My Reaction to the Reactions

 Almost two months after the leak of the draft of Alito’s majority opinion, the Dobbs decision was finally released on Friday, overturning Roe v. Wade.  I have not yet read the entire opinion, although the hefty opinion and the dissents sit at the edge of my desk in my “to be read” pile.

The final decision has triggered the expected response in the usual places.   Nancy Pelosi was so angered that she was almost incoherent and her earring fell off at the end of her statement.  Barack Obama, with no small irony, commented “[the decision] relegated the most intensely  personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues.”  *cough**cough*  The ever eloquent and inspirational Kamala Harris reacted by stating “we are guided by what we see that can be, unburdened by what has been.”  Ms. Harris apparently has been unburdened by any serious Constitutional scholarship.  The Vatican did release a statement, but also took the opportunity to say that being “pro-life means defending life against the threat of firearms.”  The Woke Pope himself, who tweets daily about climate change and immigration, has been pretty quiet about an issue that has been central to Catholic beliefs for a long, long time.  And from the radical Left, the reaction has been an entirely predictable temper tantrum.  Lost in all this is that a Missourian just needs to fill up the car and drive across the  border to Illinois where she will be welcomed into the Abortion Mecca of the Midwest with open arms by our ever health focused governor J.B. Pritzker (Body Mass Index approaching infinity), a drive that would be less expensive had Joe Biden not won the presidency.    And Woke corporations like JP Morgan Chase are tripping over themselves to underwrite abortion transportation costs in the name of women’s rights  (“If you could be back at your desk taking calls by lunchtime, that would be great, Nancy.   We’re here for you.”).   None of that messy, inconvenient maternity leave and post-birth time on the phone coordinating with nannies, doctor’s appointments,  parent-teacher conferences and all that for the progressive, beneficent Mr. Dimon.  We have shareholders to please.  The cost/benefit is pretty clear.  A couple thousand bucks of travel expenses is a real bargain to limit the lost productivity that children cause.

For me, the most curious reactions came on LinkedIn, and as a result, I have begun the practice of “de-networking,” that is, trimming contacts from LinkedIn that use the platform as a place to make political statements.   In my view, LinkedIn is a platform to make and maintain professional connections and to view someone’s background, and is a job search engine.  LinkedIn is usually the first stop for most headhunters and employers.

I have begun to actually trim contacts.  It began with people putting pronouns in their bios.  I figured that if I don’t know you well enough to know what sex you are,  it is highly unlikely that I will know you well enough to do any business with.   Pronouns in the bio earn an automatic deletion from my contact list.

Similarly, I deleted a number of contacts after the 2020 election that posted gushing comments about Kamala Harris breaking the glass ceiling.  Harris, who didn’t earn a single delegate in the Democratic primaries, has broken nothing but the nation’s record for vacuous speeches and inappropriate cackling.  Mostly, I deleted these contacts because I apply The Iron Law of Reciprocity.  Not a single person dared post anything positive when Donald Trump won in 2016 on LinkedIn.   Likewise, not a single person had so far shown the courage to applaud Supreme Court's reasoning and adherence to the Constitution.  They wouldn't dare. They would be a social pariah if they did, and would be treated as if they had contracted professional leprosy.  But those that support Roe and express anger at Clarence Thomas are free to paste their views all over LinkedIn.   Most astonishingly, many of the supporters of Roe demonstrate in public their profound ignorance of what the Dobbs ruling actually says, which also says something about how one would analyze professional matters.

But since much of corporate America has incorporated progressive positions in their cultures, it is now permissible to publicly espouse them on public platforms.   For conservatives or libertarians, it is verboten to do so.  They must stay in the closet on political matters—you know, like gays used to have to.  I thought we were past that. I guess not.  We merely switched positions.

So I have been busy trimming contacts like I trim the bushes in the spring.  I refer to it as de-networking. One person actually boasted that he had lost 20 contacts due to his commentary on Dobbs that he posted on LinkedIn.  Delete.  Make that 21.   

But I did do something quite astonishing as a consequence of all this.  I sent a modest campaign contribution to a NY Democrat--  Maud Maron, running for the 10^th District in NY.  Yes, you read that correctly- a NY Democrat. Before you write me off as having completely lost all of my marbles, I reprint her response to Dobbs in its entirety here:

I fully support the legal right of a woman to choose whether to have a child or an abortion, and believe that abortion should be safe, legal and rare.

The Supreme Court’s decision overruling Roe v. Wade should not be a cause for panic—especially in New York State where access to abortion is protected by State Law.  The issue now lies with our democratic process; and laws will differ in different states.  We should strive to resolve our differences on this deeply emotional question through reason, not rage.

The federal government should support funding for abortion where it is legal in the states.  Congress should also make sure that states do not interfere with interstate travel to obtain legal abortions.

This is an opportunity for Americans to solve a difficult problem together through debate and compromise.  Let’s take it.

I was so thoroughly impressed by her measured and thoughtful response that I was compelled to send her a contribution and mention her on social media.   While many on the left were firing up flamethrowers and too many on the right were smugly gloating, Ms. Maron’s response was the most eloquent that I have seen expressed so far.  What really caught my attention was what Ms. Maron did NOT do.  She did not assail the Court or its decision.  Her response suggests that she is respectful of the Constitution and the separation of powers.  She advocated a democratic process and debate and compromise.  Plagiarizing a slogan from the Clinton campaign—I’m with her. 

I undoubtedly have some policy differences with Ms. Maud.  And that's OK.  She's a Democrat.  I've generally hewed more closely to Republican positions.  But her enlightened and reasoned response to Dobbs demonstrated the limits of partisanship.  Ironically, out of a highly divisive issue about which people occupy hardened positions, I find myself fully behind a Democrat.  Go figure.  I will be following her closely, and I encourage my readers to support her candidacy.  We need more like her from both parties in Congress.

Black lives matter

 But so does Black behavior.

I detest writing about race, because I do not see people that way.  Skin pigmentation, being an immutable characteristic, is as relevant to me as any other—eye color, hair color, height, etc.  It really means nothing to me and does not govern how I relate to another person at all.  That is the MLK credo.  But in the world in which the preachings of Ibram X. Kendi surpass Martin Luther King, banishing skin color to irrelevancy is not enough.

But there is a topic that must be talked about, openly and honestly, if we are to regain our place as a civil society.  We can’t duck it or hide from it.  We have to ask questions that many are afraid to ask because of the fear of being labeled or canceled.   But facts are facts. 

The issue is the predominance of Black violence.

The Left for years talked about “disparate impact,” a concept that made its way into our judicial and administrative system of governance.  Disparate impact was the idea that certain practices were not discriminatory on their face but disproportionately adversely affected a certain group—generally African Americans.  This concept was applied in a variety of discrimination cases.

Just as Lionel Shriver’s masterful novel We Need to Talk About Kevin addressed American violence generally and critiqued middle America’s complacency and lifestyle, we now need to talk about black violence.

The facts are stark.  Thirteen percent of the population commits 50% of the violent crime.  The numbers are even worse when you consider that the vast majority of those are committed by black males between the ages of 16 and 40.   And since major urban areas have elected progressive prosecutors, defunded the police and enacted “criminal justice reform,”  murders, assaults, armed robberies and assaults have spiked across the country.  And that’s just the crime that gets reported.  Other incidents, like the horrifying terror inflicted upon an older couple by a flash mob while they were trapped in their vehicle as youths mobbed the car and jumped on it, threatening and terrorizing them, don’t even get reported.  Twitter has been unable to block all of the brawls in airports, fast food restaurants, and hotel lobbies, a vastly disproportionate number involve African Americans.   Chicago had 1800 carjackings in 2021, and so far 2022 is on pace to eclipse that total.  Almost all of them have been committed by African Americans.   Whites, Hispanics, Indians, and Asians together make up a fraction of those crimes.

Just as we talked about disparate impact, we need to put disparate black violence on the table and talk about it.  It is turning our magnificent cities into dystopian hell holes, which are being increasingly being abandoned by law abiding citizens and businesses.  It is true that 80% or so of the violence by blacks is directed at other blacks.  But this is meaningless.  It is destroying the black community and prompting me to ask why, as a white person, do I seem to care more about the slaughter of black children in Chicago than Chicago’s black political leadership?

We can’t begin to make progress in solving the problem until we can ask the question of why?

Most whites are prohibited from asking the question for fear of being labeled racist.   Few blacks will address it honestly.  Shemeeka Michelle has addressed black violence.   So has Glenn Loury and John McWhorter (this recent podcast addresses it squarely and I highly recommend it. 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0vPhfM372Ju2GfdtCATFir

But they are the minority of a minority. Economist Steven Leavitt attempted to explain Black violent crime by citing Roe v. Wade.  He came under attack by both the left and right for asserting that the violent crime rate was a demographic issue and had decreased because fewer unwanted children were being born as a result of Roe.  But we have had a decrease in birth rates and the Roe hypothesis certainly looks shakier as crime rates spike.

I would argue that Black violence is actually worse that Loury portrays it.  Black violence is not exclusively confined to lower class black young men.  We have seen Black women engaged in horrible melees and as participants in flash mobs.

The violence is not limited to lower classes, either.  Police were summoned to the home of Cook County DA Kim Foxx's home after she apparently had a physical confrontation with her husband.  Two of Michael Jordan's sons--Jeffrey and Marcus--were arrested after physical confrontations with law enforcement.  These two young men grew up in opulence and in one of Chicago's wealthiest suburbs.  And then there was the very public battery by Will Smith of Chris Rock.   Resorting to physical violence is not limited to the "marginalized" in Black society; violence seems to reach the very to echelons of the Black community.

It is not racist to ask what is going on.  If we care about people, if we care about the progress of African Americans, particularly African American children, we cannot be afraid to ask why.  Indeed, responsible citizenry demands that we do.

A subset of the problem of Black violence is the feral Black youth.  The murderers of Tessa Majors, and the UberEats driver in DC were in their teens as are a predominant number of carjackers in Chicago.  What is to become of these youthful criminals?  What are we to do with them?  The murderer of Tessa Majors received a sentence of 18 months of "detention."  What will likely become of him?  Can he be reformed and rehabilitated?  How did he get to be a soulless murderer in the first place?  Judge Tim Evans, Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook  County in Illinois has stated that those children under 16 cannot tell right from wrong.  Is that really the case?

The radical Left has attempted to frame this up as a white supremacist problem. The statistical and anecdotal evidence suggests that the Black violence problem vastly overwhelms any contribution of purported white supremacy.  And it is Black society itself that is bearing much of the suffering from this pathology.

Platitudinous answers like, "It's a cultural issue," or "It's a legacy of slavery," or, worse, "It's genetic" are all unsatisfactory answers.  Most insulting was Mark Milley's absurd comment about needing to understand "white rage."  It's not the white population that is disproportionately exhibiting rage.

Most of us have been socialized to have violence inhibitors kick in.  In our day to day lives, most people find a way to supress their violent urges.  Most of us figure out how to block the urge to smack a co-worker in a meeting even when they are exasperating to us.  We do not slap our spouses when they enrage us.  We certainly do not physically resist law enforcement during a traffic stop, even when we feel we have been unjustly singled out.   Why do Black Americans, proportionately, do not seem to possess such disinhibitors?  Again, this says nothing about any individual, but only making observations of Blacks as a group.  We need to come to a fuller understanding of why this appears to be so, and discuss it in a frank and productive manner without  being labeled or canceled.

We must begin by not whitewashing the problem and certainly not lionizing criminals.  George Floyd's death was harmful to our society, but not in the way the MSM thinks.  Floyd died under the knee of Derek Chauvin, true.  But the toxicology report conclusively showed that Floyd had enough fentanyl in his system to kill him-- and on its face a fact sufficient to nullify Chauvin's conviction base on a "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard.  Yet the MSM and certain segments of the public continue to view him as a religious martyr.  Statues were erected to him.  Murals have been painted in his honor.  Nancy Pelosi thanked Floyd for "sacrificing your life for justice."  A new biography of Floyed has been released and the New York Times Book Review gushed with praise for Floyd, describing him as "shy, contemplative and good natured" and blamed "growing up Black and poor" and "structural racism" for his outcome.  According to the author and reviewer, Floyd had no agency over his own life.  Nowhere did the review even mention Floyd's conviction and imprisonment for beating and threatening a pregnant woman with a gun.  And after his actions were so bad that he was put away for five years, Floyd apparently didn't learn anything from it.  George Floyd was no Rosa Parks.

It's not racist to put this issue on the table for discussion.  We need answers.  The peace and prosperity of our society and the progress and reduction of the income and wealth gap between black and white America depends on some answers.