Shorter Shelby Steele

issue_steele.jpg
Kill the niggers.”

Bradrocket adds: There are some gems from this piece that demand to be highlighted:

Anti-Americanism, whether in Europe or on the American left, works by the mechanism of white guilt. It stigmatizes America with all the imperialistic and racist ugliness of the white Western past so that America becomes a kind of straw man, a construct of Western sin. (The Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons were the focus of such stigmatization campaigns.)

No shit. Why should we feel guilty about torturing people anyway?

America and the broader West are now going through a rather tender era, a time when Western societies have very little defense against the moral accusations that come from their own left wings and from those vast stretches of nonwhite humanity that were once so disregarded.

So, per Shelby, the following groups of people are anti-American: the American left, the Europeans and all non-white people.

But my crude calculations, that’s about 99% of the world’s population. This is gonna sound strange, but when that many people are opposed to you, maybe you’re the crazy one, no?

To maintain their legitimacy, they practice the minimalism that makes problems linger. What but minimalism is left when you are running from stigmatization as a “unilateralist cowboy”? And where is the will to truly regulate the southern border when those who ask for this are slimed as bigots? This is how white guilt defines what is possible in America. You go at a problem until you meet stigmatization, then you retreat into minimalism.

Oh. My. God.

Shelby, think about this. Are you honestly saying that the only reason white conservatives don’t nuke the Middle East or summarily execute illegal immigrants is because they’re afraid of being called mean names? You have to be shitting me. Today’s conservatives have to be the biggest goddamn wimps and crybabies I have ever seen. If you really believe that white people are superior and should be allowed to run rampant over the planet, stealing others’ resources and colonizing their lands, then you should be able to deal with people calling you a racist. Suck it up and grow a pair, hombre.

Possibly white guilt’s worst effect is that it does not permit whites–and nonwhites–to appreciate something extraordinary: the fact that whites in America, and even elsewhere in the West, have achieved a truly remarkable moral transformation. One is forbidden to speak thus, but it is simply true. There are no serious advocates of white supremacy in America today, because whites see this idea as morally repugnant.

Y’know why that is, Shelbster? Because white supremacy is, in fact, a morally repugnant idea.

If there is still the odd white bigot out there surviving past his time, there are millions of whites who only feel goodwill toward minorities.

I know, and I feel terrible about it- I really am too nice to minorities. Well, that’s changing… starting now. I’m gonna go knock on the door of my Lebanese neighbor and slap that motherfucker in the face, just like Shelby would want me to.

Check out this next graf (my emphasis):

This is a fact that must be integrated into our public life–absorbed as new history–so that America can once again feel the moral authority to seriously tackle its most profound problems.

Shelby Steele is Gary Ruppert. You heard it here first.

And really, nobody has more moral authority than white supremecists. Thanks, WSJ op-ed page. Truly, you’ve brought us another enlightening essay.

 

Comments: 45

 
 
 

But… but… but…

 
 

Its OK If You Are Channelling Churchill.

 
 

And Churchill was just demanding the right to “bomb the niggers”, not to necessarily kill them.

 
 

Now that’s some mighty fine genocide. Yummy.

This is a fact that must be integrated into our public life–absorbed as new history–so that America can once again feel the moral authority to seriously tackle its most profound problems. Then, if we decide to go to war, it can be with enough ferocity to win.

Hm…Yes. Ferocity. And the real kind, this time. Not that delicate, brittle, watered-down with-white-guilt faux-ferocity that’s been so ineffectual up to this point.

 
 

Ah, c’mon! You know we have to burn the forest in order to save it!

 
 

WTF?

 
 

Excuse me, he also said we should have nuked the gooks.

 
 

I’m getting so tired of these arguments over skin colour, and I think it’s high time all the melanin-free, glow-in-dark fish-belly white people like me set everyone straight about something…the rest of you are all brown. Bush looks high-yellow to me and I’m pretty sure Jerry Falwell is an octoroon.

 
 

That article is the most appalling thing I’ve seen so far out of the HooHah Institute, and that’s saying alot.

 
 

We must abandon our moral authority so that we can “once again FEEL our moral authority”.

Somebody (preferably Nolan Ryan) hit this guy with a tomato. He is insane.

 
 

The only point I might find reasonnably sensible is the attack on white guilt. It’s fine to feel guilty about something or even accept some form of inherited guilt, but the people who were brutalised by your actions and continue to suffer don’t give a damn about your feelings. They just want you to stop brutalising them.

 
 

Don’t miss billmon’s take on Shelby Steele’s little journey into the heart of darkness.

 
Strange Ruppert
 

The fact is, The Left is made up entirely of racists.

 
 

Why do the wingnuts confuse “fourth-generation warfare” with “restraint”? The former is a basic military concept for conducting counter-insurgency. The latter is something they think keeps them from their well-deserved orgasmofantasy.

 
 

We have been too gentle with the enemy in this war. The fact is that we need to move forward shiftly to wipe the insurgency off the face off the Earth.

Meanwhile in other news, Osama bin Laden reads DailyKos:

Bin Laden’s parasitical relationship with Western debate really came into its own from 2004 onward. During this period he has sounded almost indistinguishable from various left-wing blogs. In April 2004 he ranted about “big media,� describing them as “agents of deception and exploitation.� He said the war in Iraq “is making billions of dollars for the big corporations, whether it be those who manufacture weapons or reconstruction firms like Halliburton and its offshoot sister companies.� (Halliburton is, of course, the bête noir of anti-war bloggers.)

The left emboldens the enemy like this all the time.

 
Gary's Better Half
 

I think “niggers” is too specific. Kill the wogs works better.

 
Gary's Sister
 

“The left emboldens the enemy like this all the time.”

Gary’s always been like that. When we were kids he was always going on about how the civil rights movement was manipulated by communists.

You’d be interested to know, though, that his favorite ancestor of ours, the one he never stops talking about, was the one who died in a concentration camp. The one who got drunk and fell out of the guard tower.

 
 

Meanwhile in other news, Osama bin Laden reads DailyKos

God, if I didn’t see this kind of sentiment expanded and elevated beyond the burblings of the Moveable Type software glitch known as “Gary Ruppert”, this fact would so funny in its sheer irrelevance.

The fact is every Muslim from Morroco to Indonesia is also reading Jeff Goldstein.

 
 

Meanwhile in other news, Osama bin Laden reads DailyKos

Wow. So many ways to respond. Let’s do multiple choice:

A) Someone on D-Kos says the sky is blue, and Bin Laden also says the sky is blue–that proves collusion! Or perhaps some sort of ceilus-indigo phenomenon…

B) Hey, how come Osama can get reliable WiFI in his desert caves and underground bunkers and I can’t get decent broadband in Ft. Worth? (Osama for FCC head? Interesting possibility.)

C) The fact is that if Our Leader hadn’t screwed up the operation at Tora Bora, Bin Laden wouldn’t be reading anything other than the “Gitmo Daily News.”

D) All of the above.

 
 

No see, Osama only has left wing blogs bookmarked. Osama never reads Little Green Footballs. It would make him want to surrender. Because they’re fighting the war on terra in the best way they can.

Or something like that.

 
osama bin forgotten
 

I don’t know about you, but I take my laptop with me every time I go spelunking in Afghanistan. I can’t go a day without Kos. We make these antennas out of bag ties and hack into an american communications satellite in stationary orbit above us.

 
BrooklynRaider
 

The fact is that if Our Leader hadn’t screwed up the operation at Tora Bora, Bin Laden wouldn’t be reading anything other than the “Gitmo Daily News.”

Clearly, Dear Leader was suffering from white-guilt induced restraint. If the damned Euro-wogs hadn’t been so bloody impolite he would have strode into Iraq with a nuke in each hand and he woulda damn well– Wait, what do you mean Tora Bora’s not in Iraq?

 
 

Steele writes, “It’s just that today the United States cannot go to war in the Third World simply to defeat a dangerous enemy.”

I guess the invasion of Afghanistan to defeat al-Qaeda and the Taliban doesn’t count.

 
 

That Steele decretum(excreta might be more fitting) is bizarre and disgusting. Is he really, as it seems, trying to claim the moral high ground for advocating white-led genocide?

 
 

Meanwhile in other news, Osama bin Laden reads DailyKos:

Pffft, we’ve known that for years. His user name is “BeardyNKhyber69” and he likes to post diaries about 911 conspiracy theories and meta-diaries about Kos ads that he doesn’t like.

He wouldn’t be so bad, except that he always troll-rates people who don’t agree with him, the jerk.

Meanwhile, in other news, the goldfish where Adolf Hitler’s brain now resides reads Reason.com.

 
 

The left emboldens the enemy like this all the time.

Ring Ring

Hello, this is mikey.

Mikey? al-Zarqawi here. Got a minute?

Umm, sure. Brownies come out of the oven in 15 minutes, so sure. What’s on your mind?

Well, here’s the thing. This whole insurgency thing? I’m REALLY having second thoughts. Y’know, it just drags on and on how do I really know if we’re doing any good…??

Listen, abu-musab. Stop…Listen to me. I know, there, there. Now listen. It’s like I’ve told you so many times. You just need to be Emboldened, y’know? You’re in a tough struggle, and it’s understandable that you’d lose your nerve from time to time.

Oh, mikey, you’re right. I feel so…Emboldened. Talking to someone in America on the left always does that for me. I’m ready to go fight on.

Hey, listen A-M. Anytimne you need a little support, you know you can get it from American Liberals, right?

Thank you, mikey. Goodbye.

mikey

 
 

Meanwhile in other news, Osama bin Laden reads DailyKos:…
…”from various left-wing blogs”

Hot damn! I’m not DKos, for sure, but this certainly explains who’s been visiting me from Dubai, UAE. Thanks for the heads up, Gare-bear.

***psst, guys, he’s over there***

 
 

I hear he also plays Neopets every day and watches Eastenders on his 40″ flat-screen plasma TV. He also listens to the Beatles, is an environmentalist, is a vegetarian, supports gun control, and is also a furry.

…..Gimmie a break.

 
BrooklynRaider
 

…and is also a furry.

Well that’s got to be why we couldn’t find him! We’ve just got to look for the dude in the rabbit suit.

 
 

What Shelby misses is that certain American minds are not simply the construct of racist ugliness, but are in fact the cause and breeding ground of such ideas.

How do people like this get accepted by editors?! Sometimes I feel like giving up my journalism major; I’m obviously not crazy enough to ever get my own column nor am I sufficiently, intellectually dim.

 
 

Hell, I don’t even read DailyKos. Say, Gary, how do you know what websites Osama Bin Laden checks out on a daily basis. You sure seem to know a lot about his likes and dislikes. Why am I suddenly getting the mental image of a notebook covered with scribblings that say “Mrs. Gary Bin Laden”…

Anyhow, Brother David Neiwert over at Orcinus has an awesome post on this topic, and particularly obliterates Steele’s ludicrous idea that advocates of white supremacy “don’t exist” in modern America. Go read it, is good stuff. I’d post a link, but that’s how life goes.

 
 

…and is also a furry.

Now that is truly disturbing.

 
 

I heard Shelby Steele give a speech in Madison in 98 about reparations and affirmative action. Then he sounded like Malcolm X and was advocating a kind of GI bill for the disenfranchised.

This op-ed, however, is very disappointing.

 
 

have very little defense against the moral accusations that come from their own left wings and from those vast stretches of nonwhite humanity

see I tend to think that a proper response to a “moral accusation” is to either (1) act morally, or (2) defend our actions as moral, with a clear, coherent, and well reasoned argument.

I do not think that the proper response to a moral accusation is to say “whites are supreme” and then bomb a bunch of non-white people.

 
 

And Churchill was just demanding the right to “bomb the niggers”, not to necessarily kill them.

Actually, it was David Lloyd George.

 
 

Osama on DKos? He goes by the handle Armando. I thought everybody knew that.

 
 

I’ll bet if he just scrubbed a little harder, that hideous tint would come right out of that inferior skin like magic! In the meantime, it’s Selfloathingpalooza!!!

 
 

[i]Actually, it was David Lloyd George.[/i]

I stand corrected. And thank you for not mentioning the splt infinitive. I get carried away sometimes.

 
 

We have been too gentle with the enemy in this war.

Hi Gary!

 
 

Does he have a mirror? He looks like one of the nonwhites.

I think maybe he’s talking about his own “White guilt”. Like feeling guilty he’s not white maybe?

Whatever….

 
 

Why is it that all the affirmative action hires at the Hoover Institute universally loathe the reason they actually have their jobs (or any job requiring only the output of their second and third-rate intellects)?

 
 

a proper response to a “moral accusation” is to either (1) act morally, or (2) defend our actions as moral, with a clear, coherent, and well reasoned argument.

Pfft, that sounds like work. I think we should all save ourselves a lot of trouble and take a tip from Gary’s method. (3) pretend you didn’t hear the moral accusation, ignore the inner voice whispering “hypocrite”, and regurgitate some more talking points.

 
 

Did anyone else notice that Steele used the word “stigmatization” with regard to the Abu Ghraib scandal, without being aware that the tortured detainees *may very well have had nails driven through their hands* ? “Stigmata-“-ization my ass. I mean, the most iconic image of Abu Ghraib et al was of a hooded figure forced to remain in a crucifix-like pose. ?!Stigmatization?!

Of course, Steele is only following British Lord George when he refused to agree to the early 20th century suggested ban on aerial bombardment as a cruel and inhuman weapon, in particular the British penchant to bomb Iraqi tribesmen:

“I reserve the right…to bomb n***ers,” said Lord George.

 
 

Now that’s unfair, who; it’s not only the affirmative action hires who are second- or third-rates intellects at the Hoover Institute.

 
 

If Osama reads Kos then surely the NSA has his fucking IP address. If that’s the case, and he’s still at large, then the question must be asked:

Why does the NSA hate America?

 
 

(comments are closed)