism. So, how do you create a Socialistic State?
There are 8 levels of control; read the following recipe:
1) Healthcare - Control healthcare and you control the people.
2) Poverty - Increase the poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them.
3) Debt - Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this willproduce more poverty.
4) Gun Control - Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government That way you are able to create a police state.
5) Welfare - Take control of every aspect (food, housing, income) of their lives because that will make them fully dependent on the government.
6) Education - Take control of what people read and listen to and take control of what children learn in school.
7) Religion - Remove the belief in God from the Government and schools because the people need to believe in ONLY the government knowing what is best for the people.
8) Class Warfare - Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor.  Eliminate the middle class This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to tax the wealthy with the support of the poor.

Finally:
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Another Rant:

Until we get official statistics for June, it is impossible to judge where the economy is going, and even then we really do not know given the resurgence of the virus. Anecdotal reports suggest the past two or three weeks, since many states reopened, there has been a surge of new orders to many companies. Some in differing industries. Reports say the surge in new orders has taken many small businesses from being close to failing, to now having order books similar to pre-Covid.  These are just anecdotes, but it will be interesting to see if this is widespread across many industry groups and across the country. Some companies report that their order books remain slow, and so we still have high unemployment. That may change at the end of July when the $600 stops and millions decide to go back to work. That $600 payment has been a real handicap on reemploying people. We may be going through a transition period as has been predicted, and we will not see what the economy is really doing until September. The surge in virus cases will slow the reopen growth, but it is not clear by how much as it is partially confined, and being handled by healthcare authorities. For example in both TX and AZ many of the cases are centered near the border and may have originated in Mexico, or they are where there are a lot of young people in bars.  It is unclear how many get hospitalized vs get detected. Meantime, the stock market also has no idea which way to turn. You really do not want to be investing in travel and hospitality stocks right now as it is very unclear what impact the surge in cases will have on their return to cash flow. 
There are Trillions in cash sitting on the side right now, and most investors are cautious, so in the event of another downturn, there is a lot of cash to step in and provide a basis for thinking there will be no collapse of stock prices from here. A recent survey shows that most fund managers are sitting with a lot more cash than is usual. The risk is until the election when a major sell off could happen if Trump loses. One thing about this market is the FANG, and similar stocks are the story. Median stock prices are still down 12% from the earlier highs. At least the FANG companies have billions of cash, little debt, and can weather anything. What happens with regulation of, and advertising on  social media is a real issue, and may impact the advertising revenue. Unclear where that is going. There also does not seem to be a lot of speculative games being played at the moment by hedge funds and other investors which could collapse into a real bear market. While there is too much corporate debt, the Fed is keeping the bond market stable and liquid, and is there to do more if needed with its bond buying programs. Generally, there is little reason at the moment to expect a continued bull run like we just experienced, but there is little reason to believe there will be another March like crash. We just experienced the greatest bull market in history since March 23, so a pull-back is normal now, especially as we get to quarter end and institutions and others rebalance and take profits. Given the black swans swarming these days, and the virus surge, there is no way to confidently predict anything other than there will not be another full lockdown.
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There is way too much cash waiting for distressed deals. Once they start to appear, it will be the classic too much money chasing too few deals. The bargains many hope for may not be there to the extent they expect. A lot depends on how fast we recover, and what other stimulus Congress does, or does not pass.  Overall, PPP was a huge success despite some rough times at the start until they got all the rules sorted out.  4.4 million small businesses got cash, and while there was some fraud, as expected, much of that money can be retrieved and people charged. The amount of fraud is likely a fraction of what happens with food stamps and disability.
STR is the main source of occupancy data for hotels, but I have been told they do not count closed hotels at all when reporting occupancy. That means the real downturn in occupancy and Revpar is materially worse than is being reported. Keep this in mind when reading an STR occupancy or Revpar report. The temporarily closed hotels are part of the inventory of rooms, and need to be included if one is to get the real impact of the virus on the industry. Since many of the closed hotels are some large ones in the conference business, the impact on occupancy will be material if not counted in industry stats. So we really do not have any accurate data on hotels.
A recent report by CBRE forecasts 5.7% growth in industrial distribution space. Our Bayonne NJ development is indicative. We are developing a 1 million sq ft warehouse facility, and there is substantial demand from prospective tenants. Bayonne is directly across the harbor from NYC, and right next to the NJ Turnpike, so it is an ideal place from which many tenants could do distribution throughout the metro area. Online shopping growth has created huge added demand for these type facilities. Warehouse distribution is a very good place to develop if you can find the right site with good access to dense populations. Although there has been a substantial number of facilities developed recently, the demand seems to be growing as the virus has shifted to more online shopping. Far better to own a distribution center than a shopping center now.
An interesting note.  Go try to buy a printer right now. You will find that even the printer manufacturers are out of stock on many models. The work at home move led huge numbers of people to buy a new printer. 
Clearly there will need to be another PPP.  Unfortunately Pelosi will demand another stack of left wing gimmees that McConnell will not do. In the end Pelosi wants the economy to slow walk into November. It is the same stupid game she and Schumer are playing with the police reform bill. They are only interested in wining in November by claiming they passed a bill, and to hell with the rest of us.
The reality about the virus seems to be that now there are numerous therapies and methods to prevent spread to the lungs and death. Many of the drugs are in existence for years and have no side effects like hydroxy chloroquine. It is totally different than in April, May. Testing is now also readily available, so there are many more cases being detected that would not have even been known before. Contact tracing is very active. Lastly, there is a lot of irresponsible behavior now by young people who believed they were immune, so there is a surge in cases. That hopefully will change as people begin to wear masks, and not go to bars and have big parties. If someone is infected now, their chance of dying if they do not have a serious underlying condition, is extremely low.  There are also a substantial number of vaccines in human trials now, and it is likely that by sometime in Q4, one or more will be readily available to most people. They are already manufacturing the vials and syringes and other material needed,, and even doses,  so once a vaccine is approved, they have everything ready to go immediately. While some states have slowed reopening steps, it is unlikely at the moment that there will be a major impact on the economy. Bars do not make up a big part of GDP.  We also need information on where the clusters are. If for example they are in pockets, then that is much different than in the general working population. We will just have to wait to see how this goes over the next 2-3 weeks. 
The kids from campus are so brainwashed that they think shutting down free speech is a good thing if it does not conform to their ideas, and tearing down statues is just fine. They are now even tearing down Jefferson, Lincoln and Washington, demonstrating they are not concerned with police reform, or helping blacks, but are just out to destroy anything and anybody someone says needs to go down.  I will bet none of them know Jefferson authored the first amendment which gives them the right to peaceably protest. This is just mobs gone nuts, and a bunch of primarily spoiled white kids from college with nothing better to do. They have no idea what they are doing in fact. Getting rid of cops even seems to be a good thing to them, and left wing adults.  One reporter went to the East Village in NYC and asked white liberal adults about defund cops, and was met with a strong condemnation of cops and willingness to get rid of the police.  Then she went to Harlem and asked the exact same questions. Guess what. None of the blacks asked by her wanted fewer cops. They want more cops to protect them.  If you are a white left winger in a safe area, it is easy to blather on about how terrible cops are, even though likely you never interacted with a cop. If you live in a black neighborhood where crime is a problem, you understand what would happen if there were no cops. Robert Johnson, the black media billionaire, said blacks are laughing at the little white liberal kids out protesting on behalf of blacks, and tearing down statues. He made the point that the white college kiddies are just not dealing with reality. Another black leader made the point that BLM does not speak for the black community. He said they are just a bunch of radicals doing this for money they can make. But the Dems and press and universities treat BLM like they are the sole word from blacks. How can they be so stupid when real credible black leaders tell them it is all a scam, like Sharpton is. If you are from NY you recall Tawana Brawley as Sharpton’s first scam, but that one blew up and then he goes on to be a hero in Obama’s White House. And you wonder why I am such a cynic about all this.  Then we could always discuss Jesse Jackson and his similar scam tactics.  He is from Chicago, but where is he when dozens of black guys get shot. Off enjoying all the money he made.
There were 20 US soldiers killed in Afghanistan in all of 2019. There were 18 black young men killed in just Chicago in one weekend, and 4 more on that Monday. What do we hear from the media, BLM, or protestors.  Where is Sharpton.  Where is the mayor. Where is Eric Holder who rushed to Ferguson. Where is Obama who is from Chicago. Where is Pelosi. Nothing. That is because there is no money in that story, nor a story to use to bash Trump. In fact, it shows what BS the whole racist cops mantra really is. If black lives really mattered to any of them, they would be outraged at the ongoing massacre in Chicago. All of the black guys were killed by other blacks. If 18 US soldiers died in Afghanistan in one weekend, the press and Dems would go crazy, and claim Trump is a terrible guy. But 18 blacks including a 3 year old girl -that is just a normal day in Chicago. It destroys their narrative about cops killing blacks. The press are a disgrace. 
Now they are even trying to claim Trump really is in collusion with Putin based on what appears to be truly false news in the NYTimes about Russians paying the Taliban and Trump being briefed. White House staff and the DNI, CIA and chief of staff say he never saw the report, but truth is irrelevant these days. The press is only too happy to report what seems a false story if it makes Trump look bad.  My buddy, the dean at the elite university, also rushed to claim to me that this shows Trump colludes with Russia. Except the story is a lie. And he teaches the kiddies you see on the streets tearing down statues..
I have recently had emails from a number of people expressing that they are afraid generally, given the major rise in crime and the refusal of various Dem mayors and governors to crack down on rising crime, and lawlessness. The rampant tearing  down of statues, proposed renaming if streets, cities, and even of Rhode Island, has the sense of the left running out of control in many places. The situation in Seattle is the prime example, where a major city has ceded control of an area to the mob. It is a total breakdown of society in Seattle, and is now being repeated in NYC in front of City Hall.  DeBozzo now wants to do  a mural of BLM on Fifth Ave to goad Trump. What a stupid, childish  thing. He, like the mayor of DC, have no understanding of what a lawless symbol this is, and a promoting of a group that is attempting to change American society and rule of law.  They are not a nice bunch of politically motivated people. They are a dangerous hate group, and should not be promoted by government officials, or corporations seeking to pander to the latest misbehavior by college kids. We now have almost no  free press, universities are ideology centers, and brands are falling all over themselves pandering to the mobs.  In NYC this weekend there was a shooting in Harlem. When the cops arrived they were met by bottles and bricks. So they left.  If that is how the neighborhood wants to act, then they can go kill each other, just as they do in Chicago. There are a lot of decent working people in those areas, and I am sure that they want the cops and not the bottle throwing  mobs. Let’s see what DeBozzo says about this incident. The Dems in DC are playing right into the hands of the radicals, and seeking to get rid of Trump and any hope of returning to law and order, 
What is just as worrisome, is there was just a worldwide virtual meeting of top people including Al Gore, the secretary general of the UN, the CEO of Mastercard, and other CEO’s, and organizations where they agreed that the world needs to reinvent capitalism, and to find ways to redistribute wealth from the successful to the rest of the world. This is pure ignorance of history, and total insanity. Capitalism is what has lifted billions of very poor out of their abject poverty. Socialism has failed miserably everywhere to raise living standards. The free market is what works.  Even China, the ultimate communist state, has promoted their version of capitalism and free markets, and it has worked wonders for them. Gorbachev was all about undoing the inefficient state owned factories and farms. France learned that raising taxes too high causes business and the real taxpayers to flee. Do none of these so called world leaders ever read a history or economics book? Do they really think the successful will really sit back and allow governments to just take their money and redistribute it. Are they intending to raise taxes so high that there is no incentive to work hard to build a business, or to take risks. The whole concept is nuts.  As has been proven in the last three years in the US, the way you raise the living standards of the poor, and get them money, is to let the private sector succeed with lower taxes and less regulation, and then you get record low unemployment and rapidly rising wages for those who were on the low end of the economy. You do not do it by government mandate and high taxes. The most inefficient companies in China are the state run companies. The whole reason the Soviet Union collapsed is it was state run, highly inefficient companies and farms. This is one reason why we cannot let Biden and the Dems get control.  They believe in more regulation and higher taxes to “promote fairness”. They want to take your money and give it to all those who are tearing down statues.  While the basic issue for the demonstrations started as racism, the real underlying issue is a revolution of capitalism, and law and order. and how we live our lives. We are having a real battle for the future of America, and how the legal system, wealth creation, and the economy work. Biden is just a pawn for these people.
There is a report that Elizabeth Warren will be in charge of economic and banking policy under Biden. If that were to happen you better have a place to flee. It boggles the mind that wealthy people and some in Wall St, even give one dollar to Biden. How can the Silicon Valley CEO’s support Biden when Warren wants to break up their companies. Have they all lost their minds. How can they not understand that Bernie is calling the shots now as part of their deal for Bernie to drop out. The bartender from the Bronx is one of Biden’s close advisors.  What is it the CEO’s and other supporters do not understand. Trump may be a lot of things they do not like, but Biden and his radical advisors are going to destroy them. 
The biggest issue now is that Trump seems to be blowing it. He is not listening to his political advisors and he seems to think his strategy in 2016 will work again.  Not so. The world has changed dramatically with the virus and the protests, and his style is not selling now. I still believe when Biden has to be on stage with no teleprompter, and once he picks his black female left wing VP, and once Durham starts to indict and Biden is seen to have been involved, then things will change. A lot of voters are going to be turned off by the VP pick knowing Biden is not going to be able to run the country. How come the press does not demand Biden do a real press conference. He has not answered any questions in 87 days. Nobody knows what Biden’s policies really are since he never says anything. They are afraid to let him talk because they know he will blow the election if he does. 
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Conservatives are no longer wiling to fight for what they profess they believe. They have allowed intimidation to still their voices. Republicans have taken their usual position - cowardly feltalism. Disgusting.

Mob Rule Imperils Western Civilization. It's Time for Courage, Leadership.

And:

Driving Conservatives Underground

Cultural tyranny reigns in America,
the last step before full-fledged political tyranny. 

(emphasis added)

Lurking beneath the surface of virtue signaling leftists are tyrants seeking to exert their will over those they despise. The defining leftist culture enables them to ruthlessly use all the power at their disposal, both real and imagined, to enforce a single acceptable viewpoint on society. 

In some geographic areas, this is more obvious than in others, but no area will ultimately be spared. This week, my wife volunteered during the Virginia Republican primary. As people came by the booth to get information on the candidates, she offered these Republican voters an opportunity to sign up for yard signs. Most whispered that they could never put something like that up in their neighborhood. That’s understandable. Unless a family is willing to stand guard 24/7 over their property, a Trump bumper sticker or sign here is a risky proposition at best.

And so the Northern Virginia neighborhoods surrounding us are dotted with almost exclusively Democrat yard signs and the ubiquitous and unintentionally ironic “Hate has No Home Here” signs that literally blare that their home is a sanctuary of vile hatred and small-minded contempt. 

When people can’t put a bumper sticker for their preferred candidate on their car, they have suffered a loss of liberty. 

No Republicans who have paid even a little bit of attention expect the prevailing powers in Democrat areas to safeguard their property, or even their lives and liberty. 

The very reason for establishing a government has been upended. In this area, liberty-minded people almost operate like a secret society sending quiet signals to one another. 

Democrats in this country do not feel they need to hide their political allegiance or culturally approved viewpoints. Most never shut up about it, believing they are speaking truth to power, even as they bask in the approval of the corrupt and wicked power centers. 

Nobody gets to sit this one out. The cultural enforcers expect everyone to parrot their talking points publicly, to destroy all resistance, forcing dissenters to grovel in submission. That’s the whole idea behind the “silence is violence” aggression. Cultural violence is quite the opposite of silence; it is forcing people to say what no sane person should believe in order to not be destroyed. 

Few stand against this pressure, which is why nearly all major companies and organizations have come out with quisling statements of support of the name of a vile Marxist organization like Black Lives Matter. 

It’s why Hillsdale College’s response was so notable, because it was a rare exception to the rule. [This was not surprising coming from one of the only places in America still putting up statues to honor our tremendous heritage of liberty when the cultural zeitgeist is to rip them all down and start at a Marxist Year Zero.] Hate groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter operate quite freely in this environment, serving as the cultural shock troops and the terrorist wing of the cultural tyrants who have taken over the Democrat party.

Consider just a few of the displays we’ve watched over the last few weeks. A football coach had to apologize for wearing a One America News sweatshirt…in Oklahoma. We watched as most of our senior military leaders bowed before their cultural masters. We watched as statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Francis Scott Key, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and even an assortment of abolitionists, were either destroyed or came under attack, even as discussions of replacing the National Anthem erupted from the propaganda and activist cultural tyrants.

We watched as the weaponization of the federal bureaucracy by a U.S. president against a president of the opposite party was unveiled before our eyes to a massive shrug by the seditious media, who see it as a wonderful use of state power by their fellow leftist travelers in the bureaucracy. They are smug in their belief that they can use their cultural power to protect the perpetrators, who they regard as heroes.
We even watched as a sports league that caters to a conservative audience was complicit in perpetrating a crazy Jussie. We observed an emboldened social media giant censoring the President of the United States for promising to protect Americans.  
     
We also watched what I believe is the vilest propaganda campaign of my lifetime when every cop in America was slandered as a racist with barely a protest.

The guardians of civil order, who put their lives on the line every day, often under unimaginably difficult circumstances, to protect their fellow Americans, are being demoralized and hounded out of service. This has created the fertile ground for a massive increase in lawlessness that will result in a significant rise in the deaths of black Americans, showing that black lives matter not a lick to those claiming that name. 

I wish I had a dollar for every American who uttered the phrase, “Never in my lifetime did I expect to see…” over the last few weeks. We are living in the upside-down when patriotism is outlawed, the vilest of criminals are celebrated, and brave law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line daily are slandered as the worst of society so thoroughly that it descended into evil farce, when a kid’s show “Paw Patrol,” came under attack since it is apparently racist to have a positive police character in a children’s show.  

This is war and the left is playing to win. Anyone who doesn’t get that by now, to include most of the NeverTrumpers, is either irredeemably stupid or an active collaborator. Every pillar of cultural power in America, to include the unholy trinity of academia, the media, and government has declared cultural war on at least half the country. And yet NeverTrumpers reserve almost all of their scorn for those with the audacity to not drop to their knees and surrender. 

It is long past time for Republicans to fully understand the enemy and take up this fight. The phrase “silent majority” has been bandied around quite a bit in the last couple weeks. Americans are silent because the cultural tyrants ensure there is a price to pay for any peep of sane protest, which is also why Republicans voters are undercounted in polls. 

The problem is that the silence enables the leftists to continue to drive the narrative and normalize ideas and behaviors that would have been considered unfathomable just a few short years ago while winning more converts, which shrinks that sane majority. It is their toxic ideas that are being force fed to every young person in America and we are paying a heavy price for that. 

I’d like to see far more people vocally pushing back against the mob within their social circles. Every person who pushes back emboldens others to do the same. There also needs to be a sustained and concerted effort to retake academia, the true center of gravity whose main product it is returning to America are Marxist cultural tyrants. 
  
The culture war matters when you are living in a cultural tyranny. If you believe Andrew Breitbart, that politics is downstream of culture, we are getting dangerously close to losing everything, to include our liberty.

And:


Arguable - with Jeff Jacoby



'Cancel culture' grows increasingly cruel

The racial Jacobins haven’t eased up in their post-George Floyd ferocity; if anything they are growing more indiscriminate in their determination to enforce political conformity and 
to punish anything they regard as thoughtcrime. Their targets haven’t been limited to statues of American heroes, editors of prominent newspapers, or professors at leading universities. The toll of those who have been defamed, fired, or otherwise “cancelled” now includes an alarming number of people who have no power or public platform, who are not celebrities, and who in many cases did nothing wrong.

Take the case, for example, of Emmanuel Cafferty, a Hispanic employee of San Diego Gas and Electric, who was fired for making a “white supremacist” gesture while driving his company-issued truck. Except that he wasn’t making any gesture at all, and didn’t even know that such a symbol existed.
Here’s the story, as reported by San Diego’s NBC affiliate:
 
It all started about two weeks ago near a Black Lives Matter rally in Poway when Emmanuel Cafferty, a San Diego Gas and Electric employee, encountered a stranger on the roadway. The stranger followed Cafferty and took a picture of him as his arm hung out the window of his company truck.

The picture made the rounds on Twitter, accompanied by a claim Cafferty was making a “white power” hand gesture made popular by white supremacist groups.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, the gesture — made by forming a circle with the thumb and index finger, and extending and separating the other three fingers — has been used in recent years by white supremacists to form the letters 
W and P, but has also long been used as a sign signifying “OK” . . . . Therefore it shouldn't be assumed to be a white supremacy symbol unless there is other evidence to support those claims, according to the ADL. Cafferty claims he was
 just cracking his knuckles.

Soon after the encounter, a supervisor of Cafferty's told him he was suspended and 
that further action may be taken after an investigation. A few days later, he says he was fired.


Cafferty was astonished when his employer told him what he had been accused and found guilty of. Not only had he been denounced and fired for a supposedly racist act, his judge, jury, and executioner were all white, and he isn’t. Yascha Mounk dug further into the case for The Atlantic:

[Cafferty] said he explained to the people carrying out the investigation . . . that he had no earthly idea some racists had tried to appropriate the “okay” sign for their sinister purposes. He told them he simply wasn’t interested in politics; as far as he remembered, he had not voted in a single election. Eventually, he told me, “I got 
so desperate, I was showing them the color of my skin. I was saying, ‘Look at me. Look at the color of my skin.’”

It was all to no avail. SDG&E, Cafferty told me, never presented him with any evidence that he held racist beliefs or knew about the meaning of his gesture. Yet 
he was terminated.


Meanwhile, the guy who took the picture of Cafferty’s fingers deleted his tweet, admitted that he may have “misinterpreted” what he saw, and said he never intended for Cafferty to lose his job. But these days, the merest suggestion that someone is a bigot, or insufficiently antiracist, can trigger the instantaneous destruction of his or her reputation, career, and income.

Mounk describes the fate of a liberal statistician working for a left-wing firm:

David Shor, for example, was until recently a data analyst at a progressive consulting firm, Civis Analytics. . . .  Shor’s job was to think about how Democrats can win elections. When Omar Wasow, a professor at Princeton, published a paper in the country’s most prestigious political-science journal arguing that nonviolent civil-rights protests had, in the 1960s, been more politically effective than violent ones, Shor tweeted a simple summary of it to his followers.


That was all it took to wipe out Shor’s job, writes Mounk. Various agitators on Twitter demanded that he be terminated. He had done nothing more than flag a piece of research raising questions about the effectiveness of violent protests. Yet within a week of posting 
an accurate tweet about the findings of Wasow — a black PhD in African-American studies
— Civis Analytics fired Shor. Even Wasow’s wife was appalled by the crazed attack on a fellow progressive who had done nothing to deserve such a fate.

Then there is the attack on a middle-aged woman named Sue Schafer who attended a Halloween party in 2018, wearing blackface and a tag reading “Hello, My Name is Megyn Kelly.” It was a mocking reference to the former TV host, who ran into a buzzsaw  after 
she suggested that wearing blackface wasn’t always racist or in bad taste. Two young women at the party approached Schafer — who was not famous, not running for office, 
not influential — and berated her for her costume. She left the party in tears. Which would have been the end of it, except that The Washington Post, for no discernible reason, ran a 3,000-word article about the incident this month — a story, wholly devoid of news value, about a clueless woman at a party two years ago. As soon as the story appeared, Schafer was fired by her employer.

Even children are being targeted as racist, with the encouragement of adults who explicitly call for the destruction of the kids’ future prospects.

Skai Jackson, a former Disney Channel star, urged her young social media followers to expose their classmates or peers for posting racist comments or videos. “If you know a racist, don’t be shy! Tweet me the receipts,” Skai tweeted  on June 4. On Instagram, she posted a similar threat, saying she would spotlight “Caucasian teens” who say or write something inappropriate: “Let me say this: If I see you post it, I WILL expose you!! If you think you’re big and bad enough to say it, I will most definitely put your own words on blast!!”
                          
What followed, predictably enough, was a flood of submissions from informers eager to publicly accuse young people of racism, sometimes expressed in online remarks years ago. Jackson readily publicized the accusations, making sure to include the targets’ full names and social-media handles. And for going out of her way to ruin the reputation of people 
for being young and foolish, she was extolled as a heroine. Entertainment Tonight hosts applauded Jackson’s “bold move” in ensuring that “justice can be served.” Essence magazine commended her for “using this time to reverse the blatant racism she’s seen on social media.”

“I am so proud of you, @skaijackson,” tweeted actress Yvette Nicole Brown. “The good work you’re doing exposing all these ‘baby’ racists will ensure that their names, faces & deeds will be known as they enter the work force down the line. Which will protect everyone from the havoc racists cause in the workplace.”

This is chilling and dystopian, the perversion of a legitimate goal — overcoming racial bigotry — into a frenzy of character assassination and public humiliation.

Boston attorney Joseph Welch memorably confronted Senator Joseph McCarthy in June 1954: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" 

“Some of the targets of these campaigns may have spoken or acted clumsily, but 
apologists for cancel culture can find reasons to stigmatize or banish anyone,” observed 
the Wall Street Journal in an editorial last week:

We doubt most Americans agree with this unforgiving and punitive approach to cultural change, but the revolutionaries are now in charge with a vengeance. They won’t stop by themselves because their campaign is essentially about power and control, and they need new villains. But . . . they are also laying waste to liberal values of free speech, democratic debate, and cultural tolerance.


A backlash to the Jacobins’ brutality will come sooner or later.

It was 66 years ago this month that the tide finally began to turn against Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator whose anticommunist crusade was marked by a similar willingness to blow up reputations and shred careers. The moment came during the McCarthy’s televised hearings on supposed communist influence in the US Army, when he
gratuitously singled out by name a young Boston lawyer, implying that he was a secret communist and a security threat to the United States.

Joseph Welch, a Boston attorney who served as chief counsel for the Army during the hearings, seized on McCarthy’s smear to turn the tables:

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness,” Welch said. He praised the young lawyer who had been slandered, then rebuked McCarthy with words that still resonate:

“Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense 
of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Like resistance to communism, resistance to racial bigotry is a worthy and legitimate 
cause. But there is nothing legitimate about demonizing the powerless and destroying 
lives with reckless accusations. What has been done to Cafferty and Shor and too many others is stomach-turning. Have those who target such powerless people have no sense of decency? At long last, have they left no sense of decency?
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