Imagine the perfect excuse for political failure. Everyone complicit in the failure would need to agree upon this perfect excuse and give it throaty amplification, preferably executed in unison whenever circumstances required it. Forging such a consensus would not be too difficult, given the perpetrators preference for the collective over the individual and their common desperation to make sure their precious ideology avoids culpability for their coming failure.
This perfect excuse would have to cover every instance of failure, a comprehensive failure blame-shifting plan. Further, this perfect excuse would zero in on the perpetrators’ opponents as the “real culprits,” in other words, people who had nothing to do with the making the mess and, indeed, people who were opposed to the undertaking all along. Armed with this weapon of relentless propaganda and supported by media complicit in the failure, the perfect excuse convinces the victims of their failure to punish the innocent; and to reward those who actually failed with more chances to succeed with the same failed methods. (Spoiler Alert: the failures fail again.)
One need not imagine this perfect excuse. For the Left, it already exists: systemic racism.
As one dispels the slander that America is systemically racist, it is human to focus on the moral outrage of that monstrous lie—specifically, the corrosive effect it has on relations between fellow citizens. It encourages estrangement rather than engagement, suspicion rather than solidarity. Yet, since the Regressives believe politics is life and not merely a part of it, one must necessarily understand the Left’s political rationale for crafting this lie. If one doesn’t, the Left not only will prove unaccountable but victorious.
The Left’s strength is in what its policies promise; the Left’s weakness is what its policies deliver. In the cities, counties, and states run by Democrats, citizens do not vote to get higher rates of poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, and crime. They vote for Leftists because they trust them to fulfill their promises to end these social ills through the implementation of “progressive” policies. When reality trumps their ideology and the Left inevitably fails, it needs a reason. And the truth won’t do.
Enter the perfect excuse: “systemic racism.”
Yes, the insidious canard of “systemic racism” is morally bankrupt. But sadly, the lie of “systemic racism” has been a political boon for the Left. It has allowed the Left to blame their failures upon their enemies—Republicans, populists, conservatives, et al.—who allegedly are operating within this ubiquitous (though nebulously, if ever, defined) racist system.
Thus, the Left contends, their policies would have worked but for this systemic racism. All they need is more time and power to overcome this systemic racism so they can turn their promises into reality. Tragically, the victims of the Left’s failures believe this lie; reelecting them time and again to reprise and compound their failures and the concomitant civic misery.
As with so much of the perverse leftist ideology, the sane (to their credit) have a difficult time comprehending why it is able to gather such a large political following. The perfect excuse of “systemic racism” works precisely because it focuses on the moral rather than the political dimensions of the argument.
Morally, one can rightly argue that America is not systemically racist. But this is bound to ring hollow, especially for inner-city minority residents trapped in an environment that breeds paranoia, dependence, and despair. What more could a collection of inveterate racists do to harm these communities than what has already been done by leftist policies? For these communities it must certainly feel like racism and, in any event, the effects are the same.
Any discussion of the morality of the Left’s claim of American systemic racism, while important, cannot allow one to overlook the only systemic racism that actually exists in America: that coming from the Left. Focusing on the difference between what the Left has promised and what they actually have wrought will reveal their immorality and undermine their perfect excuse of “systemic racism” by turning it on its head.
