Reality Check 101

Some lives matter more – or – “Black, brown & blue; red, yellow and white; we are all precious in His sight” (to use a revised children’s rime).  In the current pandemic of sensationalism and raw emotion seeming to overpower rationality on a large scale, which will rule the future? 

There is not a living responsible adult within the 50 states that is not aware of the massive powers at work within our nation attempting to rip us apart from the inside out.  The loudest voices of ANTIFA and the Black Lives Matter movement, are only parts of the competing powers struggling to gain the upper hand into the future of America’s heart.  It is that essence of America that drives and steers our political, judicial, cultural, and ethical structures.  Commandeer that national spirit and the rest will topple.

How did the United States of America, the most successful, most uniquely governed, most diverse nation ever established in the history of the world, after the horror of civil war and the crucible of hard-fought civil rights, allow herself to be deceived and overrun by the second-most powerful racist ideologies since slavery and the Jim Crow South?  How, after all of her struggles, reaching the apex of Martin Luther King Jr.’s leadership, has she sunk into an abyss of all thing anathema to him?

In a few words, it is the narcissism of tribalism, “Intersectionality”, and “Wokeness”.  The vacuum created by King’s assassination was filled, and still is, by cunning weaponization of natural but base human impulses; class and racial envy, egoism over humility, melatonin over personhood, victimology over contribution, grudge-bearing over forgiveness, and anger over peace.

Anyone who watches and listens intentionally to news from any source at all or takes advantage of information from social media, will be able to understand the actions and words of progressivism and the Left.  It does not matter if the sources are reporters, politicians, bureaucrats, college students or demonstrators on the street. For these folks, society gives justice its meaning and its power.  The standards and application of justice are rooted in the power of their demands and change as the fabric of society yields to new and ever-shifting grievances and developing popular standards.

“Intersectional” justice determines the value of one’s grievance base on how many layers of disadvantage or felt victimhood a person can claim.  The demands of justice for a successful straight white male, pale to near insignificance in comparison to that of a poor Black female member of the LGBTQIA community. “Woke” justice pre-determines blood-guilt [bearing in the sins of your ancestors] or innocence based on one’s genetic skin color and racial heritage.  To deny white privilege is to declare one’s guilt, but if he or she confesses it, they gain only the responsibility of penance and the lifelong burden of their racial shame.

Those carry the very essence of establishing a new “systemic racism” and, I might add, a new systemic anti-authoritarianism.  It all sounds so reasonable – (What’s next for Black advocacy in Holland) get into public schools, cut law enforcement budgets even in small peaceful cities such as Holland, Michigan by “5% to 10%”; equivocate “white…wealth” against inner city poverty; most egregious of all, pervert Martin Luther King’s highest ideal, “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” (28 August in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) into “If you don’t see my color, you don’t see me”.

The other side of the coin could not be more different.  The justice system on which America was founded and is reflected in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Federalist Papers, rests on the existence of standards outside of and superior to, the self-aggrandizements of tribalism, intersectionality, and wokeness or the fickleness of society.  Without those anchors, a truly just society cannot survive. 

Calvin Beisner has summed it up in his paper “Social Justice: How good Intentions Undermine Justice and Gospel”.  To use Beisner’s words, “Justice requires impartiality, an equal application of all relevant rules to all people in all relevant situations”.  In the eyes of Madame Justice, the application favored status, no matter one’s circumstances or the look of their shell is anathema.  And, if such offences are discovered, that external standard is exactly what provides true justice. 

Beisner also writes, “Justice requires proportionality, symmetry between the initial act…and the rewards or punishments”.  To use a colloquialism, “if you didn’t do the crime, you don’t do the time”.  Whiteness doesn’t create guilt any more than Blackness creates failure.  Being a police officer does not create abuse any more than being a firefighter creates an arsonist.