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A great read Ben , Over the weekend I had my “Tokyo Marathon” moment. For weeks I have wondered , what the hell is the endgame here. I watch the cities burn and word violence redefined to not include destruction of property , the entire media sings out of the EXACT same hymn book that what we are all watching is nonviolent it has been surreal.
It was this weekend listening Lebron James talking about the NBA’s protest of cancelled games for “Social Justice” that caught my attention —-I was finally going to hear what the protesters wanted…other than defunding the police. He wanted the league to perform a voting drive and use its arenas as voting places , I presume to defeat Donald Trump—it hit me like a ton of bricks. All this coordination by the media the renfields of the party and the party itself , and the mayors of all these cities who have done nothing but cheerlead as their own cities burn—this is all about defeating Donald Trump in November. That’s it - nothing more nothing less.
Why am I seeing this now? Police shootings have remained constant, the numbers by race have also been the same for a decade at least. The National media is devoting the lions share to these stories now because they are building a narrative that this is Donald Trumps America where “ The State” kills black people simply because they are black. The facts that none of these cops involved work for the Feds and almost all work for a Democratic mayor - those facts have no place in the narrative. We are all asked to give a hurumph to BLM and we do…and they do. None of this will do anything to help black lives —-they will damage the communities in a way that will take decades to recover. More on that later.
Details of Breonna Taylor’s involvement in a drug ring in Louisville came out last week , a drug ring that deals crack and heroine in the minority community ,ruining hundreds of black lives and ending several more I am sure. Not surprisingly none of these details were picked up and covered in the national media. No protests for deaths of blacks killed by these overdoses or killed in these cities with murder rates up over 100% from last year…including truly innocent people and several small children as the police stop policing.
I have not heard a single public service mention of complying with police demands and making sure they can see your hands at all time - cause following that simple rule will make sure 100% you will survive any encounter with law enforcement.
I am taking steps to move my wealth management practice from the city to the burbs , in my call with management I found I am not the only one , far from it. I have floated the idea to clients in almost every call the past 2 weeks. To a person, my clients have said they are relieved because they did not want to come downtown for meetings and didn’t know how to ask if I would do a house call.
Service industries downtown employ many of our inner city residents , they are closing by the dozen in Louisville and I believe we are in the first inning. The events of this summer are going to be devastating to our inner city community. The powers that be could care less as long as they win in November, you know something something eggs and something something omelettes. The Professional class will flee the urban area’s in droves and the service businesses that rely on them will close. Years later the media renfields will in unison claim it was because of Covid.
Don’t even get me started on Trump , and you are right, he is just playing to his base and throwing more ammo at the powers that be on the other side because he believes it will drive more disgusted voters into his arms. We are being played , it is intentional, and the consequences are dire at every level.
I’m worried we get our own version of The Troubles either way.
Proverbs 11:29 He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind…
Them that seeks division and war should spend some time watching Band of Brothers.
Was intending to write a big long response to this that even included an excerpt from a poem — but, upon reflection, I am deeply conflicted and confused by our current moment, as I suspect many people are if they don’t have the armor of rigid ideology, so I’ve decided to note one thing only:
I am so happy you used a specific historical analogy to make a point that was not the “US-as-Weimar” or “US-as-Roman Republic” — tropes that irritates me to an extreme degree.
My first draft used that Proverbs quote instead of the Hosea “sow the wind, reap the whirlwind” quote. Great minds …
It’s odd to me that the 1968 France analogy isn’t getting more play. For one thing, Charles de Gaulle was easily as weird as Donald Trump.
This:
==> "Portland mayor Ted Wheeler, who refuses to defund the police in the way that Portland protesters mean the word (i.e. abolish), should resign. AND he should run in the special election called to replace him. AND the Portland protesters should put up their own candidate who will, in fact, defund the police to oblivion. Then vote. Let’s do this next week. Let’s see who the people of Portland put into office. Either the dog catches the car or the car runs over the dog. Either way, the story arc of this particular protest narrative ends there.
We make it not fun by removing the thrill of the chase and the thrill of the fight – we contain the rioters and the night time looters – so that all that is left is the boredom of walking around and yelling into the wind all night. We accomplish this with numbers and curfews. We request the assistance of the National Guard – of course we request the assistance of the National Guard! – so that we have the sheer numbers of trained personnel to contain the bullshit looters and keep out the bullshit “militias”.
That’s how we work our way through this.
We accommodate protester voice through new elections/plebiscites, and we contain criminal tag-alongs with sheer numbers of trained public safety officers." <==
Enough, let’s see if people really want to fully defund the police. Let’s see how popular zero police protection is as policy?
What I’ve seen all along is that almost everyone agrees with the non-violent protests against the specific police actions we’ve witnessed on TV and the idea of police targeting blacks. Away from some fringe crazies, I haven’t heard any public official say otherwise - or anyone in my all-over-the-policial-map friends and relatives - not one.
So great, we all agree that bad is bad. What I haven’t seen is, until “defund the police” took off, any specific policy response ideas. It’s been protest as identity and virtue signaling that spiraled into violence and, yes, death and destruction. And for that, sorry, you can hate me and think I’m a T supporter (I’m not), I blame mainly the left. But now everyone’s getting in on the fun - sigh.
But still, what is the policy people want? Let’s have the first vote Ben suggests (and have it everywhere) - defund or not? Then, maybe, we can have more votes till we get to a reasonable response. I have my ideas, but they’re not important; what is important is that we find an answer within the system we have.
I’m not sure I fully understand the process of Ben’s BITFD, but I kinda think he says we make the political parties irrelevant by not playing their game. So let’s not play their game of violence-in-the-street to get them votes; let force real votes on real issues to get answers.
Side note, didn’t there use to be an edit button for these comment that allowed - for several minutes anyway - one to edit their comments? My above comment doesn’t make it clear where Ben’s quote stops (after “public safety officers” in bold) and my, less important, comments begin, but I can’t find an edit button to fix that.
Seems like every week I read one of your pieces and say “this is Ben’s best yet”. It’s unusual to see a guy’s fastball keep getting better as the season progresses, but here we are.
The party holding the constitutional right of legal violence has a consequent duty to “win” by “overwhelming force” if necessary. If the goal of the other party is to meet any violence with an escalation of violence, I fear how this “ends”.
Endemic lawlessness and depravity has shown itself a sure way to provoke the wrath of God on a society.