No, You're Not Like Us
Topic: Decline of the West
That old reliable line of attack—the Republican war on women—doesn’t seem to be working too well for the Democrats this year.
In Colorado Senator Mark Udall, the Democratic incumbent seeking reelection, talks of nothing but abortion, birth control, etc. in an attempt to tar his GOP opponent as a female-bashing troglodyte. For this he’s been roundly criticized and widely mocked as “Senator Uterus.” The state’s leading newspaper, the liberal Denver Post, pronounced its disgust with Udall’s campaign and proved its sincerity by endorsing the Republican challenger, Cory Gardner, who’s now leading Udall by a narrow margin. Colorado is a purple state and Udall’s seat should be reasonably secure. But uh-uh. People see his ranting about abortion for what it is: a clumsy campaign tactic. You can bet that the war on women will be back in 2016, particularly if the Pants-Suited One, er, Hillary R. Clinton, bears the Democratic standard. This year, though? Forget about it.
Meanwhile there’s a real war on women being waged around the world that has nothing to do with US electoral politics. But you don’t hear much about it because Ben Affleck becomes upset if the subject is mentioned. But I must take the risk of enraging him by mentioning one front in that war.
Rotherham is a town in the South Yorkshire district of England, not far from Sheffield. Between 1997 and 2003 some 1,400 girls and young women, mostly white, mostly from the working class and underclass, suffered systematic sexual abuse at the hands of a gang of men, almost all of Pakistani origin. Moreover, during all that time the authorities turned a blind eye to what was going on—for fear of offending Britain’s Muslim community. In one case, a fourteen-year-old girl was consigned to state care after her parents tried and failed to end her relationship with a Pakistani man who’d twice gotten her pregnant. But social-services officers permitted the girl to have daily contact with her abuser, arguing that the relationship was consensual—never mind that that man was a convicted criminal with a history of violence! And that was only one of many such cases documented in a damning 2013 report commissioned by the Rotherham municipal authorities after years of protests and complaints from the anguished families of the victims. Worse still, what happened in Rotherham is apparently happening all over the UK in places where there exists a large Pakistani community. (Fuller accounts of the Rotherham scandal may be found here and here.)
You can see why Ben Affleck would go into a three-foot hover. Well, sure, it’s a pity what happened to all those poor white girls—but it would be insensitive, not to say racist, to call out Britain’s Pakistani community. That would shatter the multicultural mosaic. It would condemn a whole group for the crimes of a few bad actors. It would call into question some very basic assumptions of the progressive project…
Yes, precisely. What happened in Rotherham does expose the hollow interior of contemporary progressivism: the phoniness of its “war on women” line, its selective tolerance, its elitism and disdain for ordinary citizens. One reason why the British authorities looked the other way for so long was because in their view the girls were sluts, skanks, white trash. It was either than or admit that a particular ethnic group was responsible and run the risk of a charge of racism. It’s the same attitude that led Barack Obama to dismiss certain Americans as bitter clingers: the casual elitism of the enlightened. Mostly this is just offensive. But in Rotherham its consequences were deadly. Faced with a real war on women, the UK elites cut and ran.
But it is true, is it not, that a whole community ought not to be condemned for the crimes of a few? My answer to that is a qualified yes—qualified because there’s good reason to believe that the Pakistani community in Rotherham knew exactly what was going on and did nothing about it. In fairness it should be added that once the scandal broke, some Muslim community leaders did speak out in condemnation of the crimes. But there was plenty of excuse-making as well.
The UK sex abuse scandal has been described, with justice, as a “national disgrace.” But more particularly it’s the shame and disgrace of the elites, of those people who parade their sensitivity and tolerance, but whose attitude toward ordinary people is like that of the Pharisee in the Temple: “Thank God I’m not like them.”
Posted by tmg110
at 9:06 AM EDT