THE PREDICTABLE CONSEQUENCES OF ENABLING DYSFUNCTION IN THE NAME OF AUTHENTICITY?

James "Long Emergency" Kunstler fears the long hot summer to come.

What’s actually at issue here is whether black people in America really want to join with the other ethnic groups present in the land in a national common culture — that is, a consensus about behavior, ceremonies, and manners — or would rather opt out of it, oppose it, or violently destroy what’s left of it. The key to these questions is how to explain the failure-to-thrive of a large black demographic despite the apparent victories of a long civil rights campaign, colossal expenditures of tax money for assistance, and affirmative action galore. I would explain it as the malign influence of neurotic white liberalism acting on the aforesaid black ambivalence about joining in or remaining apart from that common culture.

That's certainly a possibility in Minnesota, where woke education seems to coexist with less than competent (or is it demoralized?) policing, and one Donald Trump might have tapped into a more generalized discontent about deconstructing convention.  That neurotic liberalism doesn't do much to encourage the not-yet-thriving part of the black demographic, and yet, the neurotic liberals might suggest that the broader culture is not yet all in on buying into the success of the kids who manage to thrive.

The upshot, for now, is that white liberalism has given black America permission to act violently and destructively, to disobey the law, to oppose officers attempting to enforce the law, and to justify the whole package of uncivil behavior on the grounds that “systemic racism” and “white supremacy” are the forces that keep black Americans from thriving. The script for all this prevails because liberalism cannot otherwise explain its own failure to uplift black America over many years of sedulous striving. They are left disappointed, ashamed, and guilty, and neurotically give themselves permission to support black hostility and hatred against white people as a form of self-punishment. The catch is that not all white people in America are neurotic liberals and they are not in favor of continuing white self-punishment.

The question at hand is how much longer this crazy script will be allowed to run. It appears that the country is about evenly split between those in favor of promoting black hostility and those disinclined to further submission. It’s up to American political leadership to decide, and for now the liberals are the party holding the levers of power — government, in essence, representing the blunt force that determines which way things go. And, at the head of this government sits the inert and tractable Joe Biden, who seems to have had it decided for him.

I'm still not sure whether Mr Biden is the most cunning manipulator since Lyndon Johnson to come out of the Senate, or the most easily manipulated by Congress or whoever is calling the shots since Jimmy Carter.  Not a good place, though, for the political types to be, an evenly divided electorate with neither major faction's base inclined to compromise.