Blaming the Gladiators

In a recent Daily News column, essayist Stanley Crouch explains why he believes that poverty is a poor excuse for violence.

Crouch blames gangs and correctly draws parallels between KKK members “who became homicidally enraged at the idea of a black man acting as if he was a free person,” and today’s gangs that “terrorize black communities across the nation… with astonishing levels of murder and mayhem.”

Crouch recoils from “supposedly empathetic liberals” who define gang members as “victims of race and class.”

No such glib hogwash was spewed when the murderers were white and the resultant corpses were black. No one ever explained that the lower-class rednecks who were presenting themselves under peaked sheets while burning crosses, setting homes afire, bombing homes, offices and churches or murdering and mutilating their black victims, did so because they were feeling inferior to the white upper class of the South.

When the killers were white, the issues were justice and injustice, not social status or income. If there were actual justice, as we often heard during those violent Southern years of the civil rights movement, the killers would be punished for their crimes and black people would be able to walk the streets with the safety that should be the right of every citizen of this country.

Crouch writes that when gangs became more active 30 years ago, something changed:

…The opinions of those who had been so ice cold when it came to Southern racists either became quiet or looked for ways of explaining away the corpse after corpse after corpse left perforated by shotgun blasts and automatic weapons. Some were gang bangers, some were innocent bystanders, some were children caught in the crossfire.

Crouch describes the disconnect between liberals who defend gang members, and residents who live in the affected neighborhoods and want gang members “controlled, incarcerated, or removed from the world.” He concludes that the majority of law-abiding low-income residents prove that gangs and their enablers can’t blame poverty or “the system.”

Crouch is partially correct. Although he accurately describes the parallels between the KKK and gangs, he ignores the common source of their pathology.

Winning Elections At Any Cost

Throughout Reconstruction (1876-1964), Democrats had felt threatened by former slaves who, Republicans insisted, were suddenly their equals. Some former slaves were elected or appointed offices, including seats in the US Congress and Senate. The thought of Republicans controlling the South was, to Democrats, a real threat – one that demanded a strong course of action. Democrats relied on sympathetic judges and the Ku Klux Klan to enforce Jim Crow laws that secured The Solid South for nearly a century.

Today’s relationship between gangs, Democrats, activist judges, and misguided policies like Special Order 40 and gun control are strikingly similar to the historical relationships between the KKK, Democrats, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Jim Crow during Reconstruction. Republicans who promoted racial equality faced the same threats, regardless of complexion. Negroes were safe, as long as they weren’t too uppity AND supported Democrats.

To distract us from the parallels identified by Stanley Crouch, Democrats have convinced Americans to believe that the historical antagonism between Republicans and Democrats was not political, but racial. And as long as voters supported their stable of Democrats, they were safe from allegations of white guilt (or self-hatred) often used to coerce behavior.

Planned or not, LA is as controlled by Democrats as the “Solid South” was 80 years ago. And because Republicans forced Democrats to outlaw lynching, Democrats now use intimidation, Oreo cookies, Judas horses and violence to influence elections. Democrats know that, 1) they cannot win national elections without California, 2) they cannot deliver California without Los Angeles, and 3) they cannot secure Los Angeles without union support. And as long as their multi-billion dollar fraud scheme continues to indoctrinate and retard students, LAUSD’s union teachers will continue to deliver fresh laborers whose illiteracy relies on artificially inflated union jobs to feed their families. And once a worker joins, union bosses are free to exploit their membership into supporting Democrats who empower the unions. (diagram)

Enter the Gladiators

Aided by Republicans who favor cheap labor, Democrats welcomed illegal aliens into sanctuary cities like Los Angeles to attract an unlimited source of desperate laborers. With uncontrolled borders, gangs and criminals followed.

Like church-burning arsonists, Democrats ignited ruses like global warming, multiculturalism, and racial profiling to distract voters.

But the greatest distraction plays out daily in the mainstream media. In a virtual coliseum that seats millions, Americans are entertained by an endless procession of modern gladiators: Police officers, immigrants, gang members, and assorted criminals that are both vilified and celebrated by their competing audiences. We are warmed by the multicultural pageantry of colors, badges, uniforms, and complexions as they pass before us. We hurl insults and epithets like tomatoes and trash, while those who distinguish themselves are cheered with equally raucous enthusiasm.

To control the restless spectators, the council and senate continuously tweak the rules. When cops have the advantage, they are blinded by artificial controls that make it difficult to identify gangs from allies. When gangs secure the advantage, injunctions are issued. When a gladiator assaults another, spectators revile him. If the crowd grows dangerous, prosecutors put him on trial which, when convicted, momentarily sates the audience.

From the relative safety of our living rooms, we are mesmerized by the cloudy donnybrook of notorious and anonymous characters. When spectators are sometimes caught like gnats in a web, we are transfixed as their lives are sucked from their convulsing bodies.

This drama does not begin or end, but continues like a one-season soap that is hopelessly looped by reruns. With our social conscience anesthetized by the formulaic spectacle of missing children, gruesome accidents, drive-by shootings, unsolved murders, wild weather, and sports highlights, few of us notice the crumbling walls of our city.

And while Stanley Crouch blames gangs, the ACLU blames police, immigrants blame racism, terrorists blame Zionists, Gore blames global warming, liberals blame America, conservatives blame the media, academics blame the military, Hillary blames swift-boaters, gays blame homophobes, parents blame teachers, Obama blames poverty, teachers blame parents, and cats blame dogs, LA Democrats quietly prepare for the next election. If that’s not a “systematic plan” for political success, I don’t know what is.