Minneapolis: If you liked the riots and burning, you’ll love it when the police leave – you privileged kulaks, you
News from the hot trend-setting city of Minneapolis:
Nine of the [city] council’s 12 members appeared at a rally in a city park Sunday afternoon and vowed to end policing as the city currently knows it…
Council Member Jeremiah Ellison promised that the council would ‘dismantle’ the department.
That’s Keith Ellison’s son, by the way; Ellison will be heading the prosecution of Chauvin.
City council president Lisa Bender was interviewed:
The “New Day” co-host asked a question a lot of Americans have for people like Bender who advocate for some variation of defunding/disbanding/dismantling of local police forces in the name of social justice. Who is a person to call in the middle of the night when their home is broken into if there is no police department?
Here’s her answer:
CAMEROTA: "What if in the middle of the night my home is broken into. Who do I call?"
BENDER: "Yes, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors. And I know — and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege." pic.twitter.com/WhubQ9yJIf
— Eddie Zipperer (@EddieZipperer) June 8, 2020
Don’t black people call the cops when their homes are broken into? Even black people who are not especially wealthy – or not wealthy at all? And if they do, does that mean that those black people are privileged as well? Or are they allowed to call the police because they’re black and therefore unprivileged, even though they own some property?
After all, isn’t looting and stealing just Marx’s “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”? The homeowner’s got the ability to amass the goods, and the thief’s got the need. So hey, why worry about the police?
Perhaps Bender wants homeowners to arm themselves and shoot intruders first, ask questions later. After all, if the police won’t or can’t protect the home and the people in it, it’s up to the homeowner. Ah, but I bet a rudimentary police force will be kept in order to arrest those homeowners who use a weapon to defend their paltry little privileged possessions.
And come to think about it, isn’t your life just another privileged possession? If an angry person needs to take it in order to feel better, then who are you to say “no”?
No doubt this will end well:
Black Lives Matter New York chapter Chairman Hawk Newsome said his organization has marched for years to raise awareness of “the realities of police brutality and oppression.” The group is preparing “to stop these government sanctioned murders by any means necessary.”…
They are declaring war on police and “training our people to defend our communities in Black Panther style armed patrols.” Newsome continued, “We’re talking about self-defense. We’re talking about defending our communities. You know what it’s like to see a taser pointed at a 7-year-old, you know what it’s like to see a 67-year-old black woman … pepper sprayed and pushed to the ground?”
He told The Daily Mail, “It’s our obligation, it’s our duty to provide people with a pathway forward…We want liberation. We want the power to determine our own destiny. We want freedom from an oppressive government, and we want the immediate end of government sanctioned murder by the police.
The murder of George Floyd, he said, woke people up. BLM is now “mobilizing its base and plans to develop a highly-trained “military” arm to challenge police brutality head on.” Newsome said they will send out armed “Peace Officers” to “patrol black communities to challenge law enforcement and stop police brutality, reminiscent of the Black Panther Party.”
Newsome, 43, has a law degree and prior to becoming a full-time activist, he was a project manager at a law firm.
Lawyers seem to be in the vanguard of this (then again, Robespierre was a lawyer). Floyd’s death was the opportunity they were looking for, but if he hadn’t died they would have found another excuse, and the MSM would have just played along like they’re doing now.
More:
Newsome told The Mail, “We pattern ourselves after the Black Panthers, after the Nation of Islam, we believe that we need an arm to defend ourselves. I don’t see us working with police. I see us policing ourselves. I see us teaching black people how to police their own communities.”
The group has raised a great deal of money in the past two weeks from celebrities and high net-worth individuals as well as from small donors “who respect what we stand for.”…
Newsome refuses to call for the violence and looting to stop. Instead, he says people must have more “empathy” for the rioters…
Regarding the looting, Newsome tells The Mail, it is “ultimately a product of capitalist America and its treatment of the black community.”
Privilege.
Our educational system has prepared its young people to be the perfect audience for this, although I’m not sure what percentage lap it up. But not only does the sentiment tie right in with what they’ve been taught about capitalism and their own privilege and guilt, but most are ignorant of who the Panthers and Nation of Islam were and what they did.
Is the idea to turn blue urban inner cities into the no-go areas of France (the ones that, if memory serves me, don’t really exist)?:
In the 1980s, districts now officially regarded as “sensitive areas” (zones urbaines sensibles, or “no-go zones”) barely existed. Twenty years later, they have become areas where French laws rarely apply. In 2002, the author Georges Bensoussan, defined these areas in his book as The Lost Territories of the Republic. Three years later, the “lost territories” rose up in protest for three weeks and France seemed on the brink of a civil war. Calm returned only thanks to imams to whom the government ceded power. The government told them that the police would no longer intervene where Muslim populations live. In 2017, when Bensoussan published A Submitted France, he said that now the entire country was affected.
There are presently 751 sensitive zones in France. There, gangs reign and the law that is enforced is the law of Islam, sharia. Most of the non-Muslim residents have gone. Doctors enter these areas only under escort.
The residents of those areas are Muslim immigrants and their children. Our own lost territories will not be primarily Muslim; although there is a Muslim presence (such as Ellison himself, as well as Somali immigrants such as Ilhan Omar) it is not predominant. But the idea of a police-free zone policing itself is the analogy.
And they don’t need the people of Minneapolis to vote on this, either. Leftists are in charge, and they seem quite determined to do it – for the people’s own good. Trust them; they know best.
Is it a privilege if you pay (and pay, and pay) for it?
And pay for other people to have the privilege of free law enforcement.
Tony Badran, The Tablet: Bringing the Middle East Back Home
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/bringing-middle-east-back
H.L. Mencken – “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
I am no fan of the neoliberal consensus that took over the Democratic Party with the rise of Bill Clinton but at least it did somewhat restrain the nihilistic elements on the Left.
Mike
Everybody is going to learn about posse comitatus
“The posse comitatus, in common law, is a group of people mobilized by the conservator of peace – typically a sheriff – to suppress lawlessness or defend the county. The posse comitatus originated in ninth century England simultaneous with the creation of the office of sheriff. Though generally obsolete throughout the world, it remains theoretically, and sometimes practically, part of the United States legal system.”
The sheriffs can deputize some group of the people. Is it a good idea to have such a thing in this time of systemic racism?
And ultimately, without a legitimate monopoly on the use of force, the government lacks legitimacy. With government failed, the People can take up their God-given right to self defense and community defense. Will that be better than having a police force that at least has some accountability?
“….and I know that that comes from a place of privilege.”
It’s a cult.
Mouthing their mantras and their word salad.
Earnest, super-intelligent, highly educated loons.
“She wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
The worst may be yet to come. What if Chauvin is found “not guilty”? What if there’s an attorney willing and able to mount a vigorous defense for this man who seems to be a killer? Yes, he has a record of previous complaints filed against him, but did he willfully kill in this instance? On the other hand, if testimony shows that it’s unlikely that his actions caused the death, would there be a jury willing to acquit?
And if he is acquitted, would that verdict be received without another wave of violence?
You think there’s no room for doubt about Chauvin’s guilt?
Read this:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/just_like_that_gun_control_support_and_covid19_died_this_week.html
The politicians and celebrities advocating for this foolishness have their own bodyguards and live in gated enclaves. Surprise, surprise Hanoi Jane has demonstrated her wokeness by jumping on this bandwagon. But they should remember what happens when they feed the crocodile.
As Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit has noted, the police actually make things more fair for criminals.
In the sense that a vigilante team doesn’t have time for the niceties. Instead of jail time followed by a time tested formal trial process, they may only have time to put a noose-rope over a nearby tree branch.
The vigilantes may know the victims personally and relish the chance to get a little extra payback on the suspected perpetrators.
Andrew McCarthy has an article on NRO about AG Ellison upping the drama by changing 3rd degree murder charges to 2nd degree.
This is all just really bad, really evil, and there are going to be some dead bodies there fairly soon.
““mobilizing its base and plans to develop a highly-trained “military” arm to challenge police brutality head on.”
Military arm??? Sounds like a declaration of war to me. It’s going to be a very long hot summer.
To Jan re Chauvin being found not guilty. I don’t think that will happen, but from what info we have so far, at least some of the other three should rightfully get at least get a much lesser sentence. And what will that lead to?
And come to think about it, isn’t your life just another privileged possession? If an angry person needs to take it in order to feel better, then who are you to say “no”?
if your like me you are not supposed to have self defense as an oppressor class!
i kind of explained that a while ago..
you can be sure that the death toll on all sides will go up, and that the people doing the new policing will get more and more angry than the police ever did!!! wait… its going to be interesting as they are called over and over and over by the black community much much more than others, and to stop their own people much much more… and even more so given the ability police have will probably not be conferred..
For years we have been told African-American violence and criminality is a complete myth. All of the crimes they have ever been accused or convicted of have either been made up out of whole cloth by a racist police and justice system, or else actually perpetrated but in reaction to the oppressive racism and forced poverty they must endure.
Removing the police from the equation should make African-American communities crime free and thrive economically if their narrative is correct. Does anyone on either side of the debate actually believe that anything but the opposite will happen without a police force? (Yes, technically crime will go down on paper because there will no longer be anyone cataloguing or responding to crime.)
Real white privilege: the white politicians, tenured radicals, pundits, reporters cheering on the anarchy in US cities are confident that the business destroyed will not be their business, the employer looted will not be their employer and the neighborhood services burned out probably never to return will not be their neighborhood.
–JanMN: Complaints are just that, and do not necessarily mean that something actually happened, other than in the mind of the complainer.
— Lowell: Charges of murder require some degree of intent to end the person’s life. The autopsy found no damage to the neck, airway, etc to show strangulation was done. Based on the claims about Officer Chauvin to date, one would think that he would have done a better job of throttling Floyd. The claims that Floyd was killed by police pushes a narrative that has little supporting evidence; died in police custody, or in the process of arrest is more accurate. If a defense attorney can convince just one juror that the intent did not exist means a mistrial and a do-over. Riots will ensue.
Shrug. How long can one fight against oneself by worrying what happens to those who undermining the foundations of civilization, may find it collapsing on them.
You earlier expressed concern for those New Yorkers and others who may suffer from the effects of that which they have in their reckless moral vanity and preening brought upon themselves. I can “imagine” -to to use Bender`s favorite epistemological cant word – why you would react that way. But I cannot fathom why anyone else SHOULD.
Two more things.
1, Answering (not referring to your previous remarks here) that potential victims of their own half baked social and moral assumptions, can plead extenuating circumstances because they never thought deeply about the implications of their own operating premises, seems to me to be a further indictment of their behaviors rather than to act in mitigation.
2. If we were for a moment to posit that reality is ” really real”, that consequences as in cause and effect are substantially real, that human agency is real and not an illusion, and that actions once done cannot simply be be unwound, then it becomes quite clear, if quite astonishing, that in such a reality, Hell, as in some kind of absolute domain of unbridgeable otherness and estrangement, becomes not only a reasonable proposition, but almost a moral necessity.
In other words, if you proudly make your bed out of arrogant fantasies, you are not only entitled to sleep in it, but justice requires that you be forced to do so.
Another Mike:
Each state has degrees of murder or homicide, and definitions of each degree. Only the most serious degrees require intent to cause death.
See this this for the charges against Chauvin.
There was a question in an earlier thread about “what would be use” of something. Well, every Policy that really happens has the following use:
There is a Truth, a reality, which most people See, which the Policy has an influence on, often the primary influence (like Covid-19 with other co-morbidities!)
(As Neo posted here, I commented on the Candace Owens post a couple days ago (been busy) about this silly defund the police). From Turley:
“The city council now appears to have a veto proof majority to dismantle the police department. Other jurisdictions are considering similar moves and Los Angeles just announced a major cut in funding. Again, the silence of other politicians is perfectly deafening as they try to avoid any public criticism or conflict with the most radical elements of this movement. ”
Ya, cuts in funding legal police is setting the stage for vigilante / mob / gang control of various areas.
Altho I can imagine a good, black majority (98%? 49 of 50 guys) local group providing local security (see NY Guardian Angels, seem to still be active), it seems very likely to mean less police, and more violence, for some months. Or years.
If implemented.
Since when all is said and done, with Dems, a lot more is said, than done.
(The strong silent type, of virtue and good deed tho often a bit brutal, makes it easy to do more than talk by … not talking much at all. Now I think of “the Man with No Name” in the early Fistful of Dollars type Clint Eastwood Westerns).
DNW:
Do you really think the crocodile won’t eat you? Do you really think it will only hurt those on the left who fed it?
I am concerned for all of us.
“As Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit has noted, the police actually make things more fair for criminals.”
There are a lot of children who know nothing about history, who have no idea how much better the rule of law and due process is than vigilante justice. If this keeps devolving along the current trajectory, some of them will find out first hand.
The legal system is the only thing keeping the law-abiding from killing violent rioters. Without the presence of the police or of military, there will be war between rioters and their intended victims.
KyndyllG:
Ah, but don’t you see, without police they’ll be no reason to ever riot again.
The left just insured that Trump will win in November. This is so radical and so frightening that independents and moderate Democrats will run away from it, even if it means voting for someone they distrust and don’t like.
I am told that Camden, NJ “disbanded” — not defunded — its police department, switched to police protection from a new entity and was thus able to disentangle itself from inflated collective bargaining agreements and police unions that protect crooked cops. If something like that is what any of these cities have in mind, I’m listening. But I doubt that they are headed for anything like it. In fact, I’m wondering how the Democrats plan to juggle their traditional obeisance to public sector unions — with all that lovely campaign finance money for politicians who do their bidding– against this new idea of demolishing whole unionized workforces. If they lose the unions, can any of them get reelected?
Roy Nathanson:
I agree, but I’d prefer he win in November without all the death and destruction that the left seem willing to inflict in their quest for “justice.” Leftist are truly evil.
In case anybody thinks this is the unwashed masses rebelling against the elites, Ace has actually linked to a National Review article by Andrew Suttaford that gets at the heart of what’s really going on here.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/a-preview/
Key sentences: “Specifically, Turchin has warned that “elite overproduction” can be a precursor of turmoil to come. To oversimplify, this occurs when members of the elite (or those with the talents to join it) become too numerous for society to accommodate their aspirations.”
I’ve called this the problem of the “elite adjacent.” People who really aren’t part of the elite but who desperately want to think of themselves as being just like those who are. They aren’t the ones rioting but they are the ones trying to exploit the protest/riots to advance their own careers and elevate their own status.
Mike
At this point, I’m down with leftoid cities removing their police and creating no-go zones. Those with “from their abilities” intact will leave and the rot will consume itself. Innocents will be harmed, purged, and killed true. I’m just fresh out of compassion.
In communities which cannot afford private security, protection rackets arise quickly in the absence of police.
Once the mob and gang types who operate protection rackets are established they are very difficult to get rid of.
The aggressive behavior of police is a product of the drug war. The drug war, like alcohol prohibition, can be ended fairly easily. Take the profit out of drugs by letting addicts go to any physician and get a prescription for their drug. They cost next to nothing to manufacture and the black market would vanish in days.
With no need for no knock raids and no need to treat every traffic stop as a potential encounter with an armed drug dealer, police procedures would change for the better.
Getting addicts their fix cheaply would end the non-stop thievery now necessary to feed their habit. It would also connect them with professionals who could help them get clean.
The war on drugs and government monopoly on drug related issues is the real problem.
Remove the profit driving pushers to endlessly try to entrap new users, and the problem would disappear almost overnight.
Once the drug war ends, police behavior will change dramatically.
Defunded police departments will not fade away. There are police unions, with union contracts with their employers, remember.
And all sorts of stupid , presently uncited, regulations exist to provide funds. Like going 1 mph above the speed limit…that fine might be raised to $500.
Cities like Minneapolis deserve what’s coming. Populated by smug, financially secure secular people devoid of contact with others unlike themselves. MSP took in all those Somalis, remember? So now we have Ilhan Omar and home-grown jihadis in sectors where a civilized human dare not venture. Halal meat, muezzins cry, Muslims bow and pray for the death of Jews and Christians. Right there in Minneapolis. Nice, really nice.
@Roy Nathanson: “The left just insured that Trump will win in November. This is so radical and so frightening that independents and moderate Democrats will run away from it, even if it means voting for someone they distrust and don’t like.”
I’m not so sure about the moderate Dems. They’ve had more than three years to pressure Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic leadership to put down the lunatic leftist insurrection within their party, and they have not done that. It may be that they had all they could handle just preventing Bernie Sanders from winning the nomination.
Perhaps a few — who voted for supposedly moderate congressional representatives in the 2018 midterms but watched those reps buckle under to the Squad et al. — will stay home and not vote on November 3. But Dems are largely low-information voters, and with Hillary Clinton and the rest of their party driving a wedge between moderate Democrats and the Deplorables, and with Pelosi and Adam Schiff and the partisan media feeding them a steady diet of Russia-Ukraine-TDS, I fully expect the moderate Dems to vote in lockstep with their deranged party, and in great numbers.
The police are no doubt the most visible aspect of a city’s government. What these people do not think of are things that have been taken more or less for granted for decades – certainly within Minneapolis (l lived there for 30 years). The very things that make modern cities possible: Fresh, clean water. Sewage that goes somewhere. Power that’s always on. All those and much more depend on significant capital and that means the city must function at some level. Crime ridden areas start to see breakdowns of those basic services. Power companies need escorts during the day and flat out won’t come out after dark. Roads deteriorate. Water mains start to leak for lack of upkeep. Etc. It’s the road to the third world.
But the mayor of Chicago has denounced “vigilantes” guarding their neighborhood with blockades and baseball bats. Those were white guys, though, which makes them bad.
Dick Illyes:
Surely the cartels and mobsters will agree to go out of business for the good of society? “Needle and the damage done” N. Young
Bring Mogadishu to all of Minneapolis. bring Gaza to L.A., bring Caracas to the Big Apple. A socialist paradise for all! What’s not to like?
See this on police funding:
https://pjmedia.com/culture/tyler-o-neil/2020/06/08/what-would-happen-if-cities-started-to-defund-the-police-n506985
I just wish we could have progressive free safe zones. Glen Reynolds likes to quote HL Mencken “common people know what they want and they get it good and hard”. I often think these blue states are going to get what they deserve-but sadly, I am currently stuck in a blue state and sure don’t want to be affected by the logical conclusions of their stupidity. California was still fine living 30 years ago. I hope to move to a red state sometime in the future, but the progressive cancer is everywhere, especially in our youth, so these states will slowly turn too.
The problem with so many government officials, especially the elected ones (or is that the elect?) is that there are no personal consequences for their decisions. With that in mind, I propose that the Minneapolis police immediately institute “No Privilege Zones” where the police will not monitor crime and only respond to calls for help if there is a truly serious situation and there are no more doughnuts and coffee left in the canteen. All NPZs are declared gun free zones and all hand guns, rifles, and shotguns will be confiscated and destroyed and a $10,000 fine levied for each hidden weapon found.
City Hall will be the center of a four square block NPZ. The mayor’s mansion and private home will each also be the center of a four block NPZ. Each councilman’s home will be the center of a six block NPZ.
Regardless of the level of crime, the NPZs will be in existence for at least 12 months.
When criminal activity goes up as a result of this policy, the cry will be for more money to fund the items that were to replace the police. Not to end their policies, which were good and well-intentioned, but always if only the funding had been greater their actions would have succeeded.
They will never admit they were at fault but that others hampered them in succeeding.
Meanwhile, the gangs will roam, people will be hurt and die, and those who came up with the ideas will still live in their gated communities and pay for their private security to protect themselves from the results of what they are advocating.
Classes weaponize Races and so on and so forth.
When that dynamic is tied to properties then there we go.
You know, when humans disrupt old migration memories /routes then the red fox runs north to the arctic varient. The red ones hunt and kill the white ones and then turn white in time. And so it goes. Bloody traces.
This is the time for cities to negotiate contracts w/ the police that rewards the best and punishes the few. The right to terminate up to 15% of its police force for cause would quickly clean house.
No. I fully expect that the insatiable progressive crocodile will probably come for me, or for those like me, after the crocodile has either been further enabled by, or dined upon, his present enablers.
In fact the crocodile has been slithering around for years, biting and nipping where it could, while people such as you describe look on with complacent approval at the very least. And often with a much more undisguisedly and virulent ill will toward the bitten.
I’m just not seeing what good trying to save the revolution`s cheerleaders from the revolution, will do for civilization or the preservation of a worthwhile common life-way.
So, I forcibly snatch a few from the jaws of the Morlocks, and then, the very next time the claxon sounds they migrate right back into the jaws of the beast. For unlike in the movie so popular with children, in our reality the complacent members of the mesmerized herd, do not ball their puny fists, suddenly develop muscles worth anything, and then fight back against the beast that has emotionally and financially suckled them from young adulthood.
Tell me, where’s the benefit? And, for all your closeness to them, love for them, careful framing of questions and gauging of opportunities , how many of these good friends, have you, with all the good will in the world, managed to save?
And even worse, how many of them are you confident would risk their own comforts and place to protect you, should the crocodile announce that they might prosper for a while yet, if they in tbe meantime offer you up to be eaten?
Seriously, you are a good guy Neo. But are you confident that they would to any degree reciprocate the tolerance and generosity and loyalty you have shown them, should they stop to reflect on your true views, or it prospectively cost them anything?
There is not a man posting here that I have seen, who has been able to convince his own damned progressive offspring of the value of freedom and the rule of law. What chance do you reckon you have with your self-satisfied, if truly amiable and presently indulgent, friends?
Does anyone doubt that the left will not engineer another wave of riots before the Nov. election? Or that, should Trump be elected… the left will not respond with more riots?
In such a case, can Trump refrain from instituting the Insurrection Act? Declaring Martial Law? How much longer can the media continue to be allowed to engage in the most deceitful and hateful of propaganda? High tech social media be allowed to steadily increase its censorship of speech? The schools continue to indoctrinate the young into supporting the formation of the chains of their future enslavement? Does anyone imagine that those diseased institutions will repent and reform?
On March 23, 1775 in the Virginia House of Burgesses, Patrick Henry asked, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?”
“Take the profit out of drugs by letting addicts go to any physician and get a prescription for their drug.” Dick Illyes
Drug addiction will skyrocket.
“the progressive cancer is everywhere” gina
Indeed, arguably we are close to or even at the point where the only remedy is radical surgery. So radical that even though the patient may die upon the operating table, refraining from that high risk surgery may be a certain death sentence for the patient.
What cannot go on will not go on…
“I am told that Camden, NJ “disbanded” — not defunded — its police department”
I’ve read this is an NYT/Left talking point.
In truth, Camden admitted incompetence, shut down the city PD and turned policing over to the County and to state troopers.
1) Minneapolis has pledged a new paradigm that includes sending social workers instead of police for example.
2) if you were a MN state trooper or Hennepin County sheriff, what level of effort would you expend to protect city residents knowing the city leadership will undermine you?
They’ve stopped teaching history now, so the blue city citizens won’t understand what’s hitting them. Reynolds is right, though. Prisons and penitentiaries are for the convicted felons to serve their sentence away from society; Jails are for protecting the accused from society, under presumption of innocence. Without police to keep the peace, it will be the frustrated citizens who declare vigilantism as law. Then there’ll be a growing criminal element: the one who is hanged, and the ones doing the hanging. Does anyone believe that is good for society? Or maybe the Ellison family has a solution in mind that is more in keeping with the Nation of Islam.
When does the betting start on how long Emergency Services will hang around without police having their back?
It’s worth reviewing Taleb’s ideas on the effects of an intolerant minority on society.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15
I can’t help but wonder how serious these people really are.
Virtue signalling is one thing, letting trans-whatevers compete against women is another, but getting rid of the police could get oneself and one’s loved ones seriously hurt.
Unless one wants to see the country burn for the revolution, it’s hard to imagine any city will really go through with shutting down the police.
@neal, the red foxes do NOT turn white. But their kits who are whiter live longer and have more kits, so “foxes (alive)” get whiter.
This sort of thing happens with rabbits and foxes often, and is in biology books. More rabbits means more prey for foxes, and more foxes. More foxes kill more rabbits, which means less prey for foxes, and less foxes. Less foxes kill fewer rabbits, which means more rabbits. More rabbits mean more prey for foxes …
I’m beginning to fear that the civilization stunting “social justice” / communism / “to each according to his need” ideas are, for human, in a cycle that won’t easily be broken.
DNW,
I think you’d be impressed if you conversed with my kids about this topic and others, and I know it’s the same for a lot of other young folks out there. I talk with their friends, and, more importantly, listen. Look at the meteoric rise of Jordan Peterson whose supporters are primarily young. You are probably aware, but there is a vast network of social media that is rarely mentioned in main stream circles, where well informed people discuss a wide range of serious topics at very deep levels.
Although they are likely half your age you’d even find that several of my kids could keep up with you when discussing the Classics (and even playing classical music, if you are so inclined), and one of my offspring can have that conversation with you in Latin or Ancient Greek, if you prefer.
There are many, many clear thinking young people; Candace Owens, Lila Rose, Allie Stuckey, Charlie Kirk, Michael Knowles, Stephen Crowder, James O’Keefe… and they have millions of listeners/viewers. One of my kids lived in Europe for awhile and he found the same to be true with many of the young folks he met there, who are sick of seeing their nations lose their identities due to mass immigration with no attempts at assimilation. He even met people his age who were refugees from the Middle East and Africa who are so supportive of the West they make Pat Buchanon look like Angela Merkel.
But I think you know this and are writing hyperbolically.
im typing.. cant write hyperbolically…
Disflexics of the world – UNTIE!
I would comment but find little point in it
Rufus T Firefly:
Thank you for the note of optimism about the youth you know. They will have a hard struggle with the brainwashed/indoctrinated.
DNW:
I helped “convert” one person long ago. And then for a long long time I stopped talking to people about politics, for the most part.
But now I’m trying again. In fact, I’m working on talking to one person right now. Just started, though. I’ll see how it goes. The first talk went ok, but pobably because we are good friends and because I chose someone I think is basically sensible and just misinformed because of the news sources that person uses.
I’m not ever expecting to change peoples’ minds. Remember, the title of my series is “A mind is a difficult thing to change.” I don’t say that lightly. It’s indeed very difficult, and it takes time and effort.
But that’s not what I base my caring on. I love my family and my friends. I don’t know how brave they would be if push came to shove. One doesn’t know in advance. But I believe that certain family members and at least a friend or two would stand by me.
I’ve never thought it’s easy to be a hero. My relationships with people aren’t based on the expectation or demand that they be heroes. I would like it to be so. But I cannot predict in advance.
“Floyd’s death was the opportunity they were looking for, but if he hadn’t died they would have found another excuse, and the MSM would have just played along like they’re doing now.” – Neo
So true.
A wrinkle to that was suggested by a commenter at Treehouse: Given that Antifa was seriously prepared to create mayhem and destruction at some point, as they clearly were, the disruption and riots would have had much more impact on Trump’s election chances closer to November. The commenter thinks the thugs may have jumped the gun because the provocation was too pronounced not to use as their excuse, but the longer time until the election gives Trump the opportunity to recover, especially if Barr’s DOJ gets serious about rounding up and prosecuting Antifa members.
Also from Turley:
Sounds very much like the standard platform of socialists: having everyone become equal in misery.
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/06/08/minneapolis-leader-fear-about-dismantling-the-police-department-is-just-another-example-of-privilege/
I have very good friends whose parents still live, & will until they die, in South Africa. They fought the varied wars across their generations there & made the country prosperous.
The generations that have left beg their elders to join them in Australia, the US, the UK (everywhere to which they’ve scattered). But the elders all offer some version of, “This is my country too. I was born here. My grandparents are buried here. We built everything you see here that is still standing upright. We’ll die here fighting to our last breath if need be.”
I suspect there are a few Minnesotans, & Californians, & New Yorkers who will feel the same way…and be killed as the land of their generations becomes a carbon copy of Mogadishu, Sarajevo, Goma…
Rufus,
No doubt what you say is true. And Jordan Peterson is a surprising , to me, phenomenon, who resonates with a notably youthful population of young males who have been forced to reap in life what their self-serving and cowardly seniors have sown before them.
I also have no doubt, and have specifically mentioned , how impressed I have been with the critical thinking skills of younger critics, who exhibit a knowledge of fundamentals which indignant and sputtering somewhat older conservatives of the baby boom generation lacked … unless they were specifically and deeply educated in the classical liberal arts.
Imagine an industrial engineer whose last civics class was in high school trying to argue the right to keep and bear arms with an activist who had all the specious ” civic republican” talking points laid out in front of him. This, while the engineer never had a single class in constitutional law and development, or had even read Aristotle’s Politics. No wonder conservatives were having their asses handed to them for a time.
But my remarks were not intended to suggest a sweeping generational indictment.
They were an attempt to grasp why some accomplished members of the immediate post WWII cohort ( reaching adulthood between the Korean War and 1960, say .., ) deccribed their offspring as so sublimely indifferent to or blandly dismissive of, their parents’ social perspectives and political values.
I really don’t know many such people as peers. But then my own father was the youngest of the young who still served in WWII. Something about the men after, their gravitas or the respect they commanded, seems to have changed vis-a-vis their own kids …, as honorable and well meaniing and accomplished as they may have personally been.
But no, you are correct in your implications: If a restoration is to come it won’t arrive courtesy of some 73 year old bow tie wearing professional conservative twit columnist, nor from the occasional 58 year old whose interest in history or Medieval philosophy led him to accidentally become counter counter culture. It will be from young men and women such as you describe, who have lived in the belly of the beast all their lives, and who can appreciate what has been lost, in a way which those who were blithe at losing it, could not.
All that the best of us others have done, [ and I do not include myself here] was to temporarily point to useful original sources and commentators, when fashion deemed it poor form, or unmodern, to do so; and when such references were erroneously imagined to belong to the political left as a matter of birth right.
C.S. Lewis is really the guy who pointed the way in this: to the fact that a knowledge of classical literature and primary sources exposed many of the so called modern problems, as rehashed to one degree or another, versions of perrenial issues which intelligent men of every generation have had to deal.
Every right-wing blogger on the planet is writing about this; Bethany’s post picks up an actual example of what unrestrained vigilante action looks like already — you may have already seen the original video she refers to.
https://ricochet.com/766275/so-you-want-to-defund-the-police-brace-yourself-for-vigilantes/
So You Want to Defund the Police? Brace Yourself for Vigilantes
By Bethany Mandel | June 8, 2020
At least you can dress in style while you enjoy the lack of policing.
https://babylonbee.com/news/nike-releases-commemorative-shoe-to-honor-looters
First come the emails about what they are doing, then come the demands about what you must do.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/08/america-is-in-a-cultural-civil-war/
Never mind.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/06/08/quick-retreat-the-biden-clyburn-campaign-and-key-democrats-now-reverse-position-and-oppose-defunding-of-police/
Dick Illes,
I am also one of the ones that supports ending Drug Prohibition for all of the same reasons that ending Alcohol Prohibition was a sound policy decision.
However, you will find that many political conservatives are as irrational and immune to logic on this topic as liberals are irrational and immune to logic on economic policy issues.
Om said,
“Surely the cartels and mobsters will agree to go out of business for the good of society?”
Of course, criminal organizations won’t simply go away. But, they will become far less rich and powerful.
After Alcohol Prohibition ended, the powerful mafias continued in illegal gambling, prostitution, extortion, etc… But, these all became far more manageable after the illegal alcohol profits were removed from the equation.
Keeping society civil is an ongoing process. There are no easy solutions. There will always be bad guys that will take advantage of the innocent if permitted.
I think defunding the police is a splendid idea. The police will become private security for the civilized, and the gangs will rule the inner cities. What’s not to like?
Richard Saunders on June 9, 2020 at 5:21 am said: What’s not to like?
The lack of window shopping?
Humanity can destroy themselves, if they wish. I am going to stay in Ymar’s world, waga sekai.
It will be from young men and women such as you describe, who have lived in the belly of the beast all their lives, and who can appreciate what has been lost, in a way which those who were blithe at losing it, could not.
Yes, it may even come by way of Ymar’s world.
Does anyone doubt that the left will not engineer another wave of riots before the Nov. election? Or that, should Trump be elected… the left will not respond with more riots?
In such a case, can Trump refrain from instituting the Insurrection Act? Declaring Martial Law? How much longer can the media continue to be allowed to engage in the most deceitful and hateful of propaganda? High tech social media be allowed to steadily increase its censorship of speech? The schools continue to indoctrinate the young into supporting the formation of the chains of their future enslavement? Does anyone imagine that those diseased institutions will repent and reform?
Way ahead of you there, GB. They have something planned, but it won’t be riots. At least, not just riots.
I forsaw and envisioned Trump doing a dictator and martial law run. Of course, his allegiance was unclear in 2015. Suffice it to say after America’s toelrance of Hussein, I was not in a trusting mood.
Tell me, where’s the benefit? And, for all your closeness to them, love for them, careful framing of questions and gauging of opportunities , how many of these good friends, have you, with all the good will in the world, managed to save?
Neo is polarizing in the right direction. Although that means she has a lot more work to do.
I warned people that Leftists would turn them in to the SS State. And this then happened, although mostly recently.
Also, who replaced Om, his heart of stone is now a heart of compassion? THat doesn’t make sense, but it is one person at least.
Thank you for the note of optimism about the youth you know. They will have a hard struggle with the brainwashed/indoctrinated.
That’s good, keep it up.
There are no saviors for humanity. People have to save themselves.
Trump was not going to save you from the Leftists or their ANtifa brownshirts. I foresaw that in 2015 too. It’s not because he wishes you ill. No, he is constrained by something else.
In truth, this defund the police is a last ditch hail mary pass. When the truth and data dumps come out, people will be busy trying to keep their heart working, no time to argue with Y. And with so many mass arrests, don’t you think it will be a lot easier for these Demoncrat slave masters in these cities to flee, if there were no police around?
“I am also one of the ones that supports ending Drug Prohibition for all of the same reasons that ending Alcohol Prohibition was a sound policy decision.“
I wrote a paper in college once and looked up the actual statistics. Alcohol-related illnesses plummeted during Prohibition and it took years, sometimes decades I think, for those sicknesses to return to pre-Prohibition levels.
Legalizing/decriminalizing drugs will not be cost-free, the negative impacts may take a long time to appear, and there’s basically no way to undo it.
Mike
“But, these all became far more manageable after the illegal alcohol profits were removed from the equation.“
I don’t think anyone considered the mob in 1970 New York City “manageable.”
Mike
Lebanon 1983
Roy Nathanson:
It is passing strange that those who advocate legalization of all(?) drugs note that the criminal elements won’t want to give up their business model of exploitation of the vulnerable and yet believe that those same criminal elements will be satisfied with less profit from the destruction of the vulnerable. Ruthless and evil people will limit their greed? Why would they in that land of logic and rationality? “Riddle me that.”
The aggressive behavior of police is a product of the drug war. The drug war, like alcohol prohibition, can be ended fairly easily. Take the profit out of drugs by letting addicts go to any physician and get a prescription for their drug. They cost next to nothing to manufacture and the black market would vanish in days.
I didn’t read all the comments after this but the experience in California with marijuana legalization suggests you are wrong. Taxation leads to smuggling and the beat goes on.
The aggressive behavior of police is a product of the drug war. The drug war, like alcohol prohibition, can be ended fairly easily. Take the profit out of drugs by letting addicts go to any physician and get a prescription for their drug. They cost next to nothing to manufacture and the black market would vanish in days.
Historically, that’s not the source or utility of aggressive policing. Only about 20% of the man-hours police devote to their work can be fairly attributable to the enforcement of drug laws. And, of course, the notion that it would be sunshine and smiles if you eliminated the drug laws is another social fantasy. Be nice if libertarian discourse was something other than a series of red herrings.
I am told that Camden, NJ “disbanded” — not defunded — its police department, switched to police protection from a new entity and was thus able to disentangle itself from inflated collective bargaining agreements and police unions that protect crooked cops.
They replaced municipal policing with a county police force, which is a perfectly sensible thing to do in every metropolis. Outside of metropolitan centers, multi-county sheriff’s departments would be an improvement over current models.
Where is this all going? First a reply to Roy, then considerations that French “no go zones” is what they’ll have, run by mobsters offering protection,
Nearly 20 years ago, I spent a couple years living with a daily doper in Boulder, Colorado. He and his fellow weed loving friends were also Left leaning Democrats, and all varying degrees paranoid of legalising MJ.
They trusted themselves, naturally, but were paranoid of others deciding whether or not to exercise their own freedom. They could not be reasoned with, so I gave up.
Now, perhaps paranoia like this is a good argument to go over their heads. But I found, in this tribal group, no cause for optimism.
Does any one else know that a among those spearheading the drive to de-fund the police to council member Jeremy Ellison? Son of Nation of Islam and Muslim (or past member, Believer…), Minnesota AG Kieth Ellison?
It is true.
Tucker Carlson does a lengthy rundown, BLM “is now a political party.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7aQ02YX7qo
Why no. They always wanted a Marxist transformation of the US because it always works so to achieve such SWJ ends!
So much for idealism and race whoring the rich, because Paris, France or Malmo, Sweden is what they’re going to receive. Police no go zones, because principle. Let their mobs take out the human trash, that’ll be far better!
Enough? No.
My T-shirt slogan of the day is “Woke? Let’s kill young!” Because they’ve done so well, so supremely fine to deserve what their elders will leave them in great institutions, fine engines of knowledge-producing, such great wealth. They’re ready! Not.
A bit of Robespierre ‘back at ya’ for all your fun non-Hunger Games-style fun and games. Just deserts for their infantile delusions.
Their folks are buying them Holodecks, I’ll take any Ancient Rome day.
For what it’s worth: a leftist acquaintance of mine, in his late ’60s, took to Facebook yesterday to sound an alarm about the word “defund” because (1) what “defund” really means is “reform” (2) Trump and all those other wicked right-wingers will wickedly exploit the situation by wickedly claiming that “defund” means “defund.”
He must be quite alarmed because he had sworn off Facebook some time ago.
After G.W. Bush won in 2004 I attended a Thanksgiving dinner with a mostly progressive-lesbian crowd (my ex- switched teams after we broke up). The meal was good and afterward, over chamomile tea and bidi cigarettes (I made that part up), the guests got to discussing what to do now that America had turned extra-evil and re-elected Bush.
Half declared they were serious about leaving the country. Ireland was the preferred destination, hipper than Canada I guess. But — you may have heard this story before — they never did.
My point: “Defunding the police” may sound like a blood oath today but will melt away like a light spring snow on a sunny afternoon when it comes time to do something. A few token budget cuts might be enacted, but nod, nod, wink, wink, restored quietly with hidden bookkeeping.
Where do you think this comes from?
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable. We foster a queer-affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).
Where I live, the voters directly elect a sheriff who then controls the local police. If we don’t like their behavior, we can directly elect a new sheriff.
In the big blue cities, the voters elect the mayor, perhaps council members, etc., who consult political VIP’s from the police union, democrat campaign contributors, etc., and then appoint someone as head of the police. If something bad happens, they can blame him and appoint someone else. The local voters have little to no direct control over who heads up the police.
Why do those same voters keep electing the same politicians when they are unhappy with the police? The political establishment, speaking very broadly and generally, are always offering them the same poisoned choice: Re-elect us and be sure about your welfare checks and we get to run the police, or elect others and suffer the consequences. They vote for welfare because they for sure need the income, and only the relatively unlucky end up involved with the police.
Why do the mayors, etc., arrange to choose the police chief? After all, if the voters elected a sheriff directly, that’s one less headache for them and everyone benefits from a well-run police force. Ah — that’s the problem, isn’t it. A sheriff responsible to no one but the local voters could investigate and convict all the corrupt local politicians, all the way up to the mayor and beyond. So, there will not be any locally elected sheriffs in those big blue cities until …..?
What those Minnesota blue politicians talking about defunding the police are probably thinking about is actually defunding the police — so no one will be able to investigate them — then collecting a last round of gigantic scams from the local budget and getting the hell out of Dodge. There will be an incredible mess left behind but everyone will have more important things to worry about than local political corruption.
Replace the “defunded” police with locally elected sheriffs, and some good may come out of this mess.
Re-elect us and be sure about your welfare checks and we get to run the police, or elect others and suffer the consequences. They vote for welfare because they for sure need the income, and only the relatively unlucky end up involved with the police.
I think you’ll find very few municipal governments who have much to do with welfare policy apart from the housing authority and shizzy youth employment schemes. Even in core cities, less than 5% of the households are billeted in public housing.
Why do the mayors, etc., arrange to choose the police chief? After all, if the voters elected a sheriff directly, that’s one less headache for them and everyone benefits from a well-run police force.
I’ve never noticed the quality of policing was improved by putting it in the hands of an elected official. Sheriffs generally are in charge of local jails, court security and enforcing court orders. Some are also in charge of police patrols, generally in exurbs, small towns, and rural areas with little violent crime. Much less challenging that core city policing.
Art Deco, by “welfare” I was referring to voting for democrats to ensure the stability of all government benefits, which the poor living in big blue cities depend on regularly, as compared to the off-and-on and random possibility of being badly treated by the police. As for sheriffs, I’m sure that their police duties in the suburbs and rural areas are less demanding than those of the inner city — but for sure these sheriffs also care more about doing a good job than if they were appointed. Might I add that “doing a good job” becomes a much more well-defined term when it translates so directly to “getting re-elected.” I think the same dynamic could improve the policing of the inner city, even though the job is more difficult. If it helps, break the city up into multiple police districts, each policed by a different, directly elected sheriff.
Why are big-blue-city police chiefs almost always appointed? I think that it’s to prevent them from investigating the political corruption of those who appoint them. The corruption must be blatantly obvious after all these decades of one-party rule. It would be very tempting for a directly elected sheriff to go after that. It’s hard to imagine a better spring-board to higher office than putting a bunch of political grifters in jail.
So, in general, the inner-city voters will not “throw the rascals out” because they worry more about their government benefits than their bad and corrupt police forces, and the big blue politicians will not give up their “power of appointment” because they want to stay out of jail. Letting the voters choose their police chiefs directly would break up this corrupt cycle.
If you have a different explanation, I would be interested in hearing it, but it will have to explain why the big blue cities — almost always — seem to end up appointing their chiefs of police rather than directly electing them.
The Leftist mindset is quite simple despite them being relatively verbose and many holding advanced degrees in various fields and disciplines. Racism and privilege explains their world.
Camerota asked, “What if, in the middle of the night, my home is broken into? Who do I call?”
Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender. said, “Yes, I mean, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors, and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege. Because for those of us for whom the system is working, I think we need to step back and imagine what it would feel like to already live in that reality where calling the police may mean more harm is done.”
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