DougRoss

Since that time one party, the Republicans, in its befuddled and often frustrating way, has continued to represent at least some semblance of a cogent set of ideals and practical political arrangements.

The Democrats, no longer an actual political party as we commonly understand the term, has devolved into a rabid alliance of grievance mongers more concerned with getting federal loot than they are in the welfare of the nation as a whole.

We won’t count the Libertarian Party, because really . . . who does?

The Democrats have achieved this status by cleverly exploiting the resentment and bitterness of groups that at one time had bona fide grievances with American society. To name two, blacks and women.

Of course, African Americans and women have gotten raw deals in the past. But it’s also the case that both groups have seen many unfair biases wither away, more as a result of gradual societal edification and maturation than of government intervention. That is not enough for the gripe groupies. It never could be.

They pursue a successful two-track strategy of crying oppression to keep up loyalty to the cause while at the same time encouraging their clients to believe in equality of result, which is an impossible goal. When parity of results fails to occur (because it’s impossible) this in turn further fuels the resentment and bitterness that alights the grievance engines and enriches its engineers.

The ironic part is the Democrats largely have been effective in securing for their charges many of the unethical thumb-on-the-scales perks they once decried as racism and sexism when they applied to white males as recently as a generation ago.

The main cases bear examination.

The Origins of the Grievance Industry

Brought here in chains, their treatment will forever be a deep dark blotter in America’s copybook. After 300,000 Union dead to pay part of that debt to justice, Southern Democrats, serving their post-Confederate racist clients, imposed another century of Jim Crow to exacerbate the problems they faced and continued to hold blacks in yet another form of bondage. Yet black Americans persevered and steadily chipped away at the edifice of bigotry.

By the early 20th century, their advancing standards of education, their service in uniform, and their intact and strong family units paved the way for the softening and eventual general sentiment that such irrational hatreds ought to end. The Harlem Renaissance, jazz, and other achievements made their sterling mark on America. African Americans showed, in no uncertain terms, that they are, in fact, Americans.

Then, lo and behold, the New Deal Democrats, inspired by FDR, assaulted Washington, discovered the potential vote bonanza to be exploited in the latent and justifiable resentment of blacks still seething over past and current injustice. The Democrats stoked that fire from the 1930s until the 1950s and ’60s when, thanks to typical GOP fumbling of the ball with a once-reliable voting group, the fire became a conflagration that consumed all empirical evidence against it.

The stable black family and economic self-respect were also swallowed by the maelstrom grievance that ignored and failed to reward the amazing progress black Americans had achieved for themselves when simply presented with a fair shake. Instead of encouraging blacks who were the agents of their own success, the government led by Democrats, sought to make them clients of the state and to make them feel as though any success they achieved incurred a debt of loyalty to Democratic politicians..

The growing economic renaissance among the black middle-class was ignored and a picture of never-ending poverty was promulgated because that could stir anger and angry voters are more motivated to show up to the polls to reward politicians promising retribution. As other Americans cast off the ignorance that inspired their bigotry, Democrats continued to pretend the entire nation was in danger of reverting to Mississippi circa 1955. They advocated the acceptance of an alternate universe, where the gains of Martin Luther King, Jr., and other legitimate civil rights leaders amounted to empty rhetoric.

This attitude rationalized policies that kept blacks and other minorities in a state of dependence on Democrats but at a cost for the country. In the end, it just substituted one virulent form of bigotry for the one it promised to eradicate. Black Lives Matter and the Klan are just two sides of the same coin.

The aggressive and petulant template was perfected and the grievance machine chugged along, turning a political party into a mere vehicle for exploitation of clients for votes.

How did Democrats pull this off? Well, hate is easy. Real advancement can be hard. Hate blames another. Success focuses on self-improvement and goals met.

Stoking Female Grievance

Women in America, though never quite bearing the weight of subjugation in the same way blacks did, faced significant hurdles to equal treatment under the law and economic opportunity.

The aesthetically pleasing Donna Reed aside, second wave feminist leaders such as Betty Friedan could strike a nerve with the country because they had a point. In pushing for cultural, legal, and economic equality of opportunity for women that allowed them to flourish as free citizens without irrational hurdles, there could be no serious opposition. Certainly by the 1980s, however, much of that agenda had already been brought to fruition.

Not good enough for arid third wave feminists and their Democratic patrons who now opine that the “patriarchy” is the devil to be resisted at all costs, lest women fall into the abject slavery of “The Handmaid’s Tale” come to life.

One does not require the eloquence of a Camille Paglia or a Jordan Peterson to shoot that argument down as easily as a grouse in early August. But then, the weaker sex was never really weak at all.

Do all women vote for that nonsense? Certainly not. Republicans regularly draw a majority of the female vote in statewide and national elections. In centers of cultural influence like newsrooms and faculty lounges, however, the Thought Police is hard at work to ensure conformity of mind and application, especially with young single women.

Advertising, marketing, and pop culture blare the feminine victimization trope as if it were a badge of honor, paying no heed to the myriad benefits women receive in education and the job market. To a lesser degree the same holds true of gays. It is hard to claim social oppression when you’re getting standing ovations at the Tony Awards.

That said, we should give the Democratic Party the cynical credit it is due. Unlike other more gullible citizens, it recognizes the fallen state of man not so much as a theological concept, but as a cow to be milked for their benefit. Democrats understand that in all groups and in all places at all times, there will be those who curse the darkness and refuse to recognize the noonday sun.

As long as there are such among us willing to be exploited in this way, there will be modern Democrats and their fellow travelers to take full advantage of them and their willingness to be serfs in exchange for “revenge.” Democrats don’t advance this system as a political party in the traditional American sense, though they appear on ballots as such. They achieve their victories as a collector of absurd malcontents, a harvester of make believe ills, appealing always to the lowest common denominator in mankind: that of spite.

That’s not a political party. It’s a long-term tantrum.

To end this tyranny over the human spirit, they must be fought as aggressively as they are willing to fight us in the twilight struggle that is the price of liberty.

HUMA SAYS DIDN'T RECALL THAT HILLARY'S EMAIL SERVER HAD BEEN HACKED

NEW EMAILS SHOW HUMA WARNING THAT HILLARY'S SERVER HAD BEEN HACKED

To say that Fuller came from “humble beginnings” is a bit of an understatement. He was born into a family of Louisiana sharecroppers who were so poor that he had to drop out of school to work in the sixth grade. But he also displayed an entrepreneurial spirit from a very young age. The young Master Fuller was going door to door selling products at the age of nine.

When he was 15, his family moved to Nashville. It was here that his mother passed away two years later, leaving Fuller in charge of his six siblings. Relief organizations came by to offer assistance, but Fuller turned them down because he didn’t want his neighbors to think his family couldn’t make it without handouts. It was then that he and his siblings made the decision that they were going to make it on their own without any external help.

From Poverty to Multi-Million-Dollar Empire

Using a $25 loan he obtained by using his car as a security deposit (about $375 in 2019 money), he started his own business. With his future wife Lestine Thornton, he purchased a soap load with this money, selling it door to door. He was so successful in this endeavor that he invested another $1,000 in the enterprise. His customer base were largely newly arrived black families on the South Side of Chicago, who had arrived as part of the first Great Migration. This was an underserved community and in them, Fuller saw a potential gold mine. He was promoted to manager at Commonwealth while growing his own business to include a line of 30 products, as well as other salesmen.

In 1939, Fuller opened his own factory. In 1947, he saved his supplier from going under by purchasing it. He used his newly acquired capital to sell everything under the sun, from deodorant to suits. He purchased black newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Courier and the New York Age. In Chicago, his footprint loomed large, especially after he purchased the Chicago Regal Theater and the South Center Department Store.

Fuller was a staunch Republican, albeit a bit of an anachronistic one and with a firm independent streak about him. He was the head of the South Side NAACP and at the height of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, he had a novel and innovative solution: Fuller knew that the bus company was hemorrhaging money due to the boycott and other factors. He proposed winning the boycott by buying the bus line and integrating it. This was part of his entire philosophy about how to end segregation in the South and discrimination in the north: black achievement, not government intervention.

No one is quite sure, but it’s very possible that Fuller was the richest black American throughout the 1950s. His cosmetics company alone was bringing in $18 million annually in 1950 dollars (over $170 million in 2019 dollars). His sales team included over 5,000 members, a third of whom were white. He became the first black man inducted into the National Association of Manufacturers in 1963.

His comment at his induction ceremony that "a lack of understanding of the capitalist system and not racial barriers was keeping blacks from making progress” combined with an interview in U.S. News and World Report where he stated that "Negroes are not discriminated against because of the color of their skin. They are discriminated against because they have not anything to offer that people want to buy” caused some black leaders to call for a boycott of Fuller products. The boycotts were largely unsuccessful, but his reputation was quite tarnished in the black community.

A Legacy of Black Self-Reliance

Indeed, it was his zeal for unregulated capitalism that was ultimately his undoing. In 1968, he was charged with violating the Federal Securities Act after he sold unregistered promissory notes. His company went into bankruptcy in 1971. There was some upward motion after this, but Fuller Products never attained its previous levels of success.

In 1976, Fuller retired due to health problems. In 1988, he died due to kidney failure. His widow estimated that he helped thousands of people to get their start in business.

The legacy of S.B. Fuller is an important one because it is from such a different time in American history, one where the black community was much more ascendant and optimistic. Fuller struck a path that showed that reliance upon both private charity and government fiat was not necessary for the black community to begin achieving parity with their white counterparts. It is unfortunate that the prevailing political winds of the day eschew even the very notion of black achievement.

Though perhaps political prevailing winds and majorities are not important. Fuller would certainly have been familiar with the concept of the “Talented Tenth,” first enumerated by W.E.B. DuBois in his book of the same name. This identifies a leadership class in the black community – approximately 10 percent – who can act as social, economic and political capital lifting up the entire community.

Those looking to Fuller as their example for how to build a talented tenth could do no better. He stands firmly in the American tradition of black self-reliance.

Without naming names, Barr hinted that former top officials may have abused their power by violating department protocols to launch an unprecedented counterintelligence probe into a political rival.

“These counter-intelligence activities that were directed at the Trump Campaign were not done in the normal course and not through the normal procedures as a far as I can tell,” Barr told CBS News’ legal analyst Jan Crawford. “And a lot of the people who were involved are no longer there.”

Barr added that the questionable activities were “undertaken by a small group at the top,” not rank-and-file FBI agents.

This would refer to former FBI Director James Comey and his high-level deputies including Andrew McCabe, James Baker, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok.

Both Comey and McCabe verified the official application presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to seek authorization to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page; the warrant cited political propaganda and news reports sourced from the so-called Steele dossier as evidence.

Baker, the former general counsel, also is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation for illegally leaking government information.

When pressed to explain why domestic sabotage of a presidential campaign is as damaging as interference by an international foe, Barr compared the internal efforts to those of ancient Roman bodyguards.

“Republics have fallen because of Praetorian Guard mentality where government officials get very arrogant, they identify the national interest with their own political preferences and they feel that anyone who has a different opinion, you know, is somehow an enemy of the state,” he said.

Barr warned that the use of federal powers originally intended to detect foreign enemies but instead used against an American political campaign represents “a serious red line that’s been crossed.”

Earlier this month, Barr appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to head up an investigation into the origins of the Trump campaign probe. The Justice Department’s Inspector General also is conducting a review of potential FISA abuse related to the surveillance of Page. President Trump recently authorized the declassification of key government documents in order to facilitate the inquiries.

Barr, who served as the attorney general for President George H.W. Bush, takes his mission personally. “From my perspective the idea of resisting a democratically elected president and basically throwing everything at him and you know, really changing the norms on the grounds that we have to stop this president, that is where the shredding of our norms and our institutions is occurring,” Barr said.

And in what should make people like Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan very nervous, Barr confirmed that all intelligence agencies are cooperating.