QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: “Who is responsible for the mess in Minneapolis? The answer to that question is not unknowable — but it is, in many political quarters, unspeakable.”

Minneapolis’s municipal government, its institutions, and its police department are what they are not because of the abstract Hegelian forces of capital-H History, but because of decisions that have been made by people. Who these people are is a matter of public record. We know their names: Jacob Frey, Betsy Hodges, R. T. Rybak, Sharon Sayles Belton, Medaria Arradondo, Janeé Harteau, Tim Walz, Mark Dayton . . . the rogues’ gallery is practically inexhaustible.

But, oh, the transmuting magic of partisanship! Minneapolis is a Democratic city, with a Democratic mayor and a Democratic city council (0.0 Republicans on that body), in a state with a Democratic governor and a Democratic state house; these are the people who hire police chiefs and organize police departments, who specify their procedures and priorities, who write the laws that the police are tasked with enforcing — Democrats and progressives practically to a man. (Not every member of the Minneapolis city council is a Democrat — there’s a Green, too.) That’s a lot of lefty power, hardly anything except lefty power — but, somehow, the bad guy in this story must be Donald Trump.

Read the whole thing.

AT AMAZON, Gamo 6110017154 Varmint Air Rifle .177 Cal.

THE LONG-TERM SHUTDOWN OF ELECTIVE PROCEDURES WAS A MISTAKE: Dear patient, we want you back for that knee replacement.

BREAKING: NYC Mayor de Blasio plans to defund the police.

In the meantime, expect a lot of “blue flu” at the NYPD, as de Blasio has gone full Bane.

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE K-12 IMPLOSION AND THE LIVES OF OTHERS: Illinois Affluent High School District Wants to Promote Social Change By Examining What Students Said Before They Went to High School.

Earlier: Social Media And Soft Totalitarianism:

As I wrote on Thursday, a lot of academicians apparently view The Lives of Others as a how-to guide for better education:

And note that Stasi-like spying is likely only getting started:

WE KEEP SEEING THESE REPORTS. I HOPE THEY’RE TRUE. Heartburn drug Pepcid may ease COVID-19 symptoms.

NO, THE VAST MAJORITY OF POLICE SHOOTINGS DO NOT INVOLVE RACE: Hans Bader wonders why so many jump to the opposite conclusion when the data is clear.

“WE ALL LIVE ON CAMPUS NOW:” The Campus Social Justice Warriors of Yesterday Are Now in the Workplace.

What could go wrong?

● The New York Times, Tom Cotton, And The Vanguard Of The Incognizant.

● Why isn’t Andrew Sullivan allowed to write his column?

● Stan Wischnowski to resign as The Philadelphia Inquirer’s top editor.

UPDATE: Second City owner Andrew Alexander to exit after accusations of institutionalized racism leveled at theater.

EVERYTHING THE LEFT DOES IS “CREEPY AND CULTISH,” BECAUSE, AT BOTTOM, LEFTISM IS A CREEPY CULT.

And it’s an immature one, too, which is why — see, e.g., every Thanksgiving — we see columns about terrorizing your family into sharing your beliefs, because that’s how self-centered teenagers think.

BORIS IN ACTION: Boris Johnson makes bid to ‘save summer’ with further lockdown relaxations on pubs, cafes and restaurants.

WAIT, WHAT?:

I’m not getting how you “defund the police” without lots of police officers losing their jobs (and thus their eventual pensions) entirely, forget cuts. Is she thinking that they will be retrained as social workers or contact tracers? I’m really baffled here.

NPR ADVISES READERS TO ’DECOLONIZE” THEIR BOOKSHELVES BY REMOVING WHITE AUTHORS:

NPR suggests that “decolonizing your bookshelf” is about “about actively resisting and casting aside the colonialist ideas of narrative, storytelling, and literature that have pervaded the American psyche for so long.”

They posit:

If you are white, take a moment to examine your bookshelf. What do you see? What books and authors have you allowed to influence your worldview, and how you process the issues of racism and prejudice toward the disenfranchised? Have you considered that, if you identify as white and read only the work of white authors, you are in some ways listening to an extension of your own voice on repeat? While the details and depth of experience may differ, white voices have dominated what has been considered canon for eons.

Curiously though, I doubt NPR wants to replace John Maynard Keynes with Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell, or Pauline Kael with Armond White. In any case, as Ray Bradbury wrote in the introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of Fahrenheit 451, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.”

BUT THAT WOULD PROVIDE FEWER OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRAFT: Cities Should Take a Hard Look at Police Department Budgets:

Take New York City. In 1990, at the peak of the decades-long crime wave, New York City had 212,458 violent crimes, 932,416 property crimes, and 2,605 murders. At the time, it had a police force consisting of 26,756 uniformed and 9,483 nonuniformed personnel.

In 2018, the last year for which I could find statistics, New York City had 68,495 violent crimes, 281,507 property crimes, and 562 murders. In other words, crime is down dramatically.

Nevertheless, the New York City police force has since grown dramatically, consisting of approximately 36,000 officers and 19,000 civilian employees. Perhaps having more cops on the payroll has contributed to the lower crime rate, though crime rates have fallen nationwide. Even if so, the more than doubling of civilian employees is an especially stark statistic. With far fewer crimes to process, how could New York City possibly need twice as many civilian employees as in 1990?

UPDATE: Some or all of the increase may be the result of merging the transit and housing police into the NYPD. Either way, one bureaucrat for every two cops, with police coverage 24/7 and most of the bureaucracy working 9-5 is an astounding ratio.

NY TIMES OP-ED: White people should stop talking to relatives until they support BLM.

This is exactly the kind of thing Scientology does, requiring those inside the cult to cut themselves off from those outside, even close family members. In fact, in Scientology those on the inside are denounced for failing to distance themselves from friends and family who aren’t supportive.

Even apart from the cultic nature of this, it should strike people as obviously wrong. The author isn’t recommending an appeal based on reason or empathy, he jumps directly to emotional blackmail. It would have been one thing if he’d merely said, ‘talk to your friends about why this matters.’ But he’s gone beyond that to saying anyone who really cares should demand compliance. The creepiest part is his justification of this demand, i.e. “love requires sacrifice.”

If you love me, you’ll sacrifice your relationship with your friends and parents.

Actually, it’s worse – if you love me, you’ll risk sacrificing your parents and grandparents – as the Times does one of those spectacular aerial 180s that only leftists can perform:

A BASKET OF DEPLORABLES, AS HILLARY WOULD SAY: Biden says ‘10 to 15 percent’ of Americans are ‘just not very good people.’

SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER — AND SEGREGATION UNQUESTIONED: UCLA removes lecturer for questioning proposal to give black students preferential grading. “The petition, created by UCLA student Preet Bains, calls Klein’s defense of race-blind consideration ‘extremely insensitive, dismissive, and woefully racist.'” But the administration went along.

When taxpayers tire of funding this sort of thing, we’ll be told it’s because of “anti-intellectualism.”