Sunday morning music

This morning's article is an unusual combination.  I'm going to introduce you to a song, then talk at some length about its very profound meaning for me.  Call it an extended meditation on God, life, the universe and everything, if you will.

A couple of weeks ago I happened upon an album released in 1999 by country and bluegrass musician Ricky Skaggs, titled "Soldier of the Cross".

I'm not a big fan of either music genre, and I don't normally bother with "commercial" Christian music, but somehow I felt led to click through to a couple of the tracks and listen for a few moments.

One of them was titled "Seven Hillsides", composed by Texas native Walt Wilkins.  It describes the dilemma of a preacher who's to deliver memorial services at the graves of seven soldiers, killed in action overseas.  How is he to comfort their families, particularly their mothers?  How is he to make sense of their deaths in the context of the Christian message?  Since that's something I've had to do for myself, first from the perspective of my own faith, and then for others as a pastor and chaplain, you'll understand that this song struck me very powerfully indeed.

Walt Wilkins has recorded this song himself, on his 2001 album "Rivertown".

However, Mr. Wilkins has said he loves Ricky Skaggs' version of the song, and who am I to argue with the songwriter?  Before I go on, let's listen to it.

As a pastor, I can assure you that's a very good description of the moral and spiritual dilemma we face every time we have to do something like this.  How can we make sense of tragedy and loss in the context of our faith?  To me, it's blasphemous to suggest that everything that happens is God's will.  I refuse to believe that God points at someone and says, "I'm going to kill you now, to see how your family copes with your death, and test their faith!"  That's not the God I've come to know over the years.  Rather, I recall that God never once promised us a life of wine and roses, or milk and honey, or whatever.  Instead, he promised us grace to cope with life, whatever it throws at us.  In my experience, he keeps that promise - if we're prepared to accept his grace on his terms.

Regular readers will know the background to my faith, and how it's been formed and tested over the years.  I make no claim to be some sort of Christian hero - I'm anything but.  I've made more than my fair share of mistakes, and committed far more than my fair share of sins.  I fear God's justice when I face his judgment for my life - almost as much as I hope in his mercy, which is the only thing that will save any of us.  Nevertheless, as best I can, I try to live what I've come to believe through my experiences.

For those of you who aren't familiar with my background, here are a few blog articles I've written over the years, in chronological order.

Remembering Mike

The night Christmas became real

My heroes

For context on South Africa and events there during those years, see my articles "Remembering Inyati" and "Was apartheid South Africa really that bad?"

My faith grew out of those experiences, and remains formed by them to this day.  I try to express it in the pages of this blog, particularly when writing about modern tragedies such as terrorism and war.  However, a lot of people who haven't seen such destruction at first hand seem to approach such issues with a much simpler, black-and-white perspective that doesn't allow much in the way of "gray areas", where ethics, morality, attitudes and actions are less clear-cut and more complicated.  Far too many people seem to see the world - they prefer to see the world - in terms of "us" and "them":  and we're all right, and they're all wrong, because that's the way it is.

That attitude is the cause of so much death and destruction that it's almost impossible to tabulate.  I've seen it in more than one war zone in sub-Saharan Africa, and I'm seeing it now in these dis-United States.  I wrote about it at some length after the Paris terror attacks of 2015, in an article titled "Paris and the pain of being human".  I meant every word I wrote there;  but my words clearly didn't satisfy many readers, as the more than 60 comments the article attracted will make clear if you read them (I hope you do).

Here are the salient paragraphs from that article.

Those aren't the worst aspects of violent conflict. To me, the worst is what it does to the human psyche. You become dehumanized. Your enemies are no longer people - they're objects, things, targets. You aren't shooting at John, whose mother is ill, and who's missing his girlfriend terribly, and who wants to marry her as soon as he can get home to do so. You're shooting at that enemy over there, the one who'll surely 'do unto you' unless you 'do unto him' first. He's not a human being. He's a 'gook'. He's 'the enemy'. He's a thing rather than a person. It's easier to shoot a thing than it is a person.

. . .

And in the end, the bodies lying in the ruins, and the blood dripping onto our streets, and the weeping of those who've lost loved ones . . . they'll all be the same.  History is full of them.  When it comes to the crunch, there are no labels that can disguise human anguish.  People will suffer in every land, in every community, in every faith . . . and they'll turn to what they believe in to make sense of their suffering . . . and most of them will raise up the next generation to hate those whom they identify as the cause of their suffering . . . and the cycle will go on, for ever and ever, until the world ends.

We cannot 'kill them all and let God sort them out' (and let it never be forgotten that those obscene, inhuman instructions were reportedly issued, not by a Muslim fundamentalist, but by an Abbot and Papal Legate of the Catholic Church).  There are too many of 'them' to kill them all, just as 'they' can never kill all of 'us'.  We cannot kill our way out of terrorism.  We cannot kill our way out of the dilemma of being human, with all the tragedy that entails.

May God have mercy on us all.

That article, looking at the pain of loss suffered by so many in those terror attacks, strikes very close to the heart of what I felt when I listened to "Seven Hillsides".  Right now, I'm seeing the same hardness of heart felt by Americans towards each other.  Those on the left demand their version of utopia, and regard all who stand in their way as "reactionaries" or "conservatives" or "rednecks" or "deplorables" or whatever the "label du jour" might be.  Those on the right regard their opponents as "progressives" or "socialists" or "terrorists" or "thugs" and the like.  However, neither side refers to their opponents as "human beings".  They objectify them as something to be rejected, perhaps feared, certainly destroyed in respect of their positions, if not their actual lives.  They won't accept them as fellow Americans who happen to hold different opinions.

The Christian faith that's supposed to animate this country, according to so many of the Founding Fathers, is conspicuous by its absence on both sides.  The right may complain about openly anti-Christian sentiments on the left, but their own attitudes display as much disregard of the Golden Rule as do their opponents'.  Pot, meet kettle.  Kettle, pot.

And so, pastors such as myself are again dumped straight into the old dilemma.  How can we make sense of suffering, pain and loss in the context of our faith, when both sides fail to recognize their opponents - political, electoral or otherwise - as fellow human beings for whom Christ died?  In war, it's common for allegedly "holy leaders" to claim that "God is on our side" or "God is with us".  It's always struck me as incongruous that both sides make that same claim.  It must be awfully schizophrenic for God to find himself divided like that, two halves of himself working against the middle!  Clearly, that sort of religious propaganda won't fly.  Mothers on either side mourn the loss of their loved ones . . . so how can we put that loss in the context of what it means to be Christian, and human, and real?  How can we preach God's truth, rather than our partisan, one-sided, limited perspectives?

I have no answers that will satisfy everybody.  All I can do is point out that we are called to judge ourselves by God's standards, not to judge him by our standards.  Sadly, most of us fall into the latter error;  and if pastors try to point that out, we're derided and rejected for not taking sides.  We can't win.

And that's the pain of being human.  We are called to be more than human;  not just natural, but supernatural - yet we insist on remaining in the mud and the mire, and refusing to "lift up [our] eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh [our] help".  We won't find God's answers by looking down at the human condition, but by looking up, to see what he intends human beings to become.

How should we behave towards each other?

The prophet Micah put it in a nutshell.

He has showed you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

That, right there, is a pastor's calling;  to remind and help people to lift up their eyes, and their lives, and "walk humbly with our God".  That's not an optional instruction, to be observed only if others do the same to us.  The Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you") and the eleventh commandment ("Love one another as I have loved you") are spiritually synonymous.  However, as pastors, we need not be surprised if reminding people of that reality leads to rejection by some.  After all . . . look at what they did to Christ, who embodied that teaching.

And, thus, today . . . we face our own "Seven Hillsides".


* Sigh *


Peter
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Saturday Snippet: Situational awareness can save your life

Last month Gary Quesenberry published his new book, "Spotting Danger Before It Spots You: Build Situational Awareness To Stay Safe".

In today's troubled times, situational awareness is more important than ever.  I'm astonished to see so many people (particularly younger people) walking down the street, heads lowered over their smartphones as they text back and forth, totally ignoring the world around them.  They even step off sidewalks and cross streets like that, never lifting their heads to check for oncoming traffic!  I've had a couple of close encounters with such idiots while driving.  When you honk your horn at them, they jump in fright, then look at you as if it's all your fault - and if you'd been unfortunate enough to hit them, that's what their lawyers would claim when they sued you, even if the fault was all their clients'.

In a situation where urban unrest, riots, demonstrations and the like may occur nearby, we need to be on the lookout for them, and prepared to take evasive action when necessary.  This book is a useful tool in learning how to do that.  I've excerpted some of the first two chapters as a sampler.

Situational awareness is the ability to identify and process environmental cues to accurately predict the actions of others. This requires us to be familiar with what is known as baseline behaviors (those actions that are considered normal in any given environment). By knowing what is deemed to be reasonable and appropriate, we can more easily spot the people that seem out of place and raise our suspicion. Then we can evaluate that person’s actions, and with practice, accurately predict their behaviors. This is how situational awareness works, and it allows us to get the jump on dangerous situations so that we can respond appropriately. We’re going to go into greater detail about these things later on, but there are a few points I’d like you to keep in mind as you read.

• Situational awareness always increases your level of personal security. This stands true whether you’re concerned about violent predators, or the guy in aisle three who refuses to cover his cough.

• Before COVID-19, if you were standing in line at the bank and someone walked in wearing a mask, you would have probably panicked, now it’s perfectly normal. The baseline for normal behaviors has shifted dramatically. Because of that, we each need to reconsider how we define danger. My definition may be much different than yours, but neither of us is wrong. If you spot something that you judge to be threatening, avoid it. The techniques you’ll learn in this book will help you to do that.

• You are your own last line of defense. You must stay focused on the things that matter most when you’re out and about. Although the COVID-19 virus requires us to practice specific protective measures, your personal safety extends well beyond the threat of getting sick. Whatever you do, don’t allow yourself to become so focused on whether or not the person behind you in the checkout line is wearing a mask that you miss the fact he’s holding a knife.

These are trying times, but in the end, we’ll all get through it. Keep in mind that as we progress along the road to situational awareness, the next threat to our safety could be just over the horizon, and no one knows what shape that threat may take. No matter what other people may throw at you, be it a criminal or Mother Nature, you must maintain your concentration and keep focused on the end goal, ensuring the security of yourself and those you love. It’s a big crazy world out there, and things are always changing. Stay safe, and always keep your head up.

. . .

My goal here is to take what’s relevant in the world of situational awareness and personal safety and boil that information down to its simplest terms, which can then be easily implemented in your daily life. The techniques and exercises I’ll have you practice work for everyone—parents, small children walking to school, teenagers going off to college, and whole families headed out on summer vacation. It works universally. When properly applied, this system of situational awareness will help improve your general understanding of how, when, and where violence occurs. It will also increase your chances of successfully detecting and avoiding danger no matter where in the world you may find yourself.

. . .

Real situational awareness requires a shift in perspective. It’s not enough to just walk around in a state of hypervigilance, thinking that nothing within your line of sight will go unnoticed. You have to be able to see yourself and others from the perspective of a predator. This isn’t easy for a lot of people. For the most part, we all want to see the best in others, and the fact that someone else could possibly view us as a target of opportunity is hard to imagine. The unfortunate truth is that there are predators among us, and unless we can change the way we think, we may look like easy prey without even knowing it.

To better understand predatory behaviors, let’s start by breaking down and categorizing the different types of predators and their basic motivations. In his book, Facing Violence: Preparing for the Unexpected, Sgt. Rory Miller breaks down predators into two groups: resource predators and process predators.

A resource predator is looking for tangible items, be it cash, jewelry, or even your shoes. They’ve decided they need something and they’re going to take it from you. Predators in this category include your basic mugger, pickpocket, or burglar. In some cases, if a resource predator confronts you and you just give them the thing they want, they go away.

Process predators, on the other hand, are much different. Process predators aren’t interested in your watch or wallet; they get off on the act of violence itself. This category of predator includes the likes of rapists and murderers.

Motivations of the two categories of predators can vary, but violent behavior is primarily driven by one of four things: money, ego, territory, and emotion. Let’s take a closer look at each.

1. Money: Like it or not, money is a consideration in almost every aspect of our lives. If you want a roof over your head, food in your stomach, and clothes on your back, you’re going to need money, plain and simple. Money is also a consistent factor in the commission of crimes. Some people have plenty of money, but they want more, and they’ll do whatever it takes, legal or illegal, to get it. This is where you get your white-collar criminals who end up in jail for tax evasion, fraud, or embezzlement. In those cases, victims may have lost money, but they were seldom harmed physically. More commonly, it’s the lack of money that drives people to commit irrational acts. Desperation can creep in, and people will go to any length to satisfy their needs. A friend of mine just sat as a juror on a capital murder case where a twenty-five-year-old man murdered his drug dealer over a forty-dollar debt. Most of us can’t even fathom such an act over that amount of money, but money is just the beginning of the problem; the real issue starts when the need for money is fueled by addiction. According to the Bureau of Justice, more than 18 percent of inmates in federal prisons committed their crimes to get money for drugs. In addition, drug addicts committed 26 percent of violent crimes as defined by the UCR. Alcohol, drugs, sex, you name it; if there’s a need for it, you can guarantee that money is what gets it. For some people, when money is unavailable, crime is a reasonable alternative.
   
2. Ego: On the surface, this one seems to be a little less common, but we all have egos; it’s the part of us that feels the need to be special. People will go to extremes to protect that feeling because it feeds their self-image, which can lead them into some pretty dangerous situations. We’ve all seen this play out either on television or in real life. Guy number one at the bar backs up and spills his drink on a lady’s dress. The lady’s boyfriend (guy number two) rushes to her defense and verbally attacks guy number one. Guy number one now has to save face in front of his friends and the other patrons of the bar, so he puffs out his chest and starts talking trash. Guy number two isn’t about to back down in front of his girlfriend, so things escalate and become physical. Both guys end up bloody, broken, and kicked out on the street looking like fools. Overinflated egos often lead to bad decision-making. If you ever find yourself in a predicament where egos are taking over and it looks like confrontation is eminent, it’s best to simply swallow your pride and remove yourself from the situation.
   
3. Territory: Humans are territorial creatures and will fight to protect what they consider to be theirs. An entirely peaceful, law-abiding citizen can become incredibly violent when they feel something within their territory has been threatened. A person’s home is their territory. When a mother takes her children to the park, that area becomes an extension of her territory, and she will protect it viciously from anyone she feels poses a danger to her children. The same goes for criminals. They survey their surroundings and stake claims on everything from street corners to door stoops. They become aggressive and often violent when they feel their territory is being encroached upon. To avoid this, it’s important that you become familiar with the places you frequent and be aware of any areas where your presence may cause problems.
   
4. Emotion: Violence is frequently driven by emotion. From jealous spouses to disgruntled employees and bullied teenagers, violent crimes such as mass shootings are often triggered by emotional responses. The level of emotion attached to religious beliefs has served as the primary influence behind acts of terrorism and the recruitment of others to extremist causes. Emotion is an incredibly powerful force, and it can be very unpredictable. Violence compelled by emotion tends to be excessively punishing.

That's a small sample of the sort of things you can learn from this book.  It's all useful stuff, and important in today's world.  It's particularly important because the system of justice in many states and cities of our nation has become politicized.  Those with certain political views and/or skin colors are likely to be treated a lot more harshly than those with others, and if the "wrong" color or politics is involved in a violent incident - no matter how justified their self-defense may be in terms of the letter of the law - they're likely to face a very vengeful prosecutor, out to prove that "his" or "her" people couldn't possibly be the guilty party(ies).

Given that legal fees may run into the tens of thousands of dollars, plus all the aggravation in having to defend oneself against charges that may be baseless, but will nevertheless be splashed all over the news media, we can see that avoiding this post-conflict conundrum may be even more important than recognizing potential conflict itself, in time to avoid it.


*Sigh*


Peter

Primitive superstition wins again as a good man is murdered

Tragic news out of Guatemala.

A RESEARCHER for a London University has been burnt alive by violent mob after being accused of practising witchcraft in his homeland.

Domingo Choc Che, 55, an expert on traditional herbal medicine, had been working with a team from University College London (UCL), before being set upon by a group of men in his native Guatemala. The violent group accused Mr Choc Che of causing the death of a member of the community after he had given medicine and for carrying out a ceremony on the grave.

Disturbing pictures shows huge plumes of smoke bellowing from the victim who desperately tried to save his life by running through the field.

Moments later Mr Choc Che collapsed and died at the scene before emergency services were able to attend.

. . .

The Mayan medicine specialist had been working as a collaborator on a UCL pharmaceutical project ... The scientific project involved researching biodiversity use of Mayan medicine in Guatemala.

There's more at the link.

I was very sad to read that news, but not surprised.  In any primitive culture, anything that doesn't fit the traditional narrative is regarded with suspicion and distrust.  From attacks on medical teams trying to use modern medicine to treat Ebola in Africa, to the burning alive of suspected "witches", to the murder of albinos in Tanzania to obtain their body parts for shamanistic rituals and "medicine", to the "cargo cults" of the Pacific, the problem of primitive, uneducated, non-scientific (or rather pre-scientific) culture is rampant in much of the Third World.

The biggest problem is not that such lack of understanding exists:  it's that those from a modern scientific background can't understand or appreciate the depths of superstition confronting them in such places.  They don't take enough time or trouble to understand local beliefs and attitudes, or to explain what they're doing and why.  They simply press on with their studies and research, because they don't want to "waste time" explaining what they know locals are unlikely to understand.

That's what leads to tragedies like this.  Because the locals feel ignored and "left out", they naturally put the worst possible interpretation on what they see the outsiders doing.  If that threatens the foundations of their belief system or culture, they're going to do something about it.  In this case, Mr. Choc Che was the victim of that response, with locals assuming his medicines had caused the death of the sick person he tried to help.

I experienced similar reactions in primitive African society.  I learned early on that one couldn't just hand out medicines.  It wasn't safe if improvement didn't result.  Rather, it was best to take the sick person to another location, where they could be treated by doctors and nurses without having suspicious family members hovering over them, ready to lash out at any sign that things weren't going well.

For those of my readers who may venture "off the beaten track" for any reason, tourism, research or whatever, please bear that in mind.  You're on someone else's turf.  You're the intruder, the outsider.  You can't assume that you're welcome, or that you're understood, or that you're free to do whatever you please.  Conformity to local customs and expectations is at least polite.  It may, at times, help to save your life.

Peter

A propaganda effort backfires on its originators

I can't help laughing cynically at the outrage expressed by US Congressional representative Bobby Rush (D - Illinois) and Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot (christened "Groot" by the always useful Second City Cop blog, which has chronicled her missteps and foibles since she took office, including some rather revealing history).

The story begins with this news report.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush on Thursday condemned images they said depicted Chicago police officers making popcorn, drinking coffee and sleeping on a couch in the congressman’s campaign office while nearby businesses were being looted amid unrest nearly two weeks ago.

The revelation came at an unusual City Hall news conference where the former political enemies stood united, with Rush praising Lightfoot’s leadership and the mayor apologizing to the veteran congressman on behalf of the city.

“That’s a personal embarrassment to me,” Lightfoot said of the scene that played out inside Rush’s Fuller Park political office. “I’m sorry that you and your staff even had to deal with this incredible indignity."

. . .

Lightfoot pledged to hold them accountable for their actions.

“Not one of these officers will be allowed to hide behind the badge and go on and act like nothing ever happened,” she said.

There's more at the link.

Sounds bad, doesn't it?  I wasn't surprised to read it, though.  When the Mayor and her city administration spend most of their time bad-mouthing the police (and blaming them for problems largely caused by their elected and appointed administrators), it was no surprise to me that officers would prefer to remain somewhere peaceful rather than risk being publicly pilloried yet again for trying to do their jobs.

However, the story didn't end there.  Second City Cop confirms that the officers were assigned to Congressman Rush's office, to protect it after it had been burglarized (presumably by rioters).  They weren't sheltering from the riots or ignoring them - they were where they were supposed to be, on duty.  As SCC notes, "The officers were wrong in availing themselves of popcorn and coffee that wasn't theirs, but they were ordered to hold that position with no relief and, tactically, no ability to stop hundreds of persons bent on mayhem."  Puts a different complexion on the matter, doesn't it?

Now the news media are becoming aware of the real story.  For example:

Second City Cop notes, "It was an assigned detail. Rush has been lying his entire life, from the "racial profiling" that didn't happen, to being the insider who set up Fred Hampton. Groot's hatred of the CPD has blinded her to this fact."

I think there's a whole lot more to this case than meets the eye.  It looks very much as if Rush and Lightfoot were trying to manufacture more "dirt" with which to smear the Chicago Police Department.  I await further developments with interest, and I'll be reading Second City Cop to get the inside story.  If you're not familiar with Chicago, and want the lowdown on its crime and law enforcement situation, SCC is the place to go.

Peter

Talk about ignorance on display!

It seems one, at least, of our news networks is so uneducated, ill-informed and grammatically backward that it can't find (or can't be bothered to hire) literate editors.  Courtesy of Divemedic, we find this:

Had they never heard of "Molotov cocktails"?  Are they historically as well as linguistically illiterate?  (Or, as Divemedic suggests, they may have been reporting on Jewish riots!)

Ye Gods and little fishes . . .




Peter

Heh

Fellow blogger Eaton Rapids Joe says he's "just installed our new security system at the end of the driveway".

Yes, that should give low-lifes pause for thought!  You'll find a larger version of that placard at the link above, if you want to print it out for your own use.  (The phone number, needless to say, is not his - but I like where it directs callers!  Look it up online for yourself.)

Nice one, Joe!




Peter

Moonbat logic at work - budget edition

There's a breathtakingly stupid piece of moonbat propaganda floating around, seeking to blame local and state government fiscal mismanagement on ... wait for it ... Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader!

The main instigator for [defunding police], of course, is the protest movement sparked by the police killings of George Floyd and other African Americans. In their efforts to reduce law-enforcement budgets, however, the protesters have an unlikely ally: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. By spurning congressional Democrats’ efforts to dispatch additional aid to state and local governments, McConnell is enabling budgetary crises in city after city. These crises, in turn, are making well-funded police departments an easier target.

Police budgets are mostly paid by local governments. And for local governments, COVID-19 has been a fiscal catastrophe. Local governments fund themselves through a combination of property taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, special taxes (on the occupants of hotels, for instance), and aid from states. By slashing consumer spending, the pandemic has slashed sales-tax revenue. The collapse of tourism has decimated special taxes paid by the hospitality industry, and job losses have reduced revenue from income taxes. Moreover, states—which face their own budgetary shortfalls—are likely to cut local aid. The result, according to the National League of Cities, is that from now until 2022, cities collectively face a budgetary hole of $360 billion.

On May 15, House Democrats responded by passing the HEROES Act, which would have allocated close to $1 trillion to state, local, and tribal governments—$375 billion of which would have gone to cities and counties. Because most states and many cities start their fiscal year on July 1, that cash might have helped local governments stave off major budget cuts.

Senate Republicans, however, oppose another large infusion of federal funds anytime soon. In April, McConnell suggested that states respond to their fiscal woes by declaring bankruptcy.

There's more at the link.

As we've covered in these pages many times, the reason state and local governments don't have enough money is that they've "wasted their substance on riotous living".  They're prodigal sons who refuse to come to their senses.  They've lavishly funded pensions for their workers, entitlement programs for their voters, and politically correct programs, outreaches and activities beyond number.  When they didn't have enough money coming in to fund their pet projects, they borrowed it.

As a result, many US cities and states are billions - sometimes hundreds of billions - of dollars in debt.  Unable to dig themselves out of the fiscal hole they've dug, they're turning to the Federal government and demanding bailouts from taxpayers all over the USA.  The so-called "HEROES Act" is nothing more than an attempt by the Democratic Party to ram that through Congress.  I'm very glad Senator McConnell has stopped it dead in its tracks so far - although, if the Democrats take control of the Senate and the White House in November's elections, I'm afraid it'll be forced upon us willy-nilly.

I think the premise of the HEROES Act, and the article cited above, is ridiculous.  I see no reason why taxpayers in fiscally responsible states should have the liability for fiscally irresponsible ones foisted upon them.  I think Senator McConnell is entirely correct when he said that states who've spent themselves into bankruptcy should be allowed to declare it, and take the consequences themselves.  Why should we pay for their profligacy?

To assert that police defunding is, or will be, the result of Senator McConnell's obstinacy in refusing to bail out states and cities, is breathtaking in its arrogance and denial of reality.  Those entities don't have enough money because they've wasted everything they had!  If we gave them money to bail out their debts, they'd merely incur more debt right away, to continue to live beyond their means.  They wouldn't recognize the concept of fiscal responsibility if it jumped up and bit them in the unmentionables.

The only sane approach is to spend no more than you have or can afford to pay off - not to borrow yourself into oblivion to fund such spending.  If cities and states need more money, let them cut spending, even at the expense of their much-vaunted "progressive" programs and activities.  To use an old idiom, let them "cut their coat according to their cloth" - and that includes paying down the debt they've already incurred.  Only when they're doing that, and have done so for some time, and are demonstrably on the way to genuine fiscal reform and recovery, should we consider helping them.  If they want to continue their financially self-destructive ways, let them do it on their own, without wasting our money into the bargain.

Distrust any attempt by the mainstream media to blame anything on anybody.  As Glenn Reynolds, a.k.a. the Instapundit, has said so often, "Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense".  He frequently quotes the tweets shown below.

Keep that in mind, and a lot of things will become clearer.

Peter

Seattle: what did I tell you?

Yesterday I wrote that Seattle has abandoned the rule of law.  It's allowed protesters to set up an "autonomous zone" in a six-block area of the city, and pulled police out of it.  I warned of what was likely to occur - and guess what?  It's already happening.

Headlines that tell the story:

Police: Seattle demonstrators

running checkpoints at CHAZ

Lawless In Seattle:

All That CHAZ

Seattle’s Autonomous Zone

Has Its First Warlord;

Local Rapper Raz Simone Takes Over

There are already reports of violence being used to "enforce order" by local vigilantes, and that "some demonstrators on Capitol Hill are armed and trying to extort protection money from area businesses and residents".  The protesters who've "taken over" (only to have their "control" hijacked by thugs with guns) are learning that "an armed and organized element with leadership that isn’t afraid to use violence pretty much trumps all the slogans and antifa bullsh** you can spout."  Say it ain't so!

That's what happens when you negate the rule of law.  Inevitably, the law of the jungle takes over.  It's survival of the fittest and strongest.  Bring them food, or be food for them.  Chairman Mao said it well:  "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun".  The halfwits who proclaimed the "Autonomous Zone" are re-learning that lesson - and not just about power, either.  They're also learning that if you try to help them, the grasshoppers will rob the ants blind.

They want food, do they? I have a suggestion. Let's each of us buy a packet of frozen peas, and transfer the contents to freezer containers so we can use them at our leisure.  Then, let's mail the empty frozen-pea packets to the organizers of the Autonomous Zone (or perhaps to our local Antifa branches or Democratic Party offices), with a note reading "No Justice, NO PEAS!"  I think we should make that go viral, so they're inundated with empty pea packets.  It's no better than they deserve.

What about Seattle's police force?  Their city leaders won't allow them to do their job.  Therefore, those individual cops who still have a spine, and at least some professional pride, should resign from Seattle PD and take their services to places where it'll be appreciated and properly used.  The others should follow the well-known precept of "Lead, follow, or get out of the way".  They're not allowed to lead, and they have no effective leader to follow, so they should get out of the way and let citizens defend themselves - because it looks like nobody else is going to do it.

I said yesterday that "I'm a pastor and chaplain, and have my own perspective on what's happening - which does not involve violence unless in defense of my life, family and property."  Getting rid of thugs with guns who are threatening me, and refusing to be intimidated into contributing to their support, most certainly falls under that defense, IMHO.  I think it's time the good citizens of the "Autonomous Zone", and of Seattle as a whole (at least, those who haven't been brainwashed into abandoning their rights and responsibilities as citizens), banded together to reassert their own authority, and show these idiots where to go.  If necessary, assist them to get there.

After that, elect or appoint city and state authorities who'll preserve the rule of law in future.  I don't care what you do with the old ones.  They're utter failures, and deserve no consideration at all.

Peter

At 90, he lost his life's work to rioters. Undaunted, he's starting over.

My friend, photographer Oleg Volk, alerted me to a tragedy that struck artist Ari Munzer in Minneapolis during the riots there last week.  Oleg says, "Back in 1996-97, he was my college advisor, one of two people who saved my educational career. He and I have been friends ever since."

A Minneapolis newspaper reports:

Wearing circular spectacles and suspenders that held up his loose trousers on his bony frame, 90-year-old artist Aribert Munzner stood outside his studio at the Ivy Arts Building in Minneapolis, watching friends, colleagues, former students and strangers carry out paint supplies and soggy cardboard boxes.

The boxes contained more than 60 years of work, damaged in a single night.

In the early hours of May 29, the roof of the Ivy — a 120-year-old building on S. 27th Avenue that once fabricated ornamental iron and now is home to more than 70 artist studios and small businesses — was ignited by sparks from the nearby Hexagon Bar, set ablaze in riots after the death of George Floyd.

Munzner, who goes by "Ari," explained the incident as if it were a scene from a comic book:

"One: Fire torch. Two: Big fire, spark, 150-year-old roof, wooden. Big fire. Fire people come, put out the fire. Big hole in roof. 1,000 gallons of beautiful Mississippi water came thundering down and I was at ground zero," he said, with an accent that sounded like a mix of New York, German and Irish.

. . .

Munzner is grappling with the loss of his many artworks, but his outlook on change is more fluid.

"I'm starting again because that's what I've been doing all my life," he said.

He was only 7 when his Jewish family fled Hitler's Germany in 1937 for Baghdad, where they had a family friend. In their new home, he learned Arabic from a Lebanese Jesuit priest. But when British forces invaded Iraq in 1941 to depose its Nazi-leaning regime, the family took off again, this time to New York City.

Munzner has eidetic memory, also known as photographic memory — "I don't have the ability to play with words — they jump like squirrels," he joked — so when he came to America he taught himself English by reading comic books.

"I learned how to say 'WOW' and 'BANG!' " he said, making explosive motions with his hands. "Superman and Captain Marvel told me how to be an American."

He came to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1955 for a short-term gig. Now he is an MCAD professor emeritus.

"We didn't have GPS back in '55, so I never found my way back to New York," he joked. "I ended up — gladly, actually — in the Upper Midwest."

There's more at the link.

Here's a video about Ari's work, recorded last year in his now-destroyed studio.

Ari's daughter Tamara has started a fundraiser to help her father recover what he can and rebuild his studio.  She writes:

Although money cannot replace any of the finished work or work in progress that was completely destroyed, money can help with the significant costs of damage remediation, replacing materials and tools, and moving into a new space.

Ari is still assessing the full extent of the water and smoke damage.

It's already clear that as part of the damage remediation, many of the finished works will need to be reframed and rematted. The costs of that will be high, his initial estimate is $10K-$20K for that alone.

Many supplies and materials were completely destroyed, as were some of his tools and equipment. The replacement costs could be up to $5K-$10K.

There will be costs associated with temporary storage,  moving, and setting up a new studio space. It will be difficult to find suitable space that is as affordable as his previous studio, where he was a longtime tenant with favorable terms.

All funds raised will go directly to him to be used to defray the costs of damage remediation, and of establishing a new studio space. Any amount from you is welcome at any time.

Ari's Work
Another way to support Ari, as always, is through acquiring his work. His web site, http://www.aribertmunzner.com/, documents much of his lifetime output, and includes a list of all currently available major and minor work. We will be updating those pages over the coming weeks and months as the damage assessment and remediation process unfolds; in the meantime, please do contact him to ask about any specific works that interest you.

Again, more at the link.

Because Ari is Oleg's friend, and I'd trust Oleg with my life if necessary, I'm motivated to donate in his support.  I'm even more motivated by my admiration for a man of 90 years of age who's prepared to "suck it up" and face the challenge of starting over.  I hope I could be as courageous and optimistic if that happened to me so late in life - but I doubt it.  The man's a marvel.

I'd like to invite readers who feel sympathy for the victims of the riots, to join me in supporting Ari.  Let's help to salvage at least some good out of the evil that was done in Minneapolis last week.

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #1,062

Courtesy of Gun Free Zone, we find this photograph (clickit to biggit).  Compare the slogan on the T-shirt with the slogan on the placard.

Behold, a moonbat!




Peter

Seattle has abandoned the rule of law. Is this a foretaste of what's to come?

Protesters and demonstrators in Seattle have set up what they're calling the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone around the 11th Precinct police building in Seattle.  They've even produced this map of the "liberated" area (clickit to biggit).

As the labels on the map make clear, this is nothing more or less than a far-left-wing, progressive, communist-inspired project.  The labels are typical of communist propaganda throughout the world over the past century or more.  They leave little doubt as to the ideology behind this farce.  It's Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" writ large, on the streets of one of America's largest cities.

Of course, that city - Seattle - is so far left of center in its politics that it's arguably no longer American in its governance and outlook.  The occupiers of the "Autonomous Zone" appear to agree.  This notice appears on one of the barriers blockading entrance to the zone:

Please imagine, for a moment, that you're a business owner or resident inside the boundaries of that zone.  Suddenly your customers and suppliers no longer have free access to your business;  suddenly your right to the peaceful enjoyment of your residence is interrupted by radical activists who are controlling entrance to and exit from the zone.  You may face demands for access to your facilities at any time, and any refusal may draw accusations that you're "racist" or "reactionary" or (perish the thought!) "conservative".  You may be expected to "support the people" by donating supplies to the "masses", whether you like it or not.  Refusal is unlikely to be well received.

Worst of all, to my mind, is that local police deliberately and openly abandoned their own precinct building, opening the way for the radicals to take over.  I doubt very much whether police took this decision on their own initiative.  I'm pretty sure it was imposed on them by city administrators.  Despite claims that the precinct will remain staffed, it's now clear that those staff are not using their own headquarters building, which has been taken over by the mob.  Police are patrolling from mobile staging areas instead, and appear to be voluntarily remaining outside the self-declared "Autonomous Zone".  What this means for you, if you live and/or work inside that zone, is that you can no longer rely on police protection or assistance.  You're on your own.

This means that Seattle has effectively abandoned the rule of law within city limits.

Let's examine what "the rule of law" is.  Encyclopedia Britannica defines it as:

... the mechanism, process, institution, practice, or norm that supports the equality of all citizens before the law, secures a nonarbitrary form of government, and more generally prevents the arbitrary use of power. Arbitrariness is typical of various forms of despotism, absolutism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism.

. . .

In general, the rule of law implies that the creation of laws, their enforcement, and the relationships among legal rules are themselves legally regulated, so that no one—including the most highly placed official—is above the law. The legal constraint on rulers means that the government is subject to existing laws as much as its citizens are. Thus, a closely related notion is the idea of equality before the law, which holds that no “legal” person shall enjoy privileges that are not extended to all and that no person shall be immune from legal sanctions. In addition, the application and adjudication of legal rules by various governing officials are to be impartial and consistent across equivalent cases, made blindly without taking into consideration the class, status, or relative power among disputants.

There's more at the link.

Those conditions no longer apply in Seattle.  There, it's now patently obvious that:

• Not all citizens are equal under the law.  Left-wing protesters and agitators are being handled with kid gloves.  Try mounting a right-wing protest, for any cause from free speech, to pro-Second-Amendment, to outright racism like the Ku Klux Klan, and you'll doubtless get handled rather differently.  Don't believe me?  Why don't you try it, while the rest of us watch?  Pass the popcorn, please . . .
• Power is used arbitrarily, particularly as regards policing.  The police are no longer "protecting and serving" everybody.  They're doing so selectively.  If you're in a zone controlled by the politically correct, you can expect little, if any, help from law enforcement authorities and officers.  Seattle PD's motto is officially "Service, Pride, Dedication".  As far as the "Autonomous Zone" is concerned, I see from them little service, nothing to be proud of, and dedication only to surrendering to the mob.  It's hard to see how any self-respecting officer can remain in the employ of so pusillanimous an agency.
• The Mayor and city administration are abandoning their duty of care towards the city under their control, and pandering instead to pressure groups and extremist ideologies.  Those who don't fall into "politically correct" categories are no longer welcome in Seattle.  They're on their own.

In a properly administered state, the Governor and/or state authorities would have intervened long since to protect and uphold the rule of law, and ensure equality before the law for all citizens of the city.  That's unlikely to happen in Washington, where left-wing progressive politics dominate the state government.  The powers that be will adopt a snooty, high-toned, morally bankrupt perspective on the whole thing, and abdicate their responsibilities.

I'm fairly sure this won't be the only such "Autonomous Zone" set up in US cities.  Anywhere the radicals can expect compliance from city authorities, they'll try to do likewise.  Those opposed to them, or those who object to their businesses and property being turned into political pawns, are going to find themselves S.O.L. as far as the authorities are concerned.  It goes along with the "Defund the Police" and "Abolish the Police" narratives currently being spouted by the radicals.  By excluding police from "Autonomous Zones", they hope to demonstrate that they're not needed.  They may not be needed by the radicals, but they'll sure be missed by those the radicals intimidate, oppress and rob!

Of course, this will only accelerate the inevitable backlash.  Don't believe me?  Aesop spelled it out yesterday evening in relation to the "Abolish the Police" movement, but what he said applies just as well to radical "Autonomous Zones" (run, as they are and will be, by the same people that want to get rid of law enforcement).

Since ever, the whole thing is a Left-wing con job, exactly like advertising.

Create the need for the otherwise needless; then meet the new "need".

They've just taken ads for dishsoap and popcorn makers to their logical political extreme.

It's a riff on the Mafia's "protection" racket:  "That's a nice society you have there; be a real shame if it suddenly burned down."

The only answer to that is to shoot the "salesmen"; and then hunt down and exterminate the guy who sent the salesmen, and all their minions, to the last man, and last child.

Nothing less will suffice.

The Left, whether they realize it or not, is setting the table for an existential war of survival, down to the last side standing.

It's a recipe for civil war on a biblical Armageddon scale.  Everyone's families and entire lifestyle are the chips in that game.

Kill all they send.
Then find and destroy the nest.
First one to go ugliest the fastest wins.

Any half measures are a recipe for self-destruction.
Dresden and Hiroshima were a template.
Second place prize is a body bag.

What we're all witnessing daily right now is the Left's Useful Idiots trying to completely upend civilization, to suit their own ends.

Half of them think they can win. The other half would rather burn everything down to try, knowing they cannot win, and not caring anyways.

This is logic via Lucifer:  "If I cannot rule everything, I'll burn it all down."

The answer to that, as ever, comes out of the barrel of a gun, and at the point of sword and spear.

Again, more at the link.

This is my greatest fear right now.  The more radicals on one side push the limits, the closer they get to the brink, the more the other side will become radicalized and push right back, raising the stakes, "upping the ante" until there's no alternative but to go all in - or lose.  That's what's behind terrorism, the ultimate expression of radicalism.  It's what we saw on 9/11, but written (so far) in political slogans and biased, one-sided actions rather than in the large-scale shedding of blood.  Can it stay that way?

Historically, it hasn't.  Historically, extremism has always led to counter-extremism.  I think that's what we're seeing right now in the USA.  I'm reliably informed that many local movements are forming and organizing right now.  They're taking extreme pains to remain "under the radar", not using traceable or interceptable communications, being very careful and selective about whom they trust, and making plans that are not discussed publicly.  Some have progressed to the point of coordinating their plans with other groups, through very carefully vetted channels.  I won't be surprised to see regional and national networks forming, in due course.

I'm not part of any of those groups.  I'm a pastor and chaplain, and have my own perspective on what's happening - which does not involve violence unless in defense of my life, family and property.  However, some of those involved are former (and still trusted) colleagues, so I hear a few things from time to time.  I'm very worried by what I'm hearing.

After the Paris terrorist attacks in November 2015, I wrote:

I've seen war from the inside.  I've been under fire, and I've fired on others.  I've been wounded ... and I've inflicted my share of wounds.  I've picked up the dead, and the pieces of the dead.

Those aren't the worst aspects of violent conflict.  To me, the worst is what it does to the human psyche.  You become dehumanized.  Your enemies are no longer people - they're objects, things, targets.  You aren't shooting at John, whose mother is ill, and who's missing his girlfriend terribly, and who wants to marry her as soon as he can get home to do so.  You're shooting at that enemy over there, the one who'll surely 'do unto you' unless you 'do unto him' first.  He's not a human being.  He's a 'gook'.  He's 'the enemy'.  He's a thing rather than a person.  It's easier to shoot a thing than it is a person.

. . .

You no longer think of civilians as such.  They're in enemy territory, or known to be sympathetic to the enemy:  therefore, they're 'things', suspects, never to be trusted, never to be treated objectively or with anything other than the forced, mandatory legal definition of 'decency' imposed by your superiors . . . and even that becomes flexible when those superiors aren't around to monitor what you're doing.

. . .

That's the bitter fruit that extremism always produces.  It's done so throughout history.  There are innumerable examples of how enemies have become 'things'.  It's Crusaders versus Saracens, Cavaliers versus Roundheads, Yankees versus Rebels, doughboys versus Krauts . . . us versus them, for varying values of 'us' and 'them'.

. . .

And in the end, the bodies lying in the ruins, and the blood dripping onto our streets, and the weeping of those who've lost loved ones . . . they'll all be the same.  History is full of them.  When it comes to the crunch, there are no labels that can disguise human anguish.  People will suffer in every land, in every community, in every faith . . . and they'll turn to what they believe in to make sense of their suffering . . . and most of them will raise up the next generation to hate those whom they identify as the cause of their suffering . . . and the cycle will go on, for ever and ever, until the world ends.

We cannot 'kill them all and let God sort them out' ... There are too many of 'them' to kill them all, just as 'they' can never kill all of 'us' ... We cannot kill our way out of the dilemma of being human, with all the tragedy that entails.

May God have mercy on us all.

I fear greatly that unless the extremists on both sides come to their senses, those words may yet prove prophetic in these tragically dis-United States in which we live.

Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  It seems that yesterday evening, Tucker Carlson basically agreed with what I've said here about the threat from extremists.  See for yourself.

Quite so.

What will life be like without police? Ask Mexico. Ask Africa.

The Federalist points out that all those demanding the "defunding" or abolition of police forces might do well to consider the consequences, which are clearly visible in Mexico.

But let’s say these ultra-progressive municipal governments could get their wish and abolish the police in their cities entirely. What would happen? Inevitably, an armed group would emerge and impose a monopoly on the use of force.

If you want an idea of how that works, look to our southern neighbor, Mexico, where over the past decade endemically corrupt police departments in some areas have been supplanted by autodefensas, or local self-defense militias. But before you get too excited about the prospect of paramilitary autodefensas policing American cities, understand that in Mexico these groups are a mixed bag at best—and at worst they’re not much better than the corrupt local police and cartel gunmen they replaced. More importantly, their mere presence in Mexico was and is a disturbing sign of societal decay.

To understand why, a bit of background is needed. The modern autodefensas movement in Mexico arose during some of the most violent years of Mexico’s ongoing drug war. In 2013, a doctor from the cartel-ravaged state of Michoacán, José Manuel Mireles Valverde, organized one of the first self-defense militias to fight against the Knights Templar Cartel. He initially recruited ordinary men, shop keepers and farmers, to hunt down cartel henchmen and drive them out of their towns.

Initially, these ad-hoc militias met with some success, capturing or killing members of the Knights Templar, setting up roadblocks and ambushes, and expanding the number of militias operating throughout Michoacán. But as the violence in the region increased, the militias eventually caught the attention of the Mexican government, which deployed the military against both cartels and autodefensas ... By then, the line between autodefensas and cartels had begun to blur. The militias had been infiltrated by cartel members, including former members of the Knights Templar who knew the cartel was losing power.

. . .

... the autodefensas movement quickly went from being an organic uprising against a vicious cartel to a vigilante free-for-all ... As the government stepped in to control the autodefensas movement, it became increasingly clear that cartel members were joining self-defense militias, especially in Michoacán and neighboring Guerrero state. Sometimes it worked in the opposite direction. Lacking resources and weapons, self-defense militias would turn to drug cartels for financing, and would later be used by drug lords as proxy forces against their rivals.

Today, autodefensas remain active in parts of Mexico but they have largely melded into the ever-shifting patchwork of gangs, cartel off-shoots, and corrupt local police forces vying for power and territory. The fragmenting of Mexico’s criminal gangs and armed groups has helped fuel rising violence in recent years, with this year on track to break last year’s record for homicides. As far as violence and corruption go, things are worse in Mexico now than they were when Mireles formed the first autodefensa group.

That is to say, the rise of self-defense militias in Mexico, no less than the rise of cartels, is a direct result of the collapse of civil authority. Absent a functioning state, militias are no more accountable to the general public than a drug cartel—and no more capable of resisting corruption than the local or federal police.

There's more at the link.

That was pretty much my experience in large parts of sub-Saharan Africa, too.  As the authority of the state and/or local government waned during periods of anarchy and civil unrest, local gangs, tribes or other groups would take advantage of the "power vacuum" to seize control of their own areas.  They would levy "taxes" against the people to fund their operations (in reality, organized looting on an ongoing basis), and terrorize anyone who refused to pay, up to and including rape, torture and killing.  If the "ordinary people" organized to oppose them, the opposing force would rapidly become corrupted by precisely the same temptations that had attracted their oppressors.  Once entrenched, such local power players could only be dislodged by superior force - never by reasoning with them.  They were making too much money (by local standards) to be willing to give it up, and nobody else in that impoverished continent had enough money to offer them a bribe big enough to stop.

Another part of that problem was that many merchants and other vendors simply refused to deliver supplies to the region(s) concerned.  They became food deserts, with the only exception being foreign aid (mostly stolen by the groups in control, and sold in local markets) or subsistence agriculture.  I can tell you right now, if BLM or other groups take over local city suburbs, the big stores in and near them will simply close their doors, rather than be robbed on a daily basis.  That will lead to the activists (a.k.a. thugs and looters) trying to extend their activities into areas still well supplied, which will in turn provoke a violent reaction from those in the latter areas, trying to protect what they've got.  Since "the best form of defense is attack", to quote a well-known saying, they'll probably take the fight to the activists in their own areas, too.  In the absence of effective policing, who's going to stop either side?

That's your recipe for at least a localized civil war, right there.  Don't tell me it won't happen.  It will.  I've seen it before, far too many times for comfort.  It'll happen here, too, if we create conditions favorable for it.

Peter

Negligence with a gun produces yet another serious injury

I was sorry - and angry - to read this report from Utah.

A man accidentally fired his gun while trying to dismantle it and struck a woman who was three bays over at the TNT Gun and Range on Saturday afternoon in Murray ... The bullet went through both of the woman's legs.

Sgt. Paul Christiansen with Murray Police Department said the woman was in her 50s and is expected to make a full recovery. She was sent into surgery the same day to treat her dual wounds.

There's more at the link.

Friends, I've repeated Jeff Cooper's four rules of gun safety many times in these pages.  To refresh our collective memory:

1. All guns are always loaded. Even if they are not, treat them as if they are.
2. Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy. (For those who insist that this particular gun is unloaded, see Rule 1.)
3. Keep your finger off the trigger till your sights are on the target. This is the Golden Rule. Its violation is directly responsible for about 60 percent of inadvertent discharges.
4. Identify your target, and what is behind it. Never shoot at anything that you have not positively identified.

This incident was a clear breach of Rule 2 at the very least, and probably Rule 3 as well.  Guns don't just "go off by accident" unless someone's fiddling with them, and it's all too easy to let one's finger stray too close to the trigger.  (That's not helped by the design of some pistols like the Glock, where one has to pull the trigger - AFTER UNLOADING THE GUN! - in order to disassemble it.  If one hasn't properly unloaded it, loud noises can result.)

Thanks be to God that nothing worse happened.  One trusts that measures will be taken to teach the erring gun owner better weapon-handling.  I hope he has good insurance, because the medical bills resulting from his goof are likely to be high, and I daresay he'll be held liable for every penny of them - as he should be.




Peter

A sign of political backlash against the activist left?

I've been watching for signs of a political backlash against the aggressively "pushy" attempts by Democratic Party legislators to reshape their electoral districts, cities, states, and even the nation as a whole, in a progressive, far-left-wing, socialist image.  A good example is Virginia, where despite massive protests and rejection from over 90% of the state's counties, the new Democratic majority government (elected by only a few counties around Washington D.C., with large numbers of people) passed new anti-gun legislation and imposed it on the rest of the population willy-nilly.

It looks like that's already having consequences at the polls.

Staunton, a usually reliable Democratic stronghold in the conservative Shenandoah Valley, went surprisingly Republican in Tuesday’s City Council elections.

The slate ... took the four seats up for grabs in the 2020 local election, giving the Queen City a conservative majority for the first time in recent memory.

. . .

How unlikely was this conservative sweep? Hillary Clinton won Staunton in the 2016 presidential election, Barack Obama had won the city in the previous two election cycles, and Democrat Jennifer Lewis pulled 56.5 percent of the vote in her 2018 Sixth District congressional race against Republican Ben Cline, who eventually swept to victory, winning 59.7 percent of the vote district-wide.

. . .

The result is a shocker, to say the least, and if people in Richmond are paying attention at all, this one should be a wakeup call times ten.

There's more at the link.

I'm hearing increasing rumors of a similar, but even stronger electoral backlash following the riots over the death of George Floyd.  Many voters acknowledge the problems that exist in our society, and (like me) are more than willing to permit (even join in) peaceful protests to bring about change.  However, when thugs and low-lifes take advantage of protests to start rioting and looting, their tolerance (and mine) is at an end.  Matters should never have been permitted to get so far out of line.  The sight of uniformed police officers "taking a knee" in solidarity with protesters is also a step too far.  It's the job of police to maintain law and order - not to publicly adopt political positions or express political opinions.  They're supposed to be neutral, "above the fray", impartial.

The result is increasing determination among some of the electorate to make their feelings known at the ballot box in November.  I've heard many expressions of disgust, anger and resolve, and I know I'm far from alone in hearing them.  Other bloggers with whom I'm in touch report the same things from their audience.

The response from the progressive left, of course, will be additional voter and electoral fraud, as we've posited in these pages in the past.  They've become more and more blatant in their efforts to do that, including Congress' recent attempt to impose and fund "ballot harvesting", eliminate state and local electoral protections through national legislation, and other measures.  Fortunately, it looks as though their "license to steal elections" won't go any further this year . . . but they'll try again.  If they win control of the nation's government in November, look for that to become law next year, just as soon as they can ram it through.

As I've said many times before, I'm neither Democrat nor Republican - I vote for the individual, not the party.  Nevertheless, I'm encouraged by the outcome of the Staunton, VA elections.  If our politicians give us the metaphorical finger by forcing through legislation, we can return the favor at the polls.  Let's hope more American voters do that in November.

Peter