Walter White Fights His Privilege

Losers tend to find other losers.

The last time anyone heard from Chris Wallace, he was leaving Fox News – the top cable news network in the world – for CNN.

Actually, CNN+, which died before it could even get off the ground. CNN itself is still floundering, beset by the latest silliness Don Lemon says and barely qualifying as an also-ran in cable news.

Recently Wallace emerged and spoke with “Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston as part of HBO Max’s “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace.” The actor who is also known for playing a dentist on “Seinfeld” straight-up drilled American history. He claimed that a phrase as innocuous as “Make America Great Again” might be racist.

“I…when I see the Make America Great Again, my comment is, do you, do you…Do you accept that that could possibly be construed as a racist remark? And most people, a lot of people go, how could that be racist make America great again? I said, so just ask yourself from, from an African American experience, when was it ever great in America for the African American? When was it great? So if you’re making it great again, it’s not including them.”

Life in America for Black people is actually great right now. They live in the freest country in the world. It’s getting worse in our cities for Black America and everyone else, but that’s not a mark against our country’s greatness. It’s a mark against the foolish Democrats who defunded the police and unleashed crime on the streets.

Ask any Black person in South Africa or Zimbabwe if they would trade places with any Black American. You’d get a lot of takers.

Wakanda isn’t a real place.

Life was actually great for African-Americans under Trump — author of the phrase “Make America Great Again.” They enjoyed great employment and greater opportunities than ever before. Black America had historically low unemployment under Trump, a fact you almost never hear anyone in the media bring up.

Trump’s policies proved the American idea that a rising economic tide lifts everyone.

Life was also great under President Reagan for African-Americans. America stood astride the world, rebuilding its economy to heights not seen for years afterward, while facing down and ultimately defeating the Soviet Union with its evil empire.

Cranston’s point is that because slavery existed America isn’t, and never was, great. Because there was oppression, America was never great. He even compared America to Germany, arguing that we have a history similar to its Nazi past.

But if you talk to most Black Americans, they’ll disagree with that. It’s the radicals who build their careers on trashing America who agree with it.

Cranston only listens to them.

The man known to many as Walter White forgets – or probably never learned – that the American founding he decries set in motion the engine of freedom that eventually freed the slaves and recognized civil rights for all. It’s no accident that it happened in America.

The founders designed the Constitution and its philosophical foundation, the Declaration of Independence, to do just that.

America didn’t exist until July 4, 1776 and American slavery was ended by Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation on Jan 1, 1863. That’s 87 years of American slavery. Not 100, not 400, not 500. You’re welcome.

It took 87 years for America to declare war on itself and end an abomination brought to North America by the Dutch, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese and others.

Frederick Douglass, who was Black and had escaped slavery himself, noted this fact in 1852, when he mused over the purpose of the Constitution and the Fourth of July in light of the existence of slavery.

“American slavery is inconsistent with America’s founding principles and with Christianity; it is terrible for the nation and endangers the Union; you should get rid of it,” Douglass said, and he was right.

“The Constitution isn’t a pro-slavery document,” Douglass continued, and he was right again.

The escaped slave declared, “In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them?”

Against the law, white people took it up themselves to teach Douglas the English alphabet. Thank god they did.

The Constitution was written and agreed upon by the framers that people like Cranston consistently denounce. Slavery was not there. It could have been. But the evil of it nagged at the conscience.

The founders compromised because they had to in the midst of a dangerous war with the superpower of the time. They still put in place the machine that would, one day, crush slavery under its wheels. And so it did.

America did not invent slavery. She inherited it from Europe’s colonial powers and from deep human history in which slavery has existed for thousands of years (and still does in places).

But America’s gift to the world is the idea that all men – all – are created equal and no government can be allowed to deprive us of our natural rights. Such a government is illegitimate and should be done away with. This was a breathtakingly radical idea at the time.

Douglass read the Constitution and understood what it would do a decade or so hence. Why can’t Cranston, who has the benefit of hindsight, do the same now?

He can, but chooses not to. Like so many Hollywood hypocrites, Cranston is happy to enjoy the wealth Americans have given him while bashing everything that makes it possible and valuable. It’s fashionable to hate America in Hollywood and the media. It’s practically mandatory.

That doesn’t make it right.

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They want to dismantle a system that makes their very ability to criticize it without fear of harm possible. The question is, with what would they replace America? What other system is purposely designed to spread freedom? China’s? Russia’s? Of course not.

Cranston likes to discuss white privilege, but the truth is he’s blind to his own. He is privileged to pretend to be other people and build wealth far in excess of what the vast majority of humanity can even comprehend.

He’s not alone in that – Black America has billionaires, a Secretary of Defense, revered writers, actors, musicians, church leaders, a former president, and everyday people who – like all Americans – are blessed with the fortune of where and when we were born.

A.J. Rice, is President & CEO of Publius PR, Editor-in-Chief of The Publius National Post, and author of the #1 Amazon bestseller, “The Woking Dead: How Society’s Vogue Virus Destroys Our Culture.”

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