It's not just guilt, though - it's "justice." Not the kind of justice represented by the blindfolded Lady Justice one sees in courtrooms, but the kind of "justice" that punishes some and rewards others based on arbitrary standards, like the sins of ancestors long-dead - or by immutable characteristics such as melanin content.
Kamala Harris supports such "justice." We must remember that, back in 2020, when the nation stood on the precipice of a hot civil war, Harris lent her support to a fund that raised bail for the rioters - and she did nothing whatsoever for the people who lost homes and businesses in those riots.
This phenomenon goes far beyond government. It goes far beyond the streets in the summer of 2020 - or in the likely unrest in the streets of our major cities in January of 2025, should Donald Trump win reelection. The left has come dangerously close to completing its long march through the institutions, including higher education, the legacy media, and the entertainment industry. These are people who will not only co-opt formerly respected institutions but do not shy away from violence.
Mr. Klingenstein presents us with some chilling examples of how this is already happening:
The next thing may well be different punishments for black Americans than for white Americans who have committed the same crimes. This isn’t so difficult to predict because it’s already happening in California. Sometimes we just have to watch and listen.
Or, take another easy one. During the Biden administration, an office of censorship was set up within the Department of Homeland Security, brazenly named the “Disinformation Governance Board.” In this case, they got a bit ahead of themselves, so they “paused” their activities after media exposure. But, as the word “pause” implies, they will restart when circumstances permit. We must be prepared.
Indeed, we must be prepared - but are we?
K-12 education may be the last remaining institution that the group quota regime has not yet totally co-opted - at least not nationwide. I can promise you that educators and staff working in the elementary school in our little rural Alaska community are quite different from those in, say, Boston or San Francisco. That is as it should be; any government function works best when it is as close to the people as possible, and school boards are typically at the town or county (borough, in our case) level. And that may be where the counter-march will have to begin if the proponents for liberty and property are to have any hope of taking those institutions back.
This is not the task of a presidential administration. No one political figure, no matter how heroic or determined, can complete this task. This will require a Herculean effort, and we have no Hercules. If we can return the United States to a nation that puts individual rights and freedom above all, it will require engaging the left in this cold civil war; it will require reversing this long march through the institutions, and it will be the work of decades, the work of generations, to accomplish.
If we can accomplish it at all. The decline of free societies has never, in history, been reversed through peaceful means - and that is a troubling thought.
Mr. Klingenstein concludes:
Like Yogi, we’re not so good at predicting the future, but we must try. We must understand that these woke radicals are propelled by an uncontrollable moral certainty. Never underestimate their talent to sow the seeds of chaos.
It will take more than understanding. It will take action. And if peaceful action is (and it should be) our goal, we should have already gotten the ball rolling. But the fact that the vapid, ill-informed, cackling fleawit Kamala Harris seems to have a viable shot at the White House tells us that it may already be too late.