IN HOC SIGNO, WARFARE: Jeremy Peters drops a bomb!

WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 2019

Spots 82-year-old racist: According to the folk tradition, "God gave Noah the rainbow sign."

Much later, Constantine I marched to victory under the Chi-Rho sign—with the first two letters of Christ's name (in Greek) on his warriors' shields. See yesterday's report.

Constantine went on to be the first Christian Roman emperor. He left us with the inspiring cry:

In hoc signo vinces.

Under the Chi-Rho sign, Constantine actually conquered. Today, our liberal team is marching to war under a somewhat similar set of signs.

One difference:

Where Constantine's sign featured only two letters, we march to war under an array of single letters—under bombs with such names as R, B, X, I, H, M and S.

These letters stand for the various bombs which constitute the only approach we seem to have to the process of dealing with Others—with those who aren't quite perfect enough to be exactly like us.

Perhaps if our tribe stopped waging war, we'd get better results. But our species has always been war-inclined, and we liberals have been marching to war this week under the R-bomb sign.

We keep insisting The Others are racists. In a recent New York Times report, Cornell Belcher was quoted saying that we may be playing a losing game.

We'll re-post Belcher's statement below. That said, this name-calling game is the only one our pitiful tribe seems to know.

Is it possible that we lose votes by loving the R-bomb so? Over the weekend, the New York Times journeyed to deepest Michigan in search of people—in search of voters—who apparently think so.

Up in Michigan, Stephanie Saul and Jeremy Peters spoke to benighted voters who refused to agree that Donald J. Trump's recent racist tweets were actually racist! To see the way we may cost ourselves votes with our love of the R-B signs, consider the sheer absurdity of what happened next.

We'll start at the start of the front-page report which appeared in yesterday morning's Times. Saul and Peters started with one of the people—with one of the voters—who refuses to agree to the truth:

SAUL AND PETERS (7/23/19): As President Trump presses his attacks against four women of color in Congress, suggesting they are unpatriotic and should leave the country, many voters in this city on Lake Huron are embracing his “America—Love It or Leave It” message, saying they do not see it as racist.

And though they dismiss Mr. Trump’s Twitter broadsides as excessive or juvenile, they voiced strong support for his re-election and expressed their own misgivings about the four women.

“They happen to be black or colored,” Dennis Kovach, 82, said of the women, as he watered the lawn of his home near the lake this weekend. “But I don’t think that viewpoint is a racist viewpoint. I think it’s—quit the bitching, if you don’t like it, do something different about it.”

The report began with Dennis Kovach, who is 82 years old. As we learn at the end of the lengthy Times piece, Kovach "said he once worked in a factory in Romania where he had observed the Communist system."

Who in the world would water his lawn right by the shore of a very large lake? The 82-year-old Kovach would! And not only that, he wasn't prepared to acknowledge the fact that Trump's racist tweets were racist!

Later that evening, on cable news, an additional crime was laid to this voter's name:

Jeremy Peters appeared with Brian Williams on the 11th Hour. As their exchange began, Williams referred to Trump's recent claims that four Democratic congresswomen of color are the actual racists.

According to Brian, Trump was changing the definition of racism. For better or worse, Peters responded as shown—and yes, this actually happened:

WILLIAMS (7/23/19): So, Jeremy, as you well know, this has been the concurrent effort, this kind of dual "I'm not a racist but you are," and the moving of the goalpost, the attempt to change the definition of racism.

PETER: That's exactly right. And this is something you've heard, not just from the White House, but from conservative commentators up and down the board, from Ann Coulter to Sean Hannity.

And it is very resonant with a number of Americans. I mean, I think that it is something that works for Trump because these people who make comments like they need to–

The New York Times, over the weekend, when we reported the story from Michigan, just trying to see how well these remarks were playing of the president's—and one person referred to these women as "colored." And he didn't see that as racist. And so regardless of, you know, just political incorrectness and the prejudice behind some of these views that many Americans still hold, they don't see it that way.

And they see the president, when he is attacked and called a racist, as themselves, because they don't think they're racist and they don't think the president is either. So it has this certain reinforcing effect of all of the anger and the grievance that Trump has brought out in the American people.

Truly, that's a remarkable statement. Let's get clear on what Peters seems to have said, with Brian along for the ride:

Plainly, Peters seemed to be referring to the quoted statement by Kovach—the statement with which the Times' front-page report had begun. Just as plainly, Peters seemed to say that Kovach's use of the term "colored" was a racist statement and a marker of "prejudice."

Beyond that, he seemed to suggest that this usage marks Kovach as a racist even though Kovach may not think he is. To Peters, this explains why people like Kovach may side with Trump. Despite this type of obvious evidence, they don't think that they themselves are racists, and on that basis they don't think that the president is.

At any rate, yes—that actually happened! An 82-year-old Romanian immigrant used the term "colored" rather than "of color." Representing the New York Times, Peters seemed to say that this marked him as a racist. And others like him as well!

Williams accepted this without comment. Let's review what we've learned:

When he marched to war under the two letters of the Chi-Rho sign, Constantine I is said to have massively prospered. When we modern pseudo-progressives march to war under our promiscuous use of the R-bomb, it's not unlikely that we will generate substantially worse results.

We change our language every few years—the language with which all decent people are expected to talk about "race." When 82-year-old Romanian immigrants can't maintain our pace, we make the type of pitiful statement Peters unloosed last night.

Questions:

Can we high-minded, self-impressed liberals learn to respect The Other? Borrowing from Willa Cather, will we ever able to show respect for the stranger in a far land?

Uh-oh! According to major anthropologists, we modern liberals are behaving as members of our highly tribal species always did, all through the annals of time. Our species always divided into tribes, these experts say, then began looking for ways to savage The Others.

We modern liberals love that game! We'll remind you of what Belcher said, as quoted in Monday's Times:

HERNDON AND MEDINA (7/22/19): Mr. Belcher, the [Democratic] pollster, was also skeptical of his party’s ability to meet Mr. Trump on his playing field.

“White progressives don’t understand race in this country and conservatives and Republicans do,” he said. “But they better learn, because Donald Trump is coming.”

Say what? Can Cornell Belcher say that?

For the record, Jeremy Peters seems like a perfectly decent person. That said, our vastly self-impressed liberal tribe is vastly eager to name-call and demonize our lessers. According to disconsolate future experts, this is the way our deeply parochial, war-inclined species has behaved since the dawn of time.

God gave Noah the rainbow sign. Constantine scored with the Chi-Rho sign.

We liberals signal contempt for the regular person with our modern array of signs. We're marching off to next year's war under these various signs.

On the merits, our conduct is often just massively stupid. On the politics, our conduct is often deeply ugly and may be self-defeating.

Dearest darlings, use your heads. The Others can see who we are!

Tomorrow: Divide and get yourself conquered