The future of the blue city: Bill de Blasio never had any intention of protecting private property
I’ve been reading a bunch of essays about the future of New York (see this and this, for example).
They are grim. And how could they not be?
Now, you may say “who cares, they made their bed and let them lie in it.” I care, and not just because New York is my home town, even though I left it over a half century ago. I care because I still know and love plenty of people there. I care because I don’t like to see suffering, even if the suffering is a result of choices people make. I care because cities like New York used to have wonderful things about them, and still have some of those good things. I care because I worry that as New York goes, so go more cities and perhaps ultimately the nation. Is there anything to be gained by having more and more failed and broken municipalities across the land? And doesn’t New York’s economy affect us all, as well?
New Yorkers voted for Bill de Blasio in 2013 to be mayor, and then they re-elected him in 2017. So yes, they are responsible. But it’s a curious fact that the turnout both years was incredibly low, so low that in 2017 only 8.5% of New York City’s eligible voters went for de Blasio, and it wasn’t all that different in 2013.
That’s a shocking statistic in and of itself – what was the apathy about? Was New York doing so well at the time that people felt they could coast, that it didn’t matter who was elected? Were the Republican candidates so terrible that even the specter of a socialist wasn’t enough to bring many voters out for them? Or did a lot of people want socialism? I don’t have an answer, but I do know that some areas turned out in much larger numbers to vote against him, but they were overwhelmed by the voters in many other areas who voted for him and carried the day.
There’s a map at the link that you can study if you like. It’s very informative, and shows for example that Staten Island – whose population is much less than that of the other boroughs but has long been more conservative – came out forcefully against de Blasio. But of course it doesn’t matter now; they’re along for the ride, whether they like it or not and whether they asked for it or not.
Musing about all of this today (or rather, brooding), I decided to search the blog to see if I’d written anything in the past about de Blasio that’s relevant. There is little doubt in my mind that he had no intention of stopping the riots; and perhaps in some Cloward-Piven-ish manner he wanted them in order to have an excuse to effect even greater change to his leftist ideal. And sure enough, I found a post I wrote in September of 2017 that in a moment I will reproduce in full here. It’s based on an interview he’d given, so I suppose at that point he felt he could be pretty open about his plans and his dreams. He definitely had plans for private property, and they were not supportive – essentially, he wanted its abolition and total government control.
The last line of the quote from him was, “It’s not reachable right now.”
Well, how about now, June 2020, nearly three years later? We’ve had a big dose of government control in the reaction to COVID-19, and now we have the failure to protect private property during the riots. I’m pretty sure he thinks it’s a lot more reachable at the moment. Whether it is or isn’t remains to be seen.
So here’s the post, exactly as it appeared almost three years ago:
Steven Hayward at Powerline calls our attention to an interview and quote from New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio. It’s quite revealing not just about de Blasio, but about the leftist mindset about the role of government, our legal system, and what people themselves want [emphasis mine]:
Q: In 2013, you ran on reducing income inequality. Where has it been hardest to make progress? Wages, housing, schools?
de Blasio: What’s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property. I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be. I think there’s a socialistic impulse, which I hear every day, in every kind of community, that they would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs. And I would, too. Unfortunately, what stands in the way of that is hundreds of years of history that have elevated property rights and wealth to the point that that’s the reality that calls the tune on a lot of development…
…Look, if I had my druthers, the city government would determine every single plot of land, how development would proceed. And there would be very stringent requirements around income levels and rents. That’s a world I’d love to see, and I think what we have, in this city at least, are people who would love to have the New Deal back, on one level. They’d love to have a very, very powerful government, including a federal government, involved in directly addressing their day-to-day reality.
It’s not reachable right now. And it leaves this friction, and this anger, which is visceral.
There’s an awful lot packed in there, isn’t there?
First and foremost, we have the fact that de Blasio feels comfortable enough to express these sentiments openly rather than hide them. My guess—and it’s only a guess—is that he really believes that most New Yorkers, and maybe even most people in the US, agree with him about the function of government and how much it should dictate their lives. Sentiments and goals that just a few years ago were only whispered in private by any politician hoping to actually get elected are now declared openly by the current mayor of New York.
Next we have the scope of his vision. De Blasio would like the government to control as much as possible, and not just about real estate development. He says “[People would] love to have a very, very powerful government, including a federal government, involved in directly addressing their day-to-day reality.” And if Bill de Blasio and his cronies have anything to say about it, that’s exactly what would happen—for your own good, of course, because you know it’s really what you want. When Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever,” it was a dystopian and horrific vision. De Blasio thinks it’s what we all secretly—and maybe not-so-secretly—want. And he thinks that he’s just the guy to do the stomping, only he’ll call it a love tap.
Next we have the idea that government is capable of doing this sort of regulation much better than the market ever could, and much better than free and autonomous human beings ever could. When he says that “[people] would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs,” he’s not only echoing Marx (“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”), but he’s also assuming that government is capable of figuring out what people’s needs really are and designing a world that meets them. Although it’s possible that he doesn’t really believe that and he’s just cynically saying it in pursuit of power, I actually think—based on many (not all, however) of the leftists I know—that he is most likely sincere in his belief and in his hubris.
Then we have the contempt for the rule of law and for hundreds and hundreds of years of protection of property rights under it. Does de Blasio have even the remotest understanding of why our system is designed the way it is, and why property rights are so protected? I doubt it. He seems to see it as a little thing, a mere anachronism that should be pushed aside in favor of the great beneficent government he wants (“That’s a world I’d love to see..”) put in place. And he knows that you want it, too.
Lastly is the ominous phrase “right now,” found in the next-to-last sentence of the quote. We’re not there yet, folks, but if the kindly de Blasios of the world have their way, we’ll be there some day soon.
He got a junk degree and doesn’t have any background in any quantitative discipline. He’s been in the employ of the city government his whole life. And he’s pretty impervious to empirical data.
Note the sheer fecklessness of New York City’s electorate. diBlasio was the worst and the stupidest of the seven notable candidates running. Joseph Lhota, John Castimatides, and John Liu had some business standing for the mayoralty given their education and experience. The other four candidates were bloody clots.
From the percentages you cite it appears that, perhaps, 80% of those eligible to vote in New York City currently don’t seem upset enough to even bother taking an hour or two once every couple of years to vote.
I’m too busy CARING about my local community to shed any tears for those who don’t care about theirs.
Tuvea:
Actually, I think part of the apathy is the idea that the Democrat nominee was inevitable because the Republicans that year were so meh.
But whatever the reason was, you haven’t really responded to the last couple of questions in my paragraph about caring.
After 9-11 a New Yorker assured me that New Yorkers would never forget and had been forever changed.
Well, that lasted more than 15 minutes.
“Is there anything to be gained by having more and more failed and broken municipalities across the land?”
Yes. They’re called “object lessons.” The people living in and running New York City didn’t give a hot damn about the “failed and broken” cities and towns across America devastated by “free” trade, a broken immigration system, and educational “reform” that white folks in NYC move heaven and earth to avoid themselves. No, actually it is worse than that. They were openly contemptuous of the misery of others.
Now we’re supposed to shed a tear because they’re struggling with a disaster THAT IS ENTIRELY OF THEIR OWN MAKING?
Mike
That “There’s a lot of ruin in a country” is a maxim attributed to Adam Smith.
Under de Blasio’s enlightened leadership (along with the rest of the Democratic Mayors of cities that are being torched and torn apart by “protesters”, abetted and encouraged by the up-and-coming cadre of Democratic Party operatives, such as AOC and Ilhan Omar), we are seeing the effects of radical Leftism’s very visible hand.
(Not to mention that the MSCM loves it—laps it up (well, it does vastly improve ratings, I guess)—along with a significant swath, perhaps even much, of academia.)
Has mayhem, rioting and self-destruction ever had such glorious theoretical underpinnings?
Well, yes, of course, it has.
But the question at hand is how Trump might go about protecting the country from the Democratic Party and those who approve of its message and rampant illegality.
Or if he will even be allowed to do so (since protecting the country and defending its institutions and citizenry is currently IMMORAL, at least, if Trump tries to do it).
Alas no one else seems to be trying, either because they’re afraid of being branded “enemies of the people”—curious, that—and kneecapped accordingly, or because as perfectionists (all good Marxists are “perfectionists”) they MUST maintain that the imperfect USA really ought to be destroyed.
(Or if you prefer, “fundamentally transformed”.)
We are about to see whether they will succeed in their goals, or at the very least, if they will be propitiated by persuading the country to give them Trump’s head on a platter (in the same manner as Police Departments, and others, across the land have already been ritually sacrificed).
It’s never a bad time to review “Chesterton’s Fence”:
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In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
–G.K. Chesterton, “The Thing” (1929)
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Chesterton was replying to the socialists of his time.
I first read this in a “Whole Earth” hippie publication. Stewart Brand, the editor, and his mentor, Gregory Bateson, respected patterns which had emerged and worked over time.
Crime rate is going up, up, up, up, up
To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough
You got rats on the West Side
Bed Bugs uptown
What a mess this town’s in tatters, I’ve been SHATTERED
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Y5J0ka4_k
The past is the future.
Sha oobie!
All of life is about property. The right to use that property to generate wealth for yourself is how humans have become free. There was private property in Medieval times, it was just all owned by the king, then later also the Church and nobles. It is only in the last 200 years that a large number of people were permitted to use their private property to generate wealth for themselves and that has been under erosion from day one.
“If history could prove anything at all in regard to this question, it could only be that nowhere and at no time has there ever been a people which has raised itself without private property above a condition of the most oppressive penury and savagery scarcely distinguishable from animal existence.”
–Mises, Ludwig von (1927). Liberalism
“Socialism or communism is that organization of society in which property— the power of deploying all the means of production— is vested in society, i.e., in the state, as the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion. For a society to be judged as socialist it is of no consequence whether the social dividend is distributed equally or according to some other principle. Neither is it of decisive significance whether socialism is brought about by a formal transfer of the ownership of all the means of production to the state, the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion, or whether the private owners retain their property in name and the socialization consists in the fact that all these “owners” are entitled to employ the means of production left in their hands only according to instructions issued by the state. If the government decides what is to be produced and how, and to whom it is to be sold, and at what “price,” then private property still exists in name only; in reality, all property is already socialized, for the mainspring of economic activity is no longer profit-seeking on the part of entrepreneurs and capitalists, but the necessity of fulfilling an imposed duty and of obeying commands.”
–Mises, Ludwig von (1927). Liberalism (p. 63)
MBunge:
They are object lessons only if people learn the lesson. I doubt they will. The left infects everything it touches, and spreads. It has already spread very far. I don’t see other areas being immune. Perhaps the election of 2020 will show me wrong. I hope so. Perhaps it will be a turning point to more conservative points of view in more places and more cities. It’s certainly within the realm of possibility. But I don’t see it happening. I see more and more people capitulating to leftist points of view. I see more and more people making excuses for socialism and for the idea that destroying private property is just fine – as long as it’s not the speaker’s private property that’s being destroyed, and as long as it’s in the interests of “social justice.”
As I said, hope I’m wrong.
neo: I share your concern. I thought 2020 was in the bag, barring black swans, then lo and behold, Covid and its economic consequences.
The Floyd killing wasn’t quite a black swan, but it was the most cruelly shocking incident of its type in the past 20 years or more.
Together they make Trump’s re-election a less than sure thing.
Still, it’s possible the Left is overplaying its hand and may learn, as it did in 1968, that for all the headlines the Left garners, there is a “Silent Majority” of Americans not onboard, but horrified.
“They are object lessons only if people learn the lesson.” [Neo @ 4:28 pm]
Just an aside.
The current violence is almost exclusively a Democrat problem born and bred. It is happening in cities which have mostly exchewed anyhting but Democrat leadership for over half of a century: Democrat mayors; overwhelmingly (exclusively, in some cities) Democrat city councils; led by police and sheriffs who are predominantly Democrats and a police force which, if not exclusively Democrat, is unionized to support the Democrat candidates and does so year after year. At the same time, the protesters and violent agitators are, I’ll bet, predominantly Democrat voters (many college students).
And after all of this quiets down, and it will, guess which party’s candidates most of these people will continue to support?
huxley:
The most cruelly shocking of its type? What is its type?
I don’t have time to do the research now, but there have been quite a few other “cruelly shocking incidents” in which the officer deliberately killed what appears to have been an innocent black or white person. Why is the accidental death of Floyd as a result of Chauvin’s uncalled-for and brutal actions any worse? I don’t see that it is. It just has been hyped to the skies even in comparison to all the others, because the political time was felt to be right and the visuals were right.
If this incident wasn’t shocking, and cruelly so, I don’t know what was. Was it almost unpublicized because the victim was white and the police officer Somali? Was it also because the weapon was a gun, and so we didn’t have the terrible visuals of a white knee on a prostrate black person’s neck?
The biggest problem with capitalism is that people are too busy sweating, focused on their goals, being successful beyond their wildest dreams or just scraping by, to pay careful enough attention to who is mowing the grass on their playing field. The shame of capitalism is its lack of attentive governance over its supporting institutions: You can end up with terrible landlords that slide in before you become aware of them. That’s how you get a dufus like deBlasio – twice.
NYC is a terrific city, in spite of its leadership and to a lesser extent, because of it.
And for those who think the George Floyd incident was a good reason to set a country aflame (and I do happen to think it was selected as a precipitating event) then please explain Ms Diamond away – or Tony Timpa.
Isn’t there something going on regarding a vast increase in the Mayor’s private property via graft involving his wife?
In general, I don’t flinch at Dem evil, hypocrisy and lying.
What drives me to distraction is the disinclination of the Repub office holders to stand against it. It’s like they believe all the Dem agitprop that we in the base are Deplorable. They’re ashamed of us wanting a fair shake, rule of law and the like. Fine. Go join the Dem Party if that’s what you stand for.
neo: Cruelly shocking? Seems that way to me.
Does your research pull up any other case of a police office cold-bloodedly pressing his knee into a suspect’s back for nine minutes until suspect was dead and having it caught on video for the whole nation to experience?
I can’t recall anything comparable.
I’m not a resident of NYC but I am a resident of New York state. I live in a part of the state that is traditionally very conservative, very red. Like most of the state in fact, outside of NYC and a few other key areas. Their combined population is enough to make sure that whatever NYC and friends want, NYC and friends get.
There are other states likes this, I am told. Illinois and California. I don’t know about if its true but I can imagine it.
I used to read Instapundit every day, and comment there more than I ever did here. It was a nice place with a lot of good debate all around. But the WuFlu lockdown and pandemic followed by the present civil unrest has made Instapundit’s comment section a completely different place.
I get that some of the red staters are proud of their states and communities. I would be too. But the “who cares, they made their bed and let them lie in it” crowd drive me up the wall. Because having a productive discussion goes out the window. Apparently its all my fault I didn’t vote the bastards out. Except I know very few people who voted for any of them, and I know far more who did vote to get rid of them. But what NYC wants, NYC gets. I’ve been told to move, as if picking up and leaving two extended families and friends, all with largely the same values I have, is an easy thing. I’ve also been told to move, but “Don’t come to my state you damned Blue Stater.” As if I am going to suddenly start voting for all the stupid leftist programs that I never voted for here. My wife and I discuss picking up and moving regularly. But we’d leave behind so much.
There was a great piece at Ace today by J.J. Sefton about this:
A Response From Behind The Lines
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=387633
I don’t know. This prospect depresses more than the unrest and the WuFlu stuff combined.
O/T: I haven’t seen as much wall to wall coverage today on my day off but I can say things are getting interesting in the Antifa/BLM unrest. Even in my quiet community, and north of me, we’ve had Antifa show up:
-an arrest was made at a motel. Cops were called for a drug dealer. They showed up and the drug dealer, while they were arresting him pointed to a door down the hall and said the guests were making weapons. Cops checked it out: they were Antifa making weapons like pipe bombs and bats with screws in them. Large amounts of chlorine tablets, liquid bleach and fertilizer were also found.
-Antifa/BLM committed attempted arson in front of a courthouse in northern NY state near the Canadian border.
-A number of EMS squads have received anonymous phone calls stating, “We’re coming to hurt the police. If you help the police, we’ll hurt you too.”
-A friend in the PD on Long Island reported to me 4 pallets of bricks were found in his small city and removed by the DPW before the protests started.
Neo,
You are correct in that I didn’t respond to the last couple of sentences in your paragraph about why I SHOULD care about what is happening in New York City.
The real problem is that even if I DID care it wouldn’t make any difference whatsoever.
Perhaps I’m wrong but my guess is that 4,000,000 or so New York City non-voters wouldn’t be moved at all by the “caring” of a single flyover-country suburbanite in his mid-60’s.
… just for the record … in case any government agency … or leftist do-gooder group … is monitoring my internet connection … I do CARE … because …
Black Lives Matter!
Tuvea:
I certainly agree that nothing written in this blog is going to change the fate of New York.
huxley:
Of course it’s cruelly shocking. Did I ever say it wasn’t? My point was that there are others equally cruelly shocking in my opinion, and a few even more so because lethal force was clearly used on innocent people.
The fact that there are not videos that show things as clearly and graphically is not the point – or rather it IS my point, that that may indeed be the reason this one seems worse than the others to many people.
I think they’re all bad, and that shooting someone in cold blood is even worse. And sometimes there is a video. I bring you the shooting of Walter Scott.
My point was that there are others equally cruelly shocking in my opinion
neo: And my point was it was more cruelly shocking than any other I had read/seen in my opinion.
LEOs have been done some terrible things, but nine minutes and a video — that was tough, tough, tough. That was my response and I suspect that of a fair number of other Americans. Yes, I am talking about the whole package.
So once again we disagree, not on the basics, but that I don’t see something precisely as you do.
but it was the most cruelly shocking incident of its type in the past 20 years or more.
It wasn’t anything of the sort. You need to get a grip.
LEOs have been done some terrible things, but nine minutes and a video — that was tough, tough, tough.
No, it wasn’t.
Does your research pull up any other case of a police office cold-bloodedly pressing his knee into a suspect’s back for nine minutes until suspect was dead and having it caught on video for the whole nation to experience?
You haven’t a clue how much pressure he was applying. The suspect in question had coronary artery disease, was intoxicated on fentanyl, had three other street drugs in his system, and had been non compliant when they tried to put him in the vehicle. Buy a clue, please.
The biggest problem with capitalism is that people are too busy sweating, focused on their goals, being successful beyond their wildest dreams or just scraping by, to pay careful enough attention to who is mowing the grass on their playing field. The shame of capitalism is its lack of attentive governance over its supporting institutions: You can end up with terrible landlords that slide in before you become aware of them. That’s how you get a dufus like deBlasio – twice.
Mean working hours per weak have changed little in the last century and have been all that time lower than was common in 1890. Only a modest minority of people are particularly ambitious; most people are satisficers, not optimizers about their work lives. You’re talking about professional-managerial employees and a small corps of technicians, and not even all of them. That’s not more than 15% of the workforce. As for ‘scraping by’ that’s a proper description of the least affluent 1/3.
And none of this has much to do with ‘capitalism’. It’s pretty much just the human condition as regulated by the state of the technology.
Art Deco: I’m talking about the impact of the incident on Americans based on what they saw and read.
Get a grip yourself.
neo and Art Deco may disagree, but as I see it the Floyd video was especially destabilizing to the country compared to other such incidents and amplified by the Covid shutdown.
I find it weird to have vehement disagreements to the effect of “I say, it was a 5” “NO, IT WAS A 3!”
n general, I don’t flinch at Dem evil, hypocrisy and lying.
What drives me to distraction is the disinclination of the Repub office holders to stand against it. It’s like they believe all the Dem agitprop that we in the base are Deplorable.
Spot on.
In my opinion that’s how those folks in the gee ohh peeee ended up with Trump as their nominee and then president, despite their best efforts.
The GOP base learned to despise the party establishment.
Modern Renaissance Man is on the case as we speak. Today’s lesson from MRM:
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White people bow down before black people and ask for forgiveness?! What the Heck!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bysSDbGAV4
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MRM views a video of whites kneeling and begging. He considers it “…disturbing…”
I always get a kick watching this guy.
For those new to MRM, he is a black Christian YouTuber who covers a lot of ground — music, politics, self-improvement and his own brand of evangelism.
huxley:
I agree that the video has been used in a way that makes it more destabilizing and at a time that makes it more destabilizing and with a population in the US many of whom have moved further to the left in recent years and are therefore more receptive and eager for that destabilization.
huxley:
It seems you are talking about the video being more cruelly shocking rather than the act. The video is longer and more dramatic, and I completely agree that its effect on people was far greater than videos that went before it (and that was partly a timing thing, and partly the video itself).
But I am talking about the act. You certainly may disagree with me, but my point is that to me the act of shooting a man in the back who is running away after a minor traffic stop is an action that is actually more cruelly shocking, although apparently the video isn’t. You shoot and you may very likely kill. I don’t think Chauvin was doing something he thought would kill, and Floyd’s crime was, although not very serious, certainly more serious than any minor traffic violation. That’s why I think the officer’s act itself in the shooting of Walter Scott is crueler and ought to be more shocking to people, objectively speaking. I am well aware that it was not perceived that way, though.
The same for officer Noor, the case I cited earlier in the thread. But there was no video with Noor. And the victim was white and the officer black, so even with a video I doubt it would have mattered in terms of comparable shock value.
neo: Yes, I’m aware of those things and yes, I even considered them as I wrote my comment.
I try to write in a colloquial way without freighting my comments with multiple legalistic CYA qualifiers so that I might be more easily readable within limited screen space.
I become rather weary when you and Art Deco effectively respond, “Are you new here?”
I become rather weary when you and Art Deco effectively respond, “Are you new here?”
huh?
Or as Brookers, whom I consider the Charlie Chaplin of the Golden Age of YouTube, once said:
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“This is my United States of Whateva!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s35NaNkKwR4
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I suppose neo and Art Deco may inform me that Brookers was only the Buster Keaton of the Golden Age of YouTube.
Anyway. Brookers is a complicated case. She started making videos at the age of nine. She exploded in the 2000s, Hollywood called, her life got complicated, she retreated and has been in a weird approach/avoidance cycle with her mad video skillz.
She killed off her first YouTube channel, but enough went viral they can still be found. Intense. Hilarious. Not to be missed.
She was a phenom and hope we will see more of her good stuff.
“Reason will not decide at last. The Sword will decide.”
Regarding the future of New York City…
Corporate America learned something very important during the lockdown. They found out that a lot of information workers don’t actually have to work at the office… any office. The younger generation likes working from home and, of the ones that are doing so now, most don’t want to return to the office.
I was skeptical of how this could function, at first. However, I have now spoken to enough people who are working from home, that I can see that they have management systems and techniques in place to provide adequate oversight and supervision. It is working now.
So, don’t you think that businesses are sensing an opportunity to reduce their overhead costs? I am sure they are.
So, what does that mean for NYC? It means that a significant and growing fraction of the workforce won’t come into the city to work anymore. It means a plunging demand for office space. It means less need for service workers to support that space and those workers.
I am not saying that NYC will die. But it, and every other major city in the world is going experience a significant exodus. If you can do the same job and live anywhere you want to, a whole lot of people are going to opt for smaller towns, where they can get more house for their money. The big cities are going to have to get really creative in order to remain viable.
So, DeBlasio may soon find that he is a king… but reigning over ashes.
It took NYC 25 years to recover from the disaster of the Lindsay administration.
DeBlasio makes the hapless Lindsay look like Thomas Jefferson.
Corporate America learned something very important during the lockdown. They found out that a lot of information workers don’t actually have to work at the office… any office.
Roy Nathanson: Bang-on and serious.
I was just corresponding with a friend in San Francisco who worried he needed the whole office framework to be productive, then discovered he could do as well at home, even with interruptions from his adorable daughter. As he said:
I’m certainly enjoying the commute and dress code that teleworking offers.
My impression, however, is that it doesn’t work so well for schools and universities.
I’m a student at UNM. Spring semester devolved into amateur hour — “I’ll sit in front of my webcam and babble until class is over” — Zoom lectures. That’s not flying with me or, from what I can tell, other students who are paying thousands of dollars for a course. (In terms of expense, not me, I’m a senior.)
If that’s what I wanted, MIT and other first-tier institutions offer *amazing* online lectures.
‘You’re gonna kill me!…’
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/investigations/2019/07/31/you-re-gonna-kill-me-dallas-police-body-cam-footage-reveals-the-final-minutes-of-tony-timpa-s-life/
The same thing happened in Dallas a few years ago to a white guy.
I’m just waiting to pass on, with little hope, no job, and so, dont really care…
I cant change what is happening in my own life, let alone a city
my opinions are quite useless, not even material enough to use as doorstops.
as is my art, ideas, photography, etc…
Yes. Getting it over with (one thing) and getting on with it (another).
Our finite life energies and focus are continually being stolen and interrupted by … well …
Neo, have you ever known a drunk? (Maybe a drug addict will do – I don’t know.) Ever stay up all night trying to convince some son-of-a-bitch not to kill himself; not because you really cared much, but because you thought it was the right thing to do?
What did it get you? Well, it got the son-of-a-bitch another chance, and it got you a chance to repeat the exercise some days or weeks later.
After a couple of weeks of this kind of thing with a older cousin by marriage, who I had allowed to temporarily move in with me after he was kicked out by his wife, I finally went to see my actual cousin and told her I was exhausted by good old (I’ll call him Ronnie) Ronnie’s behavior. “Did you know he wants to kill himself, Janice? He’s sober a day or two, goes on a binge, drags me out to the redneck nightclubs with him as he whores around, and then crashes, gets morose, and wants to end it all. I’m trying to help him, but it’s always just more of the same.”
She said: “Oh, yeah he always does that. It’s a regular thing. Last time he told me that, I handed him his gun and told him to take it out in the yard”
Ever tried to listen patiently to some troubled soul as they poured out their tales of woe to you, only to realize after some suffocatingly interminable period, that they were probably schizophrenic? Or maybe, morally autistic? You know one of those near solipsists, whose life story is a little drama they star in and keep rehearsing endlessly.
How much of your life are you willing to piss down a drain in trying to protect people from themselves: from the effects of behaviors and tastes they will not relinquish and don’t want to give up?
You cannot reason them off the road to hell. What’s the point of accompanying them there?
Tom Cotton
Is This US “LOOTER” Sen. Tom Cotton CALLES The nation must restore order. The military stands ready
“They are object lessons only if people learn the lesson.“
If they don’t, all you can do is move to the country and start raising chickens. I’ve never been a big believer in the “civil war” talk you hear from some on the Right but I think it may have reached the point where anyone of a conservative bent should consider that there are certain parts of America which are no longer safe for them. Hopefully, the work-from-home revolution will make the transition easier.
Mike
Huxley,
You are right about education not working from home. And, the younger the students are, the worse it works. I have spoken to teachers who have been trying to teach this way. The kids simply lose interest and their attention wanders. They do not yet have the self-discipline required.
For college level education, this will be possible. But for K-12 this still requires the structured setting and imposed discipline to develop the kids’ abilities to focus and persist in completing tasks. Not to mention that the schools also provide the setting for learning the social skills required to work and play together effectively.
Roy Nathanson on June 7, 2020 at 8:35 am said: They do not yet have the self-discipline required.
This more than anything else is why the kids that go to Bronx Sci, Stuyvesant, or Brook Tech are so special… they have that discipline from very early on, or never could get there given that the schools do not teach what is required before entry… its college level in grade school… no one teaches that… (even if they claim to)
Sad to read this “ArtfldgrUselessNothing on June 6, 2020 at 11:09 pm”
Unless there is perhaps a performance element and is intentionally overdone. Or a passing feeling that has since subsided.
I recall a wonderful sequence from Winnie the Pooh, where the dismal donkey Eeyore descends ever deeper into despair. From memory–
“Good morning, Pooh.”
“If it _is_ a good morning.”
“Which I doubt.”
“Not that it matters.”
Neo asks: “Is there anything to be gained by having more and more failed and broken municipalities across the land? ”
The answer is yes. It’s a clear, American example of Democrat mayor action and inaction, and Democrat governor action and inaction.
Of course the media will try to blame Trump, but Trump being honest about the Dem responsibility is partly what the Nov. election is about.
I think a lot of less violent, less criminal blacks and other inner city residents will be receptive to messages that blame Dems, with specific reasons and actions. Can’t call most of them innocent, tho those not protesting are innocent of the protest riot violence.
In Nov: More Trump, or more riots & destruction & a huge reduction in the protection of private property.
—
Riots would be reduced if more police had paintball guns. These could and should be used on all looters and violent rioters . Lots of drones with cameras should be deployed.
Yes, spying surveillance on “peaceful” gatherings where there is a high likelihood of violence.
If you would know the De Blasio all you have to do is look at his daughter photographed commuting between riots this afternoon in NYC.
But I warn you. I WARN YOU! that you will not soon recover your senses and will need a shower of eyewash should you choose to look.
I looked and now I need YEARS OF THERAPY to scrub my memory of the mayor’s “Issue.”
https://twitter.com/3FingersXIX/status/1269672502105604107
“DeBlasio may soon find that he is a king… but reigning over ashes.” – Roy
“Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.” Milton’s Satan.
Checking out the exact wording got me this unusually quirky quote site.
https://www.shmoop.com/quotes/better-to-reign-in-hell-than-serve-in-heaven.html
And the news that Milton actually wrote
“Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.”
In context, there is another line that seems appropriate to the topic.
“The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.”
https://poets.org/poem/paradise-lost-book-i-lines-221-270
It’s sad to watch, but-
this is the only way that the heads of the Democrats can think of, to win the Presidential race, in 2020…
A phony war about phony racism.
They got nowhere saying- “Trump is a traitor, and he betrayed us to the Russians”…so fire him,
So please be aware- all the Democrats are going to do, for the next five months, + for the rest of the 2020 election, is to say:
“THAT TRUMP GUY IS A RACIST”,
which is a lie,
and-
“TRUMP IS A RACIST, AND SO IS ANY PERSON WHO THINKS OF VOTING FOR HIM”,
which is another lie.
Sigh.
That’s just my [off the cuff] prediction, about the next five months, I know, but-
its both sad to see…, and also boring…, that this plan is the only thing- that the head Democrats are going to come up with, for this latest, Oval Office election.
I wish that I was surprised about that. Amazing.
In case anyone wonders about it- I put my [quotation marks] in the wrong place.
I meant to write:
“Trump is a traitor, and he betrayed us to the Russians…so fire him”,
Nothing more than the way of the tribe as they yearn for the “good old days” of their Messiahs – Lenin and Stalin!!!
}}} I care because I don’t like to see suffering, even if the suffering is a result of choices people make.
Me neither, but the simple fact is:
1) They made their beds. The ONLY WAY for them to POSSIBLY figure out where they went wrong, is to have their heads beat in over it. I don’t think they are capable of this, but it’s still the only chance they have to ever learn
2) There are so many other, more critical situations with very widespread implications for all Americans which need attention. I’m simply not going to care that much about fools who keep voting for the same failed and repeatedly failing policies. In fact, I worry far more about their increasing tendency to leave the confines of their states in sufficient numbers to — literally — infect other states with the same lunacy that is destroying their previous states. The continual leftward shift of Arizona and Nevada is an example of this, and the sheer lunacy going on in Virginia is a really bad sign.
And the news that Milton actually wrote
“Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.”
AesopFan: Then there’s Housman’s reply to Milton, while making other fine points:
____________________________________________
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
— A.E. Housman, “Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff”
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/terence-this-is-stupid-stuff/
____________________________________________
The whole poem is a keeper. I’ve read it enough times to commit large chunks to memory. Its message, appropriate for our times, is a resilient stoicism:
____________________________________________
Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
People must suffer and experience pain, before they will awaken. THeir choice.
In context, there is another line that seems appropriate to the topic.
“The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.”
Truer than most realize.
Double slit experiment. Quantum entanglement. Observation creates reality.