But, Who’s Doing the Talking?
By J. Jeff Toler for Shenandoah Christian Alliance j.toler@sca4christ.org
- “Sin is not ended by multiplying words, but the prudent hold their tongues.” (Proverbs 10:19)
In the days following the attempted assassination on Donald Trump as he was speaking at a campaign rally near a rural town in Pennsylvania, it’s simply not possible to ignore a palpable change in the national conversation. This was once a popular phrase among pundits: to have a National Conversation. What does it really mean to have one, with whom, and most importantly, is it effective? Wesley Morris, writing in The New York Times, makes the case that it’s simply futile.
The term became a feature of Bill Clinton’s presidency when he held his first of several “national conversations on race.” This would become an important mile marker in the decades that followed, as the issue of race and racial divide became increasingly promoted among both pundits and politicians.
According to Ta-Nahisi Coates, in writing for the Atlantic in 2015, wrote, “In 1998, Toni Morrison wrote a comment for The New Yorker arguing that “white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime.”
Continuing, Coates explained, “The popular interpretation of Morrison’s point holds that, summoning all of her powers, the writer gazed into the very essence of Clinton, and found him sufficiently soulful. In fact, Morrison’s point had little to do with soul of any kind. She was not much concerned with Clinton’s knowledge of Ebonics, his style of handshake, nor whether he pledged Alpha or Q.* Morrison was concerned with power… race has never been much about skin color, or physical features, so much as the need to name someone before doing something to them. Race is not a sober-minded description of people. It is casus belli.” (Casus belli is from the Latin: “occasion for war.”) Editor: Emphasis added
This point must not be lost on anyone paying close attention. The issues of race, gender, class, or any other topic for a national conversations are, in fact, dialogs that are not so much intended as discussions, as they are strategies for creating and increasing power in the war on western civilization. We can recognize it as dialog when it attempts to prevent open debate and respectful disagreement. For the leftist, the purpose of dialog is always compromise, which invariably requires someone to surrender some form of principled belief.
The question then, is it possible those in his life, failed to have valuable conversations with Timothy Matthew Crooks before he decided to shoot at Donald Trump?
The most effective conversations can and will be effective only when those having one will listen as sincerely as they are persuasive in speaking. While debates and arguments aren’t the best model for earnest conversation, they are far superior to threats, intimidation, and tirades.
From my perspective, the most important sign that one generation is failing the next, is when we are unsuccessful in making the necessary efforts to teach our children, with sincere conversation, about the things that will really matter to them. Essentially, if parents and teachers fail at that, our children and students will fail in life.
For that matter, what important opportunities are missed for the countless people whom tragedies were visited because the important people in their lives didn’t listen, or more importantly, speak into their lives? Hypotheticals of course, but someone should be asking them.
Of course, for some, conversations like this will not always elicit honest responses. There are people, probably like Crooks, who harbored dark and troubling thoughts and emotions that even a parent couldn’t or wouldn’t see. In our culture now, we are living in a time and place where most of our “friends” are on Facebook. Worse, our thoughts are consigned to commentary on National Review, or The Huffington Post. When I take the time to read some of them, I do so as a means to gauge the temperature of… well, the National Conversation. Much as I hate to admit it, I’m not very encouraged.
I happened to see on YouTube, some interviewer asking random people on the street their reaction to the shooting. Some said, “He had it coming.” Or, “It was all staged to make him look good.” Are these our neighbors? Yes, they are.
We should have learned more than we did these last four years. We didn’t realize just how naive we were in thinking that more people shared our worldview going into these years than we have coming out. Look how much has changed in just the span of a week.
Do we dare think that we can come out of this insane episode with some sense of optimism for the future? If so, my advice is to avoid celebrating before crossing the finish line. Even though it seems as if the enemies of truth and liberty have been disabused from their plans, not everyone can tell you what those plans were.
Charles Kessler, (pictured) Editor of the Claremont Review, recently wrote, “A second marriage, Samuel Johnson famously remarked, is the triumph of hope over experience.” After Sunday, July 21, the choice facing American voters in 2024, appears to be between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Now it appears to be the triumph of experience over hope.
Joe Biden ended his campaign, but he hasn’t left office. Will they tell us now who’s running the country?
But make no mistake. The real enemies of democracy still own the narrative—the national conversation—aided by the power of a corrupt and incompetent corporate media, and a very committed, albeit currently disarrayed, Democratic National Convention.
Be courageous when approaching the general elections this November. There is still much that even one person can do to help preserve our democratic republic. And, by far the most important is to engage in purposeful and meaningful discussion with anyone who will give you the opportunity. Of course, we must first look for that opportunity, and then seize upon it.
MOreover, we can take action in the form of volunteering to speak at local town halls and meetings. We can attend school board meetings and take the podium to present the case for what honestly preserves true democracy. The will of an informed people, afforded the power and protection the founders drafted, is the very definition of democracy. The irony is this: thinking this way, speaking this way, has been determined by our foes to be a threat to democracy. Admittedly, this will make honest conversation difficult.
- And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7)
* A reference to two historical black American fraternities: Omega Phi Psi, known as “Ques,” founded in 1911, Howard University, and Alpha Phi Alpha, or “Alphas” founded in 1906 at Cornell University.
