The leftists in America have a hard time determining their label. Democrats, socialists, liberals and the current nom du jour, "progressive," are all applicable and somewhat interchangeable. Although, given recent Cabinet picks by President-elect Joe Biden, a better descriptor might be "regressive." Whereas progressive implies a movement toward a better, more efficient and enlightened world, regressive connotes movement backward, toward a darker era. That is exactly where we are headed.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Biden's selection of secretary of defense. The heir apparent was supposed to be Michele Flournoy, a Harvard- and Oxford-educated policy wonk and highest-ranking woman ever within the Department of Defense. Her insight into the Chinese threat made her especially valuable in developing strategies to meet major emerging threats. She was a darling in both the Clinton and Obama administrations.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Congressional Black Caucus pressured the Biden handlers to select Black Gen. Lloyd Austin instead. Austin is known to be a "competent but cautious" commander. Furthermore, almost his whole career was oriented toward Middle East operations, not the emerging Chinese threat. To make things even muddier for the left, the retired general has made millions through his connections with many defense-related mega-corporations like Raytheon.
Austin's actions as commander in the Middle East were criticized severely. At a hearing in the U.S. Senate in 2015, Sen. John McCain told Austin, "I have never seen a hearing that is divorced from the reality of every outside expert and what you are saying." According to The Washington Post, Austin admitted that his command, U.S. CENTCOM, spent $500 million on a program to train only "four or five" Syrian combatants who survived their first battle. McCain told him blatantly that his strategy was "an abject failure."
So, why would a new administration burn precious political capital to nominate a weak candidate for such an important position? The answer, as Biden's handlers shared with the Wall Street Journal, has nothing to do with providing military forces to fight and defend this country. Instead, Biden wants a defense department chief to oversee distribution of the corona vaccine; to improve diversity within the top ranks; and to tackle climate change. Huh? Apparently, fighting and winning wars are not all that important.
Also, Biden promised in a CNN interview that he would provide the country with "the most diverse Cabinet anyone in American history ever announced." In saying this, he also announced that it was back to skin color as a measure, not competence or character. Biden's politics are not progressive at all, but a throwback to the pre-Civil rights era when a person's skin color mattered.
Booker T. Washington wrote 110 years ago that, "There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want to lose their grievances because they do not want to lose their jobs."
Washington, a former slave, wrote those words in admonition to more aggressive Black activists like W.E.B. Dubois in the early 1900s. Since then, Washington has been chastised by radical civil rights leaders from Dubois to the Black Panthers, but the truth of his words withstands time. He could just as well have admonished the leftist regressive crowd in 2020. The only difference today is that it is not just Blacks exploiting Blacks for political gain. It is an entire political party.
Roger Smith, a local author, is a frequent contributor to the Times Free Press.