Biden administration members are confused about a host of issues, and it is incumbent on American citizens to help them overcome this problem and get on with the business of government. This essay is a modest contribution toward that goal.
Their confusion about the defund-the-police movement. Why hasn’t it worked? they wonder. As they see it, the country is suffering from systemic racism, and police departments are responsible for most of it. They focus their attention mostly on black neighborhoods. They stop black-driven cars and harass the drivers. They stop black citizens on the streets and arrest them more often than they do any other racial or ethnic group. Most damning of all, they fire their weapons at black males more often than they do at other citizens, and the result is an inordinate number of injuries and deaths. So from the administration’s standpoint, most police hate black people, males in particular. Therefore cutting police budgets, or better yet eliminating entire departments, will save black lives.
To end this confusion, the administration need only consider why more police patrols, investigations, and arrests occur in poor black neighborhoods than in upscale white, Asian, OR BLACK neighborhoods. The answer is, because there is more criminal activity there! In other words, honest people in those neighborhoods are more preyed upon by criminals. To reduce crime and protect citizens, there needs to be more and better police activity there. Defunding the police only makes matters worse.
Their confusion over Conservative claims of fraud in the 2020 election. “They ask, why do they persist in making such claims? Why can’t they accept the fact that numerous investigations have proven the elections were fair and honest? Are they so mindlessly supportive of Donald Trump that they can no longer face reality?”
To end this confusion the administration need only examine more closely the reports and commentaries they chose to ignore at the time, or that their news sources kept them from seeing. The following three are sufficient to persuade any honest person that the dismissal of election fraud claims was irresponsible: Peter Navarro’s detailed report, Mark Levin’s analysis, and Army Intelligence Captain Seth Keshel’s statistical study.
Their confusion over Conservatives’ view of Biden’s border policy. Members of the administration regard the opening of the southern border and the abolishing of Trump’s approach to migration as a restoration of common decency and the Judeo-Christian principle of loving our neighbors by overcoming poverty and oppression. They are therefore inclined to dismiss opposition to their policy as grounded in hardheartedness, racism, and xenophobia. The support of a number of religious leaders have given this position has strengthened the administration’s resentment of opposition to the policy.
To end this confusion about opposition to their border policy, members of the administration need to stop proclaiming their good intentions and consider the effects of their policy and the message it conveys. Thousands of illegals from Central and South America (and some from other hemispheres) are streaming across the border, many of them infected with Covid and other diseases, including HIV. Most of them are not tested when they enter, but housed for a time at American taxpayers’ expense, then put on buses without masks and sent to the four corners of the U.S. and left to become wards of the various states. Moreover, they are exempted from the rules concerning wearing masks, social distancing, and getting vaccinated that have been imposed on American citizens. It should not take much reflection on these facts for members of the administration to grasp why so many citizens find the policy unfair and absurd.
Their especially deep confusion over people’s reluctance to get the Covid Vaccine. The administration has tried more mask mandates, more closing of schools and businesses and other restrictions designed to persuade, cajole, or force people to be “vacced,” without the level of success they have sought. The latest approach, as I write, is NYC mayor DiBlasio’s requiring of Vaccine cards for entry to restaurants, bars, gyms, and other facilities.
To end this confusion, the administration can consider the flip-flopping that has characterized their statements since President Biden took office. For example, from “masks are effective” to “masks are ineffective” to “masks have to be doubled to be effective.” Also, from the firm rule that large gatherings of any kind are taboo, to exemptions for protest demonstrations that often turn into riots, to special dispensations for elected officials like Gavin Newsome and Barack Obama. They can also consider the fact that none of the vaccines have yet received the approval of the FDA without which public skepticism has not only been justified but RECOMMENDED. Finally, they can consider that despite their continued emphasis on “following the science,” they have completely ignored the scientific finding that antibodies produced by having the disease provide greater immunity than receiving the Vaccine. Each of these cases have made public caution understandable.
Their continuing confusion over peoples’ opposition to Black Lives Matter (BLM). Because the administrators see the organization as not only a positive force, but also as a noble one, they see no rational basis for opposing it. They therefore conclude that white opposition must be due to racism and black opposition to ignorance or self-hatred.
To end this confusion the administration need only consider that BLM vehemently apposed the perfectly reasonable argument that “all lives matter.” More importantly, they have generally confined their campaign to protesting white on black offenses, particularly ones committed by the police, while ignoring the considerably more numerous black on black offenses that occur daily in many large cities. Such selective concern has led many knowledgeable commentators to accuse BLM of hypocrisy.
Their confusion over the growing outrage over Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the schools. The administrator evidently accepts the CRT description of the curriculum as a long-overdue updating of the traditional teaching of U.S. history that gives students a deeper and more accurate view of America’s past. “What can be wrong with that?” members of the administration wonder, and they conclude that the parents have been misinformed and should not be listened to.
To end this confusion and adopt a more informed view of CRT, members of the administration should look more closely at what the parents are saying and their basis for saying it. Far from being misinformed, those parents are listening to what many teachers and curriculum experts are saying. One example of the message is this testimony of Dana Stangel-Plowe, a teacher who resigned in protest of what she told Dan Bongino was teaching. “The school’s ideology requires students to see themselves not as individuals, but as representatives of a group, [and] forcing them to adopt the status of privilege or victimhood. As a result, students arrive in my classroom accepting the theory as fact: [That] people born with less melanin in their skin are oppressors, and people born with more melanin in their skin are oppressed. Men are oppressors, women are oppressed, and so on. This is the dominant and divisive ideology that is guiding our adolescent students.”
Some readers may wonder why I am suggesting that members of the Biden administration are “confused” when they are more likely intentionally pursuing programs that destroy the governmental, legal, and cultural systems that have defined our country. The answer is that I am following the old and still sturdy adage, “Never attribute to malice what can as reasonably be attributed to ignorance.” In other words, I am giving those members (well, many of them) the benefit of the doubt. They are likely to have been sufficiently manipulated, if not brainwashed, by their college professors and fed carefully select information, if not lied to, by mainstream and social media that they are genuinely confused. As for those who harbor ill-intentions, that very fact can make them susceptible to confusion about reality.
Copyright © 2021 by Vincent Ryan Ruggiero. All rights reserved
