Still Winning : Our Last Hope to Be Great Again (9781546085287)

by Hurt, Charles

  The images on television were even more discouraging. Full-fledged riots broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore during President Obama’s second term. Both were in response to police action against black suspects.

  In Ferguson, a white police officer shot a black man after the man lunged into his squad car and tried to grab the officer’s gun. Among Democrat politicians in Washington, this aggressive move from a guy who had just roughed up a store clerk and stolen a box of cigars became known as “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” Among the ringleaders of this gross distortion was Sharpton himself. Democrat politicians in Washington were right behind him ready to pour more gasoline on the fire. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus—a segregated club in Congress—took to the House floor with their hands up and gave speeches in solidarity with the thug who assaulted the officer and appeared to have been trying to murder him.

  In the midst of the riots, President Obama dispatched his attorney general, Eric Holder, to the scene. Al Sharpton was already there. Naturally, Holder launched a Justice Department investigation into the police department. Despite all the political hysteria, a grand jury of Missouri citizens later determined that the officer did nothing wrong and acted in self-defense. The subsequent federal investigations found that the black suspect had neither put his “hands up” nor even said “don’t shoot.” The Department of Justice determined that the officer acted lawfully and was merely defending his own life.

  Democrat politicians take pride in being the party of so-called racial identity politics, claiming it is important to represent each group of disenfranchised victims. They run campaigns overtly designed to fragment voters into camps based on race, gender, religion—anything they can find to divide people—and then pit them all against one another in an election.

  Remember the Republican so-called war on women? Or Hillary Clinton’s ridiculous “I’m with her” campaign motto? President Obama’s “wise Latina” Supreme Court justice? In truth, all of it is racial or gender profiling, something they claim to be vehemently opposed to. In any other business it would be called what it really is: racism.

  There are two reasons Democrats wage this kind of overt racial politics.

  First, it is extremely effective. There is no more potent weapon in politics today than to accuse your opponent of being racist. It not only destroys your enemy, it silences him. Professional Republicans live in terror of being called racist. Often, such as in the case of illegal immigration, Republicans will vacate the battlefield of an important issue even before Democrats have trundled out their tired old “racist” weapon.

  This is also why Democrat politicians like to racialize every issue. If they can make it about race, then they automatically hold the upper hand, especially against timid Republican politicians. Again, consider illegal immigration.

  It is why they even racialize crime. Especially crime. All they need is a black defendant and they can make the whole thing about race. And, of course, the media dutifully follows right along.

  There is a second reason Democrat politicians are so wedded to racial politics. By making everything about race, they avoid any debate or scrutiny about the actual policies they are pushing on the people they claim to care so much about. It is why they make everything from housing to poverty rates to crime all about race. Because if all these problems are not caused by race, then perhaps they are caused by all the policies that have been put in place by the Democrat politicians.

  The idea, for example, that black-on-black crime in cities run entirely by Democrats is somehow evidence of racism is simply a lie. That is not to say it is not a terrifying problem. It is. It’s just not racism.

  Barack Obama certainly did not invent racial politics. But he sure exacerbated it during his eight years in office.

  The riots in Missouri were so bad and bled so deeply into the fabric of America that people began talking about the “Ferguson effect.” It was all a result of Democrat politicians trying to politicize an awful criminal situation for political gain. It instilled widespread disrespect for police, which in turn caused police officers to question how effectively they really should be doing their jobs. Why arrest someone if it risks your winding up being accused of murder? Or even worse, a racially-motivated murder?

  This was never more evident than when riots broke out in Baltimore the following year when a black suspect died after a bumpy ride in the back of a police van. Amid the fires and mayhem, six Baltimore cops were arrested, including three black cops. After all the Democrat politicians were done making as much political hay as they could out of the tragic situation, cooler heads prevailed. All the cops were either acquitted or all charges dropped.

  The “Ferguson effect” also thrust the so-called Black Lives Matter movement onto the national political stage. At its best, the movement highlights the real tragedy going on in American cities today, where alarming numbers of black men are violently killed every year. But even this, in the hands of Democrat politicians, gets weaponized into something racial, as if racism were somehow killing all these people.

  Democrat fixation on the racial politics of crime was never more awkwardly obvious than when Hillary Clinton—running for the Democrat nomination in 2016—spoke at a black church. She told a story about a lesson she learned from her mother about treating people kindly. Clinton concluded by declaring that “all lives matter.”

  This drew immediate groans from people sitting inside Christ the King United Church of Christ. Making Clinton’s offense even worse, the church she was visiting was just a few miles from Ferguson, Missouri, where the black suspect killed by a cop had (not) put his hands up and had (not) said, “Don’t shoot!”

  By the time Clinton’s comment made the political rounds, she and her campaign were in pure meltdown. There was only one thing to do: bow at the altar of racial politics. She later issued a correction and declared that, in fact, all lives don’t matter. “Black Lives Matter.”

  Meanwhile, over in the Republican primary, something else had taken center stage. His name was Donald Trump. And, unlike just about anybody in politics—especially Republican politicians—he couldn’t give a rat’s ass if you called him a racist, or anything else. Not that he is remotely racist or condones any form of racism.

  As he himself told one interviewer: “I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed—that I can tell you.”

  Trump just doesn’t care that his enemies try to hurt him by accusing him of racism. He is simply impervious to the all-powerful “racist” weapon that Democrats have been deploying for so long against anybody they want to destroy or silence.

  Illegal aliens from Mexico who are “rapists.” The “Muslim ban.” Third-world countries Trump calls “shitholes.” For Democrats—and the dutiful media—this was all resounding evidence that Trump is a racist. Of course, most rational thinking Americans do not believe this. They heard the same things and thought Trump was talking about illegal immigration, radical Islamic terrorism, and third-world countries. And people roared their approval of a guy in the public spotlight who finally stood up to the race bullies and said Enough!

  Early in the Republican primary, the media tried pinning white supremacist David Duke to Donald Trump, demanding that Trump “disavow” Duke after Duke made positive comments about Donald Trump.

  Why CNN would hang around listening to a racist like David Duke is a mystery and would bear investigation by the Southern Poverty Law Center if they themselves were not such a corrupt organization. Anyway, CNN’s Jake Tapper was demanding that Trump declare independence from David Duke.

  “Honestly, I don’t know David Duke. I don’t believe I’ve ever met him. I’m pretty sure I didn’t meet him and I just don’t know anything about him,” Trump responded.

  Trigger media meltdown. Trump was not finished.

  “I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So, I don’t know. I don’t know—did he endorse me or what’s going
on? Because I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists.”

  To the media, this just proved Trump really was a racist. But to regular people, it actually proved that for the first time, a guy stood up to the race bullies and refused to play along with their racist little games. Trump would not even agree to the terms of discussion Jake Tapper laid out.

  Even more enraging for the media, Trump gallingly offered to do some research and get back to them. He would look up David Duke and whatever group he supposedly represents that no decent person has ever heard of.

  “I’d have to look,” Trump said, pretending to be helpful. “If you would send me a list of the groups, I will do research on them and certainly I would disavow if I thought there was something wrong.”

  Not only is Donald Trump a racist, the media concluded, he is a lying racist. All because he refused to play along with their perverted games. The evidence that he was lying came in the form of a statement back in 2000 that Trump had made to the New York Times. Explaining why he quit the Reform Party, Trump noted the membership of David Duke, “a Klansman.”

  Ah-hah! This proved that Donald Trump, in fact, did know who David Duke is and lied about it!

  No, actually, it simply proved that Trump was not about to play some reporters’ twisted game geared to smear Trump as some kind of racist. It only proved that Trump publicly quit the Reform Party because he did not want to be associated with “a Klansman,” which seems like a fairly unracist move.

  As the media was breaking out in hives over Trump’s obvious racism, voters were breaking out in cheers that somebody was finally standing up to the race bullies.

  As the record shows, the media went straight to calling Trump a racist right out of the gate. They screamed it again. They screamed it more. They screamed it about everything.

  And, yet, Trump persisted.

  Donald Trump refused to lie down, defeated by their accusations. Democrats and the media had never seen anyone impervious to this—their most powerful weapon. Nobody in politics had survived even one of these circuses. But Donald Trump just kept on going. Soon enough, Democrat politicians and the media decided to circle back and try reinventing their weapon with updated terminology and more complex explanations for why and how everything Donald Trump said and did was racist.

  He is a “white nationalist.” Okay, we might be onto something here. Trump is definitely a “nationalist.” And he is “white.” So, you know, okay, Donald Trump is a white nationalist.

  Well, they ventured, if he is a “white nationalist,” then that means he is part of the “alt-right.”

  What? What the hell is the “alt-right”? Turns out the “alt-right” is yet another term made to accuse someone of being racist in cases where there is no evidence whatsoever of the person actually being racist.

  When all else failed, they accused Trump of playing racist “dog whistle” politics, meaning that he is secretly sending secret messages to secret voters that—like a dog whistle—cannot be heard by the regular human ear.

  Oh. My. Goodness. These people keep getting dumber and dumber. If there is just one thing you learn about Donald Trump, it should be this: Donald Trump does not do “dog whistle.” There is nothing “dog whistle” about him. Donald Trump is a straight “bullhorn” kind of guy. He says what he is thinking, completely unfiltered. There is nothing silent about his blunt message.

  All of the attempts to smear Donald Trump as a racist fell flat. It was all a giant waste of time and verbiage. Even with all the new words and terms, Donald Trump still did not care that Democrat politicians and their handmaidens in the media were hell-bent on sliming him as a racist.

  He just kept motoring on and people cheered him all the way.

  Probably the most painful moment of the Trump presidency was that haunted weekend in the late summer of 2017 in which an innocent woman was killed when she was run over by some racist nut from Ohio who drove his car into a crowd in downtown Charlottesville.

  It was painful because a young woman got killed. Two Virginia state troopers trying to keep the peace also died that weekend when their helicopter crashed. Painful, too, was the bullhorn that got handed to a bunch of racists spewing their hateful nonsense. And, as always happens in these situations, the whole thing got distorted and politicized beyond recognition by Democrat politicians and the media.

  For decades now, Virginians have debated Confederate monuments. We have done so peacefully. Everybody gets together. Everybody says their piece. Sometimes people get a little worked up. But people do not normally come to blows over the monuments to the Confederacy.

  Sometimes the monuments are taken down or moved elsewhere. Sometimes names get changed or monuments are altered. Sometimes they just remain. It is a tricky balance between people venerating their brave ancestors and being respectful of fellow Virginians who might take offense at the memory of such a painful history.

  It bears noting that many of the people involved in the Charlottesville fiasco were, of course, not from Virginia.

  But it all began innocently enough as a debate over the statue of Robert E. Lee in what was then called Emancipation Park in Charlottesville. Previously, the park had been known as Lee Park until the city council voted that summer to change the name. Still being decided was what to do with the statue of the great Confederate general that graces the park. Like many Confederate statues, it was cast and erected in the early 1900s after the South had begun to recover from the economic ruins of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

  Like many statues around the state of Virginia, this one had been a topic of increasing debate in recent decades. I have witnessed these debates as a citizen. I have covered them as a reporter. And I have witnessed them as a consumer of the media. And I can tell you with all certainty that, indeed, there are good people on both sides of these debates. Sure, there are nasty people, too. There are nasty people on both sides. But there are certainly good people on both sides.

  As soon as the media gets involved and the politicians start to feast, all truth and sanity goes right out the window. Early on when Trump’s critics could not make their “racist” weapon work against Trump, they invented new words and terms to try smearing him. “Alt-right.” “White nationalist.” But these did not stick, either.

  “I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed—that I can tell you,” Trump said more than once.

  Whenever the Great White Media descends on some town in the South to cover a fracas about a Confederate flag or some monument, they glom on to another invented term, designed to smear and denigrate as racist good people for whom there is no actual evidence that they are racist.

  “Neo-Confederate.”

  What in the ever-living hell is a “neo-Confederate”? Someone riding around out there in 2019 on a horse in the Shenandoah Valley killing Yankees who venture south down Interstate 81? Or, is it someone who tends to his great-grandfather’s grave who died in the Civil War? Is it someone who studies the Civil War? Or is it someone who marches around in Confederate garb terrorizing people trying to sleep at night? Or is it someone who is such an enthusiast of the Civil War battles that occurred in his backyard that he takes part in reenactments of those battles? Or is it some toothless yahoo who rides around in his pickup truck looking for people to lynch? Or is it someone who has books about the Civil War on his book shelf?

  Well, I am not personally an expert on the term “neo-Confederate,” but I have seen it used plenty. And I can assure you that it is an entirely weaponized term used by the media to tarnish as racist all the good people who defend the monuments and revere their ancestors and by happenstance were born in the South.

  Donald Trump is the first person to come along in a very long time to give these good people a voice. They are tired of the media distortions about Confederate monuments. They are tired of Democrat politicians trying to racialize everything for partisan political gain. Yet nobody, until a brash-talking Yankee real estate developer from Quee
ns came along, had stuck up for these good people and stared down the race bullies.

  So, when asked about the horrific events in Charlottesville, Trump blamed “both sides” for the eruption of violence. This should not have been particularly controversial. In fact, people on “both sides” have since been convicted in court for the violence.

  President Trump specifically noted that “you had some very bad people” stirring up violence among those in favor of keeping the Lee statue. But President Trump was not about to allow those racist little miscreants to snuff out the voices of many good Virginians who have always defended the Confederate statues.

  “You also had people that were very fine people on both sides,” he said.

  Which was entirely true. And equally brave to say.

  Since the senseless tragedy in Charlottesville, the media and Democrat politicians have only grown nuttier and nuttier when it comes to their efforts to portray President Trump and all his supporters as unreconstructed racists.

  They seemed almost delighted when the FBI announced that it had arrested an avowed white supremacist from Maryland for hoarding guns and drugs and who had been plotting a terroristic attack against a list of Democrat politicians and key figures of the left-wing media. But they were not so much delighted that a bad guy had been taken off the streets. Rather, they were delighted that since he had been targeting Democrats, his case would fit neatly into their narrative that, well, Donald Trump is a racist.

  One of the more shocking observations came from former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, an advanced sufferer of Trump Derangement Syndrome. In an interview, Steele actually stated that Trump was “probably not happy” that the FBI had stopped a white nationalist from killing a bunch of liberals and media people.

  Yikes.

  Even stupid stuff becomes supposed proof of Trump’s racism.