Grievance is not a governing philosophy

It’s all too beautiful (as the Small Faces sang), this twenty-second day of August 2020, on the Blaska Experimental Work Farm (and Penal Colony). 

The phlox is in full bloom — pink, purple, and white. A field of zinnias (red dwarf Holi Scarlet hybrids and 4-foot tall Jung Super Giants, red and yellow) wave in the breeze. They’re fronted by a bed of red portulaca. 

The unlettered field hands are still taking a few spears of asparagus, which the indentured servants are blending into the Squire’s scrambled eggs and bacon. Temperature this 9 a.m. is a summery 76 degrees, the coffee is strong, and the Harley Softail Slim is gassed up for the chicken burn in Rockton, Sunday.

So why do our liberal-progressive-socialist acquaintances hate America?

The gray labcoats at the Policy Werkes understand that the party out of the White House must nail grievances to the church door, real and imagined. (But the Great Post Office Conspiracy … !?) Even so, Ronald Reagan challenged a sitting President and won by painting a bright picture of America as a shining city on a hill. Not the Democrats this year! Of this week’s Democrat(ic) national convention, Tunku Varadarajan (Tunku, tunku very much)  writes: 

Scarcely a speech or segment went by in which a fetish wasn’t made of immigrants. They were portrayed, almost uniformly, as victims — hapless people thwarted by “systemic racism” and American injustice, moored forever in a netherworld of murk and fear by President Trump’s refusal to be humane.

No accident that the chaos of Democrat-controlled cities like Chicago, St. Louis, and Seattle was taboo at the convention, which was held in Uncle Joe Biden’s bunker instead of Milwaukee, which had just fired its Hispanic police chief. Peggy Noonan, no Trumpbot herself, observes:

There was a non-stop hum of grievance at the convention. To show their ferocious sincerity in the struggle against America’s injustices, most of the speakers thought they had to beat the crap out of the country — over and over. Its sins: racism, sexism, bigotry, violence, xenophobia, being unwelcoming to immigrants.

The charges, direct and indirect, never let up. Little love was expressed, little gratitude. Everyone was sort of overcoming being born here. … The cumulative effect of all this, especially for the young, would prompt an inevitable question: Why would anyone fight to save this place? Who needs it?

And you wonder why Portland burns. Identity politics blames unseen “white privilege” for Black-on-Black fratricide. Progressive Madison is boarded up. A state legislator (David Bowen, D-Milwaukee) lied for the BLM hooligan who fired a shotgun into a (Black) Wauwautosa police officer’s home. (Story here.)

“Those factions in U.S. politics who trumpet the grievances of various identity groups without offering an underlying vision of unity push the state toward a tribalism from which there may be no easy return,” a former assistant secretary of State writes.