The Stakes by Michael Anton

Author:Michael Anton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2020-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

The Avengers

At first glance, there would appear to be so much in common between the Avengers and the other two groups that one might wonder whether a separate category is warranted. Like the Freeloaders, the Avengers want free stuff. Like the Wokerati, they condemn America as fundamentally evil. We might even say that social justice requires both positive policies—the Wokerati agenda—but also punitive ones: the Avengers’ wish list. Aren’t they then just two sides of the same coin?

Perhaps—but the present discussion is more about motivations; therefore, stipulating again the considerable overlap among groups, let’s examine those that are specifically vengeful.

The Avengers look more backward than forward. Their hope for a glorious future is secondary to their lust for redressing the past. The free stuff is necessary recompense for past and present wrongs.

To the Avengers, everything good in America—and I do mean everything; they seem to admit no exceptions—is either the result of oppression, corruption, and theft, or else the product of hard, honest work by “disfavored groups” who deserve all the credit but never get any. The real story of America is, first and foremost, slavery, but also genocide against Native Americans, religious bigotry against all non-WASPs, anti-Asian racism, Jim Crow, sexism, anti-Mexican racism, anti-Hispanic racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia—you get the picture.

In the revenge-oriented mind, these sins are America. They outweigh, by far, all the accomplishments and glories—or are even the true cause of them. There is nothing good in or about America, the Avengers insist—and at the same time allege that every American good was created by someone else and stolen. Those wars you think you won? They were all in the service of imperialism—and all those victories were achieved by mistreated groups and on the backs of the oppressed back home. Inventions? Stolen, or the result of exploitation, and then hoarded by the privileged and denied or rationed to the disfavored. Prosperity? Sure—for the 1 percent. All that blather about America being “a middle-class country” is just cover for wealth concentration. “Freedom?” Don’t make us laugh. Maybe for you—at our expense—but can you seriously and with a straight face call Jim Crow, back of the bus, literacy tests and poll taxes, omnipresent racism, hiring discrimination, on-the-job harassment, unequal pay, glass ceilings, redlining, and microaggressions “freedom”?

Pick virtually any claim to American greatness (or goodness), the script is always the same. First, denial: it wasn’t great, it was bad; it wasn’t a victory, it was a loss; it wasn’t an achievement, it was sordid or trivial. Second, grudging concession coupled with denigration: OK, the “victory” may have been real, but it furthered an evil end; the “achievement” empowered and enriched a few at the expense of the many; the few then used this new wealth and power to further oppress the rest. Third, claim credit: actually, the victory was won, the achievement accomplished, by our people; you guys just stole it and covered up our central role.

Obvious and blatant contradictions pile up from one postulate to the next. We could

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