Surprise! Barnyard Collectivist Caught Braying.

The president of the Los Angeles city council has stepped down as president -- but has not resigned her seat -- after the release of a tape of a conversation she had with other government officials and a union boss.

Contrary to what you might expect in these days of woke lunatics twisting innocuous remarks by random people into excuses to ruin their lives, this is the kind of stuff only a Democrat could get away with -- although there is some hope in this case that that won't happen.

Here's just one of her remarks:

[Nury] Martinez and the other Latino leaders present during the taped conversation were seemingly unaware they were being recorded - as Martinez, 49, criticized the white councilmember's parenting of the adopted child, saying, "They're raising him like a little white kid," and "This kid needs a beatdown."

For starters, this kid wasn't even three at the time.

The American reports I first heard focused on this politician's use of a term meaning monkey to describe the child, which I think borders on covering for Martinez since many American parents call toddlers monkeys, including their own children. (I am not one of them.)

The rest of the linked report -- from a British outlet -- will remove any doubt, if there is any left.

Such occasions call for us to remember Ayn Rand's penetrating and economical demolition of racism, which will also bring up a larger point. Rand says in part:

"Let me take him around the corner and then I'll bring him back." -- Nury Martinez (Image by Solagil1126, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage -- the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

Racism claims that the content of a man's mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man's convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman's version of the doctrine of innate ideas -- or of inherited knowledge -- which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men. [bold added]

Unsurprisingly, this politician has been making a career out of the more socially-acceptable (but equally wrong) version of racism, identity politics.

The official then pleaded for forgiveness, pointing out that during her nearly three years in office she spearheaded efforts to help minorities in her communities, including an initiative launched in 2020 to assist school-aged homeless children.

"As someone who believes deeply in the empowerment of communities of color, I recognize my comments undercut that goal," Martinez said.

It is a sad commentary on our age when passing loot around according to racial quotas -- rather than protecting individual rights and fostering a culture that respects initiative and hard work -- is equated with "helping" various collectives identified (and pigeonholed) via the dim-witted observation that they are visually similar.

The welfare state is wrong because stealing is wrong, and every collectivist political theory is vicious for the reasons noted above. For these reasons, Nury Martinez never deserved to be in office in the first place.

Absent the justice of rejection by a rational electorate, we shall have to be content in this case with seeing Martinez fall out of grace with the public, as we see with the protests that have occurred on her own doorstep, for however long they last and to whatever extent they succeed in causing this shameless panderer to resign from office altogether.

I won't hold my breath, but I will hope.

-- CAV