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Thinking Out Loud

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September 13, 2020

Lawrence Brooks, the 111 year-old World War II veteran was treated to a military plane flyover above his New Orleans home for his birthday. He looked and sounded more spry than presidential candidate Joe Biden. This disconcerting observation aside, despite dealing with some racial discrimination, Mr. Brooks’ recipe for a long life was “serve God and be nice to people.”

On the heels of that sage advice, we woke up to the news of the attempted assassination of 2 sheriff’s deputies while sitting in their car policing the local train station. Some Black Lives Matter beasts felt it necessary to plant themselves at the hospital emergency room entrance, chanting “We hope they die!” Sympathy is saved for career criminals, sexual predators, and all sorts of felons, especially those resisting arrest.

Failed-state California’s Indian-Jamaican American senator and vice-presidential candidate said that “the reality is that the life of a Black person in America has never been treated as fully human.” Why would someone who palms themselves off as intelligent make such a moronic statement? More pandering to the mob. Is that savage BLM mob in front of the hospital acting like humans? Let’s not pretend that BLM is about improving Black lives or changing the perceptions of the individual jerks and fools who devalue Black lives. It is about using racial tensions to foment more unrest and advance a Marxist agenda.

COVID-19, Culture & Society, Current Events, Featured, Op-eds, Politics, What's New

Only in America

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What a great country we are! Where else do we have immigrants from around the world who stood in line for years or risked their lives to be part of the U.S. and also mobs of people who want to overthrow the government that brought the world individual liberty, due process under the law, and the right to peacefully protest? These violent mobs are burning down Black-owned small businesses in the name of improving Black lives. The most liberal city in America, blessed with a socialist congressperson, boasts an angry horde chanting the Iranian mullahs’ favorite saying, “death to America” as they vandalized private property. 

While Black lives are clearly as precious as anyone else’s, supporters should beware. Black Lives Matter’s co-founder describes herself as a “trained Marxist” and its manifesto rejects private ownership, individuality and the traditional family. 

Only in America can we have an internationally acclaimed, Princeton and Harvard law school-educated, over-paid hospital administrator, wife of a former two-term Black president, who lives in a lily white neighborhood in a $12 million, 7,000 square foot, 29 acre beachfront estate, cast herself the poster child for aggrieved Black victims of evil white people? Obviously, Mrs. Obama has nothing in common with the hapless Black folks caught in the crabs-in-the-barrel, anti-education mentality that drives them to quit school, or worse, commit crimes and run from the police and wonder why things do not end well. This privileged person relishes in telling a story of someone who cut in front of her in line, concluding it was fueled by racism. No, it was a rude person who likely always cuts in line. This screed is a well-known tactic among radicals: create an enemy and demonize him at every opportunity. 

 It is vexing to see privileged people emphasizing their tribal identities (e.g., race, gender, sexual preference) and embracing critical race theory that preaches that American government and culture is racist (sexist, homophobic), that oppressed people can never overcome the racism (sexism, homophobia), and that even people who are not racist are racist because they like America. Thus, America must be reformed into a Marxist utopia. Fact alert: Thomas More’s Utopia, written in 1516, was political satire. “Utopia,” derived from the Greek, literally means “nowhere.”

In the march to a collectivist society, we’ve entered the phase of erasing history. Despots through the ages have airbrushed their enemies out of photographs and history books. Mobs and woke politicians initially toppled statues of offensive historical figures. Now, no historical figure is safe: the mayor of Washington DC wants to take down or “contextualize” the Washington monument and the Jefferson Memorial. 

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 presciently depicted an American society where books (representing history and culture) are outlawed and burned. First, our statues, next our books. As George Orwell wrote in 1984, “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered… History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” A submissive, compliant populace drugged by government largesse or simple apathy is a recipe for a massive societal shift. Censorship by the news media and taking down websites and social media posts are the polite 21st century version of exiling the enemies of the state.

Generally, 2020 was going well with high employment rates, rising salaries, and racial harmony. Along came coronavirus. Those who want to fundamentally change America knew fear was an effective tool to drive us to acquiesce to unreasonable government demands. Some governors confined us in our homes indefinitely, unable to attend funerals or religious services to have our moral principles reinforced. Wearing masks that prevent flashing a friendly smile to strangers of all colors while strolling down the street fosters distrust. 

By the time more was known about the new virus’s low probability of death for the average person and about the uselessness of lockdowns, we were raw and susceptible to emotional manipulation. The drumbeat of social justice über alles is pounded into our psyches. In what sane world would anyone swallow the leftist swill that looting is justified as reparations for slavery? 

How does labeling some Americans the “oppressors” and others the “oppressed” based on skin color advance societal harmony? How does having employers force Caucasians to take classes to learn that they are racists and how to repent for their “white privilege” engender warm feelings? 

Instead of whining about the past, advocates for improving Black lives should march through the Black-on-Black violence-ravaged sections of Chicago and let people know that success – while not easy – is possible. And all liberty lovers must wake up from our fear-induced stupor and actively protect our freedoms and reject mob rule while treating our fellow man with respect. 

COVID-19, Culture & Society, Op-eds, Politics, What's New

Some Black Lives Don’t Matter

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I grew up in a segregated neighborhood where within three months of our Doberman’s death, our house was burglarized 4 times. Thus, a new architectural feature: burglar bars. I can’t imagine my old neighborhood with no police to protect us. Our experience reflected the 2016 and 2019 studies showing no racial bias in police shootings—what Harvard’s Roland G. Fryer Jr. called “the most surprising result of my career.”

Year after year, this Boomer Black woman has seen the country change for the better. It was the ever-present burglar bars that made me appreciate integration all the more. Now I can live in any neighborhood I choose. As Black people moved through an integrated society, negative attitudes changed. While the Great Society’s federal poverty programs helped around the edges, the rules for some programs encouraged mothers to jettison their children’s father from the home. Fatherless children are more likely to be high school drop-outs, thus limiting their opportunities for the future. There must be more to social policy than throwing federal dollars at “the underserved.” Reliance on government money is the road to a permanent low income. This saps the recipient of dignity and the spirit of achievement.

Welfare programs hurt more than they have helped by marrying the recipients to the government. Black Panther Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver said it well: “What we have to do is organize people in free institutions that can put them to work, and then they can draw their living out of our economy, not out of the federal treasury. …If we [create projects] through the state like President Roosevelt did with the New Deal, you augment the power of the state. But if you do it through decentralized structures that are controlled by the people, then we maintain our freedom, within a free institution.”

Black activists complained that cities were run by White men. For years we’ve had Black mayors, chiefs of police, and school superintendents. Sadly, little has changed. As of 2013, only 59 percent of Black males finished high school. High school drop-outs have a 70 percent chance of going to prison. Black folks cannot partake of the opportunities in front of them without a good education. Many times, the worst teachers are shunted to poor neighborhoods with substandard schools. Meanwhile, “progressives” bow down to the unions and oppose school choice, and paradoxically champion the free flow of illegal aliens for cheap labor thus displacing Black high school drop-outs from these unskilled jobs.

Social Justice Warriors and White teenagers from well-heeled neighborhoods seem to think there were no successful Black folks until the SJWs decided to rescue us. My grandfather graduated from a White medical school in 1905. My mother’s “big sister” became a dentist in the 1940s. Repeat: Black female dentist, 1940s.

Oh yes, the SJWs lovingly suggest you read self-flagellating books about how every White person is a racist. Why don’t they ever suggest 1950s tennis trailblazer Althea Gibson’s “I Always Wanted to Be Somebody.” Or “Why Should White Guys have All the Fun” by Reginald Lewis, a poor Black kid who attended college on a scholarship and Harvard Law School, worked his way up in the financial world of leverage buy-outs, and in 1987 bought Beatrice International for $985 million.

Predictably, the SJWs find an excuse for why some Blacks are able to make something out of their lives and are eager to blame faceless White devils for the failures of Black folks. Tell this to a regular guy from Twitter: “I’m a 33 year old Black male and I have NEVER been oppressed. . . I can buy a car, I can buy a home, I can obtain a passport, I can WORK. I love this great country and proud to be an American. . .” Of course, he was labelled with the obligatory Uncle Tom moniker.

Democrats had the presidency, the House, and the Senate for 2 years during Barack Obama’s presidency. It’s curious that there were no mass nationwide protests under Obama’s watch, even with police-involved deaths. Did the civil rights advocates think he was actually doing something for Black people? Was he given a pass because he is Black? Of course, giving Black people a pass is so racist; it implies that Black people are not up to the task. What is going on now is beyond protesting. It is sick, cult-like behavior. White people kneeling in front of Black people professing their brokenness and begging forgiveness. For what? The immutable trait of their skin color? What about the descendants of Black slave owners? If you can find them, they should probably be thrashed. I would have not a scintilla of respect for anyone who knelt before me and apologized for being alive.

Let’s stipulate that some people (both Black and White) are actual racists. Tarring all people with the same brush is a dangerous road to travel and risks the loss of good will. While protesters say they want a conversation about race, why would anyone converse with a disdainful overlord wannabe who has determined that you are lower than a worm’s belly at the outset? This is a recipe for a race war, not peace.

As a physician, I cannot ignore the plain fact that the people who champion social distancing and mask shaming are silent about the current large gatherings of protesters standing shoulder-to-shoulder. This must be one smart virus that can tell the difference between anti-economic lockdown/let me feed my family protesters and Black Lives Matter protesters.

And why do only some Black lives matter? Nineteen persons were killed in Chicago during the last weekend of May as the Black Lives Matter protests rolled on. With its Black superintendent of police and Black mayor, from January 1 to June 1, 2020, Chicago had 236 homicides, 165 of whom were known to be Black. None were killed by the police. Most were under 30 years old. Where are the national television stories and public vigils? Read these names and weep.

Bio: Dr. Singleton is a board-certified anesthesiologist. She is Immediate Past President of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). She graduated from Stanford and earned her MD at UCSF Medical School.  Dr. Singleton completed 2 years of Surgery residency at UCSF, then her Anesthesia residency at Harvard’s Beth Israel Hospital. While still working in the operating room, she attended UC Berkeley Law School, focusing on constitutional law and administrative law.  She interned at the National Health Law Project and practiced insurance and health law. She teaches classes in the recognition of elder abuse and constitutional law for non-lawyers.

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