A bridle of silk thread

"It is impossible!" replied Cedric, starting. "Fearless and wicked as they are, they dare not attempt such open and gratuitous cruelty!" "Alas!" said the Jester, "to restrain them by their sense of humanity, is the same as to stop a runaway horse with a bridle of silk thread.

Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott

The traditions and values of, if not all of, Western Christian civilization are doomed.  There is no stopping the inevitable.  Rod Dreher demonstrates why.  Please read the entire piece.

Get that?  The whole piece is about the obvious racist, bigoted, and politically driven farce that Smollet is accused of trying to pull off, from which he received round the clock adoration and praise and sympathy from across the Leftist spectrum.   Now, I should mention that he's still innocent of the crime he's accused of committing, and I'm willing to afford him the consideration that the modern Left is working overtime to eliminate.

Nonetheless, let's say he's guilty as charged.  Let's say he played off of the prejudice, bias, arrogance, self-righteousness, racism and bigotry, not to mention the lust for power and desire to destroy all opponents, of the Left in order to falsely accuse an entire segment of the population.  Let's say that it was all wrong, and everyone who used this against white conservative male Trump supporters the way the Nazis used the Night of Long Knives, is exactly how it happened.

What do we think?  Will the Left say, "Gee everyone, we're sorry.  Clearly we jumped the gun and wrongly and unfairly condemned an entire group of people based on lies and false accusations"?  Do we dare think they could stop and say, "Wow, we suppose it's true that bigotry and hate and hate crimes exist in all people groups (perhaps rendering the concept of hate crimes redundant), and that blacks, homosexuals, liberals, women and other designated minority groups are quite capable of hate, hate crimes, bigotry, discrimination and even violence against others"?

Don't hold your breath.  At best I'm hearing nothing but silence from those who jumped on the latest 'Destroy the enemies of the Left' bandwagon.  At worst, I've actually heard some float the idea that if this is all true, and he did make it up, he's still the victim because we're such a vile and evil Nazi nation filled with millions of white skin racist bigots just itching to kill them some minorities.  So while he certainly overdid it, we should be sympathetic to his victim status as a hapless minority surrounded by such hatred and violence on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, look at Rod.  Rod is hardly a stranger to this tendency I'm talking about, nor is he unique.  In fact, I'd say Rod represents the majority opinion among opponents of the Left.  He spends the lions' share of the post rightly pointing out the ugly, obvious truths that this case, if true, expose.  That should be where it stops.

But then he joins the MSM in jumping on the story about a coastguard officer who is charged with wanting to perpetrate horrific crimes against various minorities, Democrats and media personalities.  That proves conservatives can be evil too!  That's your white skin racist hate mongering Trump fanatic butcher for you!  They're out there, we admit it!

Of course they're out there.  The sin of the Left isn't that it points out the obvious, that conservatives, like any group, will have their bad apples.  The sin is that it tries to act as if such bad apples, such evil, is only capable of occurring in such groups as those the Left deems to be its enemies.  If one person in any of the white, right, male, Christian, or American demographic wants to commit a crime, it damns all in those demographics.

But if someone in a Leftist designated demographic of worth commits a crime?  A black man sets out and does kill multiple police officers for being white? A Muslim kills dozens in the name of Islam?  A woman molests an adolescent in a school, or uses power to get sex from a subordinate, or falsely accuses a man of rape?  A homosexual seduces teenage boys or abuses a partner?  Or a black homosexual falsely accuses entire swaths of society? What do these mean?  Not a damn thing.  At best, it means they're villains that have nothing to do with anything, and it's time to turn our backs on the perpetrators.  At worst, it means they're still somehow the victims, and while murder, rape, hate and slander are never good, let's not be hasty.

Meanwhile, let a white, male, Christian, Republican, Conservative, heterosexual American do, or even think of doing, anything wrong, and you have Conservatives stumble over themselves to say, "Yes! Yes!  A thousand times yes!  There are evil Conservatives, Republicans, Men, heterosexuals, and Americans who are all the Left says they are ... just not us.  We're the kinder, gentler, compassionate ones who care.  No worshiping Jim Crow instead of Jesus for us, that's those baddies over there.  We're all about finding ways to compromise, and changing all that old time thinking that clearly is behind those [other] right winger baddie types."

And to prove the sincerity of this good faith gesture, we change, modify, compromise, alter, smooth, and sometimes jettison old values and views the Left insists are evil, all while thinking this time it will be enough.  We've admitted that those others in our demographics are the baddies, and we've modified everything we think will do the trick.  We've admitted the Left is correct regarding what it says about our demographics, but it's only right about all those others over there.  We're the good guys.  We admit there are bad apples in our barrels.

And it's not just this type of identity politics issues that brings out Right wing acquiescence and appeasement.  Let a Stanford Professor, in the wake of the Covington High debacle, come out against Christians schools, and what do you get?  Christians running about saying, "Sure, some are bad, but a lot aren't!  We're the good schools!  We're nice."  Are you kidding me?  In our nation we are gong to let ourselves be preached at by advocates of America's train wreck of a public school system?  I'd turn it around and shove it back at them with a candle on it: 'You have the audacity to lecture Christian schools just because we don't conform to your intolerant  beliefs? You, who are advocates of the hot mess camps of chaos, ignorance, violence, and everything failing in our schools times ten, have the gall to criticizes anything?'  And yet what do the conservatives do?  They do their best Dr. Smith from Lost in Space, on their knees pleading, "Sure, some area real bad like you say, but not all of us!  Some are good!"

Blech.  Makes me want to retch.  Talk about losers playing a losing game.  We act like the football team that is down nine touchdowns with a minute left in the fourth quarter.  We assume we'll lose, and we're just trying to avoid anyone getting hurt - especially us.  Maybe make a field goal or even a touchdown, then it won't look so bad.  The problem is, the other team - the Left - has not put its fifth stringers out.  It's got its starters out, because it has every intention of grounding the opposition into dust.  If it can make five or fifty more touchdowns, it will gladly do so.  All the while we're just hoping they like us, they really, really like us, once the game is over.

But that is the opposition to the Left.  Always thinking that if we just accept some of what they propose, concede some of what they accuse, or jettison some of what they attack, we'll find that middle ground of compromise; that appeasement after all those nasty little Czechs have been tossed under the bus like they deserve.  That is the silk thread trying to stop the Leftist horse.  The Left smells blood, and isn't about to stop, slow down or admit defeat.  It will do no such thing.  It doesn't have to.  The agencies and institutions meant to keep in check those forces which threaten a free society - the press, arts and culture, education - are firmly behind the horse, beating it on.  After all, they're riding that horse to the finish line, and they can see that line on the horizon.

When, after all, was the last time the Left conceded anything?  When did it ever say, "We were wrong"?  When did it say something from the old, traditional model of the world was right?  When did it ever give so much as millimeter, much less an inch?  Never, that's when. Never.

And the conservatives?  Those in opposition to the clear vision that the Left has put out for the future, one that seeks to be a weary but dangerous reflection of the other Leftist revolutions of the last century?  What will they be doing?  Probably the same as Rod.  Playing like the game is lost, compromising or blaming others, or trying to accept as much of the Left's narratives as will keep their feet in the door.  Why?  Don't know.  Are they biding time, hoping it blows up after they've gone onto their heavenly reward?  Hard to say.  I just know that, at the rate we're going, we're barely putting up a resistance at this point.  Lots of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.  It won't be with a bang, or even a whimper that the resistance to the Left's revolution will go out.  It will likely be with a yawn, as if the game's outcome was so obvious, it was so boring, that it was no longer worth playing.

The American Conservative mindset in scoreboard form