Online, there is a storm brewing over NRO’s Kevin Williamson’s derisive comments about working-class communities, with outrage from pretty much everyone.
Here is the pertinent passage:
“The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible,”
More information here and here. You have to go down a pretty deep rabbit hole to find the actual article, which is behind a paywall.
IDk..Hyperbole aside, I think his message is about communities and the people who comprise them having to to bear some responsibility for their circumstances. Rather than being told niceties, they (these communities) need to be told the truth, or risk ‘dying off’. In other words, evolve or die. Similar to democrats in 2008 with Obama, too many on the ‘right’ are looking to Trump as the ‘solution’ to their problems, as if Trump as president will make all their problems go away. Which I think is a valid point on Kevin’s part. We need to look beyond others and instead to ourselves for the solution.
Kevin probably made some good points, but the wording was poor. Part of the problem is that online authors are paid per pageview, and the way you get more clicks to to say outrageous things, and it would seem he succeeded at that. While the anger is justified, we don’t want to go down the left’s path using the same tactics against him that they use against us.
The issue is why he implicated white communities (with the reference to Oxycontin) and not inner-city black ones, which are also plagued by dysfunction. The 2012 firing of John Derbyshire may explain why, which is that it’s ‘safe’ to lecture whites but not blacks. It’s the third rail: white columnists dare not touch it.