Why the Madness of Democrats? Part 2

Aside from the occasional insane hereditary ruler, we generally assume that political leaders want their domains to be successful, powerful, and rich.  This isn't always the result of policies chosen - we all understand that it wasn't Hitler's goal for Berlin to be bombed flat - but his stated objective was a Greater Germany that would bestride the world like a colossus for a thousand years.  In the event, his cookie crumbled differently, but what he set out to accomplish was pretty much what we expect of absolute leaders, and sounded very appealing to most of his subjects at the time.

In the first article in this series, we cited numerous inexplicable choices by blue state politicians which seem to us to be so transparently bad for their future electoral prospects that only an insane person would ever make them.  Yet simply writing them all off as mad or deluded doesn't make logical sense.  These Democrats were smart enough not only to get elected, they've been re-elected continually for decades.

And if only one or two officials acted this way, it could be an aberration.  Since so many are ignoring riots that burn down their cities while trashing their police that are the only thing holding back utter chaos, they seem to be reading out of the same playbook, much as the MSM's lies about Mr. Trump's Mt. Rushmore speech seemed to have been written by the same truth-challenged scrivener.

One example of their hypocrisy will do as representative of many.  The Blaze pointed out that the Mayor of Oakland, who praised "peaceful" BLM marchers, changed her tune when protests got a little too personal:

The Democratic mayor of Oakland, California, accused vandals who left Black Lives Matter messages spray painted at her home of trying to "terrorize" her and her family.

She surely knows that her voters are no more pleased with vandalism than she is, so why is she telling the police to "give them space?"

Even Democrats once knew how to handle rioters.  During the Boston police strike of 1913, Governor Calvin Coolidge fired them all, sent in the National Guard with shoot-to-kill orders, and rode to the White House on his "law and order" reputation.  Coolidge was a Republican, but Boston's mayor at the time was Andrew Peters, a Democrat.  Mayor Peters supported Coolidge's drastic but effective action; he went on to become a serious candidate for Governor himself, though his promising career was derailed by an unrelated sex scandal.  Too bad for him that he lived back when Massachusetts voters still cared about such things!

It turns out that very few rioters want to go up against police forces which have been given what the military call "weapons free" rules of engagement.  The only reason today's riots continue is because political authorities have ordered the police to stand down; if the police were given permission to enforce the law, the riots could be ended this very night, and the remaining thugs rounded up and put where they can do no further harm.  For what they're worth, we see polls declaring that Americans disagree with defunding the police by margins of 2 or even 3 to one.

Given what would appear to be obviously dire electoral consequences, we've wondered why so many elected Democrats continue encouraging rioting and cutting police budgets despite the desires of their votes.  Let's take a look at few theories, and perhaps even see what ideas our Gentle Readers might have.

Orange Man Bad Theory

A comment on our first article suggested the "Orange Man Bad" theory, a.k.a. Trump Derangement Syndrome.  The writer cited the "iron triangle" of unionized government employees, welfare recipients, and elected officials who support these interest groups against the interests of law-abiding taxpayers has lasted for decades.

The logic behind the TDS explanation is that if Democrats create enough chaos for long enough, Mr. Trump will seem to be an ineffectual leader who can't keep order.  This theory assumes that Democrats hate Mr. Trump enough not to care about the lives being lost to the rioting; their goal is simply to put Mr.Trump in a no-win situation by any means necessary.

If he steps in with the military, the theory goes, the moment one of those peaceful BLM protesters suffers so much as a hangnail - or, better yet for The Cause, a gay trans pregnant woman of color catches a bullet - the MSM will blame Mr. Trump for creating a police state.  Indeed, we've seen exactly this take place already, with fervid anger at Federal law enforcement grabbing firebombers off the street.

The comment went on to say that although police unions are on the back foot at the moment, the riots will end after the next election, police funding will be restored if only to keep bribes from police unions coming in, and the unions will reassert their traditional control of municipal governance.

There's certainly ample evidence that Trump Derangement Syndrome is real and that it does cause leftists to lose their minds enough to tell the truth about their intentions.  But as a theory to explain rational actions, it suffers from Mr. Trump's known mastery of controlling the dialog.  He has said repeatedly that if Democrats can't keep order, he will.

If he were to actually take forceful unilateral action, the theory goes, he will own any subsequent disorder. His statements make it sound like they can suck him into a quagmire - but so far, he has held back, and later said he will come in full force only if invited by a mayor or governor.

The Portland federal courthouse is an interesting edge case.  Federal law enforcement officials clearly have the right to protect any federal building regardless of state or local wishes.  They also have the right to arrest people who commit crimes on federal territory.  Yes, Virginia, they do have the right to make a federal case out of rioting on their turf, or that which threatens it, and to arrest perpetrators.

Videos being circulated by the federal forces give the lie to the Portland mayor's protests against mistreating "peaceful" protesters who seem to have done permanent eye damage by shining lasers at law enforcement.  Some polls show Mr.Trump's approval rating creeping up, which suggests that he's getting traction on this issue.

On the other hand, he's said he's sending federal forces to cities such as Chicago where the mayor has stated vehement opposition.  We're not law enforcement professionals, but if a few hundred federal officers can restore peace in these cities, one wonders what the thousands of regular police officers have been doing all this time.  If they can't, it will look bad for Mr. Trump.

We hope he knows what he's doing.  Either way, it seems unlikely that even the massed chorus of the MSM will convince most voters to blame Mr. Trump for their cities being burned to ashes when literally every other political authority in those jurisdictions was a Democrat cheering on the torchbearers.  This theory seems to us a bit weak - and if it were true, our electorate would have to be so terminally debauched, delusional, and dysfunctional that we're doomed regardless.

Kerner Commission Theory

This theory points out that past rioting benefited Democrats greatly.  Maybe they're attempting another bite at that wormy apple?

President Johnson appointed the Kerner commission on July 28, 1967, while rioting was underway in Detroit, Michigan.  Riots were occurring in the black and Latino neighborhoods of major U.S. cities:

• Los Angeles - Watts riots of 1965
• Chicago - Division Street Riots of 1966, the first Puerto Rican riot in U.S. history
• Newark, NJ - 1967 Newark riots

President Johnson asked three questions: "What happened?  Why did it happen?  What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again?"

Nothing the commission recommended, or that has been done since, has put a stop to riots, perhaps because instigating riots benefits so many different interest groups.  The report cited lack of economic opportunity, failed social service programs, and white-oriented news media, but placed most of the blame on "white racism" - yes, even that long ago, everything bad was whitey's fault.

Even though President Johnson had won a landslide victory over Senator Goldwater in the 1964 election, he had expended so much political capital passing Great Society welfare programs in 1964 and 65, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that he didn't feel like taking on another major reordering of American society.  He declined to run again in 1968.

There wouldn't have been time for a new program to take effect in any case: one month after the report, fresh rioting broke out in more than 100 cities after the assassination of Dr.Martin Luther King.

In a 1998 lecture on the 30th anniversary of the report, Harvard Professor Stephan Thernstrom made a point which holds today:

Because the commission took for granted that the riots were the fault of white racism, it would have been awkward to have had to confront the question of why liberal Detroit blew up while Birmingham and other Southern cities - where conditions for blacks were infinitely worse - did not. Likewise, if the problem was white racism, why didn't the riots occur in the 1930s, when prevailing white racial attitudes were far more barbaric than they were in the 1960s?  [emphasis added]

He's so non-PC that he's clearly a candidate to be canceled, though his great age may provide some protection.  He has strongly opposed racial preferences, arguing that affirmative action leads to higher rates of black student dropout. Given that saying "All lives matter" seems to be enough to get you shot these days, his arguments are so non-woke that he's asleep.  Given prevailing attitudes, he might not be long for the world of academe.

More recently, on the occasion of the report's 50th anniversary, the Wall Street Journal was blunt:

The experience of the Kerner Commission-formally, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders-is a case study in the futility of leadership by blue-ribbon panel. ...

Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, the black CCNY psychologist whose work the Supreme Court cited in its 1954 school desegregation decision ... testified to the Kerner Commission that he'd read reports of similar riot investigations drafted in 1919, 1935, 1943 and 1965 and warned: "It is a kind of Alice in Wonderland - with the same moving picture re-shown over and over again, the same analysis, the same recommendations, and the same inaction."

Nobody wanted to address the politically-incorrect role family breakdown played in rioting by kids who had grown up without a father's influence.  The Journal described the 1967 deliberations as a battle between law-and-order hawks who blamed opportunistic criminals and doves led by Mayor Lindsay of New York who blamed "white racism."  Blaming white racism for every ill ever experienced by any black person led to the creation of our immense multi-billion-dollar diversity industry, and good livings for "racist reverends" such as Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson who exploit racial ill-feeling for their personal profit.

We've described some of the costs divisive leaders have imposed on our society.  There have been many votes found in sowing discord over the 5 decades since white racism was forced into national attention, however, so we don't expect Democrats to stop doing it anytime soon.

They hurl charges of "racism" at anyone who discusses any explanation for black suffering other than white racism, effectively shutting off discussion of poor schools, fatherless welfare kids, personal responsibility, gang culture, hard work, personal dress styles, using proper grammar, or any of the many other contributing causes.  They particularly don't like Mr. Trump bragging about his economic policies that reduced black unemployment to the lowest level ever recorded.  "Candid Conversations about Race" explains why we can't have candid conversations about race: actually solving the problem would cost them votes.

It could be that Democrats perceive that past riots benefited them at the polls, so why shouldn't this round work just as well?  Again, though, we regard that as somewhat unconvincing because most of the Burn, Loot, and Murder rioters seem to be white and because many black people have realized that rioting and the resulting increase in violence as police pull back hurts them.

The George Soros as Blofeld Theory

Having appeared in three James Bond novels and eight films, Ernst Stavro Blofeld defines the brilliant criminal mastermind with credible aspirations of world domination.  In the typical James Bond saga, the villain threatens to wipe out humanity with a nuclear bomb or a enhanced version of bat soup flu unless his demands are met.  James Bond Saves the World by defeating the villain with the aid of a comely young lady while surviving chase scenes that are possible only with a great deal of help from script writers and CGI technicians.

Is George Soros, the legendary billionaire who "broke the Bank of England" through financial chicanery, a real-life Blofeld?  He certainly possesses the required financial resources, and many lesser-known denizens of the Internet fervently believe that he is.  He even looks the part.

Wikipedia tells us that Mr. Soros was born in Budapest in 1930, survived Nazi-occupied Hungary, and immigrated to the United Kingdom in 1947.  His web site says that his family survived the Nazi era by "securing false identity papers, concealing their [Jewish] backgrounds, and helping others do the same" so he's experienced in deceiving government authorities.

He also recognizes the necessity of using force to advance causes which ordinary citizens are reluctant to accept.  We quoted his book back in 2009:

One of the books I read was Karl Popper's "The Open Society and its Enemies."  ... Popper argued that the Nazi and Communist ideologies have something in common - they both claim to be in possession of the ultimate truth.  Since the ultimate truth is beyond human reach, both ideologies had to be based on a biased and distorted interpretation of reality; consequently, they could be imposed on society only by the repressive methods. 

- George Soros, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, (New York, Public Affairs, 2008) p. 15

As far as we know, Mr. Soros isn't the proud possessor of a nuclear weapon or a killer virus, but he has something nearly as potent - money.  His web page says "He has given away more than $32 billion of his personal fortune" but doesn't say how much he has left.

Saint Paul said that the love of money is the root of all evil.  Mr. Soros has enough filthy lucre to purchase a great many evil deeds from unscrupulous money-lovers should he choose to do so.

Mr. Soros is known to involve himself in American politics, although there is hot debate about precisely what he's done.  Googling "soros funded Ferguson protests" without quotes gives many articles saying he did and others saying he didn't.  There are enough indications that some of the Ferguson protesters were paid and enough photos of the same protesters showing up at Trump rallies all across the nation that we put this in the "plausible but unproven" column.

Campaign finance reports show that Mr. Soros has given considerable sums to candidates for the office of prosecutor so that they will take a "progressive" attitude toward crime.  Indeed, Soros' Safety and Justice PAC funded the campaign of St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner who is bringing felony charges of unlawful use of a weapon against Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who brandished their weapons against protesters who were trespassing on their private property.  Their weapons they brandished were incapable of actually being fired, but no matter - the police lab was able to tamper with evidence by fixing them right up so that charges of felonious threatening could be filed.

Mr. Soros could certainly overpay politicians for any houses they happen to own or donate to any charitable foundations they might set up, but what would it profit a politician to gain a lot of money and be shut out of politics by angry, resentful voters?  Would that sort of incentive suffice to persuade so very many mayors and governors?  Could he make credible offers of insuring politicians against any potential commisions of Arkancide?

We doubt it - and it would be absolutely impossible to do this without leaving all sorts of visible traces.  We do not see a giant sucking sound of newly-rich Democratic local politicians retiring to private islands.  Therefore, despite the visceral appeal of this theory, we are reluctantly forced to consign it to the realm of fiction.

The Sherlock Solution

Sherlock Holmes famously said to Dr. Watson, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."  We have two or three overlapping "improbable but not impossible" solutions which we'll discuss in the next article.