The Money Factor

Balderdash.

Appearing on Bill Maher's Real Time in October of 2024, Van Jones had stated 

If progressives have a politics that says all White people are racist, all men are toxic, and all billionaires are evil, it's kinda hard to keep them on your side. if you're chasing people out of the party, you can't be mad when they leave.

This quote had become most widely circulated only recently, and nothing Jones has said or even hinted at suggests that he has revised his perspective. So earlier this week I wrote "in 2020, neither Jones, or (Rahm) Emanuel (nor Carville) was heard offering criticismor even skepticism, maybe a word of caution,of the Black Lives Matter protests or the movement it symbolized. That would have demonstrated leadership, boldness, or prescience."

I have not changed my opinion but have changed my perspective. There are such Democrats who bash their own party because, among other things, it (allegedly) says that all white people are racist. These Democrats in neither 2020 nor the intervening years have uttered even a word of skepticism about BLM, thus rendering them feckless.

Most Democrats, even most progressives, don't argue that all white people are racist. However, the idea that some whites don't believe they're fully accepted by the Democratic Party because of their race has merit.

This (real or imagined) perception goes back decades. However, it was placed on steroids by the George Floyd protests of 2020,  of which the Democrats publicly skeptical could fit inside a phone booth, were one to be found.

Yet, as Sam Seder recognized, the thrust of Jones' comments was not directed toward race or gender. It concerned primarily money, or class. Seder remarked (with remarks in parentheses made by off-screen contributors)

It sounds like he's making an argument like "look, you just don't have the votes if you say no white people or no men. Yea. But honestly, like how many votes could we lose if we said no billionaires? (About a thousand.) I mean, how many billionaires do we have voting for, uh, Democrats now or progressives? How many billionaires do we have that are supporting progressives?

I don't know. Yea, a bunch. And with, uh (there are 200 billionaires in the United States but they're all in, um, in Ohio.) We could be losing a small town somewhere. (We'd be losing Pritzer?) It just gives you a sense of what his project is and it, it really is one of the best illustrations of that whole cohort of voices that you hear across the spectrum who considers themselves moderates The will argue we've got to stop this identitarian politics.

Characterizing Jones' sentiment, Seder adds "we've got to stop demonizing, uh, white people, we've got to stop demonizing, uh, black people. I mean, excuse me, we can still do that. Uh, we've got to stop demonizing men, etc. etc."

For one brief moment, Seder geot it wrong. Not only does Van Jones never demonize black people but no reasonably prominent Democrat on the national level demonizes black persons. A black person, obviously, can be demonized but never black people as a race nor anyone because he or she is black. Never.

Pardon the digression (or as they say on ESPN, Pardon the Interruption).  

Date:  July 6, 2017

Motorist: Philando Castille, 32-year-old black male

Police Officer: Geronimo Yanez

Location: Falcon Heights, a suburb of Minnesota

Incident: Officer stops car with whose two adult occupants look like robbery suspects. Castille tells Yanez that he has a gun (legally/illegally carried unclear). Yanez tells Castille not to reach for it or pull it out. Castille makes a move. Yanez believes Castille is reaching for gun, shoots him five times, killing him.

Trual: Prosecutor argues that Yanez was "a nervous officer who lost control of his traffic stop. He was too quick to pull the trigger after learning Castille had a gun" (CNN).

Verdict: Not guilty of "culpable negligence" 

It was awful police work, Castille shouldn't have been shot, and Officer Yanez soon thereafter was separated from the St. Anthony, Minnesota Police Department. 

The victim should not- and was not- blamed by anyone anywhere for having been shot. It proved tragically disastrous that Castille was carrying a firearm while driving with his wife and his child. The police officer, as the prosecution conceded in its own argument, panicked. Following the killing, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain issued a travel advisory as they warned of the USA's "gun culture." (Good point, guys.)

Gun safety advocates joined all notable Americans  (NRA excepted, for its own reasons) in acceptance of an individual unnecessarily carrying a firearm. Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, otherwise a gun safety advocacy group, argued "A traffic stop should not be a death sentence for Black men but, in America, it's an all-too-oommon occurrence."

Not "a traffic stop should not be a death sentence" but "a traffic stop should not be a death sentence for Black men." He was a hero because he was black, which runs contrary to Seder's notion that blacks can be demonized. Moms Demand Action hardly demonized blacks, Van Jones did not demonize blacks, and given black women as the base of the Democratic Party, no Democrat demonizes blacks. However, Seder is spot-on when he continues 

But what they're doing is they're protecting money interests. They're just trying to distract you with the first two. It was really the perfect illustration, the perfect and most concise illustration. And the context in which he said it also was sort of magnificent. You would literally have to goto a laboratory and create that.

Van Jones et al. are trying to distract us with the other stuff.  Moms Demand Action was unintentionally and stupidly diverting attention from its calling, gun safety. However, Jones and others usually are trying to distract us, turning our attention from their support of monied interests. Race and gender are easy distractions, but money talks.

 

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