Let us say, and why not, that you're a white guy. And you've penned an editorial where you rant against how depraved the world has become since the 1960s, mocking the very notions of liberation and social upheaval. Now let's say you have a black friend read it. Do you think there's a chance that that black friend is gonna think you've gone all Trent Lott on him? Would it be wrong for him to think that you're essentially writing in your little editorial, "Let's go back to that time when the Negroes who didn't know their place got taught where the back of the bus was"? Would it be wrong for you to be called "racist" by implication?
What's just rankly pathetic about Thomas Sowell's
column this week is that it was written by a black man, subconsciously plumbing depths of self-loathing that usually end up in a years-long alcohol and coke binge or in a repression that eventually turns one into a serial killer. Sowell writes, "Some of the painful consequences of various 'liberations' that began in the 1960s have included the disintegration of families, skyrocketing crime rates, falling test scores in school, and record-breaking rates of teenage suicide." By about fifth grade, every child in this country knows that the "liberations" of the 1960s include the civil rights movement, you know, Martin Luther King, voting rights, shit like that. But Sowell doesn't bring this up, for to do so would be to validate, in a major way, the fact that liberals might just have the good of the majority of people at heart.
No, no, Sowell, who, once again, it must be pointed out, is black, just goes on the offensive against the 1960s, engaging in a one-man jihad, if you will: "Murder rates, for example, were much lower during the Great Depression of the 1930s and during World War II than they became after various 'liberating' changes in the 1960s." Leaving aside the obvious, which is that to say that murders declined during World War II because so many soldiers were fucking overseas, leaving aside things like the post-war jump in population, and leaving aside the facts that reporting of crimes, inclusion of a broader swath of society in crime stats, and statistical methodologies all underwent a shift in the 1950s and 1960s, look at the delusional nature of the statement: in other words, because women and African Americans had greater guarantees of rights, more people got murdered.
What else have the evil 1960s wrought, according to Sowell, who is, as mentioned, a black man? He writes, "A long downward trend in teenage pregnancy and venereal diseases sharply reversed during the 1960s, starting a new trend of escalating teenage pregnancy and venereal diseases, climaxed later by the AIDS epidemic." Goddamn, Sowell would have been right there in Chicago in 1968,
waving his UC economics doctorate, smashing hippie heads. Oh, wait, no, he wouldn't have. Because if the Chicago cops had seen a black man threatening people with a billy club, they'd've beaten the shit out of him, maybe even broken Sowell's glasses.
Sowell doesn't dare try to discuss what actually caused any of this or why the revolutions of the 1960s occurred. That would have to get into the racist, misogynistic, homophobic, sexually repressive underpinnings of American society. Instead, Sowell tries to rewrite history: "For example, the quest for those elusive 'root causes' of crime, so dear to the political left, has been put aside in favor of locking up more criminals -- and the crime rate has declined." Well, yeah, it declined in the 1990s when the economy was strong because a smoothly whirring economy actually addresses the root causes. And crime's kinda been
going up the last coupla years when we haven't been locking up less people.
What Sowell is really getting at that, though, seems to be that he's worried about his stuff, his shit, his property: "The left has never understood why property rights are a big deal, except to fat cats who own a lot of property. Through legislation and judicial rulings, property rights have been eroded with rent control laws, expansive concepts of eminent domain, and all sorts of environmental restrictions." Again, one might think that changes in laws that allowed minorities more access to the ownership in America might seem to bespeak a respect for "property rights," but that's not what Sowell is concerned with. "Politicians in cities around the country violate property rights regularly," he says, "by seizing homes in working-class neighborhoods and demolishing whole sectors of the city, in order to turn the land over to people who will build shopping malls, gambling casinos, and other things that will pay more taxes than the homeowners are paying."
And that statement should make you understand that Sowell has no fucking clue what he's scribbling about. Apparently because the environmental movement, just another inconvenience for Sowell, wanted toxic waste shitholes cleaned in the 1970s, Donald Trump can wreck Grandma's house to build a giant gold building that looks like his cock. And it's all Abbie Hoffman's fault. Or Betty Friedan's. Or Malcolm X's.
Sowell's too busy mocking liberals to bother with logic, calling us "adolescents" who don't really understand shit like the grown-ups, like Sowell, the black man who wishes things would go back to how they were prior to the "post-1960s social disasters." When Thomas Sowell would be lucky if three people on a street corner listened to him go on about how good he and all the people in his neighborhood have it.
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