06/12/2020
02m32s Revolutionary spasms. (With each one, they tighten the vise.)
07m47s I have a dream. (Not that different from the original.)
13m50s The smack of firm government. (I yearn to hear it.)
22m36s Crafting a proposal to consider. (In the Halls of Uselessness.)
29m54s Ironies great and small. (One from a different cultural revolution.)
33m54s London’s "Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm." (As Orwellian as it sounds.)
36m12s Japan not yet woke. (They can’t get the hang of our racial protocols.)
37m59s Coronavirus in Britain. (Marmite-lovers hardest hit.)
39m35s Signoff. (With a military trombone.)
01 — Intro. And Radio Derb is on the air! Greetings, listeners, from the Autonomous Republic of Derbistan.
Yes: Inspired by the communards of central Seattle and their establishment of Chaz, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, my family and I have decided to secede from the Union. The Derbyshire estates here on Long Island are now a new nation.
We began in the manner of a traditional coup d'état by seizing the radio station. That was easy; and now Radio Derb is the flagship broadcast medium of Derbistan. Tenders for advertising spots will be evaluated in the order they are received.
We shall trade on friendly terms with all other nations — including of course Chaz — and shall issue visas to visitors and guest workers, after proper scrutiny of their credentials, of course; but we shall no longer be bound by the laws of New York State or the U.S.A.
It’s all been a bit impulsive, I'll admit. There are some details to be worked out. Mrs Derbyshire is hard at work drafting a constitution, our daughter is designing a colorful flag, and our son is out patrolling the Derbistan borders to discourage any illegal immigration. I shall give fuller reports in future Radio Derb podcasts.
So: this is your autonomously genial host John Derbyshire welcoming you to the new, independent Radio Derb! Let’s review the week’s news.
02 — Revolutionary spasms. I see that the symphony orchestra of Austin, Texas has fired their lead trombonist. This is a white lady named Brenda Sansig Salas, 51 years old and a U.S. Army veteran. She'd been posting comments on social media. The comment that precipitated her firing was apparently this one, quote:
The BLACKS [capitalized] are looting and destroying their environment. They deserve what they get.
End quote.
Some spokes-critter for the symphony orchestra announced the firing of Ms Salas in the dreary schoolmarmish jargon of corporate wokeness. Quote: "This language is not reflective of who we are as an organization." And, quote: "there is no place for hate within our organization."
So if you can work that trombone to orchestral standard, there’s a vacancy in Austin. And our cultural revolution rumbles on.
It doesn’t proceed at a smooth regular pace, but in spasms. There is this one we're currently going through, the Minneapolis Spasm. Before that, three years ago there was the Charlottesville spasm that followed the Antifa triumph in that Virginia city, where local politicians stood down their police force so that Antifa could assault a lawful, peaceful demonstration.
Five years before that there was the Trayvon Martin spasm. That was just a warm-up, though. The forces of militant wokeness were not yet properly mobilized. It was an election year; Barack Obama looked strong for re-election, the Republican candidate was an obvious no-hoper, so another four years of black supremacy — black President, black Attorney General, black Homeland Security Secretary, and so on — was pretty well assured. No need to alarm people with any major disturbances.
With Donald Trump’s election, the political temperature went up forty degrees. These last two revolutionary spasms have been in earnest.
Following the 2017 one, after Charlottesville, there was a serious campaign of de-platforming against dissident outlets like this one and American Renaissance. The totalitarian left barked "JUMP!" Their corporate poodles like PayPal and Amazon squealed back: "How high?" and overnight there life got a lot more difficult for us patriots and skeptics.
Now here’s the second great spasm of the Trump era. The enforcers of goodthink, emboldened by their successes last time around, are getting people fired all over: New York Times editors, sports announcers, soccer players, data analysts, trombonists, …
When the dust has settled, the range of opinion allowed to be expressed by anyone employed in any kind of respectable job — or even, as the case of that soccer player illustrates, by the spouse of anyone so employed — will be even narrower than it was before the beatification of the Holy Blessed Martyr George Floyd, peace be upon him.
That, of course, is the point. The goal here is totalitarian thought control. After two or three more of these spasms, only one set of opinions will be permitted in the public sphere. Every opinion not approved by the Thought Police will be a species of hate. It will not be who we are.
03 — I have a dream. I have a dream today, brothers and sisters. I have a dream. My dream is of an America that has embraced race realism.
Yes, I have a dream that one day race differences in educational success will be as calmly, dispassionately accepted as race differences in athletic success; that race differences in criminal arrest and incarceration rates will be regarded with no more anger or alarm than sex differences in those same rates; that different social outcomes by race will be understood as caused not by the malice of our fellow citizens, but by ordinary processes of nature.
I have a dream that one day we shall discard magical thinking about race; that the notion of an invisible vapor or miasma called "racism" permeating the atmosphere and intoxicating our minds will seem as quaintly absurd as the Four Humors Theory of ancient medicine or the Luminiferous Æther of 19th-century physics.
I have a dream that one day, poor white children will not have to endure being lectured about their "privilege" by rich black adults.
I have a dream that one day soon, after sixty years of futile efforts to change what cannot, in the nature of things, be changed, sixty years of twisting our constitution and our jurisprudence into knots to pretend that different statistics by race can only be caused by white people’s ill will, sixty years of vast public expenditures on educational and social programs that deliver no benefits at all (other than to those who pocket the expenditures); that one day soon, after sixty years of futility and waste, we shall accept race differences as calmly and as prudently as we accept the laws of thermodynamics.
I have a dream that with the black homicide rate at eight times the white rate, and with discrepancies of a similar size having existed since reliable records began a hundred and eighty years ago, an organization calling itself Black Lives Matter will address itself to bringing black homicide numbers down to the white level — better yet, to the Asian level — or else be laughed out of the public square.
I have a dream that race differences in outcomes, which are mere statistical abstractions remote from our everyday dealings, will one day matter as little to us as personal differences in outcomes. I shall never be a skilled violinist, a good tennis player, or a creative mathematician; not because of malice, "racism," or "privilege" on the part of my fellow citizens, but because of my own abilities and inclinations — which, like almost everyone else’s, are middling and un-spectacular. I do not lose sleep over this. I absolutely do not take it as an occasion to insult and berate my fellow-citizens, or deprive them of their rights.
I have a dream that our nation’s past will one day be cherished for having made possible our present security and prosperity; that the ignorance and misdeeds of that past be kept in sight on a shelf, accessible to all, but never dominating our view of what our ancestors were, the heroism they displayed in defense of our civilization, and the great good things they did.
I have a dream that one day freedom of association, which picks no man’s pocket and breaks no man’s leg, will be restored to us.
I have a dream that the evil and divisive doctrines of "disparate impact" and "affirmative action" will be scrubbed from our jurisprudence; that hiring into civil-service work — including police work and firefighting — will be strictly meritocratic; and that young black Americans will no longer, just to satisfy the whims of smug college admissions officers and innumerate jurists, will no longer be pushed into academic college programs they can’t cope with and will drop out from.
I have a dream that my two beautiful children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character …
04 — The smack of firm government. The phrase "the smack of firm government" seems to have originated in a political report by journalist Donald Maclachlan at my old employer, the London Daily Telegraph.
That was 64 years ago — long before my time at the Telegraph, I hasten to add — when Britain was in the throes of the Suez Canal Crisis. The Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, was thought by colleagues in his party, the Conservative Party, to be not handling the crisis very well. Quote from Donald Maclachlan in the Telegraph, a conservative newspaper, January 3rd 1956, quote:
Why are Conservatives around the country restive, and Ministers and backbenchers unenraptured with their leader? There is a favorite gesture of the Prime Minister’s which is sometimes recalled to illustrate this sense of disappointment. To emphasize a point, he will clench one fist to smack the open palm of the other hand — but the smack is seldom heard. Most Conservatives, and almost certainly some of the wiser trade union leaders, are waiting to hear the smack of firm Government.
End quote.
I know the feeling. Watching coverage of the anarchist takeover in Seattle, I am yearning to hear the smack of firm government.
I doubt we shall be getting that from the Governor of Washington State, a jellyfish named Jay Inslee. The last time Governor Inslee earned the attention of Radio Derb was back in April when we noted his having appointed to the state Supreme Court a disabled black lesbian immigrant from Trinidad. Disabled, black, female, homosexual, and an immigrant: How woke is that!
We further noted Governor Inslee’s previous two appointments to his state’s highest judicial authority: a Jewish Native American, and another lesbian advertised as "Asian-American-Latina." Either they are plumb out of able-bodied native-born white Anglo heterosexual males up there in the Pacific Northwest, or else the Governor is so overwhelmed with shame at being one such himself, he is determined there shall be no others in the seats of power.
When, two days into the anarchist takeover in his state’s largest city, Governor Jellyfish was asked about it at a news conference, he replied, flapping his tentacles, quote: "Well that’s news to me … I have not heard anything about that." End quote. Too busy ingesting plankton, perhaps.
The Mayorette of Seattle, an Irish-American lesbian — boy, they really are running out of normal people up there, aren’t they? — at her presser on Thursday described the anarchists of Chaz as, quote, "patriotic." Well, yes, I guess they are, in their own sweet way. They are patriotic Chazians.
The only other Washington State authority figure to express an opinion was Seattle police chief Carmen Best.
I didn’t know anything about Chief Best, so I went googling. I saw that she is a short, trim black lady; physically, not a figure who'd fill you with confident hope if you saw her running to your assistance when you were getting mugged in the street by two George Floyd-size villains. Uh-oh, I thought, another affirmative action hire.
My opinion of the Chief was not improved after the Monday surrender of Seattle’s central district to the anarchist mob and the evacuation of the precinct station house. "This is an exercise in trust and de-escalation," said the Chief.
Ri-ight. Failing generals in war-time have a whole lexicon of euphemisms for retreat: "regrouping to the rear," "phased withdrawal," "strategic repositioning," and so on. Well, I thought, here’s another one: "trust and de-escalation."
As the week progressed, though, my opinion of Chief Best did improve somewhat. I'd guess she'd been hearing plain talk from rank and file cops and had been revising her attitude accordingly.
At her Thursday address to the force, where she mentioned the abandonment of that station house, Chief Best actually showed some spine — not a thing we've been seeing much of anywhere this past couple of weeks.
[Clip: Leaving the precinct was not my decision. You fought for days to protect it. I asked you to stand on that line day in and day out: to be pelted with projectiles, to be screamed at, threatened and in some cases hurt. Then to have a change of course nearly two weeks in, it seems like an insult to you and our community. Ultimately the city had other plans for the building and relented [sic] to severe public pressure. I’m angry about how this all came about. I understand that my comments in this message may be leaked to the public, but I’m not concerned about that. I stand by what I’m saying.]
By this point I found myself thinking that Chief Best may be the only player in this dismal melodrama with anything like a normal person’s approach to events. I bet she could administer the smack of firm government if the mayor and governor would let her, but of course they won’t.
My own ideas about dealing with the Seattle Commune at first ran to flamethrowers, helicopter gunships, and mass bayonet charges, with tactical nuclear weapons for backup. On reflection, though, I realised that may not be politically optimal.
OK; how about a siege? Federal troops stationed at all access points to the zone, under strict orders to let no-one in, and to let out only infants, invalids, and infirm old people. Let’s see how long the Chazians can feed themselves. Personally, I'd let it run all the way to cannibalism; but again, I appreciate that might not play well politically.
Federal troops, yes … federal … Shall we hear the smack of firm government from Washington, D.C.? Next segment.
05 — Crafting a proposal to consider. I had to restrain myself from adding a laughter clip at the end of that previous segment. The smack of firm government, from this administration? From our lazy, inattentive, blustering, putty-in-the-hands-of-Deep-State tweeter-in-chief? In our dreams.
To be fair to the President, though, he’s in something of a bind here. For one thing, he has no support from his congressional party, who hate him.
Consider for example Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill. What’s he doing as the country goes up in flames? Quote from Roll Call, June 9th, quote:
Senate Republicans, led by South Carolina’s Tim Scott, are putting together their own policing legislation and say they hope to find common ground with Democrats on issues like body cameras, data collection on use of force and training practices to emphasize de-escalation. …
Interrupting quote. "De-escalation," right. That word’s kind of in the air right now, isn’t it? Gotta de-escalate!
Where gangs of thugs looting and burning our city centers are concerned, I personally would like to see law enforcement try a little escalating. But hey, that’s me.
Tim Scott, by the way, is the only black Republican in the Senate; so, a perfectly random choice to head up the project. Remember the old quip: "Q: What do you call the one black guy at a Republican conference? A: Mr Chairman."
Continuing the quote:
The Kentucky Republican [that’s McConnell] said he’s asked Scott, the only black GOP senator, to lead a working group in crafting a proposal for the conference to consider.
Pretty bold stuff! Senator Scott will lead a working group in crafting a proposal for the conference to consider. Perhaps when they have fully considered it they will bring forth provisional plans to form a subcommittee to produce a report for deliberation by the full committee so that, in the fulness of time, draft legislation can be prepared for consultation with the relevant departments … The spirit of Sir Humphrey lives!
Wait, though: Isn’t the President also Commander-in-Chief of our nation’s armed forces? Couldn’t he just send in troops to restore order, as Eisenhower did with Little Rock in 1957, as Kennedy did in Oxford, Mississippi five years later, as Poppy Bush did in the L.A. riots thirty years after that?
Eh, he could, but it’s not easily done. It helps to have some local authority figure — a mayor or a governor — ask for federal troops. The mayors and the governors here, in Minneapolis and Seattle, hate Trump and would cut their own throats rather than invite him to launch what might be a successful law-enforcement operation.
And then there are the military chiefs. In case it’s escaped your attention, the most senior ranks of our military are thoroughly pozzed.
The name George Casey mean anything? General George Casey? General George Casey of the following famous quote, after the mass killing by a crazy Islamist at Fort Hood back in 2009? Famous quote:
As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.
End quote.
And that was eleven years ago, before the Great Awokening really got airborne. By this point, eleven years further on, the Chiefs of our General Staff would be right at home on the faculty of Williams College.
My own occasional reports from the enlisted ranks tell me that the wokeness of the General Staff does not extend very far down the chain of command. If that’s right, an attempted Pentagon coup against Trump to put some black lesbian Muslim in the White House might not work out exactly as intended. Don’t think the brass wouldn’t like to try it, though.
And even if Trump could get civilian cover for sending in troops, and even if our woke generals didn’t resign en masse or try to stage a coup, the politics of the thing — looking forward, I mean, to November’s election — are dicey.
Too many things could go wrong, with too many powerful people in the military, the bureaucracy, and the media, wanting them to go wrong — wanting to scupper Trump’s chances in November.
It would be a heck of a gamble for Trump. Is he that much of a gambler? We may find out.
Although I should have said: Is he still that much of a gambler? You don’t have a career like Donald Trump’s without having rolled a lot of dice. The President is coming up to 74 years old now, though — this Sunday, in fact — and you can take it from me: the dice-rolling urge falls off after seventy.
06 — Miscellany. And now, our closing miscellany of brief items.
Imprimis: The last few days have been rich with ironies.
The Mayorette of Seattle tweets that, tweet: "It is unconstitutional and illegal to send the military to Seattle," when you just know, if you were to ask her, she totally supports the Union having taken up arms against the Confederate States.
Or how about the anarchists of Chaz enacting strict controls on who comes in and out. No open borders there! — and you better have good i.d. on you, just like at a polling place … There’s nothing anarchists are more keen on than personal i.d. cards.
Here is another irony, one that, so far as I’m aware, nobody but me has noticed, though I'll allow it’s a very small and obscure one.
HBO Max has announced they are withdrawing the movie Gone with the Wind from their lists, although only temporarily. The movie, a company spokesreptile explained, quote, "will return with a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions." End quote.
In other words, whereas you used to get just a movie, now you get a movie prefaced with a lecture telling you the correct opinion to have about it.
In the coming Utopia of righteous thinking there will be no such thing as just sitting down to be entertained. You will first have to have your attitude properly adjusted.
All right, Derb, all right, so where’s the irony?
Here it comes; and as I said, it’s a very little one.
We are of course undergoing a cultural revolution. The archetype and template for all cultural revolutions in our time is the one that convulsed Communist China from 1966 to 1976.
A lead player in that cultural revolution was Jiang Qing, the much-younger fourth wife of Mao Tse-tung. This lady distinguished herself as one of the loudest, shrillest, busiest, cruellest, most vindictive of all the propagandists and persecutors through all the most violent and terroristic phases of that cultural revolution.
Before marrying Mao, Jiang Qing had had a brief career as a minor movie actress in 1930s Shanghai. She fancied herself a connoisseur of the performing arts, and was particularly fond of Hollywood movies. Once Mao had taken power and she could get anything she wanted, she spent a lot of time watching movies. (As, by the way, did Stalin.)
Do you know what Jiang Qing’s favorite Hollywood movie was? See if you can guess.
Item: Our cultural revolution has spread abroad, with marches and protest demonstrations in several European cities.
Britain has been especially badly afflicted. Particularly strong over there have been the revolutionaries' iconoclastic passions. Perhaps you have seen pictures of Sir Winston Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square, first defaced by the rioters, now boarded up for protection.
I would tell you more, but haven’t the heart. I feel about Britain the way you might feel about a beloved elderly relative thrashing and howling in dementia. I grew up there; I remember Britain when it was still a country, before the great national suicide got under way. It was a lovely country; I remember it very fondly.
Now gone, all gone. The Mayor of London, a Pakistani Muslim who knows nothing and cares less about what was once a nation, has announced a Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm, which is just as Orwellian as it sounds. London’s statues, street names, and commemorative plaques largely reflect Victorian Britain, says the mayor, and that must be changed to reflect Britain’s new, vibrant diversity.
Of course it must! I wonder what new name they will give to Parliament Square. Slay-the-Infidel Square, perhaps? Wakanda Square? Nelson Mandela Square? Osama bin Laden Square? …
I’m sorry, I have to turn my eyes away. It hurts too much.
Item: It’s not just white countries that are infected by this latest spasm of the cultural revolution. I was surprised to read in the South China Morning Post this Tuesday that in Japan, quote:
Hundreds of people took to the streets of Tokyo and Osaka last weekend in support of the Black Lives Matter protests.
End quote.
That was, however, at the tail end of a story about how the Japanese TV network NHK had aired a minute-and-a-half animation clip of wild-looking blacks looting stores.
Sample quote:
One black man with an Afro carries what appears to be a burning electrical appliance as if he has been engaged in looting while another — also powerfully built — strums a guitar while seated on a fire hydrant. Other black protesters march in outrage in the background.
End quote.
NHK, the Japanese network, has groveled and apologized. Still, it warms my heart to know that the fine old East Asian total indifference to Western racial protocols, at any rate where blacks are concerned, is still alive and laughing.
Item: Back to the place formerly known as Britain. The news from over there just gets worse and worse.
Headline from the Daily Mail, June 10th: Marmite limits sales due to shortage of brewers' yeast during coronavirus lockdown.
Yes, this story is about Marmite, that lovely savory spread that has been sustaining and energizing Britons since 1902.
A fundamental constituent of Marmite is repurposed brewer’s yeast. With the pubs closed by the coronavirus pandemic, however, brewers have been slowing down their production of yeast. The Marmite company has had to stop producing their larger jars of the stuff. Now you can only buy the teeny nine-ounce jar.
Here come the tears again. First they gave up their Empire; then they threw open the borders to all the criminals, moochers, parasites, and religious fanatics of the Third World. Now the Brits are cutting back on Marmite. I weep, I weep.
07 — Signoff. That’s all I have, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your time and attention; and Mr President, if you're listening: Happy Birthday! And yes, that’s sincere. I don’t think much of you, but, dammit, you're all that stands between Americans and President Stacey Abrams. Stay well … please.
OK, I'd better sign off. I’m due to take over from my son at border patrol duty five minutes from now, and I don’t want to show up late. You know how punctilious these ex-military types are.
And to be perfectly frank with you, I’m a bit nervous with him out there in full combat fatigues, carrying my trusty old Lee Enfield. It’s a British rifle, one he’s not used to; and in night-time conditions like now, a shot could easily go wide. In a suburban neighborhood like ours, a miss can do as much harm as a hit. I think in fact …
[Sound of gunshot.]
What the hell …? Wait a minute … [Calls out.] Son, that was Mrs Bernstein’s cat from number 27! For goodness' sake be careful! [Normal voice.] Good thing that cat’s an agile little critter. I guess they really do have nine lives. I'd better wind up here, though.
For signout music, let’s end where we began: with a U.S. Army trombonist. Here’s Staff Sergeant Carmen Russo with the United States Army Field Band playing Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee.
There will be more from Radio Derb next week.
[Music clip: U.S. Army Field Band, "Flight of the Bumblebee."]
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