Robert Harrington<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a08:00 pm EDT June 18, 2020<\/p>\n Palmer Report<\/a>\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0Analysis<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t even go there Robert Harrington\u00a0|\u00a08:00 pm EDT June 18, 2020 Palmer Report\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0Analysis Let\u2019s say your grandmother just died. Her death is especially distressing to you because you\u2019ve lost a lot of family members of late who were equally precious to you. Let\u2019s say you go to a friend for comfort. Their first reaction…","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-larrynorton","post-1188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","no-post-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8bppg-ja","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1189,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions\/1189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nortonspeaks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Let\u2019s say your grandmother just died. Her death is especially distressing to you because you\u2019ve lost a lot of family members of late who were equally precious to you. Let\u2019s say you go to a friend for comfort. Their first reaction is to wonder aloud what your grandma did or failed to do to contribute to her own death. They then point out that death is common when you live in the world of the elderly, and the elderly need to take more responsibility for that sad but implacable Home Truth.<\/h4>\n
You try to express to your \u201cfriend,\u201d who you\u2019re beginning to wonder if indeed they are your friend, how much your gran\u2019s life mattered to you. \u201cWell,\u201d your friend responds, \u201call grandmothers\u2019 lives matter.\u201d<\/h4>\n
This is an example of what it\u2019s like to have your feelings hijacked by a self-righteous person employing (barely) technically true irrelevancies as weapons. It neither helps nor comforts you. What it does instead is leave you with the realisation that your pain isn\u2019t merely acute, it\u2019s voiceless and bereft of outside human compassion and understanding.<\/h4>\n
I think it\u2019s important that this point be fully understood before we proceed. The last time I ventured onto the topic of Black Lives Matter, some well-meaning but clueless readers used the expression \u201call lives matter\u201d in the comment field. While that technically ought to be true, it isn\u2019t merely irrelevant to the discussion of Black Lives Matter, it is ultimately inimical to its central message. \u201cAll lives matter\u201d isn\u2019t a point that needs to be made. It\u2019s more or less been an American article of faith since the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. We will leave off, for the moment, that the Declaration probably meant that all white, male, property owning lives \u201care created equal,\u201d and take the most generous interpretation for the sake of our point at hand.<\/h4>\n
\u00a0\u201cBlack Lives Matter\u201d is not a position that needs embellishment or qualification. What it means in America is that black men and women have for centuries been treated as if their lives don\u2019t matter at all \u2014 and it needs to stop. It began with slavery, continued with Jim Crow and is perpetuated by a mindset that is systemic in law enforcement today. It helps no one if you parrot \u201call lives matter\u201d in response, as if it\u2019s a point that needs to be made and no one ever heard it before until Wise Old You brought it to their attention. It doesn\u2019t make you sound like Gandhi or Jesus. It makes you sound like a fool. So cut it out.<\/h4>\n
<\/h4>\n
Besides which \u2014 and this is a point that\u2019s almost never really made \u2014 in actual practice and where the rubber meets the road all lives most emphatically don\u2019t matter. That\u2019s the reason we have to say Black Lives Matter in the first place. That\u2019s the thing that needs to change, and the change needs to begin with attitudes and presumptions about the lives of people of color. Black lives matter, and we need to acknowledge that naked fact without equivocating commentary.<\/h4>\n
Let it also be noted that when you respond to Black Lives Matter with \u201call lives matter\u201d you\u2019re in despicable company. During a House Judiciary meeting on the House Democrats\u2019 police reform proposal, Representative Eric Swalwell asked if any of his Republican colleagues could \u201cunequivocally\u201d say \u201cblack lives matter.\u201d Representative Matt Gaetz responded saying \u201call lives matter.\u201d So if the expression hasn\u2019t become repellent to you yet, maybe the execrable standard set by the House of Representatives\u2019 very own pet weasel will help.<\/h4>\n
\u201cAll lives matter\u201d is an updated version of the well-meaning bromide that \u201csome of my best friends are black.\u201d It needs to exit the language now and forever. People of color have invented Black Lives Matter and made it their very own. They don\u2019t need help from us white people. I have total confidence in the competence and intelligence of people of color, and if you don\u2019t, maybe it would be helpful for you also to recall that the best and brightest and most intelligent and most competent and most compassionate President of the United States we\u2019ve had in our lifetime was also a person of color. Let\u2019s make his choice for his second in command our choice for President in November. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters of color, comrades and friends, stay safe.<\/h4>\n