Letter from America:with KENNETH MUFUKA
It used to be that conservatives and progressives fought a war of words before every election. After the election, they came together. Underneath the wars, participants had forged an elite class of operatives across party lines, making two sides of one coin.
That is no longer the case.
The post-civil rights education system created thoroughly disillusioned college-educated elites, whose speech forms and beliefs were alienated from the good old American values. The differences between the elites and the conservatives therefore became vicious and lost their pretend nature.
In this primary season the war behind the words seems even more vicious than before, and is very real.
Since the leader of the Republican Party is unchallenged, all the shenanigans are on the side of the progressives (otherwise called Democrats).
For the first time in the 30 years, progressive ideas are being challenged with a vigour never seen before. Conservatives had assumed that if only they met the progressives halfway, there would be a meeting of the minds somewhere, only to realise that progressives wanted nothing short of the destruction of the old order and the overthrow of the value system that under-girded it.
It is this realisation that a sizeable portion of the US population, the deplorables, the sexists, the homophobes and you name them, are putting up a fight that daggers are drawn, and the fight promises to take no prisoners and give no quarter.
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For years progressives attacked the Catholic Church policy of celibate priesthood through the behaviour of a minority which abused young boys. Though the abuse was rare, the attacks were relentless. Rules were changed to protect accusers while exposing the accused, whether they were guilty or not. Forty-year stories were dragged from the archives. That through its 6 000 schools in 1960 the Catholics had made an invaluable contribution to the society was denied. The grand institution was almost driven into bankruptcy.
That was not enough. The last bastion — marriage between man and woman — must fall. The attacks were relentless. Today there are less than 800 Catholic schools in the land. Catholic adoption agencies, the largest and most successful in the land, were removed from government rosters because they avoided gay adoptive parents. As if this was not enough, progressives attacked gender differentiation simultaneously with child abuse in the Boy Scout Movement of America. That organisation, too, has of last week declared bankruptcy.
Eventually, it became apparent that progressives would not rest until everything that American society held dear and sacred was overthrown, that conservatives gathered some spunk.
At this time, progressives had sponsored a married gay presidential candidate, a young handsome man. This candidate has won primaries or is playing second fiddle to the leading candidate. He has a treasury of $75 million in cash even as we speak.
Progressives have done such a good job in advancing their causes that Pope Francis is regarded as “very brave” in saying these words. “The family” Pope Francis told the saints of Our Lady, (September 9) as God wants it, (is) composed of man and woman for the good of the spouses and also for the generation and education of children.” He went on to say that: “Today the family is deformed by powerful projects supported by ideological colonisation.”
That is regarded as hate speech.
Evangelist Franklin Graham gave a similar speech. He was scheduled to preach at an auditorium in Glasgow, Scotland. The auditorium was booked last July 2019 for the event. Last week, the Glasgow city fathers cancelled the event on the grounds that he is a hatemonger.
Fifty protestant pastors, including two from the Church of Scotland, wrote a protest letter to the city fathers.
Progressives have a modus operandi which starts with an attack on the meaning of established words. In the state of California, Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer has placed a bill for immediate consideration.
In future, failing bad kids shall no longer be referred to under the words “at risk” or “delinquent juveniles”. Instead they shall be referred to as “promising kids.”
The war of words has caught some fire. New York City Human Rights Commission now refers to lunatics and emotionally disturbed persons together with persons suffering from serious mental illness as “indisposed persons”.
The war on words has risen to a higher level in the Mormon state of Utah, whose ancient practice of polygamy was outlawed in 1890. A judge, listening to an infraction of the law, refused to make a ruling on the grounds that there is no difference between gay marriage and polygamy. If one is legal, the other must be too.
Indeed, argued a legislator, who has since brought a bill before the Utah assembly.
All across the union, 33 states have already made the possession and smoking of marijuana legal. The argument in favour of making smoking “recreational and liberating” was based on an innocent truth that while kids from wealthy families like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton had smoked this weed without let or hindrance, the poor are often locked up in jailhouses.
Many years ago, I visited the city of Los Angeles where all these ideas have been tested. Today, the central district that borders San Pedro and Skid Row streets is infested by 12 000 homeless addicts. They are allowed to use tents, metal and wooden shack encampments. A recent traveller and journalist, Chris Rufo, who spoke to the city fathers, estimated that as much as $200 million worth of drugs pass through this community in one year.
In the new spirit of tolerance, thefts of less than $500 are no longer prosecutable. Most bikers in that area have come into possession of their vehicles through unauthorised capture of the two wheelers. While dealers can be prosecuted, drug addicts themselves receive free needles (but not the cocaine itself).
Some “affordable” or temporary accommodation has been provided, sometimes in hotels. Homeless people, however, often resent this form of incarceration and flee back into the street.
Fights between homeless people no longer require police intervention except to separate antagonists. This is all in the spirit of tolerance.
The war between the progressives and the conservatives is reaching pitch fever. Progressives, in their desire to remove all restrictions on human freedom, forget that tradition, law and norms are the foundation on which freedom is built.
Progressives assume all faith-based initiatives are based on patriarchy, misogyny, and oppression. Conservatives have realised, like anti-slavers of the past, they are supposed not only to live with progressivism, but to embrace and cherish its propositions.
The election in November will be a step in one direction.
l Ken Mufuka is a Zimbabwean patriot who writes from the US. He spent 10 years researching Life and Times of Robert Mugabe, Dream Betrayed, available in Zimbabwe at INNOV Bookshops and in the world at kenmufukabooks.com
