Punditmas (known as Election Day by all you normies) is fast approaching, and today is the first day of Punditmas Advent, marked by the first debate of the year.
For all the millennials who care more about Kim & Kanye, Snapchat, or whatever is cool now than politics, a presidential debate is this thing that happens three times every election year where the two major candidates get on a stage and repeat fragments of their stump speeches, except this time they repeat them at each other rather than to crowds of adoring fans.
At least, that's how a presidential debate in any year but this year would look.
I honestly have no idea what to expect tonight. Does Donald Trump come out swinging, like the unhinged drunken master we saw in the Republican debates, and pummel "Crooked Hillary" with various insults about her health and proficiency at emailing things? Or does he sit back and strike a more measured tone, as we've seen him briefly do several times in the last few weeks? Does Hillary Clinton project calm and bait Trump into making a rhetorical fool of himself, or does she get out the shrill attack-dog voice and berate Trump for being "racist, sexist, homophobic," and any other vaguely SJW-sounding insults she can muster?
I don't know. What I do know is that this debate will be all about the people on the stage, and not about their policy. And that's a shame.
In an era where protests in American cities easily boil over into riots, where Christians and innocents are slaughtered by the thousands by a nation of radical Islamic terrorists, and where uncertainty and insecurity about our world are daily realities, America needs a true leader. Someone who realizes that this election is not about them, but about America's future; someone who can bring our people together rather than push us further apart. That leader will not be debating tonight, and as far as I can tell, that leader is not running for president. So I won't be voting for either of the people on stage.
Perhaps I'm an idealist, you think. Maybe I don't realize that my vote counts. The Trump Train will shriek: "If you don't vote Trump, you're voting for a crooked habitual liar named Hillary!" Clinton's various surrogates will yell: "If you don't vote Clinton, you're voting for a racist self-obsessed dumpster fire named Trump!" If I think that neither of these caricatures are entirely correct, and that the choice isn't as binary as both of these camps think, does that make me naive or realistic?
What I know is that my vote is an expression of my desire for this country's direction. I want America to be a place where limited government, free markets, and common respect rule the day. What I do not want is an America where we pick our candidates like finalists on a reality TV show. I'm tired of the endless hype and histrionics.
Most of all, though, I am tired of arguing with those who believe this election has some sort of apocalyptic significance. On the day after Election Day, we will probably get up and go about our lives just like any other day. The media will have a new toy to play with in the form of our next President-Elect - I did nickname Election Day PUNDITmas, after all - but the American people will be the losers. We will be farther apart than before, no better off than before, and will have four more years of partisan bickering to look forward to. It's sad.
The best we can do is to pray. Pray for our nation's direction. Pray for our next president, whoever he or she might be. And most importantly, pray for a new Great Awakening. As Augustine said, "our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee."
Monday, September 26, 2016
Thursday, September 15, 2016
What Do The Anthem Kneelers Want?
By now you've probably heard about the fact that a bunch of prominent athletes are kneeling, sitting down, or otherwise refusing to stand with their hand over their heart for the national anthem. I think the motivation for this is #BlackLivesMatter based on the statements of Colin Kaepernick and Adam Jones, though according to Megan Rapinoe, she's doing it because she feels it's right in her heart and she somehow thinks it honors the country.
Whatever the motivation, I don't necessarily have a problem with these displays of dissatisfaction. My question is broader.
What do the "anthem kneelers" want? What will satisfy them?
Do they have a specific thing they want to see change, something concrete, achievable? Or is it just a vague, nebulous sense of "injustice," a feeling that something is not right and needs to change, without a clear "how?"
I suspect strongly that it is the latter, which makes their protest somewhat pointless. Sit-ins at lunch counters, for instance, had a point: black people were literally being separated from society, forced into an underclass. The Boston Tea Party didn't happen because a bunch of colonists thought the British were just being "unfair." They had a concrete complaint: don't tax us without allowing us to represent ourselves in Parliament. So they dumped a symbol of that taxation into the harbor.
#BlackLivesMatter, in its most straightforward form, has a point too. They claim that police use excessive force against black people because they are black. They want law enforcement to be equal in their enforcement. If the facts are as #BlackLivesMatter claim – something which I choose not to debate here – this is a worthy goal.
I'm just not sure how refusing to stand for the national anthem relates to unequal enforcement of local laws by local police officers. The federal government didn't kill Freddie Gray. In fact, they investigated the police department who hired the officers that were with Mr. Gray when he died.
Maybe it's Kaepernick's frustrations with Donald Trump's stance on immigration and Islam that lead him to kneel. If that's it, Colin, we agree that Trump's positions smack of racism, or at least that they can be easily twisted in that direction. But Trump's views are not the country's views. Far from it.
Even if Trump's views were that of the country, what would lead Kaepernick et al to stop kneeling? What if we banished Trump from our country, and every one of the white supremacists who happen to support him? What if we replaced every cop in Baltimore, in Ferguson, in Baton Rouge, in New York? Would that be enough? I suspect not. "Deadly" unconscious racism would remain, because believing that people that are different than you are lesser than you is a human flaw as old as the human race.
Humanity's baked-in tendency to treat other people unequally for meritless reasons is the reason for the law. Enforcement of the law will never be perfect, because people enforce the law, and people are far from perfect. As the Father of the Constitution James Madison said in Federalist 51:
So to the "anthem kneelers," feel free to express your dissatisfaction with whatever it is you're dissatisfied with. You have that right in America, the land of the free. I have the right to continue to be bewildered by your methods and motives.
Whatever the motivation, I don't necessarily have a problem with these displays of dissatisfaction. My question is broader.
What do the "anthem kneelers" want? What will satisfy them?
Do they have a specific thing they want to see change, something concrete, achievable? Or is it just a vague, nebulous sense of "injustice," a feeling that something is not right and needs to change, without a clear "how?"
I suspect strongly that it is the latter, which makes their protest somewhat pointless. Sit-ins at lunch counters, for instance, had a point: black people were literally being separated from society, forced into an underclass. The Boston Tea Party didn't happen because a bunch of colonists thought the British were just being "unfair." They had a concrete complaint: don't tax us without allowing us to represent ourselves in Parliament. So they dumped a symbol of that taxation into the harbor.
#BlackLivesMatter, in its most straightforward form, has a point too. They claim that police use excessive force against black people because they are black. They want law enforcement to be equal in their enforcement. If the facts are as #BlackLivesMatter claim – something which I choose not to debate here – this is a worthy goal.
I'm just not sure how refusing to stand for the national anthem relates to unequal enforcement of local laws by local police officers. The federal government didn't kill Freddie Gray. In fact, they investigated the police department who hired the officers that were with Mr. Gray when he died.
Maybe it's Kaepernick's frustrations with Donald Trump's stance on immigration and Islam that lead him to kneel. If that's it, Colin, we agree that Trump's positions smack of racism, or at least that they can be easily twisted in that direction. But Trump's views are not the country's views. Far from it.
Even if Trump's views were that of the country, what would lead Kaepernick et al to stop kneeling? What if we banished Trump from our country, and every one of the white supremacists who happen to support him? What if we replaced every cop in Baltimore, in Ferguson, in Baton Rouge, in New York? Would that be enough? I suspect not. "Deadly" unconscious racism would remain, because believing that people that are different than you are lesser than you is a human flaw as old as the human race.
Humanity's baked-in tendency to treat other people unequally for meritless reasons is the reason for the law. Enforcement of the law will never be perfect, because people enforce the law, and people are far from perfect. As the Father of the Constitution James Madison said in Federalist 51:
But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. . . . In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.As imperfect beings, we can only do our best to improve the law, while knowing we will never reach absolute utopia.
So to the "anthem kneelers," feel free to express your dissatisfaction with whatever it is you're dissatisfied with. You have that right in America, the land of the free. I have the right to continue to be bewildered by your methods and motives.
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