I don’t mean to pick on Justin Phillips, I really don’t. I’ve never met him; he’s probably a very nice man. However, he is the poster child for woke wackiness, and as a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, he is not without influence. The things he says are so ridiculous, so insulting to common sense, that they demand to be rebutted. So let’s take a look at his latest column.
It’s a variation on his obsession, complaining about how Black people are treated. For the last couple of months, as San Francisco (and America) have moved away from wokeness toward valid criticism of it as a retrogressive cult, Justin has been throwing a temper tantrum. He doesn’t like what he sees. Yesterday, he turned his vitriol on Mayor London Breed. As we know, Mayor Breed has been supporting the S.F. Police Department and cracking down on crime. We, at the Coalition, are big fans of hers. But according to Justin, she’s “a Republican,” “misguided,” an “extreme conservative” setting “a troubling standard,” and “trying to gin up support…as her re-election bid approaches.”
Justin is a master of the ad hominem attack: “an argument directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.” Justin can’t craft a reasonable response to Breed because there is none. She’s right, which is why she will easily win re-election; the voters were clamoring for security, and Breed is giving it to them. Instead, Justin levels personal attacks against her, demeaning her character and thereby displaying his own intemperance.
If Justin has a favorite word, it’s “equity.” Here he is yesterday: “Breed’s conservative turn on critical issues sends a disturbing message that moderate Democrats in San Francisco no longer prioritize compassion or equity.” Of course, for Justin, “compassion” means treating crooks with leniency, decarcerating the jails, and giving reparations to Black people. There clearly are powerful arguments against all those things, but Justin cannot or will not understand them. Instead, his position is “If you’re against anything I’m for, or for anything I’m against, then you’re a racist.”
As for “equity,” well, I’ve dealt with that canard before. By “equity,” wokes like Justin mean equal outcomes for everyone. Obviously, that is never going to happen. I’m never going to be a 7-foot tall basketball center, but you don’t hear me complaining that the NBA is prejudiced against me. I understand that different people have different talents, and that’s the way things should be. But Justin Phillips doesn’t believe in true democracy, which is that all of us start at the same starting line and where we end up depends on our skills and energy and, maybe, a little bit of luck.
It’s amusing to hear Justin whine about Democrats moving to the right. First of all, it’s not true. Democrats are just as pro-woman, pro-gay, pro-environment, pro-labor, pro-science and pro-taxing billionaires as they ever were. But when it comes to crime, Democrats have decided that enough is enough. Woke District Attorneys and soft-on-crime judges have made life in the big cities intolerable. You’d think that Justin would welcome tougher policing and sentencing for the thugs that terrorize Oakland and San Francisco, but no. He’s so disconnected from popular opinion, so frozen in his reactionary ideology, that he doesn’t realize why London Breed is shifting, why the voters are shifting. The times have changed. We’re sick of crime, and we understand that the only way to deal with crime is to enforce the law.
Of course, Justin keeps regurgitating the same statistics, such as “Black Californians are incarcerated at a rate that’s 9.5 times that of White people.” He has never once said that the reason for this can only be that they commit criminal acts much more than do White people. In Justin’s fantasy world, if a lot of Black people are in jail, it can only be due to racism. Again, the public has realized that this slur, this deliberate falsehood, is laughable. The public is reasonable and fair-minded, and they know what they see on a daily basis. They know that Justin Phillips can’t make reality disappear by denying it.
Now Justin is drumming in favor of Proposition 47, the evil, stupid law that de-felonized thefts of less than $950. That is the reason why retail theft is at epidemic proportions: the bad guys realize that if they get busted for stealing an iPhone, they won’t get charged with a felony but only a misdemeanor that will never be prosecuted by a District Attorney. Justin loves that. He doesn’t come right out and admit that he favors stealing by poor people because it’s a form of socialist redistribution of wealth, which he likes. Instead, he claims California can’t afford to repeal Prop 47 because it would fill up the prisons. Justin has no problem bankrupting California by giving billions of dollars in reparations to Black people, but all of a sudden he’s a fiscal conservative when it comes to public safety.
I could go on and on, and in all likelihood I will, because Justin will never stop his propaganda which is—frankly--racist. He’s on the wrong side of history, which is bypassing him like a freight train rushing past a homeless tent. I am grateful that our country, Democrats AND Republicans, is finally getting tougher on criminals. It’s long overdue.
Steve Heimoff