Many Americans realize that there is a cultural and political war underway in America. The outcome of this war ultimately will determine the nation’s continued existence as a constitutional republic or become something else, God forbid, such as a socialist/communist totalitarian state. Thus, this article argues that this is no time for members of the so-called conservative “silent majority” to remain silent.
As discussed herein, there is a pressing, urgent need for many millions of this majority (estimated to be between 50 and 80 million American adults) to take an active role in overcoming the callous and nefarious agenda of the woke cancel culture mob. Overcoming this agenda includes actively supporting and voting for candidates for political office who hold bona fide conservative values and cherish the freedom birthrights of all Americans as listed in the Declaration of Independence and America’s Constitution.
It is believed that the mob is a relatively small minority of the American population. But this mob is highly vocal, highly energized, and very well funded by both domestic and foreign sources. Further, as Founding Father Samuel Adams famously once said, “it does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority.”
Unless the mob is confronted and overcome by a more forceful and energetic coalition of patriotic Americans desiring to protect and preserve their freedom birthrights, the eventual outcome may be disastrous for American liberty.
The principal weapons deployed against America’s republic, purposely setting one segment of the population against another, are unfounded charges of ongoing systemic racism and white supremacy throughout the land. Such tactics are directly drawn from the Marxist, communist playbook of “divide and conquer.” In fact, Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza is a known communist protagonist and proponent of Marxist ideology, causing many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of black American youths and others to despise America and riot in the streets.
Proof of the mob’s callousness and nefariousness (and blatant disregard for the safety and welfare of American citizens) is its support for the transportation of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of undocumented, unaccompanied, COVID-untested illegal alien children to destinations throughout America. Most if not all of these children speak no English and have to rely on the kindness and goodness of the American people to safeguard and take care of them wherever they are sent in the United States.
The mob supports such despicable activities, believing that ultimately, these children will become voters for the Democrat party. In doing so, the mob and its supporting radical leftist elites show their true despotic nature; lust for power and control; and absolute disdain for America, its citizens, its founders, and its founding documents.
The movements of undocumented, unaccompanied illegal alien children throughout America became evident during a recent trip to the southern border by United States congressman John Katko (R-N.Y.). In a recent television interview, the congressman described how he witnessed these children being placed on commercial aircraft with brown envelopes in their laps. One side of the envelope listed the flight numbers the child was to take; the other side had a written message stating the following: “Please help me. I do not speak English. What plane do I need to take? Thank you for your help.”
Doctor Ben Carson, while campaigning as a presidential candidate in 2016, stated, “There are a group of people who would like to silence everybody and have everybody go along to get along, but that’s not going to be very helpful for us in the long run. Somebody has to be courageous enough to actually stand up to the bullies.” Fast-forward to 2021, and the bullies of five years ago have become today’s woke cancel culture minority. They are openly hostile toward Americans’ freedoms of speech and religion, 2nd Amendment rights, and other cherished freedoms.
Members of the silent majority, regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, religious beliefs, etc. must band together to confront and defeat the mob of leftist bullies. Their onslaught on America’s unique constitutional republic and individual freedoms, using unfounded charges of ongoing systemic racism and white supremacy as their primary weapons, must be effectively challenged and overcome.
Writing in the journal of the World History Institute, Dr. Marshall Foster recently agreed with the statement of Samuel Adams presented above in that “[t]he testimony of history is that … the critical mass sufficient for cultural change resides in the minority … and often in only one individual.”
In conclusion, it is time for many, many members of the silent majority (and other truly patriotic Americans) to form their own “tireless minority” and go on the offensive to challenge and overcome the lies and actions of the mob and its radical leftist supporters. Leadership and funding for this coalition of concerned, highly energized citizens might be provided by an organization such as Heritage Action for America. Citizens would have numerous opportunities in their respective states to get actively engaged to save America’s unique republic.
Paul S. Gardiner is a retired Army officer; Vietnam veteran; and grateful citizen of the greatest country on Earth, the United States of America. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Alabama, and the United States Army War College.
The Biden administration is seeking to institutionalize critical race theory in American education. Thus, on Monday Biden’s Education Department promulgated a proposed rule on American History and Civics Education. The rule “proposes two priorities for the American History and Civics Education programs, including the Presidential and Congressional Academies for American History and Civics(Academies) and National Activities programs….” More broadly, it shows the direction the administration will go as it influences primary and secondary education.
That direction is basically anti-American. It seeks to inculcate a distorted version of American history in our children:
The Department recognizes that COVID-19—with its disproportionate impact on communities of color—and the ongoing national reckoning with systemic racism have highlighted the urgency of improving racial equity throughout our society, including in our education system. As Executive Order 13985 states: “Our country faces converging economic, health, and climate crises that have exposed and exacerbated inequities, while a historic movement for justice has highlighted the unbearable human costs of systemic racism. Our Nation deserves an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda that matches the scale of the opportunities and challenges that we face.” *** For example, there is growing acknowledgement of the importance of including, in the teaching and learning of our country’s history, both the consequences of slavery, and the significant contributions of Black Americans to our society. This acknowledgement is reflected, for example, in the New York Times’ landmark “1619 Project” and in the resources of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History.[2]
As history, the 1619 Project is a bad joke. As propaganda, it is working pretty well for the Democrats.
Accordingly, schools across the country are working to incorporate anti-racist practices into teaching and learning. As the scholar Ibram X. Kendi has expressed, “[a]n antiracist idea is any idea that suggests the racial groups are equals in all their apparent differences—that there is nothing right or wrong with any racial group. Antiracist ideas argue that racist policies are the cause of racial inequities.”
So racist policies re the reason why Asian Americans earn so much more money, on the average, than whites. I would like to see the Biden administration explain those racist policies to me.
In its application, an applicant addressing this priority must describe how its proposed project incorporates teaching and learning practices that—
(a) Take into account systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history;
(b) Incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives and perspectives on the experience of individuals with disabilities;
(c) Encourage students to critically analyze the diverse perspectives of historical and contemporary media and its impacts;
(d) Support the creation of learning environments that validate and reflect the diversity, identities, and experiences of all students; and
(e) Contribute to inclusive, supportive, and identity-safe learning environments.
There is much more, but you get the drift. The idea is to mis-educate America’s youth so that they grow up hating their country and its history. This will make it easier to bring about the radical changes that the Democrats have in mind for us.
Comments on the proposed rule are open until May 19. You can see how to submit comments at the link.
Isn’t it a Christian duty to perform works for the common good, NBC News asks today? Indeed it is, but whether that’s the main problem with vaccination hesitancy is another question. Nevertheless, NBC headlines this effort at NIH to engage Christians especially on overcoming skepticism and pitching in to end the pandemic:
The thrust of a new campaign to persuade mostly white born-again and evangelical Christians who have been unwilling to get Covid-19 vaccinations is a variation on the Golden Rule — do it for others if you won’t do it for yourself.
And the main driver behind the Christians and the Vaccine project backs up his contention that that is what Jesus would do by both citing the Bible and tapping the expertise of secular public health experts like Dr. Francis Collins, who heads the National Institutes of Health.
“It is necessary for others in the world that we Christians take the vaccine,” Curtis Chang, a theologian and founder of the Redeeming Babel site, wrote in one section. Christians and the Vaccine is a project of Redeeming Babel. “Given our numbers in the U.S. and in many parts of the world, what Christians decide will determine whether the world achieves herd immunity and whether the vaccine succeeds in bringing the pandemic to an end.” …
The message isn’t yet resonating with born-again or evangelical Christians, which is how about a quarter of Americans identify their faith, according to recent polls by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Chang is certainly correct, theologically speaking. The Vatican has tried to get that message out early and often, with Pope Francis and the Congregation for the Defense of Faith declaring in December that Catholics had a duty to get vaccinated for the common good. They reiterated that stance last month despite concerns over the use of fetal stem-cell lines in development and/or testing of the vaccines, which has also been a sticking point among evangelicals. The need for solidarity in a pandemic outweighs those ethical concerns, the CDF insists, especially since the connection between those vaccinated and the original abortions is so distant and tenuous — although they warn that the producers are still morally culpable for having used those tissues.
How much of a problem is this segment when it comes to vaccine hesitancy? Substantial within their own demographic, but …
Forty percent of white born-again or evangelical Christians said they weren’t likely to get vaccinated, compared with 25 percent of all Americans, 28 percent of white mainline Protestants and 27 percent of nonwhite Protestants.
Overall, the numbers of these skeptics is pretty small when compared to the overall population. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth tailoring a message to overcome their hesitancy, but it might mean that the focus on them might not be the best immediate investment. For instance, a new Morning Consult poll identifies a larger cohort of vaccination skeptics — mothers:
I’d be hard pressed to come up with specific numbers on this, but I’d guess that half of all moms uncertain or unwilling to get vaccinated amounts to many more people than 40% of all white born-again Christians. A look through the other demos shows other bigger problems than just “white evangelicals,” too:
18-34 year olds: 48% uncertain or unwilling
Blacks: 48%
Republicans: 42%
Under $50K income: 42%
35-44 year olds: 41%
Not college graduates: 41%
Morning Consult drills down further into its crosstabs to note subdemos with even greater resistance, although fewer overall numbers:
Rural dwellers with low income: 52%
Black adults: 52%
Republican women: 53%
Interestingly, the ethnic demo with the best uptake so far of vaccines is whites, with 53% already vaccinated and another 16% planning to get vaccinated for a total uptake potential of 69%. Among blacks, it’s 52% and 62% among Hispanics, and 71% among “others,” presumably primarily Asian-Americans.
With those numbers in mind, it’s curious that NBC News focuses so much on white born-again Christians for campaigning against vaccine hesitancy. The big challenge appears to be getting mothers to roll up their sleeves. Certainly we can aim PSAs at multiple demos at the same time, and let’s hope we do, but let’s also hope that we’re prioritizing them in the proper order.
Yahoo News, which is a hard left partisan outfit, committed an act of journalism this week: it discovered that the United States Post Office has been running a “covert operations program” to monitor Americans’ social media posts for inflammatory information. That sounds like a bipartisan sin of officiousness that, despite the public nature of many posts, can leak into being a Fifth Amendment violation. However, when you dig more deeply into the article, you discover that the Post Office is concerned only with “right-wing” inflammatory information.
The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americans’ social media posts, including those about planned protests, according to a document obtained by Yahoo News.
The details of the surveillance effort, known as iCOP, or Internet Covert Operations Program, have not previously been made public. The work involves having analysts trawl through social media sites to look for what the document describes as “inflammatory” postings and then sharing that information across government agencies.
“Analysts with the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) monitored significant activity regarding planned protests occurring internationally and domestically on March 20, 2021,” says the March 16 government bulletin, marked as “law enforcement sensitive” and distributed through the Department of Homeland Security’s fusion centers. “Locations and times have been identified for these protests, which are being distributed online across multiple social media platforms, to include right-wing leaning Parler and Telegram accounts.“
A number of groups were expected to gather in cities around the globe on March 20 as part of a World Wide Rally for Freedom and Democracy, to protest everything from lockdown measures to 5G. According to Yahoo, even left-leaning civil liberties experts have found the Post Office’s conduct disturbing. For example: When contacted by Yahoo News, civil liberties experts expressed alarm at the post office’s surveillance program. “It’s a mystery,” said University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone, whom President Barack Obama appointed to review the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks. “I don’t understand why the government would go to the Postal Service for examining the internet for security issues.” You really should read the whole Yahoo article. It’s a throwback to the good old days of actual journalism. An interesting question is how the Post Office targeted accounts. Conceivably, it could just have run word searches: “May 20,” “Biden is an illegitimate president,” “Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself.” Over at The Gateway Pundit, though, Joe Hoft suspects more a nefarious source for the information: he thinks the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) seized the information from Brian Kolfage, the triple-amputee they went after for allegedly misusing donations sent to him to help build a border wall. Fifteen USPIS agents showed up to arrest Kolfage, dragging him out of the house without a wheelchair or his prosthetic legs and then forcing him to maneuver his way into the car with minimal help. (The Gateway Pundit explains the circumstances of the arrest.) Once Kolfage was out of the way, says Hoft: The USPIS officers scoured his house and took information from his computers including the list of all the individuals (mostly conservative) who donated to the We Build the Wall project. This list included millions of conservatives. Hoft concedes that the USPIS said the information was necessary to build a case against Kolfage. (I have no opinion about the charges made against Kolfage.) However, Hoft believes that a primary or secondary reason was to get the names and contact information of millions of conservatives. It’s questionable whether Hoft’s assertion can ever be proven, although it’s certainly an intriguing idea. It’s sufficient to know, though, that every time you, a conservative, write or post anything on a social media site, the Post Office is watching you. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
Lies and propaganda are now the mainstay of leftist communications. A twenty-first century reincarnation of George Orwell’s 1984 Newspeak is one of their primary mechanisms utilized to prevent critical thought and debate while expanding power by “reimagining” (their word du jour) language:
In the novel, the ruling English Socialist Party (Ingsoc) created Newspeak to meet the ideological requirements of English Socialism in Oceania. Newspeak is a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to limit the individual’s ability to think and articulate “subversive” concepts such as personal identity, self-expression and free will.
Whether operating in academia, the media, social justice movements, or the Democrat party, the left has stifled free speech and intimidated Americans into submission (as we’ve seen in corporate America and professional sports) through its cancel culture and lies (Russia collusion, Russian bounties, Russian disinformation). It’s achieving its goals through the perversion of language to control society.
This is nothing new. Recall the days when the world was going to end from “global warming.” When that prediction failed, the left devised the term “climate change,” understanding that any weather event would easily fall under that reimagined term. As expected, every weather event is now used as an excuse for government and progressives to decry human consumption of energy and limit our freedoms.
Similarly, Donald Trump and other rational humans recognized the pandemic was caused by the Wuhan virus (named after its place of origin like many viruses). Alas, the left now finds itself in bed with the Chinese, so Covid-19 became the reimagined name.
Apparently a student of Orwell, Congresswoman Spanberger recognized that if Democrats don’t stop using words like “socialism” and “defund the police,” we’re going to get f—–g killed in 2022.” Here is a partial list of words and phrases that have been butchered by the left to retain — and gain — power:
Immigration
The most recent dystopian dictate from Biden/Harris is the order to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol to cease using the terms “alien,” “illegal alien,” and “assimilation.” Those words will be replaced with “noncitizen or migrant,” “undocumented,” and “integration,” respectively. CBP’s head explained, “We enforce our nation’s laws while also maintaining the dignity of every individual with whom we interact. The words we use matter and will serve to further confer that dignity to those in our custody.”
No, they do not enforce our nation’s laws. If they did, our borders would be closed rather than having tens of thousands of illegal immigrants crossing it. And while words matter, the majority of those flocking into the country don’t speak English, so this Orwellian decree is meant for U.S. consumption, not the “dignity” of illegal aliens.
This is reminiscent of the insanity of the Obama administration scrubbing FBI training materials of references to the terms “terrorism,” “terrorist,” and “jihad,” replacing them with euphemisms like “man-caused disasters” lest we offend the Muslims committing such atrocities.
In yet one more effort to undo Trump’s successful policies, Biden seeks a more “humane” immigration system so facilities that were labeled “cages” under Trump are now “shelters” under Biden. With Newspeak, the situation on our southern border is not a “crisis” but rather a “challenge.” Alas, Biden didn’t get the memo (or likely forgot) so Jen Psaki was forced to walk back his mistaken use of “crisis” this week explaining that the crisis is actually in Central America, not on our border.
Spending Bills
In order to ram through trillions in spending and tax increases, Biden and the Democrats have redefined the words bipartisan and reconciliation. According to Biden, any legislation that has the support of at least one Republican voter is now bipartisan since the dictionary “doesn’t say the Republicans have to be in Congress.”
Biden’s spending packages would never pass the Senate with a bipartisan filibuster-proof 60 votes so Democrats have devised faux descriptions to ensure they’re defined in a way that guaranties passage with a simple majority. Voila: an infrastructure bill is now budget legislation, passing through the reconciliation process while bypassing the filibuster.
Speaking of infrastructure, only 6% of Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure bill goes to roads and bridges. The rest is “a progressive boondoggle” resembling AOC’s Green New Deal while also addressing Democrats’ other obsession, “equality.” Kirsten Gillibrand proudly took to twitter to announce, “Paid leave is infrastructure. Child care is infrastructure. Caregiving is infrastructure.” Who knew? And according to Biden, the “infrastructure” bill will, “extend access to quality, affordable home or community-based care” for seniors and people with disabilities.
No surprise that this bill has little to do with “shovel ready jobs,” (an Obama/Biden lie promised to pass their “stimulus” swindle) and everything to do with redistributing wealth. It follows the Covid-relief bill as to which only 9% of the $1.9 trillion went to Covid while the rest was described by the Wall Street Journal as a “progressive blowout for the ages that does little for the economy but will finance Democratic interest groups for years.” Words certainly matter when scamming American taxpayers.
And while Democrats are advancing a slavery reparations bill, they’re also concealing such payments in signed legislation including labeling them “agricultural support” – for black farmers only — and providing funds for “Historically Black Colleges and Universities as well as Minority Serving Institutions.” This is racism but they’ve redefined that as well.
Systemic Racism/Anti-Racism
Every day whites are accused of being racist for something they did or did not do. America and its police are systemically racist, America was founded in 1619 by racist slave-owners, whites suffer from unconscious racism and so on. If you do not abide by critical race theory’santi-racist agenda, you are a racist. Christopher Rufo explains:
There are a series of euphemisms deployed by its supporters to describe critical race theory, including “equity,” “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion,” and “culturally responsive teaching.” Critical race theorists, masters of language construction, realize that “neo-Marxism” would be a hard sell.
In our Oceania of today, neo-Marxism is dictating that every white person is guilty of the crime of simply being born white.
One of Biden’s first executive orders directed the federal government to “affirmatively advance equity” as if the Civil War never occurred, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were never passed, affirmative action never existed, and Black people haven’t advanced in every profession imaginable.
Corporate America is similarly obsessed with Coca Cola telling its employees to “be less white” while Home Depot is boycotted for remaining silent. Social justice warriors cancel you for not virtue-signaling when they order you do so.
Thus, we find ourselves in 1984’s Oceania when Georgia is boycotted for voting rights legislation that is more lenient than New York or Delaware simply because the left demands it. Voter I.D. requirements and voter suppression are, in Newspeak, reminiscent of the KKK notwithstanding that ID’s are required to board a plane, buy cigarettes, cannabis and liquor, or cash a check.
The term “Jim Crow” is now being abused much like Nazi and Hitler were to describe Trump and his supporters. Laws established to prevent voter fraud, according to Biden, “make Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.” And the filibuster, that so many Democrats including Biden in a lengthy speech in 2005 defended as being a hallmark of democracy, is suddenly a Jim Crow relic.
Domestic Politics
“Peaceful protests” now include rioting, looting, and torching businesses, with a financial cost of an estimated $2 billion. The mainstream media never aired videos of the “violent BLM protests” since, in the Newspeak lexicon, only Trump supporters commit violence.
Hypocrisy is a bulwark of Democrats’ power. There is no better example of this than the way in which they define “incitement.” Democrats impeached Trump for “inciting” the January 6th riots despite the fact that he told his supporters to march “peacefully and patriotically.”
On the other hand, Maxine Waters is given a pass for telling crowds, “If you see anybody from [Trump’s] Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them.” When she clearly incited crowds to violence telling them to “stay in the streets,” “fight for justice,” “get more active,” and “make sure they know that we mean business,” Pelosi explained, “Maxine talked about confrontation in the manner of the civil rights movement” and should “absolutely not” apologize. Every House Democrat agreed.
Democrats don’t like conservatives holding a majority on the Supreme Court so Rashida Tlaib is now claiming that when Republicans fulfilled their Constitutional duty to fill vacancies, they “stole” the majority, hence we must “expand” the court. Jerry Nadler claims Democrats are not “packing” the court, they’re “unpacking it.” Ed Markey justified the move because the court is “broken,” “out of balance,” and “needs to be fixed,” adding that “expanding the court is equal justice.”
There are many other examples of Newspeak permeating our discourse. The Associated Press banned the word “mistress” using “companion, friend, or lover” instead. Businesses, colleges, and media outlets either require gender neutral pronouns or the use of personally selected terms. Boys aren’t necessarily boys and can compete in girls’ sports by simply claiming they’re a girl. In New Oceania, gender is fluid. Headmaster is now banned at many private schools and the City of Berkeley banned terms like “manhole,” “manpower” (now “human effort”), “bondsman” and “pregnant woman” “to be consistent with principles of inclusion” (notwithstanding that only 0.4% of our population defines as transgender). And a BLM co-founder and proud Marxistexplained that purchasing multiple expensive homes is not capitalism because it’s for her family.
Foreign Policy
Obama advisor Ben Rhodes admitted years ago that the administration’s lies regarding the Iran nuclear deal were disseminated through the “echo chamber” (aka the mainstream media). They told the world that the JCPOA would prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons despite it actually greenlighting their eventual sanctioned development. They promised that Iranian President Rouhani was a “moderate” despite him being anything but (just as they tell us that Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas is a moderate when both he and Rouhani are terror-sponsors).
CNN’s Christiane Amanpour reports that Palestinian presidential candidate Marwan Barghouti is an “activist” despite serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison for multiple terrorist attacks. One of Biden’s first executive orders was to revoke the designation of Yemen’s Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization despite their continuing acts of terrorism; in Oceania, they’re committing man-caused disasters.
Bizarrely, State Department spokesman, Ned Price refuses to utter the term Abraham Accords, negotiated by the Trump administration leading to peace between Israel and at least four Arab nations. Instead, Price refers to them as “normalization agreements” to avoid mentioning the Patriarch of the Jewish people and the father from which Christianity and Islam also descended.
-isms
The left spent years accusing Trump of fascism, applying the term as carelessly as they used the Hitler comparison. Their raison d’etre is to demonize and delegitimize Trump and Republicans, historical accuracy be damned. They also demonize and delegitimize Israel through anti-Zionism as a means to camouflage their antisemitism.
Since, as Spanberger noted, Democrats shouldn’t use the word socialism to describe their policies lest the public be frightened, so they’re disguising their true intentions behind spending bills with Newspeak-like names including the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), America Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Obama stimulus), American Rescue Plan (Biden “Covid” bill), and American Jobs Plan (Biden infrastructure bill). Don’t be fooled, they’re all plans that redistribute wealth and aim to achieve “equity.”
Finally, the Chinese Communist Party violates the human rights of all its citizens but especially the Uighurs who are treated horrifically by the regime that controls through communism. Given that Biden is in bed with the Chinese, he justified their abuses claiming, “Culturally, there are different norms in each country and their leaders are expected to follow.” H.R. McMaster recognizes Newspeak when he hears it responding, “You could call that bigotry masquerading as cultural sensitivity.”
************
As the left becomes more emboldened by its control of the federal government, expect more Newspeak to be used, but don’t fall for the propaganda. We have entered a new age in America and if we don’t recognize this true crisis for what it is, we’ll find ourselves living in Oceania with no way out.
To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
If you would like to comment on this or any other American Thinker article or post, we invite you to visit the American Thinker Forum at MeWe. There, you can converse with other American Thinker readers and comment freely (subject to MeWe’s terms of use). The Forum will be fully populated and ready for comments by midday (Eastern time) each day.
The full-court press by progressive Democrats to pack the Supreme Court has had an impact on public opinion. It’s just not the one they wanted. A new poll out from Morning Consult reveals that opposition to adding seats to the court remains near 2:1 among those with any opinion — and has grown a bit among Democrats:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) distanced herself last week from a Democratic bill that would add four seats to the Supreme Court, and a new Morning Consult/Politico poll helps to explain why she was quick to nip the plan in the bud: The idea is still broadly unpopular among the American electorate.
In the April 16-19 survey, voters were 20 percentage points more likely, at 46 percent, to say Congress should only allow nine justices to serve on the high court than they were to be in favor of passing a law to add more Supreme Court jurists.
Those numbers were essentially unchanged from a Morning Consult/Politico survey conducted in the fall, reflecting a continued lack of public appetite for what has been an increasing source of interest for liberal activists since Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky blocked consideration of Merrick Garland, then-President Barack Obama’s appointee to the court, in 2016.
What’s remarkable about this is how little public opinion has changed since the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett in replacement of progressive icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Morning Consult charts both polls at the link, but the only significant change since then is that Democratic opposition went up from 25% to 28%. In no party-demographic category did support go up. For that matter, no party-demo group showed an increase at all — even marginal — in support of the idea.
The months-long campaign to pack the court has been an utter flop, even with the party base. Democrats’ support for the idea doesn’t even get to a majority, although they are the only demo in which support outstrips opposition, 43/28. That’s the same 43% as six months ago in the heat of the Barrett confirmation process and just before the election. Independents are markedly unimpressed at 17/47, down from 20/46 last fall.
Surely, readers might ask, there must be some demo in which court-packing enjoys majority support? According to the crosstabs, there is one — and literally only one — demo where the idea reaches 50% support. Among those who strongly approve of Joe Biden’s job so far, it gets support at … 50/27. It’s only at 48/26 among those who are personally favorable toward Biden, 40/29 among those who voted for Biden, and only at 36/22 among black voters — even though court-packers explicitly frame this as a quest to appoint at least one black woman to the Supreme Court. It’s a disaster, even with months of campaigning in support of this radical policy.
Interestingly, as of this writing, Morning Consult’s partner Politico has yet to report on these findings. Perhaps the news here is so bad that the results just speak for themselves. However, Democrats who fail to recognize the political danger in pushing this radical goal will end up discovering just how badly they miscalculated when Republicans use it to beat them in the next midterms. This is precisely why Pelosi put the immediate kibosh on the bill, and why Jerry Nadler retreated from it a bit yesterday. It’s that bad.
The Coca-Cola Company seems to be learning the hard way that signing up for the racialist agenda of the left has a downside. Bradley Gayton, senior vice president and general counsel of the Coca-Cola Company until yesterday, generated a firestorm with the release of this January 28, 2021 letter instructing the law firms that perform legal services for it to
commit that at least 30% of each of billed associate and partner time will be from diverse attorneys, and of such amounts at least half will be from Black attorneys.
The letter helpfully defined Persons of Diversity (PODs) as
American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black, Women, Hispanic/Latinx, LGBTQ+, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander and Persons with Disabilities[.]
Many questioned the legality of such an order, given that anti-discrimination law forbids eliminating people from work based solely on race.
That was followed by another P.R. disaster in February, when it was revealed that mandatory diversity training at Coke instructed employees to “try to be less white.”
Then, after Georgia passed an election integrity law that Democrats opposed, Coke’s British CEO criticized it:
The Coca-Cola Company does not support this legislation, as it makes it harder for people to vote, not easier.
But the company now apparently has decided to ease away from the racialist agenda by accepting the “resignation” of Gayton and paying him off to the tune of many millions of dollars to go away quietly. Bloomberg Law reports:
The Coca-Cola Co. announced Wednesday that it is moving legal chief Bradley Gayton to a “strategic consultant” role less than a year after he joined the company (snip)
The deal gives Gayton a lump sum “make-whole payment” of $4 million, a waiver of “repayment obligations of certain benefits” related to his initial employment agreement with the company, and a nearly $670,000 monthly consulting fee starting in May 2021 and extending through April 2022.
The payments are contingent on Gayton’s “continued compliance with certain restrictive covenants contained in the consulting agreement,” the filing said.
Gayton received about $4.7 million in total compensation from Coca-Cola last year, according to an annual proxy statement filed by the company March 4. Gayton’s pay package included nearly $3.5 million in stock awards, a $576,000 cash bonus, and roughly $253,300 in prorated base salary.
He currently owns over $4 million in Coca-Cola stock and nearly $2.9 million in Ford Motor Co. stock, according to Bloomberg data. Coca-Cola hired Gayton last year from Ford, where he spent almost three decades in-house, the last four of which he served as the top lawyer for the Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker.
Wow! The consulting contract alone pays him over $8 million for one year, 71% more than he earned in his first year working for the company, in addition to the $4 million that is being called a “make whole” agreement. I strongly suspect that the undisclosed “restrictive covenants” that Mr. Gayton agreed to include keeping his mouth shut.
Douglas is a 17-year veteran of the company who most recently served as chief compliance officer and associate general counsel for the North America operating unit. In her new role, Douglas will oversee the company’s global legal function, reporting to Chairman and CEO James Quincey.
Douglas joined Coca-Cola in 2004 as senior managing counsel. She went on to hold roles of increasing responsibility, including as legal director for Coca-Cola Southern and East Africa, before being named general counsel for Coca-Cola North America in 2018.
MN Prager Discussion Group 
You must be logged in to post a comment.