A Great Light Dawns Dept.

Now and then, the Beltway crowd belatedly allows itself a glimpse of reality, however distasteful it might be:

It’s a widely accepted idea that Republicans are sitting on a demographic time bomb: The GOP is getting whiter and whiter in terms of the voters it attracts even as the country is growing increasingly diverse.

Marisa Abrajano, an associate professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego, doesn’t dispute that basic notion in a new study of the electorate. But she does suggest that the time bomb may well have a very long fuse — and that in the time before it explodes, Republicans could actually benefit electorally from a consolidation of the white vote.

“Given that whites still make up about three-quarters of the voters in the nation and will likely be the clear majority for decades to come, there is every reason to believe that whites will have a real say in who governs,” writes Abrajano in “Will Immigration Spark a White Backlash in America?” “Indeed the white population’s growing allegiance to the Republican Party points to a very different short term future — one that might more likely be highlighted by Republican victory than by Democratic dominance.”

As the title of Abrajano’s study suggests, she ties these demographic shifts closely to the ongoing debate over immigration — and, specifically, what to do about undocumented immigrants — and the effects on our politics.

[Emphasis added by FWP.]

Abrajano, given her Brookings Institution affiliation, is likely to hold to left-of-center politics, wherefore she would consider her conclusion an unfortunate one. Yet she apparently possesses enough realism to state it unambiguously, which is a rare thing among persons of a left-liberal inclination. This might not be sufficient cause to say "there's hope for the nation yet," but it's not bad news at all.

The critical factor, which few on the Left have acknowledged, is their own role in bringing about whatever degree of "white backlash" they and their mascot-groups must face. For all their incessant racism-shouting, they've never confronted the extent to which racial division in America is of their making.

To this admitted racist, it's a source of dour amusement -- especially when I get to rub some sanctimonious leftist's face in it, as follows:

Sanctimonious Leftist: You're a racist!
Fran Porretto: And damned proud of it, baby. But do you know why I'm a racist?
SL: (sneering) I can hardly wait to hear it.
FWP: Because you made me one.

This is sometimes followed by dumbfounded silence, though now and then the conversation will continue along these lines:

SL: (shocked) How can you say such a thing?
FWP: Because it's true. You're my stand-in for everyone on your side of the political fence, while I represent my own. I wanted nothing but to be left in peace, to get along with my neighbors as best I can regardless of the color of their skins. You refused to permit it. You've emphasized race at every opportunity. You've harped on racial injustices in the distant past as if they were the doing of contemporary whites. You've taught American blacks and Hispanics to think of themselves as helpless victims of "Whitey." You've agitated ceaselessly for racial preferences in the law, and you've usually gotten them. You've excused non-white criminals, traitors, and other miscreants on the grounds that "they couldn't do otherwise in this oppressive society." You've granted a wholly undeserved degree of respect to racialist hucksters like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Julian Bond, Toure, Melissa Harris-Perry, and hundreds of others. You've used ordinary words and idioms as justifications for destroying decent men's lives and careers. You've used cries of "racism!" to silence anyone who disagrees with you about anything. Worst of all, you've got everyone in the whole damned country seeing race everywhere, and afraid to speak his mind if it might somehow touch on that subject. But now that whites are showing some racial consciousness, voting and relocating and arming to protect our own from the groups you've sheltered and coddled, you find that you dislike what you've wrought? Choke on it!

At that point the conversation usually trails off, though it might continue one exchange longer:

SL: I...didn't mean to do any of that.
FWP: If I accept your claim of good intentions, it makes you an idiot who shouldn't be allowed out of the house alone, much less permitted to have a voice in national discourse. But if you did intend this outcome, you're one of the worst villains in American history and deserve nothing but my contempt. In either case, get away from me.

Perhaps the greatest challenge, when I confront someone like "Sanctimonious Leftist," is not wishing him ill. Christians are taught from early in life not to hate. It's an important lesson, for hatred is an animating force that can have the most terrible consequences. A passage from C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength comes to mind:

[Dimble] seemed to Mark to be looking at him, not with anger or contempt, but with that degree of loathing which produces in those who feel it a kind of embarrassment -- as if he were an obscenity which decent people are forced, for very shame, to pretend that they have not noticed. In this Mark was quite mistaken. In reality his presence was acting on Dimble as a summons to rigid self-control. Dimble was simply trying very hard not to hate, not to despise, above all not to enjoy hating and despising, and he had no idea of the fixed severity which this effort gave to his face. The whole of the rest of the conversation went on under this misunderstanding.

However, I must hope that God will excuse thoroughgoing contempt and revulsion toward such a person, for at this point I find that I cannot deny it. I'd imagine that many decent Americans feel much the same, whether or not they ever "let fly" as I did in the exchanges above. Pray for our country, and for them...and for me.