used with permission from Ace of Spades http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=377650

Max Boot, who’s notoriety extends to being so continually wrong about foreign policy that he must be actively trying to fail, was the target of a recent National Review article in which he was called out for fanning the flames of racial hatred. You see, Boot in the post Trump era has done what many other “conservatives” have done. Namely, they’ve decided TV appearances and that sweet, sweet cable news cash outweigh any concern for actual conservative policy wins. These are the people who fancy themselves moral betters in the age of Trump despite the fact that their private lives rarely measure up.

Boot, Sykes, Frum, Rubin, Brooks, Kristol, etc. make up a cabal of media fixtures who have no actual following. Yet, they’ve learned they can make money by being anti-Trump and parroting woke talking points. Boot has comically “left” the Republican party about a dozen times as this point, each time demanding other real Republicans pay him respect for his principled decision. I believe he even wrote a low-selling book about it. I’m not going to waste the time to find out as it’s nothing I’m going to recommend.

Earlier, Boot wrote a piece entitled “Get a Grip White People. We’re Not Victims.” That’s news to me as I’ve never claimed to be a victim in the first place, buy hey, we are doing the broad brush thing here and Boot has to get his woke points up to remain at The Washington Post. In response to his silly screed, John Hirschauer over at National Review wrote a rebuttal. Here’s an excerpt of the National Review article that got Boot so incensed.

A responsible journalist would propose a realistic alternative for conservative whites who don’t want to cede their basic political premises but who nevertheless reject white nationalism. But Boot instead goes on a meandering tirade with scant a coherent point. Sometimes he rails against white people as such; his claims range from the tautological (“White people can be pretty clueless”) to the plainly calumnious (“ . . . the sense of outrage that white people feel when they fear losing their privileged position to people of color”). At other times, he aims his fire more narrowly on the “many” Trump supporters who assume “that white supremacy is the natural order of things.”

Like most white authors in this genre, Boot’s self-hatred is boutique and performative. His ire is directed more at White People in the abstract than with white people as such. Boot (who, it must be said, is whiter than almost anyone on the Washington Post masthead) must, for his piece’s title to make any sense, be in possession of the “grip” he’d like his fellow whites to “get.” I’m not quite sure he is.

The great shame of this piece is not that Boot had the audacity to instruct an entire racial group to “get a grip.” It is not even his almost libelous comparison of post-apartheid South Africa with the United States in 2019. It is the irresponsibility of speaking in such totalizing racial language in a time that, as he himself concedes, is “dangerous.” Max Boot can claim all he wants that President Trump is stoking the flames of race hatred, but if he really believes that, he ought to stop fanning them himself.

Sounds fair to me. What Boot is doing is exactly the kind of identity politics that the left routinely propagates. He assigns nefarious motive and faux grievance to an entire race of people, never stopping to consider most people are simply living their lives, not concerned in the least with presenting themselves as victims. Then, even as he demands subjugation of one group, he makes room for every possible grievance of other groups he deems worthy. Never once does he stop to consider people of all races are simply individuals, often with diverse viewpoints.

It’s a kind of soft racism that’s tolerated way too much in the name of inter-sectionality, which has become a religious dogma within the Democratic party at this point. Boot, desperate to be part of the club, is willing to say whatever it takes to keep the plaudits and retweets flowing.

Worse, Boot traffics in the typical “white supremacist” trope that has so perverted our politics and discourse. Don’t like someone’s views on immigration? Just call them a white supremacist. Don’t like someone’s views on the 2nd amendment? Must be a white supremacist.

In a response that would be suspected of parody if his Twitter account wasn’t verified, Boot responds to Hirschauer’s criticism exactly as you’d expect.

It makes sense if you’re a white supremacist. https://t.co/eJGjsZeWVN

— Max Boot (@MaxBoot) August 12, 2019

Everything is white supremacy.

This is what passes for intelligent thought at The Washington Post and within the greater liberal media structure these days. It’s so devoid of actual thought and evidence so as to simply be a reactionary slur at this point. In reality, it’s an abuse of language that ultimately hurts the cause of fighting against racism. If everything is racist, nothing is racist.

Maximum Bootlicker (@MaxBoot) is now retweeting Kurt “Tentacle Porn” Eichenwald (@KurtEichenwald) in defense of his dumbass “white supremacist” attack on an NRO writer b/c the writer’s article owned Boot & made him Mad Online & forced his fedora into an even more aggressive slant pic.twitter.com/WIDiTrMkM7

— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) August 12, 2019

I’ve got my issues with certain writers at National Review. What I do know though is that they aren’t white supremacists. But this is the future of politics on the left, which Boot is firmly on at this point. No longer do issues and details need debating. All you have to do is call your opponents racist and you tacitly endorse their silencing. It’s a level of laziness that is leading to further corrosion of our society.

I’m genuinely curious how long this stupidity can last.

I’ve got a new twitter! Please help by following @bonchieredstate.