September 3, 2020
Rapid City, South Dakota
After having visited 120+ countries on all seven continents, and dozens of states across the US, it’s a pretty rare event these days that I travel somewhere I’ve never been before.
I’m pretty weak in the South Pacific—I’ve never been to Tahiti or Bora Bora… nor central Africa, like the Democratic Republic of Congo.
But most of the rest of the world I have covered.
One blank spot on my US travel map was South Dakota… until yesterday afternoon.
I knew back in July that I would have to make a trip… primarily to see Mount Rushmore before the Bolsheviks cancel it.
Sadly I’m only half-kidding.
I almost never watch TV anymore. But I happened to be flipping through channels on the afternoon of Friday, July 3rd and saw a reporter from the Communist News Network describing Mount Rushmore as “a monument of two slave owners on land wrestled away from Native Americans.”
And that pretty well sums up the national hysteria right now.
(Meanwhile, on the right side of the screen, CNN had its real-time Covid statistics to continue stoking fear and paranoia. And that single clip tells you everything you need to know about mainstream media.)
Then, just this week in Washington DC, the local government released a report of 153 properties across the city—schools, parks, monuments– that should be renamed because they’re presently named after a “person of concern.”
The report was authored by a special committee established by Washington DC’s mayor, which was tasked with identifying monuments that have “disqualifying histories”.
This includes people like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and dozens of others.
The findings are so absurd that the DC committee even recommended to “remove, relocate, or contextualize” the Washington Monument.
“Contextualize” means adding the opposing context… so the Washington Monument would include a sign or plaque that explains how George Washington owned slaves.
Great. But why don’t we contextualize everything?
How is it that peaceful protestors and their champion politicians are allowed to paint “Black Lives Matter” on the streets, without contextualizing it as well?
Perhaps there should be an asterisk * at the end of the phrase, followed by a footnote informing people that the parent organization is founded by “trained Marxists” (in their own words) and has amassed vast, unelected power and taken in countless millions in donations without a single public audit or financial statement.
Of course, we’re not allowed to contextualize BLM, nor any figure from the movement. No one can engage in civil discourse on the matter without enraging the Twitter Mob and being cancelled.
But George Washington? The guy who literally won the war of American Independence? He must be contextualized! Or removed.
And that takes me back to Mount Rushmore, where all four men—Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt– have “disqualifying histories”.
Don’t take this to the bank, but I have a sneaking suspicion that some Antifa domestic terrorist will eventually deface or partially destroy the monument.
(Security isn’t very tight at the park, and it wouldn’t be terribly difficult for a good climber with a few cans of spray paint to make a big fuss.)
That’s not an especially outlandish suspicion. These ‘peaceful protestors’ feel fully justified in torching property, looting businesses, making death threats, and engaging in all sorts of violence. Vandalizing Mount Rushmore would be pretty tame by comparison.
And that’s the world we live in now.
Most people are pretty sane and easy going. But a small minority of intolerants has hijacked society with its paradoxical logic.
We must contextualize the slave owner George Washington! But we must respect China and the brutal way that it treats minority groups.
We must cancel misogynists! But we must respect cultural misogyny in many Islamic countries.
It’s all mind boggling.
I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult it must be for a child in school right now, with all this wokeness being crammed down their throats– the gender obsession, white fragility, historical revisions… not to mention pandemic hysteria.
And this fever is not going to break anytime soon.
This is why I’ve written for such a long time about having a Plan B. It should seem pretty obvious by now: if you’re not prepared to bend the knee to the Twitter mob, you’re at risk.
They’re happy to destroy your business, threaten your family… anything they have to do to intimidate intellectual dissenters.
And that doesn’t even take into consideration all the other issues—politicians playing God with the economy and your lifestyle, central banks conjuring trillions of dollars out of thin air, or the fact that the federal debt is well in excess of 100% of GDP and growing by the day.
