The Perfect Storm–Mask Mandates, Citizen Rollover, And Government Autocracy

Sam Perkins lived in the Idaho Panhandle in a log cabin in the high mountain forest, off the radar, remote, secure, and the last bastion against government interventionism.  He and his brothers remembered Waco, the FBI assault on the Branch Davidian complex, and the slaughter of innocent women and children.  ‘Nevermore’ was emblazoned on the escutcheon carved over the door; and Sam and the other members of the small, insurrectionist community he had founded meant it.  

Not only would they protect this, their land, but this, their sovereignty.  No government agent would ever set foot within ten miles of their sanctuary or would be met with a firestorm never before imagined.  Sam and his brothers had amassed an arsenal far more complete than David Koresh ever had – an armory of assault rifles, machine guns, bazookas, rocket launchers, grenades, and napalm – and they were willing and ready to use it.

Although they lived in the far woods, they had not cut themselves off from civilization.  They were not hippies or social refugees. The roof of their cabin sprouted the latest in communication equipment with which they monitored police, federal, and citizen band transmissions and via satellite linked high-resolution optics surveyed the entire north Idaho territory. 

They monitored both network broadcasting and key social media, and kept abreast of the political developments which could lead to armed government intervention. The cabin was equipped with much of the same surveillance, data tracking, spyware as the CIA, and the banks of telecommunication equipment, satellite up- and downlink software, and sophisticated hacking and anti-hacking tools was not unlike those feeding the White House war room.

When they drove the 100 miles into town for provisions, they rode in an Oldsmobile sedan and dressed like Mormon missionaries.  No one would have expected these mild-mannered, ordinary-looking men to be anything other than proud, patriotic, and duty-bound Idahoans.

The COVID pandemic had passed them by.  Although they were well aware of it thanks to their media surveillance, they paid little attention.  There was certainly no threat from the virus this far off the grid, and the town where they provisioned was barely a dot on the map. 

However the political and social import of the pandemic quickly became clear; and the more they watched and listened, the more they were convinced that the government response, cloaked as it was within predictable public health nostrums, was a thinly-veiled opportunity for government hegemony. 

Washington had been waiting for decades for the opportunity to finally and once and for all un-man American society – to neuter its pride, patriotism, Old Western independence, and individualism, and to make it over into a socialist model. 

Sam and his brothers talked of their American ancestors who braved and survived malaria, yellow fever, dengue, and infection to tame the overgrown bottomland of the Mississippi Delta, the Northern Neck of Virginia, and the pestilential swamps of North Carolina.  Those ancestors who fought and killed the Indians of the Western plains and made them habitable for cultivation and residence.  Those great grandfathers who fought and killed Mexicans to reclaim lands rightfully theirs.  Those forefathers who drove cattle from the Mexican border to the Montana prairies, settled on virgin land and made the dream of Jefferson and Lewis and Clark a reality.

They in their great adventure had been maimed, infected, snake-bit, crippled and disemboweled along the way; and yet they persisted.  It was an adventure fraught with death and disease but one of high purpose and determination.  The’ Greatest Generation’ of World War II was not the first but one of many in the history of the United States – generations of uncommon courage, steadfastness, and honor.

As the news became more focused on the pandemic, Sam was both angered and incensed by its insidious spread – not just the virus but the government interventionism which followed. The Biden Administration was engaged in the most egregious arrogation of power that the nation had ever seen; and yet township after township, citizen after citizen rolled over like lapdogs and accepted insolent, quiet aggression. 

This was no banana republic violent coup.  It was takeover by insidious means, creating an enemy within to justify its assumption of absolute power. One by one the states followed suit, instituted and enforced lockdowns, mask mandates, and punitive, retributive action against those who refused. 

Only a few governors and mayors pushed back against this federal intrusion.  There might be public health measures to be taken, but not so restrictive as to deny civil and individual rights, to destroy local economies, and to create social mistrust and disharmony.

Sam and his brothers watched in dismay and disbelief as they watched the President tiptoe through his schedule, masked and ‘socially distanced’, afraid of his own shadow and sending a message of craven surrender. 

Of course, he was only a puppet in a White House run by his Rasputin, the Vice President, as calculating and vixenous a woman who had ever held public office.  She told him to project fear and, through the image of his timid capitulation to the epidemic, encourage others’ capitulation – not to the virus but to government authority.

As the vaccines spread and the incidence of new cases dropped, the government decided to ride a new hobbyhorse – the Delta Variant – an unexpected, highly infectious form of the virus that they insisted was threatening the country. 

Of course it was not. Vaccinated people who somehow contracted the new strain came down with little more than a cold, and the disease produced in unvaccinated people was no different than the original strain.  A tempest in a teacup, bald-faced manipulation of 'the science', more government chicanery and abuse. 

Despite the evidence Biden and his shills downplayed the effectiveness of the vaccines and continued to hype mandates, government lockdowns, punitive enforcement and de facto government takeover of municipal and state institutions.

Sam and his brothers were blindsided.  So intent were they on defending themselves against a Waco-like assault; and so vividly did they see martial law and the violent insurrection that would be mounted against it, that they missed the insidious, peaceful assault now well underway.  

There were no barricades to be stormed, no firefights in which to engage.  There were no lines of battle, guerilla warfare, or battlefield strategy.  The government – thanks to the lickspittle cowing of the American people – had taken over without a shot being fired.  The few pockets of resistance were ineffective against the full-frontal government assault. 

Masks for so long a complaisant symbol of ‘doing the right thing’, a flag of dutiful obedience to government and ‘science’ and flown proudly by credulous progressives, now were symbols of the Biden gulag – an item of prison gear, a muzzle.

The frustration in the Idaho cabin was palpable.  The government’s blanket of repression had been cast over the country with people welcoming its 'protection'. Without the complaisance – the capitulation – of the American people, such government autocracy would never have been possible. A nation of sheep.

As bad as this public health charade was, agreed cabinmates, the government’s program to reconfigure American society in its own deformed image was even worse.  Progressives were engineering a sexually deformed society, cancelling Independence Day parades and replacing them with San Francisco Bay-to-Breakers gay extravaganzas.  Worst of all America was becoming a place where free enterprise and economic opportunity were replaced by bureaucratic, authoritarian socialism.

It was, Sam and his friends concluded, the perfect storm – an authoritarian, anti-historical, perversely determined government; and a complaisant, rolled-over, weak and uncomplaining populace willing to accept anything.

This understanding was cold comfort.  It only highlighted their own powerlessness.  They were an insurrectionist group without popular support.  

Although they thought of themselves as Che Guevara-like revolutionaries in the Sierra Maestra, they had no thousands of disaffected supporters in the lowlands.  They were increasingly isolated and alone, without the necessary tools for revolt – a revolt which would have to be mounted electronically, politically, and progressively. A battle of information and disinformation, public relations and snake oil hucksterism until the citizenry finally coalesced into a rebellious majority.  

But Sam and his crew could only watch.  They had prepared for the wrong fight and now were left on the sidelines.

They dismantled their satellite dishes, electronic surveillance equipment, computer grid, and hi-tech software systems.  They sold most of their weapons at Idaho gun fairs, but kept enough, just in case. 

Yet they stayed angry and militant to a man. This outrage, this arrogation of power, this historical absurdity would not stand, but unfortunately not at their hands. 

The Woke Olympics, Transgenderism, And Identity Politics–Tokyo Charade

Viewership for the Olympics is significantly down, its lowest since the 1988 games in Seoul, and it comes as no surprise.  After the incessant banging of Black Lives Matter, disrespectful protests by professional athletes, and the infection of all sports with radical wokism, it is apparent that viewers and most Americans have had enough.  

It was bad enough that they had to sit by and watch professional athletes introduce radical politics into sports at home.  It was even worse when these same athletes, hearing the angered public outcry at the sight of sullen, defiant athletes sitting during the National Anthem, changed their tune and disingenuously knelt instead.

 “We are praying for the restoration of the dignity of America, not disrespecting the flag”, one BLM spokesperson said; but viewers immediately understood the chicanery and insolence of using the illusion of prayer as a cover for a profoundly contemptuous act.

And worst of all, athletes who knelt, raised their fists, or shouted in protest before and after Olympic events were not only disrespecting their American fans at home, the teams for which they played, and even the flag, but America itself.  Such self-serving demonstrations offended even those with sympathy for civil rights.  It was an outrage.

At the same time, these offensive protests are signs of something far more troubling and profound – an endemic anti-Americanism.  The violent demonstrations against supposed police 'brutality' did not remain in the streets but went viral, promoted and encouraged by the media and given loud support by political progressives.

America is indeed a racist country, they said, and black people have every right to challenge racism in every quarter and by any means necessary.  Racism is a vile, perfidious legacy of slavery, and must be expunged, erased, and eliminated at any cost.

These protests in the hands of a renewed and energized Left did not end with condemnation of presumed racial injustice but evolved into a blanket condemnation of white people, an assumption of historic guilt, and a dismissal of the European culture and civilization which was the foundation of the American republic. 

Before long the infection had spread virally.  Fourth of July parades were cancelled, flags kept in the closet, celebrations muted.  There was nothing to celebrate, progressive critics said.  America was a racist, venal, and corrupt capitalist society which deserved no praise or support.

So in addition to those on the political right who were offended by the sanctimonious displays of Olympic athletes, the political left also protested.  Cheering Americans who represented their country and competed under the American flag were tantamount to political traitors.  It was the perfect storm.

There’s more.  Many people are upset by the demise of Olympic amateurism – competition unbiased by professional training, sponsorship, or monied interests – and see participation of professional athletes in the Olympics as a corruption of an important ideal.  While some see the participation of the world’s best athletes (judged at least by their professional standing) as a good thing, others see it not only as a deviation from the Athenian norm, but more of the same.  

Who really wants to see over-the-rim basketball in Tokyo when the long, laborious, and tedious NBA season has just ended.  And why should anyone care about soccer when the UEFA championships have just ended and the World Cup is soon to come? Or who will watch Olympic tennis when the Australian Open, the French Open, and Wimbledon are over and done with?

That’s not all.  Identity politics and the divisiveness and moral lassitude it has sponsored have infected the Olympics. Simone Biles, world champion American gymnast withdrew from team competition because of her concerns for her mental health.  Or, looked at more critically, in an act of selfish egoism she failed her team and her country by dropping out at a critical moment of the games. 

If she had been so concerned about her mental health, she could have chosen not to compete at all giving a chance to others; but no, she waited until she had center stage to complain and protest. Not unlike the athletes who took a knee, she did not admit personal failing but the failing of ‘the system’.  A premier, coddled athlete blames the system that made her? She wanted to set an example, she said, of all those victimized by the system; to step up for what is right; to legitimize mental illness.  Are you kidding? said millions of viewers who wanted no more of her cant and self-promotion.

It gets worse. At least three transwomen were viewed as strong contenders for slots on their nations’ women’s Olympic teams and two are currently competing.  The issue of cross-gender sports competition is a live, contentious one in the United States with progressive supporters advocating for an open field.  Anyone, no matter where they are placed on the gender spectrum, they say, should be able to pick and choose how, when, and where to compete.  

Opponents disagree.  Transgenderism is a folly at best and a distortion of human biology at worst.  Viewers know best and are again turning off the set.  Who wants to see a ripped, 300 lb. man compete in a woman’s competition?  

Additionally, the number of openly LBGTQ+ athletes is at an all time high.  While no one objects to gay athletes per se, for viewers who have been so force-fed gayness at home, the last thing that they want to see is rainbow flags in Tokyo.

There is no shortage of athletes and celebrities who use their popularity to speak out on political issues but they do so as individuals and judged as such.  While most people wonder why anyone should listen to a Hollywood actor on the Middle East, taxation, or international finance, others swallow their meanderings hook, line and sinker.  

We are used to such bilge, emotional claptrap, and political ignorance, and if we choose to pay attention, that’s up to us; but when popular athletes use American Olympic teams as a pulpit, a venue, and a place of protest, they are not only out of line, they are – despite their vainglorious claims – acting immorally and unpatriotically.

The Olympic ideal, now so sullied and made to look archaic, once represented the best of our collective humanity.  The Olympics were a showcase of simple, proud, and determined amateurism – the display of individual achievement unaffected by monied interests or financial support.  They did not disparage professionalism, but provided a space for its alternatives.  

Now the ideal has been corrupted by professionalism, identity politics, and wokism.   Those American athletes who ‘take a knee’ and bow their heads in sanctimonious protest; those who hypocritically use personal failings as a means of public complaint; and those who participate as cross-gender willy-nilly competitors, are not only defiling founding Athenian principles, but disrespecting team and nation.

Why would anyone watch these games? Who wants to watch sports these days anyway? Viewership for American professional sports is also at its lowest ebb.  The American television outlet TNT, a frequent broadcaster of professional sports, has noted that viewership of NBA (National Basketball Association) games is down over 50 percent since the 2010-11 season.  No surprise there.  Who wants to see predictable over-the-rim slam-dunks preceded by knee-taking, BLM sweatshirts, and political disrespect?

The most telling consequence of this politicization of sports is that it has deprived the American viewer of his last non-political refuge.  Sports was a happy, exciting escape from politics; and now that it has become just as contentious, aggressive, and meanspirited as everything else, where can one turn?  Nowhere.

The drop in viewership of the Olympics, therefore, is not just an incidental demographic affair.  It is an indicator of the social disruption, political arrogance and ignorance that has infected the entire country. 

It may be that this progressive race-gender-ethnicity juggernaut will be slowed come the midterm elections which will offer voters an opportunity to voice their dissatisfaction, but it may have too much momentum, and the Left may have been too successful in institutionalizing its exaggerated ideas.  The next Olympics will be an indicator, that is if anyone watches.

Orwellian Indoctrination In A Kiddie Gulag–Wokeness In Kindergarten

“Who Are We” was Mrs. Johnson-Ibo’s signature opening to her kindergarten class, a session meant to introduce the principle themes to be taught during the year.  

“We are all determined by the color of our skin”, she wrote in the syllabus presented for approval to the Principal of Jenkins Elementary.  “Whiteness signifies oppression, race-based autocracy, racism, and capitalist deformation.  Blackness signifies dignity, ability, beauty, and spiritual evolution.  The white race has been for far too long seduced by the propagandistic, outdated and outrageous assumptions of ‘civilization’ when descendance from Greece, Rome, and Europe is nothing more than tainted, corrupted legacy.  

“White children must be disabused of notions of cultural superiority and the permanence of Western, Christian traditions.  The legacy of Africa – its tribal roots, its naturalism, and its essential spirituality – is the historical inheritance that must be celebrated”.

The fabled notions of American exceptionalism – freedom, opportunity, challenge, and competition – are erroneous, ill-founded principles of white men, she wrote. 

The famous Enlightenment, the so-called foundation of the new American Republic, was nothing more than a self-serving document of fallacy.  Logic, reason, astuteness, and intellectual rigor were part of a philosophical smoke screen blown about to cover ‘essentiality’ – the wisdom, insight, pure spirituality, and emotional integrity of the Black man.

Capitalism, the natural outgrowth of this faulty assumption of individualism’s higher value, consolidated the White man’s control of society and facilitated his oppression of People of Color.  It is the economic system which dehumanized the Northern laborer and forced him into the inhuman conditions of the assembly line; and which enslaved the Black man in the South.

Mrs. Johnson-Ibo did not stop there, and went on to detail the moral corruption of White American Society and the need for radical, systemic reform.  The early grades of primary school were to be the educational foundation of the new, dynamic, racially-significant society.  

Children of five and six, although still under the influence of their parents, could easily become favorable to ‘exogenous’ educational principles – those stemming from the larger society into which they would eventually enter.  In other words, young children were intellectually malleable, virgin vessels into which righteous, woke principles could be introduced.

“Indoctrination!”, shouted Hiram Fellows, one of the two white members of the school board.  “Apostasy, ignorance, autocratic meddling”.  His arguments against the 1619 Project, systemic racism, and the cancel culture as a whole were roundly shouted down, dismissed as anti-progressive and cave-dwelling ignorance.  “

The people will be heard”, LaShonda Washington shouted at Fellows, rising up to her powerful six-feet-two height, glowering at him with an icy stare, pausing for breath, and then letting go with a volley of intemperance and hostility never before heard at any school board meeting.

“Unconscionable!”, she yelled, shaking her fist in the air in protest and anger. “Mr. Fellows’ remarks are outrageously out of order and out of place.  He and his kind….” Here the parents who had been invited for this open session squirmed at Ms. Washington’s thinly-veiled reference to White people, but kept their seats.  “He and his kind”, she continued, staring down the White audience, “will not prevail”. 

“Hear, hear”, murmured her colleagues on the board.  “Well said…absolutely… without a doubt”.

So the woke curriculum for the city’s kindergartens was adopted, and Lilly Thompson on her first day of school got the full bore.  Of course Ms. Washington did not use the arch-polemical defense of her theory presented to the School Board.  She was enough of a schoolteacher to know how to tame and tone down an adult lesson for little ears; but over the following weeks, she made her point.  White children had a lot to atone for.

“White people are bad”, Lilly said over dinner one night.

“Who says so?”, asked her father between bites of lamb.

“Ms. Washington”, replied Lilly; and so the Parent Revolution of 2021 began.  Harold Thompson,  conservative, independent individualist had heard enough and had had enough.  He stormed the School Board, its Chairwoman, his City Council representative, and the Office of the Mayor.  

Thompson was no right-wing rock-throwing radical, but one of the city’s most prominent trial lawyers, known for his unblemished record of courthouse victories and take-no-prisoners approach to the law.  The Board was aware of his reputation but so solidly united as a woke educational cabal and so convinced of the righteousness of their position, that they met him casually.

Of course they were unprepared not only for his oratory but for his legal threats and K Street intimidation, and he did not disappoint.  In full voice and passion, he dismantled every fallacy, called out every ignorant assumption, challenged each and every preposterous supposition, and left the Board weak, weary and uncertain.  “You will hear from me”, he said.

The Board members looked at each other, stunned.  Used to bootlickers and sycophants, they had never faced such purpose and will. They were a group of poseurs, educational pretenders, and venal politicians, who never before had encountered so determined and packed an enemy.  His last words implying lawsuits, dismissals, defunding, and political wilderness were consequential. 

The Board and city politicians were used to political tenure – walking around money, political patronage, no-show jobs, and certain re-election; and the more their jobs became sinecures, the more they believed their own phony cant.  ‘White privilege, systemic racism, capitalist greed, black empowerment, reparations, justice, and victory’ were part of their canon and their liturgy, repeated and intoned at every meaning with genuflections and amens without a scintilla of reflection.  Government at its worst, its most self-serving, and most self-righteous.

The board members, councilmen, and City officials had for so long taken entitlement for granted, and for so many decades assumed that they, as minority members deserved preferential treatment in compensation for the ills of the past and white oppression, that Thompson’s salvos were a complete surprise.   They always knew that he and his ilk were out there – right wing closet segregationists and unrepentant Robber Baron capitalists – but not one of their number had ever come before them.

It was true that White, wealthy professionals and businessmen never bothered much with city politics.  Their money and investment influence kept them far from the dirt and grime of ward politics, but after recent elections which ushered in a liberal city council and school board which intended to radicalize early primary school education, the White political calculus changed. 

The school board badly misjudged the seminal importance and centrality of the primary school.  While the White, wealthy residents of the city could remain disengaged from the mud and mire of municipal politics for most of the time, they were ready to go to the barricades once the principles of the secular, non-denominational, apolitical school were discarded. 

Speaker after speaker at a recent municipal educators conference repeated the familiar injunctions against the Whites of the city – ‘corruptors, oppressors, intellectual vandals, social troglodytes, vain and worthless demi-citizens’ and far worse; but then Harold Thompson, armed with money, political clout in Congress, Wall Street money and Federal Reserve insiders, led his raiders in as violent and uncompassionate a raid as Genghis Khan’s centuries earlier.

Thompson’s Charge went viral.  It was the energizing force behind the opposition to wokeness in the country.  It sent a clear and unequivocal message that standing up to intellectual louts and routing them from influence was not only was possible but certain.  

Most Americans had already had enough of the weakness of conservative politicians who rolled over like good doggies before their progressive masters.  They had had enough being told that they were trifles, insignificant warts and moles, descendants of White oppressive empires.  They had begun to see through the lionization of racial victimhood, recognize the significance of White European civilization and the importance of its legacy, and to realize the corrupt liberal anti-American revisionist Deconstructionism of latter day progressives for what it was.

It took only Thompson’s Charge to out this conservative frustration.  If progressives hadn’t meddled with the schools, they might have fooled many more adults into believing their fairy tales; but they were doctrinaire to the roots and knew, like Stalin and Pol Pot before them, that re-education begins with the young.

Thanks to Harold Thompson and his volunteer army – and of course thanks to his serious threats of lawsuits and endless litigation – the school board backed down; and although the curriculum was far from The Three R’s, it was academic, non-political, and serious.

Only time will tell if his Charge had gone viral enough to sensitize and energize other opponents to woke nonsense; but he at the very least provided a model for community activism.  A far cry from Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama in Chicago, it was conservative to the core.  It was not righteous like theirs, but right. 

“We learned about numbers today, Daddy”, little Lilly Thompson said to her father. “All kinds of numbers, even hard numbers”

Ahh, thought Harold, smiling, that’s something indeed.

The Sad Whiteness Of Joe Biden–“I Want To Be Black”

Bill Clinton said he was the first black president, and he indeed came as close as they come.  He loved fried chicken, collard greens, and the blues.  He loved hanging out with black men on the stoop, sharing stories about poontang and moonshine.  He liked the Reverend Al Sharpton, and the aging coterie of Martin Luther King.  He said that he felt for the plight of black people – it was a personal, emotional thing with him, not just a political one.  Even more than LBJ who did more for the black community than any president since Lincoln, Bill Clinton’s empathy was heartfelt.  He was moved to tears over a poor black child, fist-clenching angry over reports of lingering Jim Crow and continuing denial of black rights.  

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Black people loved him, apparently.  They loved his warmth and good-natured camaraderie, and felt that his friendship was above and beyond ‘the black vote’.  He was a friend to the black man, and they would never forget it at the polls. The fact that he drew the line at black women – his preferences were uniquely white – gave some blacks pause.  If he were really one of them, he would be courting their women.  Ordinarily black men were angered at white sexual trolling – for that was what it was, sexual adventurism which never amounted to anything; and worse, white men never settled for anything less than the high-toned, sassy, and best black women, emptying the gene pool of the best.  Yet, they forgave Clinton for his white women.  He meant well, but how could an Arkansas cracker ever get above high-gloss nail polish, tight skirts, and cheap beauty parlor hair?  He was as black as a white man could get, but still as white as an Easter lily.

Joe Biden in his private moments wanted to be even more black than Bill Clinton.  He wanted to truly breach the divide between black and white, make the racial promise of America reside in him.  He wanted to walk, talk, and act as black as the men whom he secretly admired.  He was no Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas fan.  They had been laundered, bleached, and whitened beyond recognition.  If you shut your eyes when they spoke, you would swear that they were white.  No, he wanted the true black experience, but didn’t know how to get it.

Of course, growing up in Delaware, he had no chance to associate with black people let alone become like them.   The 40s and 50sin Wilmington were still socially segregated; so he played ball with white classmates in white neighborhoods, went to a white church and white schools, and  never saw a black person except through the windows of the crosstown bus.  Bill Clinton’s South was a very different place.  While assumptions of racial inferiority persisted in the South – the legacy of slavery, Reconstruction legislatures packed with illiterate former slaves, and the autocracy of the Freedmen’s Bureaus lingered – it was far more integrated than the North ever was or could be.  In small towns of Mississippi white, middle class neighborhoods abut poor black ones; whites and blacks crisscross, greet each other, and are cordial; nothing like neo-apartheid Washington DC where east of the Park is all black, and west of it all white.  The races in Washington only meet in the federal government or at the DMV.

Bill Clinton came by his racial tolerance naturally.  It wasn’t necessarily that he thought blacks were equal to whites – such distinctions were never in play in the quiet corners of the South were both races were in their place – but that he knew that their overwhelming demographic proportions in the Southern states could mean victory for him.  To be fair, Clinton was a naturally, inherently social person.  He was always comfortable in a crowd, whatever its complexion.  It was just as easy for him to be with black people as white. Joe Biden, for all his Congressional gregariousness never had the personal intimacy of Clinton.  His smile was always fixed in place signaling bonhomie and welcome but little more; but such empty political camaraderie got him perennially reelected in his small state where everyone knew him.

The black ‘thing’ was therefore new to Biden.  For most of his political career he had supported liberal causes and civil rights was one of them; but unlike Clinton, he could never think black, nor even imagine any part of the black experience.  Despite his liberal political agenda and his longstanding progressive commitment to the black cause, he always felt removed – not exactly a poseur or dilettante, but far from the action.

Being Obama’s Vice President didn’t help at all.  To Obama’s credit he never went black, talked black, or acted ghetto.   He was half-white, educated in traditionally white schools, and was part of the Eastern Establishment elite.  The white electorate celebrated his presidential victory, hoping that his accession signaled the beginning of the end of racial tensions in America.  Of course they were as ignorant as Joe Biden about black inner city communities where persistent dysfunction, culture of entitlement, and lack of personal responsibility increased their segregation.   When blackness exploded in the form of radical, organized, angry demonstrations orchestrated by Black Lives Matter, these former moderate Obama supporters were surprised, frustrated, and not a little angry.  What did these people want?  They got a black president.

So, by the time Joe Biden sat in the White House, racial tensions and hostilities were at their height; and he, a good, lifelong progressive, wanted to put things right.  But he was not Clinton or Johnson, Southerners with an instinctive sense of race; and as much as he kept a political silence about the destructive rampages after the deaths of black men during police arrests, he was nonplussed.  As a child of the temperate, homogeneous, righteous, white 50s, for all his political solidarity, he couldn’t understand the chaos, nor the inner city culture from which it came.

No one who followed Biden’s career in political office every suggested that he was a leader.  He was at best a man of compromise, moderation, and good will – a dutiful follower, a responsible advocate for his constituents and little more.  The Vice Presidency was the perfect office for him.  It required nothing.

Unfortunately this sense of dutiful following and generous compromise coincided with diminished mental acuity.  He couldn’t quite frame an issue the way he used to, got confused when asked to sort through variables and proximate causes; and turned his affairs over to his Vice President.  Moreover she, being black herself, would certainly be able to calm the racial waters and by example show the young men of the inner city that they too could rise to power and prominence.  Of course she was just about as black as Condoleezza Rice, Obama, or Colin Powell,  and so was far removed from the inner city; but Biden was proud that he had selected her as a running mate and immediately put her out front with the black community.

Still, this didn’t do the trick for the President.  Thanks to the radical liberal leanings of the media and especially Hollywood, there were black actors, black-themed dramas, and racially charged scenarios far out of proportion to the small percentage of blacks in the population.  Any foreign visitor watching American prime time television would think that black people were at least fifty percent of the population, not the bit more than ten that they were.  The more Biden watched, the more he wanted to be black – authentically black, ghetto black, rap, pimped, bejeweled black.  How sad and sorry was his white-bread, prayerful, duty-bound, responsible life.  White privilege? Hell, no.  Whiteness was an unhappy lot.

Yet, now almost 80, he knew that he would always be just a black wannabee.  No hot, black women in his bed, no malt liquor on the stoop on hot summer nights, no spinners, pimped out rides, and fur coats.  It was a sorry consignment.  Worse, the whole White House thing looked like a charade.  He had plugged racial types into his Cabinet like pegs, entertained young black Congressional radicals with a smile, talked up Black Lives Matter, condemned systemic racism and championed Critical Race Theory; but felt he was a stick figure propped up in the middle of a bad soap opera.

In other words, he had been duped just like millions of other white liberals who were conned into thinking that whiteness was a bad thing, blackness was a higher good, and that radical racial reform – expunging and erasing America’s past; lionizing minority culture and dumping Socrates, the Sun King, and the Renaissance; dismantling capitalism and embracing a New Social World Order – was America’s future.

“Turn that music off!”, shouted Jill to Joe, snapping his fingers to Lil Uzi Vert. “I’m trying to sleep”.