Law Enforcement – Page 2 – Libertate Virtute (Virtue + Liberty)

November 24, 2021December 2, 2021

How’s That EQUITY Working Out for You?

May be an image of 3 people and outdoors — Darrell Brooks’ SUV racing through the Waukesha Christmas parade.

May be an image of 7 people and outdoors — Victims on the ground in the wake of his passage.

Why the 2020 summer of riots, the chronic indulgence of violence and behavioral ugliness in our cities, the Rittenhouse trial, Waukesha, et al? Equity, baby, Equity.

Ibram X. Kendi (Ibram Henry Rogers), a godfather of Equity lingo: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination”.

Is Kendi’s governing principle that much different from George Wallace’s in 1963 when Wallace said, “. . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever”? Segregation, discrimination, they both draw distinctions based on melanin count, genitalia, bed partner, and many combinations thereof. And put an end to equality before the law. Think of Kendi as a black John C. Calhoun, the figurehead of a new discrimination.

Kendi (born in 1982) is proof that the caricature of the muddle-headed millennial is more than a caricature, and an embarrassment to the generational many who aren’t. Kendi’s goof-thought is hidden behind the façade of Equity. It’s wordplay. To this guy and his fellow delusionals, Equity is code for anger over things not turning out equal across the demography. The Equity word is cover for forced equality of outcome through blatant discrimination.

Calhoun, an unacknowledged Kendi mentor, has his mental fingerprints all over Equity. It found its way into the bloodstream of the past and present Democratic Party, back to LBJ, and the Biden administration in the form of militant affirmative action executive orders and banal press briefings. Remember “affirmative action”? In case you forgot, it conferred advantages to a gaggle of new honorees, the hackneyed “historically oppressed”. The camel’s nose poked under the tent.

It remained somewhat innocuous so long as it was restricted to government employment, contracting, and college admissions. Certainly, it was grossly unfair for anyone falling on the wrong side of the genital/color divide, but the ill-effects didn’t end up threatening your life. Not true now.

The forced leveling spread to criminal justice. Since crime stats aren’t equal across the color spectrum, they must be made to be equal, like the effort in admissions and employment. So, gambits such as refusals to prosecute, passage of no-cash bail laws, approval of propositions to lower a plethora of crimes to misdemeanors (California’s Prop 47), etc., sent a green light to miscreants everywhere. Equity suddenly became dangerous.

These Equity enthusiasts are really into profiles. Kyle Rittenhouse was tossed into the Equity meat grinder because he clicked the bigoted bullet-pointed traits reserved for the vile by the ladies on The View: he’s white, male, and carried an “assault” rifle. Equity demanded that the immense resources of the state of Wisconsin be thrown at a 17-year-old because he fit the Equity industry’s enemy sketch. Self-defense be damned, the industry’s brain trust will rebrand it racist. The goal isn’t justice; it’s Equity in the form of a conviction and hard time. Think of this new age of lynching as a morality play for the self-anointed with a white guy in the noose this time. Everyone is expected to feel better, except, of course, the white guy in the dock.

If Equity requires that we must get a white guy no matter what, it also demands that we rebrand riots as “mostly peaceful protests” to herd all of society kicking and screaming to Equity. Tell that to David Dorn in St. Louis who was murdered by “mostly peaceful protesters”. Public authorities ordered police to withdraw and stand down; bail funds were established for looters and arsonists; DA’s refused to prosecute the hoodlums; and governors rejected requests for national guardsmen to restore order.

Retired St. Louis police captain David Dorn.

Once more, riots and mayhem – er, “peaceful protests” – are rebranded as noble endeavors to instill Equity. Tell that to a local businessperson – many are of the “other” – who must now stand before their life’s work in smoldering ruins.

People flee, and not just from California, as Equity’s disorder reigns. Corporate retail giants such as Walgreens and Target – and other paragons of the corporate woke – suddenly realized that “woke” looting, boarded up doors and windows, and smash-and-grab mobs aren’t healthy for the bottom line. That model of Equity rule, San Francisco, and playground for mob-shoplifting, has seen Walgreens close 22 stores. Target and Safeway cut hours to limit their exposure to Equity’s rampant revenge. Need I mention the recent mob assaults on Nordstrom and Louis Vuitton? Equity carries costs way beyond the price tag for gauzy corporate rainbow ads.

The real-world effects of Equity cause capital to look for the exits. For goons and lowlifes, Equity also supplements a widened exit door with a revolving one in the criminal justice system. The Equity logic (or illogic) demands that we can’t have too many convictions of one color. Turn ‘em loose, but bloody incidents inconveniently arise. Prime example: Darrell Brooks of Waukesha Christmas parade fame. After plowing through the Dancing Grannies, bands, and spectators, it came to light that this guy made “career” a functioning modifier attached to “criminal”.

The Brooks rap sheet extends back to 1999 and through a variety of violent interactions with others. It includes a lust for underaged girls and an outstanding warrant for his arrest. His savage history and penchant for jumping bail didn’t stop the Milwaukee DA, John Chisholm, from lowering his bail to $1,000 for using his weapon of choice, his SUV, on his girlfriend. A couple of weeks later, he showed up at the Christmas parade.

Chisholm (D) is a unique piece of work. He’s the DA who went after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) and his staff in 2010 for rumors of illegal campaign coordination between Walker’s campaign and supportive PAC’s. Ironically, the insinuation is equally at home with Democrats. The fishing expedition uncovered nothing and was only closed this year. (Read about the case here)

Apparently, not a word was raised about the cozy relationship between Chisholm and his teachers’ union activist wife. In the heady days of 2010, Walker was trying to bring to heel the uncontrollable teachers’ unions and succeeded – a necessity that should be on the front burner of parents in California and Loudon County. The whole affair stinks of politics and shows Chisholm to be a swimmer in the currents of fashionable Democratic Party belief. Brooks’ easy release fits neatly into the Party’s Equity zealotry. Anyway, Brooks was out in the public to commit a mass casualty event thanks to the indulgence of Chisholm’s office.

See, Equity is an amorphous concept that can cover everything from race-conscious hiring and admissions to giving multiple opportunities for thugs to destroy our livelihoods and kill us. Equity should join communism on the ash heap of history but, alas, it is thriving in blue America. If Equity comes to your state and locality, move!

RogerG

April 24, 2021April 25, 2021

Our Abysmal Leadership

Biden and Harris after the Chauvin verdict was announced.

It seems that we go through periods of poor public leadership like the spate of presidents prior to the Civil War (Pres. James Buchanan?). Great leaders don’t get caught up in momentary public manias, nor are they demagogues grasping for approval and feeding the passions of extremists who they mistake for a fount of wisdom. Dead ends and discord are the results, which is horribly and amply displayed in our history.

The quality of our leadership of late came to mind after surveying the campaigns of the 2020 election season and its aftermath down to the present. Of particular note is the reaction of Congressional leadership and Biden and Harris to the inflammatory Chauvin case. Either through ignorance or demagoguery, after the verdict, they paraded before cameras and went from the abuse of a single police officer right to “systemic racism”. It’s a leap without a scintilla of evidence. It wasn’t even an argument made by prosecutors, nor was any evidence presented that implied that Chauvin was a racist. So how do these public luminaries get from “A” to “Z”? Easy, just say it!

The whole edifice of “systemic racism” is similarly constructed. The ideology’s enthusiasts go from statistical disparities right to racism. They can’t imagine any other explanation for the inequalities in the numbers across demographic groups. They childishly paste “systemic” to “racism” so they don’t have to prove it. In the Chauvin matter, the scandal doesn’t only lay in the abuse by a single cop but in the ritual abuse of good sense by an increasingly radicalized wing of our political establishment. Where’s the leadership to reign in the foolishness?

One of the chief propagandists for “critical race theory” and “systemic racism”, Ibram X. Kendi, at his lectern at Boston U.

A review of the trial record makes clear the reality of the Chauvin case.

First, George Floyd died from asphyxiation from Chauvin’s persistent and excessive pressure to Floyd’s neck and back. Chauvin was responsible for his death.

Second, the cops weren’t on a hunt for black people to harm. They had a legitimate reason for attending to George Floyd. Cops were responding to a call of a criminal act: the use of a counterfeit $20 bill. On prompting from the store clerk, cops – not Chauvin – approached Floyd, who was obviously under the influence, possessed a second phony bill in the car, along with drugs and pills with Floyd’s saliva on them.

Third, Floyd resisted the initial officers’ attempts to bring him into custody, with Chauvin and his partner arriving later, and for Chauvin to make matters worse. Throughout this early phase of the arrest, before Chauvin, it is interesting to note that Floyd made claims of “I can’t breathe” with no one having him in a stranglehold or knee on his back.

Fourth, no evidence was presented by the prosecution of Chauvin’s, or anyone else’s, alleged racism. Not a hint, inference, or otherwise. Possibly, one could argue, this was due to the need to keep the trial focused on Chauvin’s actions. Still, if Chauvin was a raging bigot, something would come light that would lead a person to believe it. Nada.

Fifth, so how do we go from bad cop to racist America? The answer lies in pure demagoguery. A virile video clip of the actions of a bad cop, combined with a mania to find authority figures, preferably white, to publicly humiliate, breeds the ill-starred crusade of our crazies in elective office. It brings out the worst in our current crop of abysmal leaders.

However, it must be admitted that these people were elected. If there is a broader guilt to be assessed, we must bear some of the blame. Enough of us chose them. Could it be that we get the leadership that we deserve, or could it be that some of us just made a poor guess? I think the latter.

RogerG

April 22, 2021April 22, 2021

Justice Under a Cloud of Mob Rule

Defense attorney Eric Nelson, left, and defendant former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin listen as Assistant Minnesota Attorney General Matthew Frank, questions witness Christopher Martin during the Chauvin trial.

If you think that the conviction of Derek Chauvin is the end of it, you’re a fool. Winston Churchill said it best in 1942: “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” There was a ring of hope in Churchill’s words for Brits after the Battle of Britain; not so for us. Now, America, we are really going to be in for it.

This is more than about Chauvin. The Chauvin trial should have been about a police officer’s abuse of his power. Instead, it was taken along in a flood of revolutionary fervor to change America beyond recognition. The verdict only fed the beast, the beast being the organized hustle of “systemic racism”; and the beast needs more feeding. Like everything else, the Chauvin/Floyd incident was thrown into this mythical-racism maelstrom. These radicals won’t be satisfied with a single conviction. Their goal is to make America unrecognizable and, hence, unlivable for the rest of us.

After reading the press reports this morning, a common reaction to the verdict is a collective “sigh of relief” with calls to “reimagine” policing and continue the fight against the spectral “systemic racism”. In both cases, we’re going to be screwed with more violent streets, an epidemic of resisting arrest, riots, and a bloated federal monster rooting around in nearly all aspects of our lives. Yes, we’re going to be in for it.

The oft-quoted “sigh” concerns the relief that the mob got what it wanted and we’re safe from them torching our cities . . . for now. That’s the ticket: public tranquility guaranteed by indulging the mob. You don’t have to look very far to see what we’re in store for. Kids will tell you what it’s like in a playground with a few bullies and no adults. Make no mistake about it, we are entering a time of public policy and justice under the gun of mob intimidation. The collective “sigh” is worrisome in the extreme.

The trial was organized at the outset to be exposed to the mob. The judge amazingly refused to grant a change of venue or even sequester the jury. The jury during the trial could have been pummeled by media stories of the mayhem 10 miles up the interstate from the courtroom (and home to one of the jurors), the Maxine Waters flame-thrower inciting more violence, the intimidation of a defense witness, the general turmoil outside the courtroom, and the year-long mayhem across blue-America. We won’t know if they were affected by the intense rancor till many moons later, but nonetheless the judge’s decisions will forever taint the trial.

The tactic of intimidation to further the ends of the revolution isn’t limited to the miscreants of Black Lives Matter on the streets of Minneapolis. The tactic of court-packing by the Jacobins of the donkey party isn’t solely meant to land four new lefties on the Supreme Court. It serves the function of intimidating the court. Justice, the cement of a civilized society, could be compromised by justices, like the institutionalist John Roberts, constantly looking over their shoulders at the threats coming from the mob soldiers running the show in Congress and the senescent Biden administration. They will have won without seating more radicals if the Court caves. Remember, in the end, back in the thirties, FDR won without successfully packing it.

Evil winds are blowing. Given all that has happened, and likely to happen, this is not a time to go into law enforcement. It’s a perilous profession that will be “reimagined” into more peril for those in its ranks. If you’re already in it, and of a ripe age, fill out the retirement papers. If you’re younger than that, you have a big decision to make: stay or leave. If you’re a young whippersnapper looking to join, consider becoming an astronaut. I hear that a mission to Mars is in the offing.

For the regular Joe and Judy six-pack, don’t expect 911 to matter anymore. We’re on our own.

RogerG

April 15, 2021April 15, 2021

Risk as a Bad Word, a Non-Existent Word, or Simply Incoherent in Use

Rioters stomping on a police cruiser in Brooklyn Center, Minn., April 12, 2021.

A patient is wheeled out of Cobble Hill Health Center by emergency medical workers, Friday, April 17, 2020, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Can anyone make sense of the common use of the word “risk”? In one sense, it’s eliminated altogether in sentences that begin with “If it saves one life . . ..” Any expense and other dangers are ignored in the pursuit of some influential person’s, or group’s, particular action. It makes a mockery of the reality of tradeoffs in life. In another sense, it’s a non-factor in bee-lining straight to a revolutionary gang’s favorite end state, or utopia, as in the “critical race theory” crowd’s headlong rush to make equal by fiat all skin shades in all socio-economic measures. They call it “equity”, thereby soiling another word with the mud of extremist politics.

The pandemic accorded the perfect opportunity to do the former: public administrators and executives, mostly blue-state and blue-Biden and company, forcefully neglected any serious consideration other than stopping the virus. Admirable, yes, but adolescent thinking at its worst. There were options other than the destruction of other aspects of life – schooling the young, careers, worship, social gatherings from the movies to Thanksgiving, etc. – but it all depends on a mature assessment of risk and the accompanying tradeoffs. Other choices were available without the never-ending masks (double and triple) – quickly becoming our new burqa – and the formation of a writ-large leper colony in six-foot social distancing and the solitary confinement of the lockdowns.

The wet blanket on life may have been justified in the first few months till we got a handle on therapeutics and some understanding of vulnerable populations. As we knew more, the controls should have been gradually lifted with concentrated efforts on protecting groups especially susceptible to lethal repercussions. Instead, we got the shuttering of life – which Fauci and Biden and company show no signs of lessening – and the subsequent rash of suicides, failed students, substance and domestic abuses, undetected diseases, destroyed careers, and the unending loneliness in our solitary confinement. Are these tradeoffs worth it? Was it acceptable to incur these risks?

No serious assessment was ever laid out to the public. The tactic was to strangle society, and keep strangling it. We were sold on the gambit to “stop the spread”. In essence, all of us were labeled walking super-spreaders. All-of-a-sudden, we lost our humanity, optimism, and future. No wonder people turned to drink, reefer, crack, and, for some, a bullet to the head. Kids languished in a cognitive miasma; Zooming their educations turned into a disaster. These risks were dismissed or blatantly ignored in the tunnel vision of “If it saves one life”.

Risk is maligned in another context: resist arrest and crap happens. Nick Saban once said,

“One thing I always tell players is that there are three bad things: Nothing good happens after midnight, nothing good happens when you’re around guns unless you’re going hunting, and you don’t want to mess around with women that you don’t know because a lot of times, bad things happen.”

Good advice, and one which requires the addition of resisting arrest to his list.

George Zimmerman after his confrontation with Trayvon Martin, 2014.

Black Lives Matter as a neo-Marxist movement par excellence came to the fore on resisting arrest. The Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman imbroglio was a small spark, but the thuggish Michael Brown/Officer Darren Wilson confrontation in Ferguson, Mo., of 2014 jump-started it to a national cause. As it turned out, Brown was spoiling for a fight with a cop and got one, and got killed, and hence giving us the “Ferguson effect”: cops pull back and crime jumps, a replay of LA’s Rodney King riots of 1992 (funny thing: another act of resisting arrest). And the whole thing is due to resisting arrest.

Remember, a nasty risk is attached to resisting arrest.

There’s more to Black Lives Matter ascending the respectability ladder to the chic status of a favorite Fortune-500 charity. More incidences followed, in this age of the ubiquitous cell-phone and universal connectivity, to give a false aura of righteousness to this Marxist band, more instances of ignoring the risks of resisting arrest. With the exception of Eric Garner (NYC, 2014), high profile instances of resisting arrest were caught on tape to be viewed by any youngster with access to a cell phone. The elevation of George Floyd to sainthood is one shining example of the tendency of resisting arrest heightening the chances of someone’s death. To deny Floyd’s uncooperative actions is to indulge in a fantasy. Floyd, a big man with an extensive criminal background, was subdued by a cop’s possible overreaction in a stressful situation of resisting arrest. Once again, crap happened.

Or take this celebrated incident in Atlanta at a time of rioting to “honor” George Floyd: Rayshard Brooks resisted arrest, scuffled with cops, grabbed a cop’s taser, fled after tasering the cop, and was shot and killed. The poor Wendy’s was torched, more rioting, and another reason is given to leave America’s urban centers.

Jump forward to August 2020, Kenosha, Wisc., and Jacob Blake. Police answering a domestic disturbance call confronted Jacob Blake, a man with a warrant for his arrest who resisted officer requests, strove to his car (whose car is open to question), and a melee erupted with Blake being shot. Like after midnight, nothing good happens from defying officer requests. It ends in the worst sort of place for all concerned. It’s a lesson that should have sunken in, instead of being used as another excuse for widespread mayhem.

Or take this most recent episode in greater Minneapolis. Cops pull over Daunte Wright, he attempts to flee, and in the heat of the moment an officer grabs the wrong weapon and inadvertently shoots Wright. You’d think that it was common knowledge that police have a tendency of not dealing with church choir members. The self-preservation instinct is very much alive in an occupation known for its interaction with some of our nastiest people. They wear body armor as part of the uniform, after all. You’d think that people would know and act accordingly, but, alas, some don’t, run the risk, and we get exposed to more Black Lives Matter jive.

Rioting and looting in Brooklyn Center, Minn., April 12, 2021.

As a side note, don’t choose a career in law enforcement in this day and age. It’s a risky business for your health and freedom as you stay out of the clutches of vengeful DA’s, the media and politician mobs, defunding campaigns, and judges and juries who could be poisoned by the same thoughts in the heads of the street mobs. Why take the risk?

Risk is not well understood, and in some cases not even considered. The foolishness has resulted in a shattered society, the destructive looniness of the “systemic racism” crusade, and a risky but necessary public service becoming a threat to life, limb, and future for all who aspire to join its ranks. Just think, these same BLM boosters want to strip the people of their guns at a time when they have made the streets an unruly mess. Soon, the only thing left for us to do in the face violent miscreants is to huddle in prayer. But the moment we seek refuge in a sanctuary to do likewise, these very same beleaguered officers will be called upon to arrest us for violating the ban on indoor social gatherings.

What a strange world that we have created for ourselves.

RogerG

August 28, 2020August 28, 2020

A Spring and Summer of Disrupted Lives and Riots

Destroyed sections of downtown Minneapolis after riots on May 28.

Lately, so much has been happening that scarcely a day goes by without a portentous event so serious that the normal Facebook frivolities seem senseless. ‘Tis a spring and summer of disrupted lives due to authoritarian reactions to a virus and viral videos being exploited for revolution.

The tension has been building before Trump. Riots have been roiling since the ludicrous attempt to turn Michael Brown into a hero in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. Parts of Portland has been occupied Isis-like by Antifa for the last few years. Now, we are experiencing viral videos exploited for more revolution by one Marxist group birthed in Ferguson – BLM – and another gaining prominence after a Democrat temper tantrum for losing the 2016 election – Antifa.

Police officers using tear gas on rioters in Ferguson, Mo., August 2014.

The truth in both the George Floyd (Minneapolis) and Jacob Blake (Kenosha) cases is getting murkier by the day. The crown jewel in the uproar over police brutality is the death of George Floyd, and, as it turns out, he had enough fentanyl in his system to kill him nearly four times over. And I quote Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker: “If he were found dead at home alone and no other apparent causes, this could be acceptable to call an OD. Deaths have been certified with levels of 3 [he had 11 ng/mL]”. One side effect of overdose is swelling of the lungs, which might explain Floyd’s cry while in the back seat of the police cruiser, “I can’t breathe”, and this before his escape from the car and the officer’s knee to the neck – something missing from the truncated, mob-inflaming version of the video.

As for Jacob Blake, he’s no Boy Scout. He had an outstanding warrant for sexual assault and this was relayed to the officers by the dispatcher according to department recordings. More importantly, why did he continue to ignore officer requests to stop and walk to the front door of his car, open it, and reach in, all while apparently holding a knife? I wouldn’t doubt the stories of prior convictions in his background.

And then we have the case of 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha this past Tuesday (Aug. 25). The circumstances of his shooting of 3 people is a huge fog bank. I suspect that more will come out both for and against the shooter.

One lesson from the ubiquitous use of smartphone video is the unreliability of them. They’re great for mob and vigilante justice. Too much is left out before the moment “play” is hit or the footage gets to the hands of a zealot. And then, beware, board up your business and flee the city.

That’s where we are at … until the fever breaks in our partisan media or a clear, unmistakable injustice is about to be inflicted that even Anderson Cooper can’t ignore.

I’m reminded of 14-year-old Bobby Fijnje who was charged with multiple counts of child sexual assault in a church child care center in 1989. He was hounded by Dade County DA Janet Reno – yeah, that Janet Reno, later to be Clinton’s AG – as a sexual fiend in a case based on “repressed memories” of children ferreted by a couple of buccaneer child therapists. The brave kid, rather than cut a deal, chose to go to trial and was finally acquitted of all charges. It broke the fever for any more jihads against phantom day care center child abuse – only to leave Reno to prove the Peter principle at Waco and guilty jurisdictions to pay millions in damages to the unjustly convicted.

Bobby Fijnje at age 14 in a picture in his parents’ home.

Child therapist inventing stories of abuse by the use of very leading questions in an interrogation of a 5-year-old.

The flames consume the Branch Davidian compound in 1993 killing 74 people, 23 of them children, in an assault approved by Janet Reno, Clinton’s AG.

Will something like that rescue us from our current mania? We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, if you live in a city or state under Democrat control, keep your options open by preparing to jump in the car at a moment’s notice as if a category 5 hurricane is bearing down on you.

RogerG

July 25, 2020July 31, 2020

Adolescent Rebellion

One thing that I told my sons when they were younger was that the adolescent’s lack of self-control and impulsive judgment when possessed by an adult can lead to a life in and out of the criminal justice system. Now fuel that impetuousness with an enthusiasm for new ideas that aren’t new. Many of the notions have deeply troubled histories, unbeknownst to the excited zealot. So, pile ignorance on top of rashness. Now we have quite the noxious brew of a personality. Have I accurately described the malicious clowns laying waste to the city centers around the country?

Maybe add pampered to the list of personality traits of the miscreants who are pillaging our public squares. Here’s the cartoonist Michael Ramirez’s succinct portrayal that does a better job in making the point.

RogerG

July 14, 2020July 14, 2020

On Abandoning Professional Sports, Part II

MLB front offices take up the mantra of the neo-Marxist Black Lives Matter, July 10.

“Big Sports” in America has chosen to hitch their wagon to a radical political movement founded upon a mountain of untruths, half-truths, and out and out lies. If the NFL, NBA, MLB and MLS want to join the ranks of the perfidious, I refuse to let them drag me into the position of being an unwitting patron of the deceit. I’m cutting my ties with them. I love athletic competition, not athletic competition tied to a neo-Marxist revolution.

Indeed, since all of us are created in the image of God in the Abrahamic tradition, black lives matter, as do all lives. Black voices matter, as do all voices. Of course, some voices matter more than others if what comes out of the mouth is grounded in reason and empirical data. Sadly, that isn’t always true. Some claims carry an unwarranted ring of truth only because they are repeated so often that the unthinking person becomes even more unthinking and prone to political manipulation. Watch Thomas Sowell provide much for your typical social justice warrior to ponder before they rush off to the next statue-toppling bacchanalia.

Of particular note in this 1981 episode of Firing Line is the rank condescension coming from an established east coast liberal, one with all the respectable Ivy League and professional credentials, Harriet F. Pilpel. She joins Buckley in the questioning of Sowell. She exhibited one the most blatant examples of vile noblesse oblige since the days of rampant serfdom. Some of her queries were predicated on her assertion of the inability of poor black parents to make the “best” choice of education for their children. Without saying it, she was all-in for the overseer of the antebellum South to be replaced by the overseer of the education bureaucrat and the self-serving officers of the teachers’ unions. Frankly, it was disgusting.

And these were the architects of the War on Poverty – a “war” we are still waging … and apparently losing. A Princeton degree is not a license to supplant the parental rights of the poor. The results of these overweening social engineers is not encouraging, what with the annihilation of civic order and the nuclear family in poor neighborhoods. It’s currently playing out on our inner-city streets.

Watch Sowell demolish these false preconceptions.

RogerG

July 14, 2020July 14, 2020

On Abandoning Professional Sports

Jul 8, 2020; Orlando, FL, Orlando, FL, USA; MLS players participate in a black power salute before the game between the Inter Miami and the Orlando City at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

More correctly, will we leave them or did they leave us?

Corporate America and our professional sports franchises are surrendering to a malicious assemblage of half-literate, quasi-Marxist fanatics and a similarly ill-educated brood of young middle class, mostly white malcontents. Take your spoiled college snowflake and mix them with incendiary black Marxists and you have the crowd that Big Sports wants to ingratiate.

The NBA will paint “Black Lives Matter” on their courts and permit the mob’s sloganeering on player jerseys. The NFL will denigrate the national anthem with a prior performance of something referred to as the “black national anthem”, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”. “Lift Every Voice” has been weaponized by extremists, and has no place as a prelude to our consecrated national anthem. Expect a scourge of kneeling at every game, not just the opening ones, from now on. MLB and MLS will have their own radicalized displays to mar the joy of athletic competition.

Recently, Premier League Football players sport Black Lives Matter endorsements on their jerseys.

I’ve had enough. How about you?

The most disgusting aspect of our current moment is that the perpetrators are zealots for a pack of lies and disastrous notions. “Systemic racism” is a fabrication to be peddled to the truly ignorant, in spite of – or because of – trillions of dollars of national treasure devoted to K-to-grad-school. Disparities aren’t due to some mysterious, skulking “man” but have an origin in social factors such as lifestyle choices and government efforts to subsidize those personal wrong turns. You won’t hear that coming from our over-priced millionaires in team uniforms and the mandarins in the NFL’s New York City headquarters.

Black lives do matter, as do all lives. And black voices matter, especially, as with all voices, the ones who have given these issues more thought than your pampered social justice warrior wrapping cables around a statue. Thomas Sowell is one important voice … and a black one at that. Rather than watch another gaudy season of Big Sports, pay your dues as a citizen by tuning into the antidote to the shouts of the radicals in the streets. Watch other black voices who put to shame the chants and grotesque behavior that parades across your tv screen.

ESPN’s ESPY awards show co-hosts Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird and Russell Wilson wear t-shirts endorsing the neo-Marxist Black Lives Matter.

Sowell in this video puts the blame for the leftist mania squarely at the feet of an unexamined vision. The vision requires you to believe that bad things are corrected by a new army of government employees peddling more dollars. The vision is rooted in a disparagement of traditions, morality, and institutions such as marriage. The results are horrifying to the most vulnerable, the poor of every stripe.

Check it out, get a cup of coffee for the 53-minute presentation, and be prepared to have your mind stretched. Oh, more videos will follow. Enjoy.

RogerG

July 6, 2020July 7, 2020

The “Systemic Racism” Canard

The scientific method begins with a hypothesis. You notice something happening in the world and ask why. You combine prior experience and facts to stitch together a possible answer. Call it an educated guess as opposed to a mere guess. Then, it must be tested and either confirmed, rejected, or reformulated for further testing. The rules of logic apply at every step along the way. So, I hear the cry of “systemic racism” from agitated marchers in the streets and ask why, why are they saying it? More to the point, is it true? They assert it, but historically speaking, mobs are seldom the founts of goodness, truth, and light.

And mobs they are, if you notice the charred remains of entire blocks in our major cities and vandalized monuments. The angry protesters went right from the post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc fallacy (this therefore that) to the illogic of the general-and-particular confusion (rule of logic: what is true of the particular isn’t necessarily true of the general and vice versa). The angry protesters qualify as mobs not only because of the violence. It’s also because of their track record for irrationality.

Let’s engage the mind of your typical acolyte of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, or your run-of-the-mill college snowflake. The constant pounding of “you (or they) aren’t responsible for your (or their) condition because it’s really the racist man holding you down” is the only truly systemic thing about the mania. The mobsters are voluntary inmates of a reeducation camp, thanks to our schools. They are primed for illogic.

With the unsupported conclusion in tow, they go right to the streets and statues. The only factoid in their cognitive miasma is some number in relation to a group’s proportionality – like police stops in relation to a subject group’s portion of the population. From there, they jump to the “racist man”. Post hoc ergo propter hoc anyone? But could there be any other possible explanation for the factoid other than the racist man? Don’t tax their minds with that question because you will first be met with a pause of blank stares to be followed by spittle-laced shouting in your face or a beating.

They’ve turned themselves into Leftist street thugs. As such, they gloss over any alternative hypothesis that might show the blame to lie with the same policies that they hold so dear. It might come as a shock for them to learn that their beloved idea of massive new social programs has already been tried and found wanting. LBJ announced the War on Poverty and proceeded to bulldoze entire neighborhoods and call it “urban renewal”. Welfare budgets ever since have exploded into mountains of cash and new ways to distribute it.

In the meantime, single parenthood became the mainstay in the black community, swelling from 24% in 1965 to over 70% today. In many cities, it’s worse. Alongside of it came increased dropout rates in school and the workforce. Crime rates soared. The litany is too well-documented to deny. Is it more logical to indict a shadowy “racist man” or recognize the fact that a Sherman’s March has been conducted through the families of the poor, many of them black, aided and abetted by the nanny state? Skin color isn’t the cause of these circumstances, but upbringing can be. The little platoons of civilization – the intact family – is an endangered species. How about that possibility?

There is no room in the mind of a late teen or twenty-something for the possibility after the non-stop pounding of tendentious curriculum, teachers, and profs from K to 16 and beyond. I should know. I was witness to it as a functionary in the Education Borg for 30 years.

The indoctrination created a new default position in formative minds. They are ready to plug single instances like a viral video of individual misbehavior into their preset dogmas. Thus, a single bad cop morphs into a cabal of Klansmen in uniform in all police departments and the hair-on-fire protester-run-amok. One or a few cops says little about all cops in much the same way as one shoplifting shopper fails to say anything about all shoppers. The foolishness of the particular-and-general confusion anyone?

Officer Chauvin with his knee on the back of the neck of George Floyd.

A sample of police officers killed in the line of duty over the course of 2018. At that time, from 2018 to the start of 2019, the number of gunfire deaths of police officers was up 67% from the previous year. Violence against police officers had been escalating since Ferguson 2014.

Many of the adults in positions of authority aren’t any better. They are the equal of the mental midgets in the streets. If you wait to get your wisdom from Pelosi, Schumer, AOC, the Squad, Lefty mayors and governors (of which there are legions), and the army of mercenary and partisan pundits on CNN and MSNBC, you are setting yourself up for a fall. They similarly jump, for instance, from black over-representation in the crime statistics to the breezy scapegoat of “systemic racism”.

It never crossed their minds that the crime numbers come from black victims. This is supported by stats for victims and suspects by race. Looking at the numbers for violent crime, 45% of assault victims are black while 53% of suspects fit the same bill. The same is true for murders – 56 and 62 – and shootings – 71 and 74. The vast majority of complaints are brought by victims who overwhelmingly are black. Pelosi and company can only square this circle by mimicking Groucho Marx: “Who are you going to believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?”

Suspect in the murder of two teenage boys in South Chicago, June 21, 2020.

A wild claim of supplanted and delusionary memory on the part of black victims would fall into the same category of illogic as the hoax of “systemic racism” – unproven, unprovable, and demagogic. Still, it is enough to enrage the inmates of the reeducation camps when they are freed to spill out onto our streets. I don’t blame the dupes. I blame the opportunistic adults, many of them with D’s after their names, many of them in tenured teaching positions, and some with R’s after their names who mistake the mob for the voice of the people. Shame on them all.

RogerG

June 28, 2020June 28, 2020

Hold It, Before You Jump to Conclusions

Derek Chauvin and officers subduing George Floyd on May 25, 2020.

The Derek Chauvin/George Floyd affair may have more than a casual resemblance to the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown matters. The earlier instances appeared on first blush, after they’ve been hastily processed through our biased media mill, to be the actions of Klansmen in uniform or racist vigilantes (George Zimmerman). But wait, if earlier episodes are any indication, more information comes tumbling out later to put the situation in a different light. Such may be at least partially true in the George Floyd case.

Andrew C. McCarthy and Gavrilo David shed new light on the case.

Here are a few things to keep in mind about Chauvin/Floyd:

(1) Floyd was intoxicated on fentanyl and methamphetamine while also suffering from 2 heart conditions. Both substances were present as per toxicology reports.

(2) There are 2 gaps in the body-cam record prior to Floyd being handcuffed and Chauvin’s eventual subduing of Floyd on the ground. Minnesota AG Ellison’s report quickly passes over the gaps.

(3) Floyd both actively and passively resisted arrest.

(4) The officers at the scene expressed concerns about a condition called “excited delirium syndrome” (ExDS) on the part of Floyd. It’s a condition that is recognized in professional psychiatric manuals and in Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) policy. The condition can be lethal for suspect and officer. The policy calls for restraint of the suspect in a manner similar to the one used.

(5) Floyd claimed he couldn’t breathe long before Chauvin placed his knee on the back of his neck. Besides, the remaining video shows Floyd turning his neck under Chauvin’s knee. This circumstance raises questions about lethality due to asphyxiation.

(6) Floyd didn’t live a life according to the Boy Scout oath. He had a history of criminal convictions. While such a past isn’t dispositive in this particular case, it sheds light on a distressing factor in today’s America: namely, social pathologies aren’t neatly distributed according to a group’s proportion of the population. A large number of criminal activities leads to a large number of run-ins with police and increases the chances of injury from the criminal activity or police efforts to bring the suspect into custody. Being law-abiding has its health benefits.

Does any of this exonerate the officers? It’s hard to tell at this point. All I know is that I smell a rat. The hive of race demagogues is ever-ready to pounce, riot, pillage, destroy, hurt others, and kill. The sad history of lynching has never left us. Only in this case, the targets are the cops.

Before you attempt to hang somebody, make sure that you have the story right.

RogerG