Sleight Of Hand . . . Leaves Observers Wondering What’s On The Table, And What’s Under

By DEXTER DUGGAN

More than one shell game is transpiring now.
There’s the classic game where sleight of hand keeps the viewer confused about what he sees on the table while the con artist does his evasions. It’s the attempt to push through social revolution now when the public demand is negligible but it’s blasted out over carnival megaphones called dominant media.
If you get 2,000 thugs massed for rioting in a metropolitan area of millions of people, that’s far fewer lawbreakers than peaceful folks who’d have gone out to the theater or restaurants on any night before the pandemic. But smashing windows gets more attention than gazing through a restaurant’s over coffee.
Another game is to conceal that what’s presented as a mighty movement actually is mostly hollow but puffed up to give a false impression of power, like the Marxist-inspired Black Lives Matter. When socialism is in the air, probably count on it to catch the sympathies of some ill-informed who should know better, and will pay for it in the end anyway.
Many people seemed to be paying for it already, falsely abasing themselves publicly as racist social criminals in rather the same way that innocent Chinese were hauled up by Communist Mao Zedong’s Red Guards more than a half-century ago to confess imaginary offenses.
Wikipedia says of the Red Guards: “Mao made use of the group as propaganda and to accomplish goals such as destroying symbols of China’s pre-Communist past, including ancient artifacts and gravesites of notable Chinese figures.” Sound familiar?
A third shell game is that of the bad Catholic husk named Dementia Democrat Joe Biden, who clearly would be a figurehead in the White House while the empowered radicals he brought along would do the dirty work aimed at eviscerating most Americans into shells at their mercy.
It’s no shame to suffer afflictions of advancing age, and some people like energetic Donald Trump age much better than others. However, some parts of life have passed those like Biden by, with age 78 just around his corner.
Be honest now, left-wingers, would you want to be along on a commercial jet with 250 people and Dementia Joe as the captain? So why would you want him to be at the controls of a nation with about 330 million passengers? Having a co-pilot is useful, but if the pilot himself is useless, that’s called a serious emergency.
Biden may not be able to draw much of a campaign crowd in an arena, but, a June 29 opinion column at the Townhall site said, he was getting his own kind of turnout. The rioters “are the Biden rallies.”
You wouldn’t even want the crowds of a big Trump rally parking their cars in your backyard. You certainly wouldn’t want Biden’s “justice warriors” yanking on your porch doors to teach you a thing or two.
Ben Stein, the longtime commentator, attorney, California actor and faithful pro-lifer, among various achievements, posted at The American Spectator’s website on July 1 about a threatening demonstration in his own neighborhood, with one of the angry guys from the obscenity-shouters jumping his home’s back wall and trying to pry open a rear door.
“My wife, Alex, and her nurse, Gemma, could see the rage on the rioters’ faces from our kitchen,” Stein wrote.
The police arrived this time, but the experience, right there in Beverly Hills, left Stein handing out pistols to his household, wondering how it had come to this, and where it would end.
Many churches and statues haven’t been so lucky, including assorted images of one of the founders of modern California, Catholic missionary Fr. Junipero Serra. The rioters’ rage against morality is comprehensible although not excusable.
The San Francisco area’s East Bay Times posted on July 4 that the white walls of the historic Catholic Mission San Jose, in Fremont, had been spattered with vandals’ paint and, as shown in a photograph, the large words “NATIVE LAND.”
The article quoted a man who didn’t regard the attack as justified.
“Andrew Galvan, who describes himself as an Ohlone Indian, said he didn’t believe indigenous people were behind the vandalism,” the East Bay Times said. “‘This is a Catholic Church, this is where I pray,’ Galvan said. ‘Not only is this vandalism, this is desecration of a sacred site’.”
Of course, if spineless officialdom can be cowed into capitulating, vandals can be spared the exertions of desecration, unless they think the destruction is just too much darned fun to miss.
California’s Capital Public Radio posted on July 7 that a statue of Christopher Columbus and Spanish Queen Isabella officially was hauled away from the state capitol rotunda after having been there since 1883 — 137 years.
The removal “comes on the heels of a weekend protest where demonstrators tore down a statue of Catholic missionary Junipero Serra on the east side of the state capitol grounds,” the news service said. “That demonstration was originally organized with the goal of demanding the removal of the Columbus statue.”
The report also cited a left-wing activist delighted that her six-year-old daughter will learn that the historic Europeans “are murderers.”
In his July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore, President Trump mentioned the rebels out to bring down the United States.
“The radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice. But in truth, it would demolish both justice and society,” Trump said. “It would transform justice into an instrument of division and vengeance, and it would turn our free and inclusive society into a place of repression, domination, and exclusion.”
Speaking of California, it won’t be long before the November elections show whether some Republican Golden State victories earlier this year were a warning that even in California, voters had become thoroughly disgusted with the left-wing Democrat-media alliance. (The Wanderer, May 28, 2020, hardcopy issue, page one, “Red straws in the wind in California politics? — Has Dem-media hammering of conservatives caused blowback?”)
These included a victorious Republican flipping a Democrat-held California congressional seat for the first time in more than 20 years, in a May special election.
Meanwhile, the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Spokane, Thomas Daly, showed necessary awareness of the Black Lives Matter organization’s opposition to fundamental Catholic teaching — although many people seem unaware of this (well, dominant media wouldn’t want to inform people and thereby create hostility to media’s BLM pals) or unconcerned.
In a July 5 statement, Daly said, in part: “BLM is in conflict with Church teaching regarding marriage, family, and the sanctity of life. Moreover, it is disturbing that BLM has not vocally condemned the recent violence that has torn apart so many cities. Its silence has not gone unheard. One need not stand with BLM to stand for Black lives.”
Daly was responding to comments by Rob McCann, the CEO of Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington, who had groveled before BLM. The bishop met with McCann, who modified some of his words, but still left Daly unsatisfied.
The bishop said: “Dr. McCann has now posted a letter that I encourage everyone to read. It provides some retractions and clarifications. While his letter answers some of my concerns, others remain. His support of the Black Lives Matter organization (BLM), albeit now modified, puzzles me.”
Even McCann’s clarified letter may have left people thinking of innocent Chinese abasing themselves before Red Guard (or, in this case, BLM) tough guys for imaginary offenses.
McCann wrote, in part: “Where racism was once understood to mean only an active and hostile animus toward minority racial groups, we now know that racism also exists where members of majority groups, or groups in power, fail to stand in active and constant opposition to systems that result in disparate treatment of, and outcomes for, minority groups.
“Being ‘color blind’ is not only insufficient, but often perpetuates systemic racism,” McCann continued. “We can only avoid racism by being anti-racist — that is, by actively, constantly, and consciously opposing systemic racism. This mindset is a daily challenge; it requires us to acknowledge that each time we fall short of active anti-racism we are — in hard truth — contributing to the continued existence of systemic racism.”
Poor McCann. The old Red Guards shamed their victims by making them wear dunce caps. Has he been fitted for one?