Led by a media that is at once delusional and cynical—an eye-rolling combination—America is in the throes of a national madness.
Few are able to tell the truth—and when they do, they are attacked by the mob, not only in the street, but also in the board room.
Just the other day, talk show host Tucker Carlson opened his mouth about the well-documented dishonest origins (the lie about Michael Brown) of Black Lives Matter and sent advertisers skittering like so many scared rabbits.
You have the sensation that people across the country are hiding what they really think for fear of repercussions—retribution that will destroy their lives and livelihood.
And they’re not being stupid. It could—and has.
If Nathaniel Hawthorne were alive today, he could write a new masterpiece with faux racism as the offense warranting the scarlet letter, but no one would publish it, certainly not one of our mainstream publishers who would rather flunk their Wasserman tests.
Is this the way to run a democracy?
Of course not, but that’s where we are in America 2020, when putative “autonomous zones” are being set up across the land by groups espousing the overthrow of the U.S. government, violently or otherwise, under the guise of a brainless anarchism that Peter Kropotkin would never recognize.
We used to have restaurant pop-ups. Now, we have “autonomous zone” pop-ups.
Who knows how many of these bogus, supposedly self-governing—denizens of the Seattle zone are asking the public for supplies of Gatorade and body lotion, poor puppies—entities will be appearing in the next days? After I finish this article, I am headed down to one promised to appear in my own Nashville.
But I also have the sensation that something else is brewing—a more positive reaction. And a strong one.
A new silent majority is about to emerge, one far more sophisticated than the old Nixonian version and more sophisticated, too, than the BLM/Antifa fellow travelers in the Democratic Party and media.
They already have their harbingers, their heroes, the few swimming upstream against a tide seemingly as strong (for now anyway) as any Louisiana hurricane.
These are the real thought leaders, folks whose courage has also “popped up” and are providing examples for those hidden in their foxholes to come out and speak up.
Among those to come to the fore in recent days are the Hodge twins, two talented African American brothers with an antic sense of humor and the smarts to back it up. They have produced some clever videos, based on actual research, to dispel the myth that most cops are racist. Indeed, they show when it comes to those rare dirty cops, whites are just as much at risk as blacks.
Not surprisingly, black conservatives lead the pack in this emerging silent majority, none more importantly than Shelby Steele, whose aptly titled classic White Guilt does more to explain that madness around us than any work in recent memory.
Steele is suddenly “popping up” all over television. We are listening.
The redoubtable Thomas Sowell also is an inspiration. He tweeted this morsel of clarity yesterday: “Have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today?”
Apparently, we have. But it can’t stay that way for long. Change is coming. And nowhere more importantly than the academy, where the yahoos of Cornell Law School just exposed themselves in their unhinged attacks on their professor William Jacobson (“Legal Insurrection”), who had the temerity to point out the same BLM malfeasances Tucker Carlson did.
Needless to say, what Jacobson wrote was never attacked, only him personally. His colleagues are trying to get him fired—or should I say canceled—for wandering off their ultra-conformist reservation.
Meanwhile, UCLA has defecated on its academic reputation by suspending another harbinger, longtime accounting professor Gordon Klein for having the temerity, in his case, to treat black, white, and brown students alike when it came to grading. Klein claims he was a “sacrificial lamb” to placate “those who threaten to riot.” (Analysis: true.)
Have we reached the tipping point? These harbingers tell me it is approaching. The whole world may not be watching, but a large part of it is.
We will see soon enough. November is coming. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In this case, I wouldn’t bet against it breaking the laws of physics and being a bigger one.
Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Oscar-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His most recent books are “I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already” (non-fiction) and “The GOAT” (fiction).
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