The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Ukraine Update

Posted on | April 16, 2022 | Comments Off on Ukraine Update

Since the Russian invaders retreated from the vicinity of Kyiv, the war in Ukraine has receded in the headlines, even while the Russians are reportedly regrouping for new offensives in the east and south of Ukraine. Anyone looking at the map can see that Ukrainian forces west of Luhansk are in danger of encirclement from Russian advances, and the strategic question is how best to prevent that, while also preventing Russian forces from advancing westward toward Odessa.

First and most obviously, a Ukrainian counteroffensive eastward from Kharkiv would break the northern pincer of the Russian encirclement, and certainly we should expect to hear of major combat in that area during the next few days. Secondly, I would argue that Ukraine should make a counteroffensive southward in the area west of Donetsk. Looking over a map, I’d say such a movement should be based in Pavlohrad and drive south toward the port city of Berdyans’k on the Sea of Azov. Knowing nothing of the terrain or tactical situation in the area, of course, in making this suggestion I can only speculate on the prospects for success of such a counteroffensive. Yet it is obvious that Ukraine cannot win by remaining on the tactical defensive, and must shift to offensive offensive operations somewhere, so that the question is, where? If some of the forces that had been engaged in the defense of Kyiv can be shifted to the south, using Dnipro and Pavlohrad as their bases of operation, a push south toward the Sea of Azov certainly offers the potential to disrupt whatever further Russian offensives may be in preparation. Find a weak point somewhere and drive an assault column through that point, while sending infiltration teams to strike at the Russian supply lines.

While such a Ukraine counteroffensive is unlikely to drive all the way to Berdyans’k, the real point is to force the Russians to fight to defend their current positions, and to maintain their supply lines, thus preventing them from being able to mount further advances at their leisure.

So much, then, for what I think should happen. Now let’s get the BBC’s bullet-point summary of what actually is happening:

  • British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and 12 other politicians are barred from entering Russia over their “hostile” stance on the conflict
  • The UN records 1,982 civilian deaths since the start of the war, but warns the figure is an underestimate
  • One person was been killed and several wounded in missile strikes that hit Ukraine’s capital Kyiv earlier today, the city’s mayor Vitali Klitschko says
  • Russia warns of “unpredictable consequences” if the Western nations continue to supply weapons to Ukraine
  • US officials say two Ukrainian Neptune Missiles hit the Russian Moskva warship and there were Russian casualties when the ship sank. Russia says a fire onboard caused the sinking

Notice that none of this “news” about the war in Ukraine gives us any idea of how the battle is going at the front lines. From the very start of this conflict, this has been a persistent deficiency in coverage of the war, and one must search very hard to find any useful tactical reports about the fighting. CNN has this:

Russia has intensified attacks in several locations in eastern Ukraine including Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk, according to Ukrainian military and regional officials. Russian forces appear to be striking areas of all three regions ahead of a planned ground offensive. Civilians have been urged to leave the regions. . . .
The Mykolaiv and Kherson regions in southern Ukraine have been under heavy shelling on Saturday, Ukrainian officials said in a statement.

So you can at least look at a map, find those locations, and get a general sense of where combat is happening. CNN also has this:

There is growing concern about the need to get more ammunition — and in particular artillery ammunition — to Ukrainian forces more rapidly as heavy ground combat against Russian units is expected to unfold in the coming days, according to a US official.
While the United States is shipping 18 155mm towed howitzers and 40,000 artillery rounds to Ukraine as part of the new security assistance announced by President Joe Biden’s administration this week, even that amount could be expended within several days, raising the prospect of Ukraine forces running out of ammunition, the official said.
During some of the heavy earlier fighting, Ukrainian forces fired up to thousands of artillery rounds in a given day, the official noted.
Going forward, the US believes the likely Russia strategy is to move weapons and troops into eastern Ukraine from their current positions just north, and then encircle and cut off Ukraine forces that are there, the official said.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley are conducting daily phone calls with counterparts in the region to encourage them to ship more weapons and supplies to Ukraine as soon as possible.
Earlier this week, the Pentagon hosted the CEOs of the military’s eight largest prime contractors to figure out how to arm Ukraine faster.
The roundtable discussion, led by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, focused on the Pentagon’s objectives to keep supplying Ukraine with arms while also being able to maintain the readiness of US forces and support the defense of allies.

Democrats suddenly discover that the Military-Industrial Complex is necessary to the defense of democracies? Well, that’s a silver lining to the otherwise dark cloud of Ukraine’s fight for survival. My Dad worked 37 years at Lockheed-Georgia in Marietta, mostly on the C-130 flight line, so I always had a direct personal interest in America’s defense industry. The really great thing about defense manufacturing is, those are all good-paying union jobs — Dad was in the Machinists union — and you might think Democrats would see the value of supporting a strong defense, simply in terms of blue-collar jobs, but the left-wing hippie peaceniks have long since taken over the party. Quite conveniently, in terms of domestic politics, the demand for artillery ammunition in Ukraine will mean more work at the General Dynamics plant in Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton. No doubt they’ll be adding overtime and hiring more workers in Scranton now, and the same will be true at many other munition manufacturers across the country, including the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant in the suburbs of Des Moines, where they make warheads for Javelin and Stinger missiles.

The Military-Industrial Complex will be ramping up production, and probably few of the newly hired workers will pause to consider the irony that they have Vladimir Putin to thank for their good fortune.




 

Category: Military, Russia, Ukraine

BLM: It Was Always a Scam

Posted on | April 15, 2022 | Comments Off on BLM: It Was Always a Scam

There is a certain type of affluent white liberal who will pay anything to absolve themselves of their sense of racial guilt, and never has there been a more perfect scheme to separate such fools from their money than the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s very hard for me to begrudge Patrisse Cullors and her BLM co-conspirators their ill-gotten gains, because is it really wrong to rip off rich white liberals? If ever anyone deserved to be swindled, it’s them — the Barbra Streisand/Jane Fonda types, the Hollywood/Manhattan nexus of wealth and cultural influence.

Even while I wholeheartedly endorse this swindle, however, it would be a nice bonus if the BLM swindlers also ended up in federal prison:

Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the domestic terrorist group Black Lives Matter, said disclosing finances is “deeply unsafe” and “triggering.”
Yeah, well, if I started a so-called charity and used the millions and millions of dollars that poured in from left-wing suckers to purchase a $5.8 million Los Angeles mansion, I might also be grasping at those same desperate straws.
What triggers this shameless grifter is the words “form 1990,” which is the form used by the IRS that requires charities to reveal their financial activities.
“It is such a trip now to hear the term ‘990,’” Cullors said.”I’m, like, ugh. It’s, like, triggering.” “I actually did not know what 990s were before all of this happened,” she continued.
“This doesn’t seem safe for us, this 990 structure — this nonprofit system structure,” Cullors said. “This is, like, deeply unsafe. This is being literally weaponized against us, against the people we work with.”
According to the Washington Examiner, Cullors says she’s “been approached by countless activists who are worried that they too will soon field requests from reporters demanding copies of their 990 forms[.]”
These idiots thought they could raise million in charity and do whatever they wanted with the money? That’s hilarious.
Here’s my favorite Cullors quote:

People’s morale in an organization is so important. But if their organization and the people in it are being attacked and scrutinized at everything they do, that leads to deep burnout. [T]hat leads to deep, like, resistance and trauma. . . .

I’m sure Al Capone felt traumatized when the IRS started looking through his taxes.
I’m sure Bernie Madoff felt traumatized when the SEC arrived with a warrant.
I’m sure John Wayne Gacy felt traumatized when the police started digging up his crawlspace.

In short, Black Lives Matter was a criminal enterprise from the start. As William Jacobson has repeatedly pointed out, the entire movement originated in a lie, i.e., the false “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative surrounding the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown had committed a robbery — caught on video — and when Officer Darren Wilson tried to arrest him, Brown violently resisted arrest, trying to grab the policeman’s gun. A grand jury cleared Wilson of wrongdoing and even the Obama Justice Department was forced to admit the shooting was justified. The facts made no difference, however, to the BLM activists who incited a riot that caused $4.6 million in damages.

What was the “social justice” benefit of burning down O’Reilly Auto Parts or Hunan Chop Suey? How were the dozens of small businesses (many of them minority owned) burned by the mob complicit in whatever grievance motivated this senseless destruction? What logic was there to any of the criminal acts incited by BLM’s hateful rhetoric?

That such a destructive “movement” should be granted 501(c) status as a tax-exempt charity is an insult to taxpayers, and was anyone really surprised that BLM turned out to be a gigantic swindle?

We all remember how Lois Lerner’s IRS persecuted Tea Party activists. Can we expect the feds to do anything to punish the BLM scammers?




 

Category: Crime

The Action and the Reaction

Posted on | April 15, 2022 | Comments Off on The Action and the Reaction

What have we learned here? A self-declared “free speech absolutist” makes an offer to purchase Twitter, and many liberals instantly get nightmare visions of Hitler. Glenn Reynolds observes:

“Democracy Dies in Darkness” is the motto of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post. It may sound like a warning, but more and more it seems like a summary of the left’s aspirations to control debate and shut down any opposition.
A recent example of those aspirations appeared in a column by former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich on Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s big buy of Twitter stock. The original headline — changed after widespread mockery — was this: “Elon Musk’s vision for the Internet is dangerous nonsense: Musk has long advocated a libertarian vision of an ‘uncontrolled’ internet. That’s also the dream of every dictator, strongman and demagogue.”
The mockery was understandable. “Libertarian visions” of “uncontrolled” speech haven’t actually been the stock-in-trade of dictators, strongmen and demagogues. Typically, those authoritarian figures want to silence their opponents and ensure that their own voices, and those of their satraps and sycophants, are the only ones heard. . . .
In George Orwell’s “1984,” war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. To these Orwellian inversions, Reich would add another: Censorship is free speech. But it’s not, and claiming otherwise won’t make it so.

Liberals consider censorship necessary to “Our Democracy” for the simple reason that their ideas can’t compete in a free market of uncensored communication. CNN once had a monopoly on cable news; when Fox News offered an alternative, they almost immediately became Number One and nowadays CNN has lower ratings than reruns of Spongebob Squarepants. In the early years of Twitter, conservatives used the platform so effectively that liberals demanded censorship — this was at the heart of the online battle that became known as #Gamergate.

Silencing dissent and criticism, effectively declaring that their opinions are the only valid opinions and that all disagreement is “hate,” liberals seek to obtain through censorship what they cannot achieve through public debate. It doesn’t matter what the issue is, their approach is always the same. Prior to August 2014, few people had paid any attention to efforts by so-called “social justice warriors” (SJWs) to intrude their particular political preferences into the videogame industry. As soon as a handful of critics began calling attention to this “progressive” crusade, however, suddenly cries of “harassment” were used in an effort to shut down criticism of the SJW agenda. Everything that has happened since then — including Twitter’s banishment of myself, Milo Yiannopoulos and others, including Donald Trump — has followed the same pattern.

Liberals think of themselves as Neoplatonic archons, authorized to act not only as arbiters of truth, but also deciding who is and is not qualified to participate in public discourse. They seek power to exclude and silence anyone who challenges their authority to define the limits of debate, because this authority — effectively deciding issues by determining who is allowed to engage in the discussion of issues — is necessary to their own preeminence within the echo chamber of conformity they construct.

These self-appointed archons seem to be motivated by irrational fears. Does anyone seriously believe that, without stringent content moderation on Twitter, the site would be taken over by neo-Nazi extremists? And yet this is the bogeyman they claim to fear, and make that fear the basis of their demand for censorship not only on Twitter, but on all other online platforms. Jesse Singal points out how demands for censorship on Substack were sympathetically portrayed in the New York Times. There are now so many topics — from transgenderism to climate change to basic economics — where liberals seek to impose ideological conformity that one can fall afoul of censorship for expressing opinions that were not even controversial a few years ago, about issues that most people don’t even care about. To this day, most people still have no clue what #Gamergate was about, and yet it was an all-consuming war on Twitter for many months. What the SJWs were doing in the videogame industry was the same thing they have done at university campuses, i.e., exploiting “culture war” issues to seize power, with the claim that censorship is necessary to protect against the forces of “hate.”

It is not enough for liberals to have a majority; they cannot be satisfied until they have a total monopoly on power. Yet we are the Nazis?




 

Category: Culture, Intellectuals

‘A Pretty Face Can Hide an Evil Mind’

Posted on | April 14, 2022 | Comments Off on ‘A Pretty Face Can Hide an Evil Mind’

Say hello to 25-year old Courtney Clenney, aka “Courtney Tailor,” who reportedly has more than a million followers on her OnlyFans account. “Gosh, Stacy,” the reader asks, “what was she putting on her OnlyFans account that made her so popular?” Uh, adult entertainment, he said euphemistically, summarizing the results of his cursory investigation.

Last we heard from Miss Clenney, she had been committed to psychiatric care under Florida’s Baker Act, after Miami police say she stabbed her ex-boyfriend to death in a luxury apartment. Miss Clenney’s lawyer insists that the stabbing was an act of self-defense, and authorities say that at different times, both she and her ex-boyfriend had been charged with domestic violence. The family of the deceased man, Christian Tobechukwu “Toby” Obumseli, 27, claim that Miss Clenney is getting favorable treatment “because of her privilege as a wealthy white woman.”

Some readers may be tempted to jump to conclusions about this case, but I think it’s important to keep an open mind, to wait for the completion of the police investigation before we decide that this bitch is crazy.

Looney Tunes, Froot Loops, cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Permit me to say that a woman who peddles her assets on OnlyFans is a woman that any wise man would be careful to avoid. What sort of status does a man expect to attain from associating with such a woman?

“Oh, yeah, I saw your girlfriend naked on the Internet.”

Way to go, Captain Save-a-Hoe.

Do we even want to delve into the racial angle here? Trust me, this story is being widely discussed in the black community, including thousands of comments on Toby’s Instagram account and — oh, my goodness! — what they’re saying about this interview with Miss Clenney:

There are so many things that could be said about this case, which might be unwise to say, but let me offer this: O.J. Simpson in reverse.

Remember how that case divided America? Now try to imagine if Nicole Brown Simpson had gotten hold of a knife and killed O.J., instead of the other way around. Because it seems this may be what we’re looking at here — a toxic relationship reaches its predictable bloody conclusion.

It was perhaps inevitable that Courtney Clenney would lead some deluded man to destruction, even if stabbing him to death wasn’t foreordained. I’m not saying that every hoe on OnlyFans is a would-be murderer, but I am saying there’s an elevated risk of death for any man that gets involved with such a hoe. You spend enough time playing with fire, sooner or later you’re likely to get burned. And I can’t help thinking of a famous old song by Johnny Rivers:

Beware of pretty faces that you find.
A pretty face can hide an evil mind.
Ah, be careful what you say
Or you’ll give yourself away.
Odds are you won’t live to see tomorrow.

Maybe somebody should have warned Toby. R.I.P.




 

Category: Crime, Florida, Racism

Brooklyn Shooting: Suspect in Custody

Posted on | April 14, 2022 | Comments Off on Brooklyn Shooting: Suspect in Custody

Right after I posted Wednesday about the Brooklyn subway shooting suspect (“Racial Paranoia in Post-Obama America”), Frank James was captured by NYPD in Lower Manhattan.

The smirking madman who turned a rush-hour commute into a bloody terror when he allegedly opened fire in a crowded New York subway car called Crime Stoppers on himself Wednesday morning — then calmly went for an afternoon stroll through the East Village while he waited for police to come get him.
“A call came in to Crime Stoppers … The guy says, ‘You know, I think you’re looking for me. I’m seeing my picture all over the news and I’ll be around this McDonald’s … I want to clear things up,’” law enforcement sources told The Post of the bizarre moment Frank James called cops on himself.
“So the unit responds and he’s not at the McDonald’s, so they start driving around and see a man who fits the description. When they take him into custody, they find his Wisconsin driver’s license.”
A couple of eagle-eyed New Yorkers also flagged down a pair of cops after they spotted James sauntering through the East Village, where he briefly sat down at an outdoor dining shed and charged his phone at a Link NYC hub.
The NYPD swooped in shortly after and put him in handcuffs. . . .

As might be expected, Frank James had a criminal record:

His troubles date back decades with a string of arrests according to authorities.
Court records obtained by the Action News Investigative team reveal a terroristic threat charge in New Jersey in the mid-1990s. He was sentenced to probation and ordered to undergo behavioral health treatment.
In 2008, it appeared the 62-year-old moved to the 3500 block of N. 18th St. in Tioga-Nicetown where he lived for several years.
He has nine prior arrests in New York City dating from 1992 to 1998 for offenses including possession of burglary tools, a criminal sex act and theft of service, NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said in Wednesday news conference.
However, James had no previous felony convictions so was able to purchase a gun, according to Essig.

For all the “social justice” complaints about police brutality and mass incarceration, it seems to take an awful lot for a criminal to actually get sent to prison. One judge says, “Hey, this guy looks like a good candidate for probation,” and multiple arrests later, all his charges either got dismissed or pleaded down to misdemeanors. Despite this leniency, Frank James nevertheless believed himself to be the victim of racism, because that’s the go-to excuse now. Some white people may be envious of this “black victimhood privilege,” but it’s a loser mentality, the same as all those “incel” losers who idolize Elliot Rodger as a hero.




 

Category: Crime, New York, Racism

Aspiring Rapper Update: ‘Slowkey Fred’ Busted for Philly Gun Trafficking Ring

Posted on | April 13, 2022 | Comments Off on Aspiring Rapper Update: ‘Slowkey Fred’ Busted for Philly Gun Trafficking Ring

More federal felony charges than he’s got hit records:

An Atlanta rapper is one of 11 people facing federal charges in connection with an alleged straw-purchasing scheme that trafficked hundreds of guns from Georgia to Philadelphia.
Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced nearly 300 firearms purchased in Georgia from dozens of gun retailers to Fredrick Norman — aka “Slowkey Fred” — and three other suspects, after some were found at crime scenes and in the possession of convicted felons in Philadelphia, according to records and interviews with federal law enforcement.
In an interview with ATF agents in 2020, one of the suspects, Brianna Walker, admitted to buying 50 to 60 guns in order to sell them without a dealer’s license, according to a search warrant affidavit — a violation of federal law. Norman allegedly admitted to buying more than 100, according to federal records.
The federal investigation expanded to include 11 suspects in Georgia and Pennsylvania, all of whom face a conspiracy charge. Kenneth Burgos, 23, and Edwin Burgos, 29 — brothers accused of brokering sales in Pennsylvania — are also charged with dealing firearms without a license, officials said.

In addition to “Slowkey Fred” and the Burgos brothers, the suspects in this interstate gun-trafficking operations also included:

  • Brianna Walker a/k/a “Mars,” 23, of Atlanta, GA;
  • Charles O’Bannon a/k/a “Chizzy,” 24, of Villa Rica, GA;
  • Stephen Norman, 23, of Villa Rica, GA;
  • Devin Church a/k/a “Lant,” 24, of Villa Rica, GA;
  • Roger Millington, 25, of Philadelphia, PA;
  • Ernest Payton, 30, of Philadelphia, PA;
  • Roselmy Rodriguez, 22, of Philadelphia, PA; and
  • Brianna Reed, 21, of Shippensburg, PA.

When I was a kid, Villa Rica was a rural crossroads on Bankhead Highway. The idea of this once-tranquil town being home to an interstate criminal conspiracy is just mind-boggling, but I guess that’s how “progress” works. Meanwhile, another gang was running guns to Philly:

In the second case, captioned United States v. Ware, et al, the following three people have been charged by Indictment with conspiracy to deal firearms without a license and to make a false statement to a federally licensed firearms dealer:

  • Muhammad Ware a/k/a “Moo,” 26, of Myrtle Beach, SC;
  • Haneef Vaughn a/k/a “Neef,” 25, of Philadelphia, PA; and
  • Jabreel Vaughn a/k/a “Breely,” 20, of Elkins Park, PA.

Additionally, defendant Muhammad Ware is charged with dealing firearms without a license.

United States v. Norman, et al:
Beginning in October 2020, ATF Special Agents identified multiple firearms which were recovered in the Philadelphia area as having been originally purchased in Georgia. The short time frame between the firearms’ purchase in Georgia and subsequent recovery in Philadelphia (known as a short “time to crime” period) indicated that the weapons may have been trafficked into the city.
According to the Indictment, subsequent investigation showed that over the course of six months, the conspiracy led by defendant Norman allegedly purchased nearly 300 firearms from dealers in and around Atlanta, and transported the firearms to Philadelphia for distribution and sale on the black market in exchange for approximately $116,000.

United States v. Ware, et al:
Beginning in March 2020, ATF Special Agents identified multiple firearms which were recovered in Philadelphia as having been originally purchased in South Carolina. Agents subsequently learned about a number of additional firearms recovered in Philadelphia with short “time to crime” periods that indicated they may have been trafficked into the city, just as in Norman, et al.
According to the Indictment, the recovered firearms were concentrated in a particular area of Philadelphia and were originally purchased near Myrtle Beach, SC. Subsequent investigation showed that defendant Ware had allegedly purchased several of the recovered firearms, and conspired and communicated with defendants Haneef Vaughn and Jabreel Vaughn, and others about the purchase, transportation and sale on the black market of over 100 illegal firearms.

Over the course of a few months, these two separate operations supplied nearly 400 guns to Philadelphia’s criminals, who have been busy setting new homicide records for the city. Our friend Dana Pico at First Street Journal is usually on top of Philly-related crime stories, but somehow he missed this one. Guess he’s not a hiphop fan.

PREVIOUSLY:




 

Category: Aspiring Rapper Update, Georgia, Pennsylvania

Racial Paranoia in Post-Obama America

Posted on | April 13, 2022 | Comments Off on Racial Paranoia in Post-Obama America

As everyone knows by now, Frank R. James is the suspect in Tuesday’s mass shooting in a Brooklyn subway station. Remarkably, even the liberal media are covering this story — Andrea Mitchell led the top of the noon hour on MSNBC with a report on the manhunt for the suspected gunman.

J.J. Sefton at AOSHQ links to a couple of stories that outline the mass shooting suspect’s deranged anti-white belief system:

Heavy[dot]com, a fact-finding website, identified a Facebook page allegedly belonging to the person of interest which contained numerous posts that talked about shooting people and expressed other extreme views, including “black nationalism.”
Andy Ngo, Editor-at-large for The Post Millennial, tweeted out screenshots from the Facebook account that showed posts that promoted the Black Liberation Army, Black Lives Matter, a photo of the man who murdered five police officers in Dallas in 2016, a photo calling to “kill all the whiteys,” posts quoting communist Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, posts expressing support for shooting people, and posts demonizing former President Donald Trump.
YouTube videos allegedly uploaded by the person of interest also showed extreme views, including one where he allegedly called 9/11 “the most beautiful day, probably in the history of this f–king world.”
The person of interest also allegedly ranted in the videos about white people, saying “the vast majority of people, white mother******* are racist.”

More from the New York Post:

The person of interest ranted about race issues and claimed that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was proof that black people were treated with disdain in society.
“These white motherfu–ers, this is what they do,” he said. “Ultimately at the end of the day they kill and commit genocide against each other. What do you think they gonna do to your black ass?”
In his rambling conspiracy theory, James claimed that a race war would follow the ongoing conflict in Europe.
“It’s just a matter of time before these white motherfu–ers decide, ‘Hey listen. Enough is enough. These ni–ers got to go,’” he said.
“And what’re you going to do? You gonna fight. And guess what? You gonna die. Cause unlike President [Zelensky] over in Ukraine, nobody has your back. The whole world is against you. And you’re against your fu–ing self. So why should you be alive again is the fu–ing question. Why should a ni–er be alive on this planet? Besides to pick cotton or chop sugar cane or tobacco.”
The only options James could find, he claimed, was to commit more violence or become a criminal.
“And so the message to me is: I should have gotten a gun, and just started shooting motherfu–ers,” he said.

He was saying all this stuff not while living in 1952 Mississippi, but rather in 2022 Wisconsin, a state that twice voted to elect Barack Obama president. This points to an odd contradiction in the social justice calculus, namely that as there is more progress toward racial equality, dissatisfaction with the status quo actually increases for many people.

Genuinely oppressed people are so busy struggling to survive that they have no time to devote to political activity. Living in abject poverty does not allow the kind of leisure required for contemplating alternatives to the existing social order or organizing reform efforts. Yet as oppressive conditions are ameliorated, and economic opportunity is increased for those previously excluded, the situation changes. New opportunities are meaningful only to those with the ability to take advantage of these opportunities, and not everyone has the aptitude to become an office manager, a college professor, a software engineer, etc.

So while a certain number of black people are now enjoying success — some of them extraordinarily so — those who are less successful are tempted to seek excuses for their lack of achievement. Thus, the election of America’s first black president — which some interpreted as the conclusive proof that America is not a racist country — eventually gave rise to a resurgence of racial paranoia, with many prominent black voices proclaiming that America is an unjust regime of “systemic racism.” Simultaneously, of course, many white people are tempted toward a pessimistic assessment of race relations, as they witness violent anarchy in major cities fomented by Black Lives Matters activists (who cynically swindle millions in the name of “social justice”).

Viewed objectively, most people in America — black, white, whatever — have it pretty good, and ought to be optimistic about the future. But those who are disappointed in their own lives are apt to project their resentments outward, seeking scapegoats to blame for their failures, and so for every white Dylann Roof type out there turning to neo-Nazism as solace for their failures, there is the mirror-reverse case like Frank James, ranting about fantasies of a race war against whitey.

We can see the irrationality of Frank James in his choice of targets. Of all the places in the country where he could have attacked, why Brooklyn? Why the Sunset Park subway station? Sunset Park is 46% Latino, 35% Asian, 15% white. If his goal was to strike a blow against “systemic racism,” Frank James seems to have been way off-target.

Racial paranoia is a motive that straddles the line between mental illness and political terrorism. Frank James doesn’t seem to have been part of any organized movement, but we shouldn’t underestimate disorganized kooks as a terrorist threat, because there’s so many of them nowadays and, as you know, Crazy People Are Dangerous.




 

Category: Crime, New York, Racism, Terrorism

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

Posted on | April 11, 2022 | Comments Off on Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

Team 41 crosses the finish line.

FORT BENNING, GEORGIA
OK, Team 41 did not win the 38th annual Best Ranger Competition. They finished 14th place, but if you know what’s involved in this three-day ordeal, you understand why merely finishing the event counts as a win. On Saturday night, they completed a land navigation exercise, then started Sunday morning at the Warrior Training Center obstacle course.

It is safe to say that more than 90% of the U.S. population Bob’s age could not complete even that one event, let alone do it near the end of a three-day competition during which the participants maybe got a total of three hours sleep. Sheer exhaustion takes its toll, and in one of the final events — at Red Cloud Range, where they shoot the big stuff — Bob had a brain-freeze and suddenly couldn’t remember how to clear a jam on the .50-caliber machine gun. However, he did score a direct hit with the anti-tank weapon, so there’s that much to brag about. And the video of the epic “don’t break the box” episode now has 300,000+ views on Twitter.

At last night’s awards dinner — the chicken was excellent — we found ourselves in line behind one of the teams from the 101st Airborne Division and struck up a conversation. One of the team members remembered Bob being his instructor at the Mountain Phase of Ranger School. So then I checked on my phone and realized this guy was a first lieutenant, a West Point graduate. Our boy is training future generals.

Very proud of him. Rangers Lead the Way!

Category: Family
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