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

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

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's next? Rainbow-farting unicorns to replace police?

I have no problem accepting that this country's law enforcement functions have overstepped the mark on many occasions.  I've written about some of them in these pages, as regular readers will know, and I support holding officers and agencies accountable when they cross the line.  It's also undeniable that American policing has often been about a one-sided enforcement of laws that were designed to benefit some parts of society, but not others.  As Matt Taibbi points out:

Basically we have two systems of enforcement in America, a minimalist one for people with political clout, and an intrusive one for everyone else. In the same way our army in Vietnam got in trouble when it started searching for ways to quantify the success of its occupation, choosing sociopathic metrics like “body counts” and “truck kills,” modern big-city policing has been corrupted by its lust for summonses, stops, and arrests. It’s made monsters where none needed to exist.

Because they’re constantly throwing those people against walls, writing them nuisance tickets, and violating their space with humiliating searches (New York in 2010 paid $33 million to a staggering 100,000 people strip-searched after misdemeanor charges), modern cops correctly perceive that they’re hated. As a result, many embrace a “warrior” ethos that teaches them to view themselves as under constant threat.

This is why you see so many knees on heads and necks, guns drawn on unarmed motorists, chokeholds by the thousand, and patterns of massive overkill everywhere ... Police are trained to behave like occupiers, which is why they increasingly dress like they’ve been sent to clear houses in Mosul and treat random motorists like potential car-bombers ... senior officers value police who make numbers more than they fear outrage from residents in their districts. The incentives in this system are wrong in every direction.

The current protests are likely to inspire politicians to think the other way, but it’s probably time to reconsider what we’re trying to accomplish with this kind of policing. In upscale white America drug use is effectively decriminalized, and Terry stops, strip searches, and “quality of life” arrests are unknowns. The country isn’t going to heal as long as everyone else gets a knee in the neck.

There's more at the link.

Despite Taibbi's undeniable points, anyone with even the most basic understanding of human nature and human interaction will realize that police are necessary.  There's a not insignificant proportion of humanity that prefers a criminal lifestyle, and lives it out of choice, not out of necessity.  No amount of wishful thinking will change that.  Therefore, current calls to abolish or de-fund police are beyond stupid.  They ignore reality.

If you're not convinced of that, try working for a few days inside one of America's prisons.  Deprived of their opportunity to prey on other citizens, what do the incarcerated criminals do?  They prey on each other, and on the officers tasked with keeping them behind bars.  There's a lot more crime inside prison walls than outside them, because when criminals are brought together in a small, concentrated space like that, they influence and exacerbate each others' worst tendencies.  You could call it a "pressure-cooker" environment.  I should know.  I spent years as a chaplain, both part-time and full-time, trying to help prison inmates.  I've written about it at some length.

In the process, I learned the hard way what works, and what doesn't.  I'm here to tell you that appeasement, kind words and wishful thinking don't help as long as those incarcerated aren't willing to change.

There's a group in Minneapolis calling themselves MPD 150.  They advocate for the replacement of that city's police force with what one could describe as "community self-policing".  See for yourself.  (Click the image for a larger view.)

Their agenda, their manifesto, is utterly ridiculous to anyone who has any real-world understanding and experience of criminals.  I quote:

The transition to a police-free Minneapolis will require immediate measures to limit the harm routinely inflicted by the police in their normal functioning and steps to address the underlying causes of distress. First responder responsibility and on-site authority in crisis situations, public spaces and schools will be transferred to parties prepared to interact sympathetically and respectfully with the people. Social service functions will be relocated in community-based settings. Military equipment will be sequestered. The police are tasked with enforcing austerity – the extraction of resources and resilience from communities for the benefit of the rich – and controlling people’s attempts to survive, resist or self-medicate under its impact. Dismantling the police will require reallocating their budget and assets to support real solutions to community desperation: good, well-paying jobs, affordable housing, healthy food, empowering education, accessible health care, removal of toxins, etc. Ending the brutal police system is, by necessity, a program for a more just and resilient city.

That's so daft as to be laughable, if it weren't so serious.

• "First responder responsibility and on-site authority in crisis situations, public spaces and schools will be transferred to parties prepared to interact sympathetically and respectfully with the people."  Oh, yeah?  You're a first responder, confronted with a couple of muggers armed with knives.  They want to get away with their loot.  Kindly explain how you're going to "interact sympathetically and respectfully" with them.  While you're telling us, I'll be selling tickets to watch your "interaction".  I reckon it'll be a smash hit (literally) on pay-per-view TV.
• "The police are tasked with enforcing austerity – the extraction of resources and resilience from communities for the benefit of the rich – and controlling people’s attempts to survive, resist or self-medicate under its impact."  Tell that to the average police officer and watch them fall over laughing.  "Extract resources and resilience"?  "Benefit the rich"?  No, not in the least.  They're there to stop criminals making themselves rich at your expense!  As for "self-medication" . . . great excuse for being a drug addict, isn't it?  And when you drive under the influence of those drugs, and kill someone in your zonked-out state, you should be treated with sympathy, instead of as the criminal you are . . . right?
• "real solutions to community desperation: good, well-paying jobs, affordable housing, healthy food, empowering education, accessible health care, removal of toxins, etc."  I seem to recall that Minneapolis, like most cities of its ilk, had a lot more of those when the city was governed by people who understood the reality of where money comes from.  It comes from businesses and individuals offering something to sell that people want to buy.  From those sales comes salaries and wages for employees, taxes for the city, state and country, and all the other means needed for a community to sustain and develop itself.  Take away those sales and all the economic activity that flows from them, and all you have left is wishful thinking.  That's not economically sustainable, no matter how much you might prefer otherwise.

I won't bother going into more examples.  These people have no idea about reality - or, rather, they've painted a mental picture of their own rainbows-and-unicorn-farts mental reality, and they're trying to superimpose it upon a physical reality that doesn't in any way match their delusions.  I'll leave you to read MPD 150's "10 Action Ideas for Building a Police-Free Future" for yourself - if you can stomach it.  It's not worth your time.

Yes, American law enforcement agencies are all too often flawed, with policies and procedures that frequently ignore Sir Robert Peel's fundamental principles for policing.  They were the foundation for British law enforcement in the 19th century, and I think offer a perspective that would deal with most of the problems we encounter today.  Sadly, even in Britain, their birthplace, they are today honored far more in the breach than in the observance.

The nine principles were as follows:

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary, of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

I think we'd be far better advised to reintroduce and inculcate the Peelian Principles into American policing, rather than seek to abolish it.  Yes, that includes "demilitarizing" our police.  That should never have happened, and it remains a very serious problem.  Take away the weapons of war from law enforcement.  That's not their job.  If things are bad enough, criminally speaking, that they have to have them, then we don't need police to deal with them - we need the military.  The two functions are distinct from each other, with completely different mindsets and approaches, and should not overlap.  If they do, we end up with police who behave like armed occupiers rather than peace officers - and that will put us straight back into the mess we're in right now.

Peter

When the sheep bleat in unison, you know it's a cluster-flock

If there's one thing the series of crises in 2020 has illustrated, it's that the mainstream media and mainstream politicians in the United States are almost all being manipulated.  Few, if any, of their voices are genuinely independent.  Most of them - darn near all of them - manifest a controlling hand behind them, spreading a common message, demanding that everyone walk in lockstep to the beat of the same drummer.  Individuality, critical thinking and independent responses are not just discouraged, but regarded as social, political and psychic heresy - and heretics are to be cast out, shunned, cut off from society.

In saying this, please bear in mind that I'm neither Republican nor Democrat.  I vote for the person, not the party, and on principle, not on party platform.  I neither support nor condemn the President or any other politician.  I look at their policies, their performance in office, and (very important to me) their integrity as an individual.  I weigh those factors against each other and against the politician's opponent, and make my decision based on which better embodies and/or upholds the principles I stand for.  I won't be told who to support, or brainwashed into voting in lockstep with the wishes of the political class.

Unfortunately, that's intolerable in today's America.  If you, or I, or anybody, dares to think for ourself, we're a threat.  We have to be bludgeoned and dragooned into letting others do the thinking for us.  Facts and independent judgment no longer matter.  Both sides of the political spectrum demand such unthinking loyalty, but it's far more vocal and outspoken on the left than on the right.

The Federalist sums this up with regard to the mainstream media.

It seems no great event or upheaval in our national life can pass now without the media lying to our faces about it.

They lied about the Trump campaign colluding with Russia in 2016. They lied about the Mueller probe and Brett Kavanaugh and former national security adviser Mike Flynn. They lied about Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president and the impeachment farce that ensued. They lied about the coronavirus and the lockdowns and the White House response. And now they’re lying about the riots.

In recent days we’ve heard a steady drumbeat of lies, distortions, and disingenuousness from the mainstream media about almost every aspect of the unrest now gripping American cities. The deceit is almost too pervasive and amorphous to describe, but I’m going to try anyway.

Over the weekend we were told, for example, that the looting and violence was being instigated not by left-wing anarchists and antifa groups but by the media’s favorite villains: white supremacists. CNN, whose Atlanta offices were vandalized Friday, went on and on—without a shred of evidence to back it up—about how white supremacists might be infiltrating the protests and stirring up trouble. The New York Times, in a report that even quoted a senior police official in New York City saying outside anarchist groups were coordinating mayhem before the protests began, nevertheless veered into a long aside about how far-right “accelerationists” were hoping the unrest would bring about a long-sought second civil war.

By Monday, no one was talking about the white supremacist agitators anymore. The media had moved on to better, more plausible lies.

. . .

[Repeated incidents illustrate] a broader pattern of opposition to Trump that the media has maintained for years, that whatever might be happening in the country, whether a global pandemic or mass rioting, the most important part of the story is always that Trump is behaving badly—that he’s lying, misleading, undermining democratic norms, tweeting mean things, whatever. Nothing, not even nationwide riots, are more important than pushing that narrative.

You see the media’s obsession with this narrative everywhere, no matter what the actual facts of a story might be ... After Trump’s Monday night walk through Lafayette Park to St. John’s Episcopal Church, the media breathlessly reported stories about violent Park Police clearing peaceful protestors with tear gas. After nearly 24 hours of endless tweets, articles, and cable news stories claiming protestors were tear-gassed for Trump’s “photo op,” the Park Police information officer disproved all prior reports confirming, “No tear gas was used by USPP officers or other assisting law enforcement partners.”

One could go on and on with examples like this. Get on Twitter right now and you’re bound to find fresh examples posting every hour as reporters and pundits lie about events that are unfolding in real time.

There's more at the link.

The way the mainstream media march in lockstep, to the bidding of their corporate and political masters, was very well illustrated in 2018 when Sinclair Broadcast Group (a conservative-leading corporation) made its many TV stations read the identical manifesto on air, making a mockery of their "editorial independence".  (Yes, this was right-wing, rather than left-wing - as I said, the problem exists on both sides of the political spectrum.)  See and hear for yourself.

The resulting mashup made headlines, and rightly so - but those headlines failed to point out that precisely the same thing was, and is, being done by opponents of the President.  The problem is universal.

This reality is very clearly illustrated in recent mainstream media news headlines and reports of the rioting.  Almost every one circles back to lay the blame for the unrest at the President's feet, despite the fact that he, personally, had nothing whatsoever to do with it.  The news media are taking their marching orders from their puppet-masters, both directly through private channels and through sites such as Common Dreams, Think Progress, etc.  They're also influenced by discussion among activists on sites such as Democratic Underground.  The pattern is very clear.  Look at the "leads" and "talking points" being generated on those Web sites, and you'll see them reflected in news reports and opinion pieces in the mainstream media within hours - sometimes within minutes.  The same goes for public response to those reports.  Those commenting on them all too often parrot the "party line" rather than display independent thought.  Everybody has to be "on message".  Anyone straying from the "party line" - such as the New York Times publishing Republican Senator Tom Cotton's views on the riots - is rapidly cut down to size by savage criticism, and forced back into line.

Fortunately, this simplifies our response.  When we see almost every mainstream media report saying the same thing, and blaming the same people;  when we hear almost every politician parroting the same talking points;  when we can't hear the still, small voice of reason over the clamor bidding us not to think, but simply to believe and do as we're told . . . then we know we're being misled and manipulated.

The cure is to ignore all those influences, get the facts for ourselves - and yes, that can be hard work sometimes, digging through the dross to find the few nuggets of truth available - and then make up our own minds.  Only by doing so can we be the responsible citizens this country so desperately needs right now.

We should also cherish the few objective voices that still exist in the media.  There are a few.  I personally have come to value the reporting of John Solomon and Sharyl Attkisson.  Both try to be as honest and objective as possible.  They don't mince their words or pull their punches, and they take on both sides of the political spectrum as and when necessary.  That's all too rare these days.  (I also value the opinion of Tucker Carlson, who's not a reporter but a commenter on the news.  He's conservative, but by no means lockstep Republican, and has criticized both left and right in his analyses.  YMMV about his opinions, of course.)

Let's conclude with Sharyl Attkisson telling us "how astroturf, or fake grassroots movements funded by political, corporate, or other special interests, very effectively manipulate and distort media messages".  It's a very good talk, and worth your time, IMHO.

Consider how such influences are currently at work in the news media, and how they're portraying our current crises. They're doing their best to shape and guide our thoughts, rather than allow or encourage us to think for ourselves. Caveat emptor.

Peter

The plot behind the riots is now clear

It remains true, as it has throughout history, that if one wants to understand an event or a series of events, look for a pattern.  If there's no pattern, it was probably spontaneous and unplanned.  If a pattern emerges . . . it was almost certainly planned, premeditated, scripted and directed, to at least some extent.  It may not have been 100% intended - the "spark to the flame" may have been accidental or spontaneous - but the pattern will reveal those who were ready, willing and able to jump on a bandwagon or take advantage of the spark.  They were prepared for it.

The same is true of the current riots across America.  The pattern is now becoming much clearer, and anyone with two working brain cells to rub together can see it for themselves.

The clearly intended, pre-planned nature of the riots is itself a give-away.  Sure, the tragic death of George Floyd was the spark that lit the fire.  That could not have been planned, but the plans to take advantage of any such incident were laid long ago, and preparations were made.  You don't think the riots were prepared in advance?  You're deluded, to put it mildly.

• Riots in scores of cities, breaking out simultaneously?
• Pallets of bricks distributed in advance, and rioters advised of their location through megaphones?
• Activists handing out Molotov cocktails and improvised explosives?
• Identical signs printed, T-shirts worn, and slogans chanted across thousands of miles?
• Solemn, almost universal left-wing proclamations of white American guilt, black American innocence, and the need for "healing", "reconciliation" and "justice for all" - all while allowing the injustice of brutal, thuggish, indiscriminate riots to continue, to intimidate the electorate?

Need I go on?  The evidence is overwhelming.  This response was pre-planned, awaiting only the right incident to activate it.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying through their teeth, and takes you for a fool.

I have no doubt that racism exists in America.  Anyone can see it in news reports from day to day.  The recent, tragic deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and (most recently) George Floyd are graphic illustrations of that reality.  However, note the fuss that's been made about those three deaths in particular.  What about the hundreds - literally hundreds - of black deaths at the hands of other blacks, in crime-ridden cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, and many others?  They happen daily, with big "scores" almost every weekend - and no liberal or left-wing or progressive politician says a single damned word, or does anything effective to stop them.  It's a strangely blinkered outrage that ignores the many tragedies for the few.

As Larry Elder, himself black, has pointed out:

In 2018, according to the FBI’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were about 600,000 nonhomicide violent black-white crimes each year, with 90% involving a black perpetrator and a white victim. According to economist John Lott, writing in 2014: “Based on the most recent available FBI crime numbers, black male teenagers were nine times more likely to commit murder than were their white counterparts. That’s right, nine times, and the gap in these urban areas is undoubtedly even larger.”

Blacks kill twice as many whites (500 in 2015) as whites kill blacks (229 in 2015). Blacks, at 13% of the population, commit 50% of murders, and 90% of black murder victims are killed by other blacks. The Wall Street Journal‘s Jason Riley wrote in 2014: “Blacks commit violent crimes at 7 to 10 times the rate that whites do. The fact that their victims tend to be of the same race suggests that young black men in the ghetto live in danger of being shot by each other, not cops.” The No. 1 cause of preventable deaths for young white men is accidents, like car accidents. The No. 1 cause of deaths, preventable or otherwise, for young black men is homicide. In absolute numbers, Chicago often has more murders than any other city in America. The population of Chicago is approximately one-third black, one-third white, and one-third Hispanic. Yet, blacks account for over 80% of the city’s homicide victims.

As to this narrative of blacks being “hunted,” several recent studies found cops more hesitant, more reluctant to shoot a black suspect than a white suspect. One such study was conducted by black Harvard economist Roland Fryer, who called his conclusion the most “surprising result of my career.”

There's more at the link.

Why aren't we hearing those facts from commenters across the political spectrum?  Because they don't favor the politically correct narrative, that's why.  Political capital can be made from white or police killings of black people, but not from black-on-black violence.  It's the ultimate in cynical exploitation.

Sundance sees it that way, too.  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

Once you see the strings on the grievance marionettes, you can never watch the pantomime without seeing them; thus the playbook is transparent. Team Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Team AME Church have again aligned, exactly as we expected.

. . .

All of the activist grievance leaders, in addition to the politicians, have been instructed to reign-in the protests in coordination with the 5:00pm Obama remarks. That timing allows the media to present the ‘healing Obama’ narrative; riots and looting stop etc.

Meanwhile, attorney Ben Crump will deliver the same healing message with the added demand that all police officers must be arrested by the time the first memorial takes place at 1:00pm tomorrow.

The “all we want is an arrest” approach, comes directly from the BLM/AME playbook as executed in Orlando/Miami (Trayvon Martin), Ferguson (Mike Brown), and Baltimore (Freddie Gray). Now that both networks have come back together and aligned, all of the coordination is much easier.

. . .

The actual goal is far less about racial healing and more specifically about how to obtain political benefit and paint President Trump as the problem ... Everything within the strategy is coordinated and planned carefully. The script is how the political value is maximized. In the larger background the goal is activism based on race for 2020 to avoid the problem that was encountered in 2016. Joe Biden, and the DNC apparatus writ large, are the intended beneficiaries.

There's more at the link.

The drumbeat of anti-Trump, anti-police, anti-establishment rhetoric is constant, incessant, and almost identical across platforms and people.  Open, blatant lies are disseminated without blinking, and without correction.  The same talking points are being parroted by politicians, clergy, community leaders - anyone who can command a microphone for a few moments to hammer home the agreed talking points.  They don't criticize the rioters, except in the most general terms.  Instead, they criticize the system that has produced the conditions that engendered the riots, and blame everything on President Trump.  It's all his fault.

(No-one ever seems to add up the number of years in political office of all the Trump critics, and compare the total to the President's number of years in political office - three, to be precise.  Have you ever wondered why all those critics - including former Presidents - didn't manage to fix the problems they're currently bewailing, after all those years when they were in positions of authority and could have done so?  Nobody seems to want to ask - let alone answer - that question.  Funny, that . . . )

These riots are being used to obtain the maximum political advantage.  That's why Democratic-Party-controlled cities and states are not cracking down on them, are not using the National Guard and/or federal government assistance to control them, and are wringing their metaphorical hands and bewailing the evil Trump administration instead of doing something effective.  That's why even some anti-Trump Republicans are doing likewise.  It's all a setup.  They want more chaos and destruction, because in it they see a path to electoral victory in November 2020.  They are relying on their allies in the mainstream media to see to it that a majority of voters blame President Trump for the chaos, and vote against him (and for them) in the elections.  This is nothing more or less than an attempt to tear down the entire country.

We need to draw a sharp, clear distinction between the righteous anger of many people at institutionalized racism and police brutality on the one hand, and the thuggery and nihilism of the rioters on the other.  I have no problem standing against the former issues:  indeed, I'll gladly join any public demonstration against them, and demand investigations and answers.  However, I will have nothing to do with any attempt to excuse, tolerate or justify the riots, the destruction being wrought by gang-bangers, thugs and looters in the name of racial justice.  They need to be brought to heel, as quickly and as expediently as necessary.  If violence is necessary to accomplish that, I believe it's fully justified.  They've brought it upon themselves.

What many of the liberal, left-wing and progressive commenters are missing, I think, is that a great many Americans in the "silent majority" - Democrats as well as Republicans - are thinking along those lines too.  I'm hearing from many of my contacts in other cities and states that there's a growing groundswell of anger, resentment and determination among "average" voters - a determination to vote for law and order in November, irrespective of the party concerned.  If President Trump can capitalize on that, particularly if he can find a way to crack down on the violence despite all the obstacles put in his way by his political opponents, I think he may benefit from it.

In many ways, current domestic US politics reflect 1938 European politics.  In that year, Hitler at last took the mask off his aggression and naked ambition and demanded compliance from his opponents.  Cravenly, they caved in.  Appeasement was the order of the day.  Neville Chamberlain came back to Britain from Munich waving a piece of paper and proclaiming "peace in our time".  September 1939 proved how misguided and foolish he was.  In the same way, we have appeasers trying to persuade us that only by knuckling under to the forces of violence and destruction can we stop them.  If we do, we're rapidly going to find that they'll be back for more, taking advantage of our weakness to wreak yet more havoc on our society.  Appeasement won't stop them.  Only determination and the reimposition of the rule of law will do so.

It's long gone time the riots, and the rioters, were stopped.  If the government won't do it, it'll be up to ordinary Americans to do so.  I don't think the rioters have figured that out yet . . . and certainly the politicians, activists and agitators who are using them don't appear to have taken that into account.  In particular, they don't seem to realize how many Americans are now ready and willing to do that, if it becomes necessary.  As Kim du Toit asks:  "What if we - we, the suffering middle classes who form the backbone of this nation - just say, 'F*** you, and your conversation'."

By demonizing ordinary Americans, accusing them of racism, deriding them as "bitter clingers" and "deplorables", and characterizing them as "vigilantes" if they dare to protect their livelihood and property against rioters, the left is making them angry enough to turn them into activists.  Perhaps that's overdue.

Peter

Organizing the riots, fake news, and other matters

It seems that the organizing effort behind the current, allegedly "spontaneous" riots is extensive, well-planned, and very well coordinated and equipped.  More and more evidence is coming to light.  As just one example, here's part of their instructions, dropped by a riot organizer and publicized on Twitter.  Click the image for a larger view.

Note that every page has to be initialed by recipients, and strict discipline is imposed on them.  I ran that image past my law enforcement contacts in a few states and cities.  Several replied that they'd seen the same sort of thing in their areas.  One pointed out that the handout shown above was 26 pages long, and that enough other pages had been found in various places (mislaid, or on the person of arrested organizers) to reconstruct almost the whole document.  The radio frequencies and encryption used by the riot coordinators are also known by now, and interceptions are happening in real time.  There's a massive effort underway to coordinate intelligence and information, in the hope that this will lead to a crackdown on those responsible.  It can't happen too soon for me!

Be aware that much of the news about these riots is false.  Many in the mainstream media are deliberately tailoring their output to reflect the "party line", shooting TV footage from specific angles to maximize the social justice perspective and minimize the thuggery.  Quotes are selective, images unfavorable to the politically correct narrative are simply not used, and reporting is biased in the extreme.

I'll give you just one example of biased reporting.  Here's a headline from BET (Black Entertainment Television) yesterday:

Beloved Louisville Restaurant Owner

Who Provided Free Meals To Cops

Killed By Police

David McAtee was shot by law enforcement

early Monday morning during a protest for Breonna Taylor.

Sounds terrible, doesn't it?  How could those brutal, heartless police kill such a wonderful man?  Well . . . turns out the reality was rather different, as Fox 19 reported (also yesterday).

LMPD says new video

shows David McAtee firing gun

before he was killed by law enforcement

You'll find other reports out there.  They agree that at least two surveillance cameras, at different businesses, showed Mr. McAtee firing at police before they returned fire and killed him.  Compare and contrast the two headlines.  Which sounds closer to that reality?  Which report is more accurate?  (By the way, the same information was available to both outlets before they published their articles.  Note what BET left out!)

The problem is, most BET viewers and readers will never see another report from a different perspective.  They'll be outraged by what they perceive - what has been implicitly portrayed - as police brutality.  This, I suggest, is precisely the effect BET journalists and editors are trying to achieve.

I wouldn't trust a single report about the rioting in the mainstream media.  I'd check, double-check and triple-check everything, using input from all sides of the political and media spectrum, before making up my mind.  News - accurate news - is too important to be left to journalists and editors, who have all too often proved to be biased, dishonest and corrupt.

I think the ever-thought-provoking Heather Mac Donald has the best input on what we're seeing on our streets.  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

Savagery is spreading with lightning speed across the United States, with murderous assaults on police officers and civilians and the ecstatic annihilation of businesses and symbols of the state. Welcome to a real civilization-destroying pandemic...

. . .

This pandemic of civil violence is more widespread than anything seen during the Black Lives Matter movement of the Obama years, and it will likely have an even deadlier toll on law enforcement officers than the targeted assassinations we saw from 2014 onward. It’s worse this time because the country has absorbed another five years of academically inspired racial victimology. From Ta-Nehisi Coates to the New York Times’s 1619 project, the constant narrative about America’s endemic white supremacy and its deliberate destruction of the “black body” has been thoroughly injected into the political bloodstream.

Facts don’t matter to the academic victimology narrative. Far from destroying the black body, whites are the overwhelming target of interracial violence. Between 2012 and 2015, blacks committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial violent victimizations (excluding interracial homicide, which is also disproportionately black-on-white). That works out to 540,360 felonious assaults on whites. Whites committed 14.4 percent of all interracial violent victimization, or 91,470 felonious assaults on blacks. Blacks are less than 13 percent of the national population.

If white mobs were rampaging through black business districts, assaulting passersby and looting stores, we would have heard about it on the national news every night. But the black flash mob phenomenon is grudgingly covered, if at all, and only locally.

The national media have been insisting on the theme of the allegedly brutal Minneapolis police department. They said nothing as black-on-white robberies rose in downtown Minneapolis late last year, along with savage assaults on passersby. Why are the Minneapolis police in black neighborhoods? Because that’s where violent crime is happening, including shootings of two-year-olds and lethal beatings of 75-year-olds. Just as during the Obama years, the discussion of the allegedly oppressive police is being conducted in the complete absence of any recognition of street crime and the breakdown of the black family that drives it.

Once the violence began, any effort to “understand” it should have stopped, since that understanding is inevitably exculpatory. The looters are not grieving over the stomach-churning arrest and death of George Floyd; they are having the time of their lives. You don’t protest or mourn a victim by stealing oxycontin, electronics, jewelry, and sneakers.

There's more at the link.  Highly recommended reading.

Finally, in response to several queries from readers following my two articles on Monday, I remind you that last year I published an article titled "An interesting look at urban defense".  It contains links to several other articles on the subject.  All are thought-provoking and worth reading.

Peter

This may explain why Minneapolis PD allowed rioters to burn down their precinct

If this account is correct, it looks like Minneapolis had already gone a long way down the liberal, progressive, socialist road to hell that's being followed in California and many other places.

All of the adults on the city council have retired or been voted out, and the council is now composed of earnest young progressives like our boy mayor Jacob Frey. And what does every young progressive like Jacob fear the most? Being called a racist. We also have a few AOC types who want to seize the Lake of the Isles mansions for the (well-connected) people.

. . .

Retail stores are soon found to be easy targets. Chain stores are the easiest. CVS and Walgreens and Chipotle will absolutely fire any employee who looks at a petty criminal in a mean way. The store manager is held responsible for shrinkage –loss due to theft– but if the manager even attempts to stop theft, he or she will be fired.

. . .

Now add in the great progressive paranoia: I cannot stand to be called a racist.

So rather than risk that city and county officials decided to stop enforcing laws against retail theft. Remember that video from a San Francisco store of thieves cleaning out all the makeup in a drugstore in broad daylight? It happens here in Minneapolis also.

Here the thieves will grab a box of trash bags off the shelf, pull out a couple, and fill it with easily fenced stuff like Tide detergent, diapers, and small electronics. If there are cigarettes, they’ll jump over the counter and grab them, along with Similac baby food (that’s already behind the counter due to high theft). Then they will walk out, and if you stand in their way, you may get shoved down. Certainly all of the “Sir, please, stop” which is the corporate recommended solution, will not slow them down.

The really great thing is, a merchant can call the police while burning a DVD of the perp’s faces, and the cops probably will not show up. If someone is injured by the bad guys, probably someone will come and hand the manager a card with a case number, but that is all that will happen. I have seen this many times in many stores.

When this virus thing happened, the city actually announced that they would not prosecute retail theft and transit fare jumping, among other things.

There's more at the link.  It makes depressing reading, but explains a lot.

Aaron Clarey (a.k.a. Captain Capitalism), who lives in or near Minneapolis, is even more scathing.

Minneapolis (and Minnesota in general) is a failed city/state, full of leftists, parasites, communists, and race pimps, all pampered and enabled by self-loathing, pussy white people who want to bring about a socialist utopia.  I hate the citizens of Minneapolis.  I hate the people of Minnesota and I am merely biding my time until I can move.  This is merely poetic justice watching a potpourri of leftists (SJW's, antifa, aggrieved black members of the community, spoiled rich kids from the suburbs-turned-virtue-signaling-activists, and simple thieves/looters) destroy a neighborhood/city that has voted-for and doted on leftist political causes EVERY SINGLE TIME.  You COULD NOT FIND A MORE PRO-MINORITY, PRO-SOCIALISM, PRO-SJW block of voters than Minneapolitans... who are now watching their city get destroyed by the same leftists they so enthusiastically supported and sucked the ***** of.  Meanwhile, the most cowardly mayor and governor in all of history stand by and do nothing, letting their most loyal constituents and neighborhoods burn.  It truly is an example of "Enjoy the Decline" and "Enjoy the Show."  You get the government you deserve.

Regardless, I am supremely confident Minneapolitans and Minnesotans in general will learn nothing.  They will go back to voting for socialism, treating minorities as incompetent teenagers instead of adults, and nothing will change.  And thus you will have essentially two groups of people.  One with guilty (predominantly white) goodie two shoes Minnesotans who obey the law and will constantly castrate themselves in front of socialists and socialist policies.  And another group (skewed towards a minority population, but also most certainly including white leftists/antifa/SJW/professional activist-victim/socialists) whose self-perceived victimhood and all-important egos will in their mind rationalize them to "heroically" riot, steal/loot property that is not theirs, destroy their town, and in general act like feral animals (but never major in STEM, get a job, stop having kids they can't afford, and in general take responsibility for themselves).

Again, I cannot emphasize how much of this is self-inflicted and how much of this is outside the rest of society's control, and thus why I (and neither you) should care.  It is the consequence of decades of brainwashing generations of victims ... They are NOT capable of having a civilized society and you do not what to be part of this society (no matter how "cool" it is to be "in the city" or whatever crappy "theater" or "colleges" or culture Twin Cities politicians promote).

I don't know how many times I've told people to move out of Minneapolis, businesses to never invest in Minnesota, young people to start careers elsewhere, industrious black men to leave the ghetto, and that YOU DO NOT OWN YOUR OWN PROPERTY IN MINNEAPOLIS AS IT IS NOTHING MORE THAN A LARGE COMMUNIST HOA.  But nobody listens.

Again, more at the link.

Such perspectives help to explain why the dreadful Ilhan Omar was elected to Congress from that city, and why her predecessor was the appalling Keith Ellison (self-avowed Antifa supporter, progressive extremist and currently Attorney-General of Minnesota, who will take over the prosecution of the police allegedly responsible for the death of George Floyd.  There goes any hope of a fair trial for them, IMHO.)

Let the powers that be ignore the law, and those responsible for enforcing it will pretty soon realize that if they do as they swore to do when taking the oath of office, they'll be treated as criminals.  That's almost certainly why Minneapolis PD rolled over spinelessly, and abandoned one of its precinct headquarters to destruction by a mob of rioters.  They knew they'd be damned if they did, and damned if they didn't.  Personally, I'd be ashamed to work for an outfit like that . . . but I took (and still take) my federal law enforcement oath of office seriously.  It remains binding on me in retirement, because it has no expiry date.  Minneapolis PD clearly doesn't feel the same way about theirs.

I'm glad I don't live anywhere near that city, because if I were confronted by a mob of rioters bent on causing me harm, I'd be doing my level best to return the favor, particularly in defense of my wife and home.  During eighteen years spent in various war and conflict zones, I came to understand what Josh Billings so famously quipped:

Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just,
But four times he who gets his blow in fust.

As the old saying goes, there's many a true word spoken in jest.  I've learned (the hard way) to be as fusty as I can, when danger makes it necessary.  I recommend the principle, particularly in these troubled times - and doubly so in a progressive hellhole such as Minneapolis appears to have become.

Peter

The real peril behind vote-by-mail

Tucker Carlson puts it into a short, concise segment.  This is a "must-see" if you're to understand why certain political parties, pressure groups and influencers are trying to promote universal vote-by-mail as a "solution" to the coronavirus pandemic and the risks it poses.

I think he's right.  If this pressure succeeds, you can effectively say goodbye to democracy in the USA.

Peter

"A Band-Aid on a chest wound"

That's how the Guardian describes the rush by illegal immigrants to get in line for California's handout of taxpayer dollars to them.

Last month, California made headlines when it announced a first-in-the-nation plan to create a $125m coronavirus relief fund for undocumented workers. But its rollout got off to a chaotic start this week, with thousands of calls flooding phone lines, creating huge delays, and so many visitors to the official website that it crashed for hours.

Adding to already overwhelmed telephone systems, the state issued last-minute directives that said callers needed to reach a live person in order to apply for aid.

Nonprofits across the state selected to distribute the money reported huge demand as people rushed to secure a spot for the first-come, first-served program.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, or Chirla, one of 12 nonprofits tapped by the state to distribute the funds, received more than 1.1m phone calls on day one of the program – 630,000 calls just within the first 90 minutes of opening the hotline.

“We knew the number of applicants would be high, but we were just overwhelmed,” Chirla’s executive director told the New York Times.

Lucas Zucker, the policy and communications director for a nonprofit north-west of Los Angeles that advocates for social and environmental justice, wrote on Twitter that the program’s rocky rollout was predictable.

“Websites and phone lines across the state crashed. Our team saw so much frustration, anger and sadness from folks just trying to feed their kids. The need here is way too large to be met with a one-time disaster relief fund. We’re putting a Band-Aid on an open chest wound,” wrote Zucker.

. . .

Undocumented immigrants make up an estimated 10% of the state’s workforce ... [there are an] estimated 2 million undocumented immigrants living in California.

There's more at the link.

Note the last paragraph cited above.  I daresay the sheer volume of calls demanding a share of that money gives the lie to the 2 million estimate.  (My law enforcement contacts in California privately estimate the number of illegal aliens there to be at least 5 million, possibly more.  They base that on their experience of traffic stops, criminal investigations, and so on.  I believe them.)

Of course, the state of California should not be rewarding illegal aliens for their presence with taxpayer dollars.  That's flatly insane, and can do nothing except encourage further illegal entry (which is probably the point, given the nature and policies of that state's government).  However, this stampede for assistance highlights the economic plight of the marginally employed.  We've already seen that many are apparently returning to Mexico under the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.  They have no jobs there, and Mexico has few (if any) social assistance or entitlement programs to help them.  Those who remain in this country aren't eligible for the federal government's assistance or stimulus package, yet are also at risk of losing their jobs not just temporarily, but in the long term, as the economy contracts.  To say that they're becoming desperate is to put it mildly.

What does this forbode for social stability?  I don't think it's anything good.  I expect demonstrations, even riots, in California as the illegals demand more sustenance to which they're not legally entitled (at least, not under federal law).  I expect California's government to cave in to their demands, and expend more taxpayer funds on them.  That, in turn, will arouse resentment and anger among taxpayers, who see their money being wasted on those who have no right to it.  I don't think that's going to end well.

Will this have an impact on the November 2020 elections in that state?  Is the special election there earlier this month an early "canary in a coal mine" for a sea change in California politics?  Who knows?  We can but hope . . .

Peter