Archive for 2020
June 10, 2020
MAYOR IN DENIAL: Lessons from Chicago.
NO. 2020 MAKES “CRAZY” LOOK SANE: Chronicles of the Crazy Time.
HOWEVER, IT IS POWERFULLY PRO-STUPID: Defunding Police is Anti-Black and Anti-Woman.
So, there’s that.
ROLLS EYES: Governor Beshear Panders To Black Voters.
Note that a government that discriminates in your favor might decide tomorrow to discriminate against you.
MOSTLY WE NEED SANITY. AND ADULTS: We Need Real Solutions, Not Ridiculous Pipe Dreams.
AS I SAID: the Cult Dynamics of Wokeness.
NONE OF THIS IS ABOUT BLACK LIVES. OR BLACK PEOPLE. OR GEORGE FLOYD: The Intersectionalist High Church.
June 9, 2020
AT AMAZON, deals in Movies & TV.
YES, WELL, THAT’S BECAUSE THEY HATE AMERICA: Christopher Columbus statue torn down, thrown in lake by protesters.
THEY’VE STOPPED COVERING AND STARTED COVERING-FOR: The Media Urge to Explain away ‘Defund the Police.’
The hot protest slogan and hashtag of the moment is “Defund the Police.” At times, it’s also framed as a call to abolish or disband the police. Ordinary speakers of the English language would naturally assume, listening to people chant “defund the police” in the streets, carry “defund the police” signs, and literally paint “defund the police” on the streets of D.C., that such people mean “defund the police.”
But not our media! There’s been an immediate rush to write pieces explaining that, of course, “defund the police” does not actually mean “defund the police.” . . .
Notably, articles of this nature seek to draw the eye towards legislative and think-tank proposals and away from the voices of the people actually chanting in the streets.
In part, of course, all this explaining is a reflection of what a radical and politically explosive idea “defund the police” is in an election year, and how it divides the Democrats along ideological and generational lines. Leading Democratic politicians are running headlong away from the slogan while trying to embrace the people chanting it. Joe Biden, who for years proudly touted his role in the 1994 “put 100,000 more cops on the street” crime bill, visibly wants no part of the slogan. But unlike the party’s leadership, many of whom were born in the early 1940s, influential younger lawmakers such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are pushing the idea. These are the folks who may run the party when the age-77-and-up crowd moves on.
Defunding police is also wildly impractical. The Minneapolis City Council grabbed headlines by voting to defund and disband the city’s police department, but they don’t actually have the legal authority to do that; defunding would require a revision to the city charter, which the voters would have to approve. Until then, the cops report to the city’s mayor, not the city council. Camden, New Jersey actually went forward with disbanding its police department — in theory. In practice, what Camden did is just old-fashioned union-busting: disband the department to get rid of the union, then hire the same cops back at lower salaries and benefits.
What makes the media’s Voxsplaining of “Defund the Police” all so astonishingly brazen is when you compare it with how they routinely treat popular slogans, protests, and broad-brush assertions by politicians on the right.
To be fair, that’s because they’re lying weasels who openly message for the Democrats.
DISPATCHES FROM THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION: Richmond, Virginia Christopher Columbus statue torn down, thrown into lake.
As Robert Heinlein has been quoted as saying, “A generation that doesn’t know history has no past; and no future.” And that’s just the way the “Start from zero” left likes it.
SADLY, JUSTIN AMASH IS BEHIND IT, WHICH MEANS IT WILL PROBABLY GO NOWHERE: New Bill Would Abolish Qualified Immunity, Make It Easier To Sue Cops Who Violate Civil Rights.
OPEN THREAD: I don’t mess around with magic, child. What I got is mine.
SPACEX TERMINATES PORT OF LOS ANGELES LEASE: “The decision to once again terminate the port lease, along with an earlier decision to halt Starship work in Florida, makes South Texas the hub of Starship production work.”
YES, BUT THAT’S NOT THE CHOSEN NARRATIVE:
THIS WAS INEVITABLE: Cops TV show canceled at Paramount Network.
We’ll always have Tattooine, though. (I think):
THE CULT DYNAMICS OF WOKENESS:
Before I got involved in studying Critical Social Justice like I do now, I mostly studied the psychology of religion. I took particular interest in the more authoritarian and cultish elements that can spring up within otherwise more reasonable faith traditions. Cult indoctrinations, in particular, tend to follow very predictable stages. First, there is initiation; then there is indoctrination; and then there is reprogramming. These three phases are distinct and must be understood on their own terms.
Lengthy, but very much worth your time.
Found via Richard Fernandez, who quotes in response the greatest and most accurate thing G.K. Chesterton never said: “When a man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.”
DAVID BERNSTEIN: Public Health Experts are Embarrassing Themselves. “Yet epidemiologists and other public health gurus have been overwhelmingly reluctant to criticize the loosening of public health restrictions on public gatherings to accommodate the current large public protests. Some, including hundreds who signed a public letter to that effect, have explicitly supported them. In doing so, some of the latter group have blatantly contradicted their own prior public statements on the dangers of public gatherings. . . . But here’s the thing: while it’s understandable that people want to take to the streets to protest racism and state violence, there is no epidemiological or other scientific evidence that such protests will have positive public health effects by spurring positive social and political change. Any scientist or public health expert who suggests otherwise is engaging in political and sociological speculation that is not only beyond their expertise, but that really beyond anyone’s expertise. But it’s worse when such speculation purports to be scientific, from experts whose credibility is crucial for containing the current and future pandemics.”
Huh. I wonder what brought that on all of a sudden?
HEATHER MAC DONALD: Why We Need the Police. People in high-crime neighborhoods want more officers, not fewer. The manufactured anti-cop outrage in New York City comes despite a dramatic reduction in shootings by officers, to the lowest level since records have been kept. But of course the activists — and their flacks in the media — can’t be bothered with such inconvenient facts.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Archaeologists map complete Roman city without lifting a shovel.
AT AMAZON, save on Vitamins and Dietary Supplements.
