The Other McCain

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

A 21st-Century Mrs. Jellyby

Posted on | June 7, 2020 | 2 Comments

 

What can be said about David French? Honestly, my preference would be to say nothing, to forget that such a person even exists, and indeed, I make it a habit to ignore all #NeverTrump people. So you can imagine what extraordinary effort is necessary to attract my notice to any #NeverTrump argument, and David French has outdone himself:

Today let’s dive into one of the toughest questions of our religious, cultural, and political lives. While we write and print millions of words about race in America, why is it still so hard to have a truly respectful, decent, and humble dialogue about perhaps the most complicated and contentious issue in American life? . . .

(Notice all the caveats stacked up here in the first two sentences. Having invited readers to “dive into” this topic, David French then feels compelled to add multiple warnings about how difficult it is to be “respectful,” etc., in discussing this “complicated and contentious issue.” Don’t try this at home kids. This man is a Harvard Law graduate!)

Take “systemic racism,” for example. I daresay that only a vanishingly small number of Americans know that this is a term with an academic meaning that’s not entirely obvious from the words themselves. . . .

(Are you part of the “vanishingly small number” familiar with the “academic meaning” of this phrase? No, you’re a stupid Republican voter, so you need a Harvard Law alumnus to explain it to you.)

Yet millions of Americans read the accusation that America is beset with “systemic racism” and hear a simpler and more direct meaning of the term — you’re saying our systems (and by implication the people in them) are racist. But that’s completely contrary to their experience. They think, “How can it be that ‘the system is racist’ when I just left a corporate diversity training seminar, I work at an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, my son’s college professors are constantly telling him to ‘check his privilege,’ and no one I know is a bigot? It seems to me that the most powerful actors in ‘the system’ are saying the same things—don’t be racist.” . . .

(Notice the mind-reading trick David French performs here. He presumes to know what other people think when hearing the phrase “systemic racism,” and even offers a verbatim quote from inside the mind of “millions of Americans.” Do they teach this skill at Harvard Law, or does the admissions process screen out any applicants who fail to demonstrate clairvoyant abilities?)

If you’re conservative, chances are your social media feed is full of images of rioting and looting. There are viral videos (including one the president retweeted Saturday) that declare “George Floyd was not a good person” and “the fact that he has been held up as a martyr sickens me.” There is the constant repetition of statistics about black-on-black crime, and posts and pieces arguing that police racism and brutality are overblown are shared across the length and breadth of social media. . . .

(Note the requisite appearance of the “Orange Man Bad” theme here. The fact that President Trump retweets a video means that whatever was in the video was wrong. Why bother making an actual rebuttal to an argument about, e.g., the statistical frequency of police brutality, if instead you can simply say that Trump is on the same side as people who cite such statistics, and therefore this argument must be wrong?)

I freely confess that to some extent where I stood on American racial issues was dictated by where I sat my entire life. I always deplored racism –those values were instilled in me from birth — but I was also someone who recoiled at words like “systemic racism.” I looked at the strides we’d made since slavery and Jim Crow and said, “Look how far we’ve come.” I was less apt to say, “and look how much farther we have to go.”
Then, where I sit changed, dramatically. I just didn’t know it at the time. I went from being the father of two white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed kids to the father of three kids — one of them a beautiful little girl from Ethiopia. When Naomi arrived, our experiences changed. Strange incidents started to happen. . . .

(He now wheels out the proof — PROOF! — of his moral superiority, just in his case his Harvard Law degree wasn’t sufficient proof.)

There was the white woman who demanded that Naomi — the only black girl in our neighborhood pool — point out her parents, in spite of the fact that she was clearly wearing the colored bracelet showing she was permitted to swim.
There was the time a police officer approached her at a department store and questioned her about who she was with and what she was shopping for. That never happened to my oldest daughter.
There was the classmate who told Naomi that she couldn’t come to our house for a play date because, “My dad says it’s dangerous to go black people’s neighborhoods.”
I could go on, and — sure — some of the incidents could have a benign explanation, but as they multiplied, and it was clear that Naomi’s experience was clearly different from her siblings, it became increasingly implausible that all the explanations were benign.
Then the Trump campaign happened, the alt-right rallied to his banner, and our lives truly changed. . . .

You can read the whole thing, if you’re afflicited with masochistic urges, but you get the general idea of where French is headed with this. The fact that he was bombarded with “alt-right” racist messages is not surprising. The Internet is a large place, and if one-tenth of 1% of Americans fit this description, in a nation of 280 million people age 15 and older, that means nearly 300,000 “alt-right” racists are available to harass anyone who attracts their hostile attention. The amplifying effect of social media can empower a strident minority to have enormous impact. This is how, for example, the transgender cult has become such a nuisance.

We must keep in mind The Law of Large Numbers when considering such phenomena, or otherwise we might be deceived into thinking that the most militantly obnoxious voices on the Internet represent widespread public sentiment. Thinks about the “incel” phenomenon, which some people have inflated into a terrorist threat, as if nerds who can’t get laid are a menace equivalent to al-Qaeda. Yes, a few “incels” have carried out mass-murder sprees, but is Elliot Rodger typical? Is every introverted geek a would-be killer? Is this a genuine trend? Or are such incidents being wrongly magnified by the media which, by devoting so much coverage to mass-murder incidents, actually help inspire copycats?

Is having “a truly respectful, decent, and humble dialogue” about race really that much more difficult than discussing other issues? If so, why? Isn’t the real reason that people are afraid of being “canceled” if they say the wrong thing? And why is that? Who has made it so risky to speak plainly about this issue? So what we need is not pious sermons from Harvard Law alumni, but instead someone courageous enough to say, “It’s OK if your opinion is unpopular. People shouldn’t be getting fired for disagreeing with liberals.” In fact, David French used to be engaged in such work, as an attorney for FIRE, but that was before he succumbed to Trump Derangement Syndrome. Now he’s just another liberal, an ally of the Thought Police who want to silence anyone who dissents from Officially Acceptable Opinion. The salt has lost its savour.

Being a conservative requires taking the unpopular side of arguments in which you know a majority of public opinion is on the other side. In a culture devoted to liberal notions of Progress, we know going into the fight that it will be unpopular to defend Tradition. Conservatives assert the value of “ordered liberty” in a society suffused with egalitarian sentiment. Surrounded by the decadent perversity of modernism, the conservative calls attention to ancient distinctions of Good and Evil. Of course this means that liberals hate us. We must learn not only to endure their hatred, but to embrace it as a badge of honor.

If you ever let yourself lose sight of this — if you ever start craving liberal approval — your value as a conservative is at an end. On what issue does David French, the Principled Conservative™, now disagree with Joe Biden? If there is any such issue, how does David French propose to influence the direction of public policy, given that his stance as a Principled Conservative™ can now be summarized as “Vote Democrat”?

Perhaps it is not necessary to further elaborate how #NeverTrump, with all their fine talk of “principles,” have in fact embraced an unconditional surrender to liberalism. It was not by my urging that Republican primary voters chose Donald Trump as their presidential nominee, but once the voters had made their choice, I felt bound to respect it, and thus counted myself among those in the “basket of deplorables.” Of course this put me on the side of certain “alt-right” types whose attitudes or opinions I don’t share, but what about 2012, when I was forced to stifle my complaints in order to support Mitt Romney? If I could bite my tongue and work with a bunch of open-borders country-club RINOs, why shouldn’t I be able to do the same with the “alt-right”? But more importantly, isn’t the existence of the “alt-right” a testimony to the failure of “mainstream” conservatives? What if National Review hadn’t purged Peter Brimelow and John O’Sullivan? What if the Bush administration hadn’t embraced a globalist agenda? What if conservatives had actually tried to conserve something?

We must live in reality, and not our fantasy of an ideal world. Of course, your ideal world may be a lot different than mine, but the point is that we are all forced to accommodate ourselves to realities that are beyond our control, including the historic consequences of events that transpired long before we were born. How different might the world be, for example, had it not been for the Bosnian assassin Gavrilo Princip?

Why do we live in a world where David French imagines that the rest of us stand ready to applaud his incessant virtue-signalling?

It’s hard even to begin to describe all the ramifications of 345 years of legalized oppression and 56 years of contentious change, but we can say two things at once — yes, we have made great strides (and we should acknowledge that fact and remember the men and women who made it possible), but the central and salient consideration of American racial politics shouldn’t center around pride in how far we’ve come, but in humble realization of how much farther we have to go.

You see how the liberal conception of Progress comes sneaking in, with this history of “great strides” toward the Heaven-on-Earth destination which, nevertheless, is still a long way off in the distance, perhaps as far away as Borrioboola-Gha, the missionary venture of “telescopic philanthropy” that consumed Mrs. Jellyby’s attention.

My belief is that we are not following a path of Progress at all, but are instead far gone down the road to decadence and anarchy. Frankly, I’m reminded of something Martin Luther King Jr. once said, that he feared black people were being “integrated” into a burning house.

If America is such a terribly racist country as David French would have us believe, then is the “beautiful little girl from Ethiopia” his family adopted actually better off here? Wouldn’t she be safer in Ethiopia, far away from all these racist Americans, including the 60% majority of voters in Tennessee who voted for Trump? Obviously, if racism is the worst thing in the world, and if Trump voters are all despicable racists — because this is what David French actually means by his pious sermon — then shouldn’t the French family get out of Tennessee and go someplace more liberal, where their Ethiopian daughter would be safer?

Well, there is such a place in America — a congressional district where Hillary Clinton got 74% of the vote, where liberals elected an African immigrant to represent them in Congress. Minnesota’s 5th District is a bastion of liberalism. It’s also where George Floyd got killed.

David French’s sermon about “how much farther we have to go” in dealing with “the most complicated and contentious issue in American life” is misguided in its fundamental premise that white racism, however it manifests itself, is the sole determining factor in the quality of life for black people — or anyone else, for that matter. This belief in the omnipotence of racism is part of a liberal mythology so self-evidently false that I struggle to imagine how any intelligent person could believe it. There were black millionaires in America long before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted. Harvard graduated its first black student in 1870, at a time when my own illiterate ancestors were farming the red clay hills of Alabama with mule-drawn plows. One can acknowledge the existence of racism without imagining that the mere existence of such prejudice has a debilitating effect that renders black people helpless.

But don’t let me interrupt your sermons about “legalized oppression,” Mrs. Jellyby, and good luck with your project in Borrioboola-Gha.


 

 

Category: Racism

The Church of ‘Social Justice’

Posted on | June 6, 2020 | 5 Comments

Lawrence Person explains the Left’s religion:

Amidst a week of rioting and looting, New York Times writers finally found a topic they were united on: outrage over an editorial by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton saying president Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act to use federal troops to stop the violence. Their asinine rationale was this exposed black staffers to “violence.” Well, only if they’re rioters. They were outraged that the house organ of the Democratic Media Complex has to pretend there are other opinions than their own, and that anyone would dare stand up to the sanctified violence of Social Justice.
“Social Justice” is more than an ideology, it’s an all-consuming civil religion for the unchurched. To oppose it is to be evil, full stop. Against evil, any weapon or action is automatically sanctified. . . .
The first goal of social justice is to force groupthink and obedience to the dictates of the victimhood identity politics left. To control the country, the hard left must first control the Democratic Party. The goal of controlling the Party is far more immediate and important to them than winning elections for “moderate” Democrats.

Because “social justice” is essentially religious in nature, any Democrat who does not genuflect before the altars of this cult must be cast out as a heretic, the “politics of personal destruction” serving the purpose of terrorizing others into mindless compliance. Facts and logic cannot be used to refute such a belief system, and anyone who raises questions of practical politics — will this kind of radical protest movement actually help elect Democrats? — will be condemned as a cowardly sellout, a potential traitor to the cause. Of course, it is heresy to doubt the righteousness of the cause in terms of public policy. That is to say, no one can be allowed to ask whether liberal policies actually make life better for black people or members of other groups identified by the Left as victims of collective oppression. And because “social justice” is a religion, it must always have its sacrificial martyrs like the heroic barista:

A 22-year-old Ohio State University graduate died May 30 following protests in Columbus, according to television station WCMH.
The woman was identified on Instagram as Sarah Grossman, who was among protesters showing support for George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis when white former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes on May 25. . . .
Grossman worked at Stauf’s Coffee Roasters, which posted a statement on Facebook signed by the Stauf’s and Cup o’ Joe family:
“It is with heavy hearts that we mourn the death of one of our own today, Sarah Grossman. Her ability to make anyone feel comfortable, coworkers and patrons alike, kept our stores warm. At Stauf’s, Sarah was known for her devotion to keeping the workplace green by implementing environmentally-friendly practices on and off the clock. Outside of the store, she fought even harder for issues she cared about, including the Rainforest Alliance, and the Black Lives Matter movement. As a peaceful protestor this weekend, she stood up to end police brutality and was tear gassed as a result. Her death came in the aftermath, but her legacy stands even stronger. Stauf’s is working diligently on plans to honor her and the other peaceful organizers risking their lives in pursuit of justice. May Sarah’s memory ring through the streets of Columbus and give her fellow fighters reason to push on.

Apparently, the heroic barista had asthma, and it is believed that her exposure to tear gas triggered a fatal respiratory failure. Notice that, in the view of her admirers, Saint Sarah’s devotion to “keeping the workplace green” was morally equivalent to her support for Black Lives Matter. All part of the fabric of the same “social justice” religion, you see.

 

 

Saint Sarah had big plans, according to her sister:

She had just graduated from OSU with a major in environmental sciences and Spanish. Her plans were to first finish classes in Argentina and then go to the border of Mexico to help the children there, followed by moving to Guatemala to have a sustainable farm.

Une citoyenne du monde! Faites du monde le paradis sur terre!

Translation: “Play stupid games. Win stupid prizes.”

UPDATE: What kind of “protest” was Saint Sarah the Blessed Barista participating in when Columbus police used tear gas? I think that’s highly relevant, because police don’t normally use this against peaceful demonstrators. So I checked for news about the protests in Columbus:

Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther has announced a citywide curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., part of government officials’ response to ongoing protests over the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd.
The curfew “remains in place until it is rescinded,” Ginther said during a [May 30] press conference. He said the curfew is not intended to restrict citizens’ ability to exercise their free speech rights, but to allow the city to better protect its residents and infrastructure. . . .
Protests have been ongoing in downtown Columbus for the past three days, and both Ginther and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said the majority of protestors have been peaceful. But, Ginther said, more than 100 public and private properties were damaged Friday night, 10 properties were looted and five police officers were injured.
Meanwhile, DeWine has activated the Ohio National Guard and is asking the Ohio State Highway Patrol to assist city police officers in their management of protests.
“Sadly, there is a relatively small, but violent group of people who pose a specific and real threat to our law enforcement officers and to the safety of the citizens of Columbus and Franklin County,” DeWine said Saturday.
Activating the guard is “about protecting from unnecessary destruction the small businesses that our fellow Ohioans have worked so hard to create,” DeWine said.

When you start looting businesses and attacking police, you are no longer engaged in a “protest.” You are participating in a riot.


 

 

Category: Crime

In The Mailbox: 06.05.20 (Late Night Edition)

Posted on | June 6, 2020 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Trust The Science, Except When It Isn’t Trustworthy
EBL: Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison
Twitchy: Attention DNC – Talcum X Has Noticed Which Party Is “Running The Cities With The Worst Police Brutality In America”
Louder With Crowder: Project Veritas’ Second Antifa Video Shows A Group Thirsty For Violence
According To Hoyt: Cosplaying The Revolution
Monster Hunter Nation: With Friends Like These
Vox Popoli: This Is Why You Never Apologize, also, I Humbly Accept

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Liberal Mush From Mattis
American Greatness: Jobs Skyrocket In May, Economists & Corporate Media Hardest Hit
American Power: Curfew Costly For Night-Shift Workers
American Thinker: A Deliberately Bankrupt America
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Line Up For Guns Friday
Babalu Blog: The Communist Origins Of The “Anti-Fascist” Movement And Antifa
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For June 5
Cafe Hayek: Some Links
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Four Questions For The Democrats, The Media, & Black Lives Matter
Don Surber: The Art Of The American Comeback
First Street Journal: The Liberal Media Cave To The Demands Of The Woke
The Geller Report: Pelosi Suffers 10-Second Brain Fart On-Camera During Press Conference, also, “Palestinians” Piggyback On BLM/Antifa Riots To Wreck Synagogues
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, “New” Jobs
Hollywood In Toto: The Aerialist Takes Flight & Stays Aloft, also, Does Walmart’s Decision Against No Safe Spaces Pass The Smell Test?
Legal Insurrection: Appeals Court Orders Molotov Cocktail Lawyers Back To Jail, also, Entire Buffalo PD Emergency Response Team (57 Officers) Resigns
The PanAm Post: Cuban & Venezuelan Detainees Allegedly Paid To Protest In U.S.
Power Line: A Distance Memory, also, Infiltrating Antifa
Shark Tank: Florida Supremes Shoot Down Gun Ban Measure
Shot In The Dark: Sheer Brilliance
STUMP: STUMP Classics – How Reliable Are Lottery Revenues?
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – William F. Buckley Jr. vs. Gore Vidal
This Ain’t Hell: Candace Owens – George Floyd Was Neither Martyr Nor Hero, also, CNN Dominates Ratings
Victory Girls: Basketcase Biden Declares Some Americans “Just Not Very Good People”
Volokh Conspiracy: Is “Defunding The Police” Libertarian?
Weasel Zippers: Corporations Blasted For Funding BLM Instead Of Small Businesses That Were Looted, also, MSNBC Hires Lisa Page As Legal Analyst
Megan McArdle: Social Distancing Is Over
Mark Steyn: The Neither-Of-The-Above Box

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 06.05.20 (Early Evening Edition)

Posted on | June 5, 2020 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 06.05.20 (Early Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ammo.com: The Tienanmen Square Massacre
EBL: 2020 Trends – Hot & Not
Twitchy: “This Is Literally Twitter” – Essence Of Social Media Platform Captured In 24-Second TikTok Video
Louder With Crowder: Project Veritas Goes Undercover, Exposes Antifa As Violent, Ruthless Fascists
Monster Hunter Nation: “Where Are All You Gun Owners Now?”
Vox Popoli: Mailvox – The USAF, Converged, also, Black Science Fiction Matters

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Whites Going Their Own Way
American Conservative: Chicago Pastor – This Week’s Violence Has Set Our Black Community Back Decades
American Greatness: LA Mayor To Cut $150 Million From Police, Reallocate It To Black Communities, also, Tucker Carlson – Our Nation Is Being Ripped Apart By A Provable Lie
American Power: The Systemic Collapse Of American Society
American Thinker: Democrats At War
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Local Hero News
Babalu Blog: Remembering & Honoring The Victims Of Red China’s Tienanmen Square Massacre
Baldilocks: May 2020 Post Digest For Da Tech Guy Blog
BattleSwarm: What Soros’ DA Spending Spree Bought
Cafe Hayek: Yet Another Open Letter To Oren Cass
CDR Salamander: NavyCon 2 – Electric Boogaloo, also, FFG(X) – Clear Sailing
Da Tech Guy: These Riots Are The End Result Of Progressive Indoctrination, also, Black Lives Matter Has Become O’Brien & Madred – I Refuse To Submit
Don Surber: Hong Kong vs. Somalia, also, The Target Of The Lockdown & The Riots
The Geller Report: ANTIFA EXPOSED, also, Mayor DiBlasio Shouted Down, Booed Off Stage At George Floyd Rally
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Your Free Trial Of Socialism Is Now Over
Hollywood In Toto: Has Hollywood Completely Lost Its Mind? also, Dreya Weber Peels Back The Curtain On A Dancer’s Life
JustOneMinute: Mad Dog Barking
Legal Insurrection: You Will Be Made To Bow, also, CNN’s Chris Cuomo Unaware That The First Amendment Only Protects Peaceful Protests
Michelle Malkin: Why I’m Suspended From Twitter
The PanAm Post: What Is Antifa?
Power Line: Please Don’t Go! also, Mattis Mush
Shark Tank: Internal Investigation Of Atlantic Beach Police Chief Michelle Cook Missing From Her File
Shot In The Dark: Probably An Academic Question
STUMP: States Under Fiscal Pressure – New Jersey
The Political Hat: Anti-First Amendment States – Massachusetts, Connecticut, & New York
This Ain’t Hell: Louisville Police Officers Walk Out On Mayor, also, Governor Blackface Again
Victory Girls: General Allen Claims To Know President Trump’s UnChristian Heart
Volokh Conspiracy: “Only The Cops Need Guns” Simply Can’t Coexist With “The Cops Are Racist And Will Kill You”
Weasel Zippers: Minneapolis City Councilman Jeremiah Ellison – “We Are Going To Dismantle The Minneapolis Police Department”, also, Massachusetts AG – Yes, America Is Burning, But That’s How Forests Grow
Mark Steyn: Plywood Thursday

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Category: Linkagery

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | June 5, 2020 | Comments Off on Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

by Smitty

There he is again.
“You tell that Zergotazz to lay by his volcanic rift. Sending the Silent Posse won’t break this crypto faster.”

No motion.
“That’s enough data, they said. Plenty of resources, they said. Sorry. It’s not. You’re wasting bandwidth.”
The hologram glitched a moment, blurring the henchman’s knees.
Suddenly, a while circle appeared around the alien’s torso. A bracelet lit up on its arm, expanded to basketball diameter, slipped below its hand.
It exited the hologram, floated across the room to paused above his head.
“I ain’t no angel.”
The circle dropped suddenly and resumed its original size.
—
via Darleen

Category: Friday Fiction

A Reason to Riot, or a Pretext?

Posted on | June 5, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

Heather Mac Donald explains the relevant facts:

In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population.
The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, N.J., who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.

Are we clear about this? Is it not apparent that, however much we deplore racism or police brutality in general, the specific facts of the George Floyd case are anomalous, and not typical? A statistically rare event has been falsely portrayed as representing a larger truth about “systemic racism,” when in reality the evidence contradicts that representation. People claiming to speak on behalf of “the black community” have been paid to promote this false belief, and the media have irresponsibly helped propagate a dangerous mythology. We have seen this before:

James Scurlock was a criminal. David Dorn was a cop. The two men never met, but the cause of their deaths — Scurlock in Omaha, Nebraska, and Dorn in St. Louis, Missouri — was related. Both were killed this past week as a result of the dangerous storm of violence that most media outlets describe euphemistically as “protests” or “unrest.”
Americans are being told by intellectuals, politicians, and TV pundits that this deadly chaos is about “systemic racism,” to quote Joe Biden, but what we are actually witnessing is the return of a dangerous belief system that Manhattan Institute scholar Fred Siegel called “the riot ideology.” People are being killed, businesses are being looted, and the fundamental basis of a free society is being jeopardized because this irresponsible mentality has been promoted as a solution to racial inequality, when in fact it is a major cause of the problem. The deaths of James Scurlock and David Dorn illustrate the damage done by the riot ideology. . . .

Read the rest of my column at The American Spectator.


 

 

Category: American Spectator, Crime

Muslim Immigrant Attacks Police

Posted on | June 5, 2020 | 2 Comments

 

Is it OK to stop calling this “mostly peaceful” yet?

Authorities are looking into whether the Wednesday night stabbing of an NYPD officer in Brooklyn was a terror-inspired attack, law enforcement sources said Thursday.
One officer was stabbed in the neck and two others were shot during the confrontation in the Flatbush neighborhood. All three officers are expected to recover, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said at an early Thursday press conference. The suspect was shot eight times and is in critical condition at a hospital.
Three senior law enforcement sources identified the suspect as Dzenan Camovic, 20, an immigrant from the Balkan region. One senior source said Camovic had recently shared anti-police sentiments on his social media feeds.
Camovic had not been on police radar, the sources said, but is associated with “individuals of concern.” Terrorism, however, is just one theory for what happened, they said, and nothing has been ruled in or out.

Can we rule it out? I don’t think so:

The man suspected of stabbing an NYPD cop in the neck without warning is a “practicing Muslim” whose family is from Bosnia — but he’s “absolutely not a terrorist,” a relative who was interviewed by federal terrorism investigators said Thursday.
The relative also said that Dzenan Camovic, 20, never expressed any anti-police sentiment to him and questioned the official account of Wednesday night’s incident in Brooklyn.
‘“I’ve known him since he was 6-inches tall. That this is a terrorism, it’s illogical,” said the middle-aged man, who declined to give his name.
“He was raised here, [English] is his only language … He was as good of a child as a child could be.”

Oh, a “practicing Muslim” from Bosnia would never commit terrorism.

Ace of Spades makes the obvious point: Why are we importing such people? Do we have a shortage of cop-haters in America, so that in order to keep the cop-hating industry functioning at full capacity, we have to bring in cop-haters from foreign countries? The fact that this particular cop-hater is white helps illustrate what’s wrong with the frequent claim that anyone who opposes the open-borders agenda is “racist.”

While we may stipulate (and it would be dishonest to deny) that racism is a factor in concerns about immigration, does admitting something like a million foreigners a year do anything to reduce racism? For all we know, this Dzenan Camovic character was radicalized because he couldn’t adjust to the ethnic diversity of Brooklyn. And there are plenty of similar examples of immigrants (or children of immigrants) who underwent a similar process of radicalization. It is difficult enough for any American-born kid, whatever their race, to adjust to adult life in this complex and confusing postmodern culture. When you add immigration to the mix of influences, you increase the potential number of factors that may contribute to psychological alienation. And this is true whether the immigrant is from Sweden or Somalia or Surinam.

Reduce legal immigration, build a wall to keep out illegals, and give America a generation or two to assimilate all the immigrants we have taken in for the past 50 years. Then maybe in about 2075 — when my grandchildren are reaching retirement age — you can reconsider.


 

 

Category: Crime, Immigration, Islam, Racism

Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes

Posted on | June 4, 2020 | 2 Comments

 

All those “dumb blonde” jokes? They’re not jokes:

A 22-year-old Michigan woman faces up to 15 years behind bars for allegedly inciting riots by destroying property and encouraging other looters to ransack stores during her Facebook Live broadcast.
Alexandria “Ally” Lyons of Grand Rapids was arrested after reportedly damaging businesses last weekend in Grand Rapids. She allegedly goaded fellow rioters to wreck retail locations by looting and throwing bricks at buildings. Lyons livestreamed video on Facebook of her kicking and shattering the glass window of a store. The riots left more than 100 businesses damaged, according to MLive.com.
Lyons and her friends went on a stealing spree where they stole beers from Mojo’s Dueling Piano Bar and Restaurant, looted a jewelry store, and stole merchandise from a clothing store, authorities said. Lyons and her friends uploaded photos and videos of their actions to social media.
“Defendant could be heard telling her friends to get her a gold bracelet because she already has silver ones,” Grand Rapids police Detective Matt DeJong wrote in a probable-cause affidavit of Lyons instructing others during a robbery of a jewelry store.
“She is heard multiple times encouraging her friends and others to throw bricks or other objects at windows of multiple businesses downtown and at one point picks up a brick herself and mentions heading ‘back to the courthouse,'” the affidavit said.
In one video, Lyons allegedly instructed her friends to break into an ATM.
Lyons shared footage of her having a party at her house, where she was reportedly seen wearing stolen clothing from F. David Barney Clothiers.
Police tracked Lyons down after receiving numerous tips and people sharing social media posts of her looting and destroying businesses.
Lyons was charged with the malicious destruction of a building (between $1,000 and $20,000) in one case and inciting a riot in a companion case, according to Law & Crime.

Because I’m not a racist, I want this white criminal to be punished to the maximum extent of the law. In fact, I consider it unfortunate that she did not get shot, or at least beaten, while resisting arrest. Stupid white people like her are giving the rest of us white people a bad reputation. And some of them might even vote for Joe Biden in November.


 

Category: Crime, Michigan
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