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Protestors: You’ve Been Duped
It’s been a lousy few months for everyone, especially for the black community. You’ve experienced more illness from COVID-19 than almost any other group. You lost your jobs right after the economy expanded and gave you work. Then you were stuck at home for weeks on end. And then George Floyd was killed. And your world exploded.
Your initial reaction is no surprise to many of us—for years you’ve listened to the litany of anger against law enforcement, so it only seemed right to join a protest. So you did. Except that in these protests, you can’t see the truth: you’re being used, so used.
What do I mean? For those of you who are sincere about protesting, I respect your right to do it. The problem is that, possibly without intending to, you are providing cover for criminals and terrorists. Those people who are burning down buildings in your town, who are attacking the police who want to protect your parents, who are destroying the businesses where you shop—they are using you. As you mingle with your friends, holding up signs, calling out for justice, the criminals are right there with you, hiding among you, destroying everything that you cherish—those monuments to your lives. And they don’t care that they are hurting you—they only want devastation and chaos.
We can argue about whether these terrorists are local or from out of town. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that they don’t care a fig about social justice, and they don’t care about you. They are wiping out any chance for justice to rule, because they are using you as shields so they can meet their agenda which has nothing to do with justice, but only with annihilating any semblance of law.
That’s the truth of what’s happening. If you care about any of these outcomes, what can you do? One option is to stop the protests. Give law enforcement an opportunity to round up the real anarchists; once they are shut down, you can continue your protests, if you are so motivated.
Or if you don’t want to stop, go home before dark. You have several hours to make your point during daylight; let those who want to destroy your homes be arrested. Watch the action on TV. This is an opportunity to ensure that law enforcement actually works for you! Let the police and National Guard know that you want these monsters thrown in jail, and you won’t support them.
Protest anarchy. That’s demonstrating true power.
Published in Culture
It would be worthwhile to discuss the poor health outcomes of the black-American community. Or rather, it could be. Quite likely, the poor health outcomes are the result of fatherless homes (poor whites without dads also have notoriously bad health outcomes). The discussion would inevitably become about systematic racism and citing studies about how single mothers often give their kids junk food would be deemed racist. The studies could be done by black-Americans but that wouldn’t matter.
As another great post on Ricochet put it, ‘lather, rinse, repeat’.
Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell are the best writers on the victimhood mentality. Particularly as it applies to black-Americans.
A lot of the protesters are bored young people looking for some excitement. They are a lot like certain spectators at a boxing match, a UFC gladiator fight, or a NASCAR race. Being part of an expressly or potentially violent event gets the adrenalin flowing, especially when seeing blood or witnessing death is a possibility.
These riots are not about a dead black guy, not anymore. And the Covid shutdowns are not about a virus with a 99% survival rate, either. They’re about destabilizing the U.S.
This is from the Austin group on Reddit:
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And pallets of bricks are mysteriously appearing in various cities. Here are two, but I’ve seen others, including one in North Carolina:
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This one is at a well known intersection in Dallas:
Antifa is in Stage 2 Communist revolution playbook.
They are instigating the riots. They have been working up to this for years, and no one is talking about.
I have spent the last ten years studying insurgencies and revolutions this is all straight from the textbooks. Maos little red book has been read by a lot of these people.
Oh and I have no doubt they have received money and training from China and Russia.
Maybe it won’t happen until the 73% of people in this country who are white realize, “White lives matter too. All lives matter.” We are all Americans living under a constitution that has no race. It is a crying out loud shame that we have put up with politicians who pander to racism in order to garner votes. I keep hoping that one day black voters will realize leftists only want to keep them on the plantation instead of treating them like the equals they are. Blacks badly need a powerful and respected leader who will inspire them to be their best and ignore those who appeal to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
I taught medical students for 15 years. A number of them were black, from Africa and the West Indies, mostly. Two American black kids. One flunked out in spite of the other kids trying to help him. Then other kid was so weird that I was afraid he was schizophrenic. He could not take a history from patients and one woman threw him out of her room at University Hospital. Eventually, I figured out that his parents were black panther members from Oakland and he did not know how to talk to white people.
I eventually wrote up a script for him to use when taking a history from an adult patient. His affect was still a bit odd but he seemed to get along with his classmates OK. It was older adults he could not talk to. I hope he went into Pathology, which is often the spot for those with no social graces.
The non-American blacks had a hard time understanding American blacks. I also had a black dental hygienist. She was Jewish, born in Ethiopia and one of the Ethiopian Jews rescued by Israel when she was a child. She was married to a white Jewish guy and they visited Israel every year. She told me she got hate stares from black women when she was out with her husband. They lived in Irvine, where the media home is about a million dollars but she still got the stares.
I also worked a bit examining military recruits some of whom were black. Many were African. American black males have a high prison rate which may be one reason we saw a small number. Also, of course, there may not be as much interest in the military today even though it is the most integrated area of American society. Some of the African kids were impressive. Of course they are selected but so are medical students. One Nigerian joining the Army Reserves has a BS in Mechanical Engineering and MS in Industrial Engineering. He said, in Nigeria , he had a choice of Engineering or Optometry.
Not into leaders so much. Couldn’t the culture just move away from this nonsense without being led by somebody?
One of my daughters taught beginning Spanish for a semester at Tulane University when she was working on her Masters. One of her students was a black girl who had a hard time keeping up with the class. My daughter liked her, and spent hours of after class helping her but to no avail as the girl had an inadequate high school education where she had been promoted in years when she should have been left back. To say she was unqualified to go to college is putting it mildly, but affirmative action had reared its ugly head. The result was a sweet girl who felt completely inadequate and increasingly depressed. She ended up in a suicide attempt which ended any desire on my daughter’s part to become a teacher. When my daughter found out about her months later, she called me crying hysterically.
I don’t know why I wrote this other than your experience with the medical students reminded me. There are no doubt those who will disagree with me, but it seems to me that it does no one a favor to create unrealistic expectations when they might excel quite well in another area. By the way, my daughter had another black student who did very well in the class, so her one failed student was not indicative of an entire race.
We do a terrible disservice to those students who get moved forward when they aren’t prepared. It’s devastating for many of them, because they have no idea how much the odds are against their success. In one way, their failures are the fault of those who thought they were helping them but failed them.
It happens with students of all colors including white. Our colleges have many kids who are there because of societal pressure to go to college who never graduate.
Look back through history where so many great leaders have led their people through turmoil. Would Britain, for example, have capitulated to Hitler had it been lead by Halifax instead of Churchill? Effective leaders can inspire us to be better human beings, but they can inspire us for the worse too. The hated Hitler was just such a leader to his own people.
You know, over the weekend I was persuaded by the initial medical report that Floyde did not die from asphyxiation. And so I argued it was a rush to judgement against the cope. I want to retract that after today’s news. Today Dr. Baden in an independent examination ruled he did die from asphyxiation. The cops were definitely culpable.
There are protestors, and there are insurrcectionists who show up and plan riots behind the cover of the peaceful demonstrators. Some of whom are accomplices, who won’t commit violent acts themselves, but will place themselves to cover attacks and escapes. The are physically mixed with the protestors, and regard innocent casualties as a win.
It’s a dilemma. We need to be able to “peacefully assemble,” etc. In this war, if we do peacefully assemble, as our right and not asking the authorities for permisson but we do not vet others in our protest, don’t actively exclude the insurrectionists and report them to the authorities we are useful idiots. If we aren’t useful idiots, we may well get on the enemies list. Not as high up as the cops, but if a situation is chaotic and the opportunity arises, someone could deliberately attack us as collaborators.
Yes. Back in the ’60s “let’s go to the riots” was a fairly common thing to hear.
Dr. Baden is the pathologist who decided that Epstein didn’t hang himself. That aside, celebrity pathologists and sensational trials have gone together since the dawn of forensic pathology.
Postscript: Look up Bernard Spilsbury. Celebrity, pioneer in the field, and ultimately became an embarrassment or worse:
True. I also am inclined to believe Epstein didn’t kill himself. I trust Baden.
I think there is a legitimate complaint that (poor) black-Americans are being shortchanged in terms of their educational opportunities in this country. Whites as well but I suspect that it’s a bit worse for blacks. Rather than address the need to fight teacher’s unions and demand that black students study more, we use affirmative action and then act surprised when blacks feel alienated and depressed.
Academia has failed absolutely everyone in this country.
Being a celebrity pathologist doesn’t automatically mean you’re wrong. FWIW, he was an expert witness for the defense in O.J. Simpson’s murder trial.
Baden’s got a long association with Crump, and did the preposterous second autopsy in the Michael Brown trial; he’s been mentioned often at Conservative Tree House.
Interestingly, several of Crump’s cases involve an African-American actress and activist named Vanessa Baden. No relation I’m aware of; Michael Baden’s first wife was Jewish, his second wife is white.
Agreed. For years, Tea Party protesters turned agitators in to the police or humiliated them on camera. The racists and violent plants received no quarter, and deserved none. They weren’t just left to find useful idiots in the crowd to further their agenda. It sounds like federal counter-intelligence types are lit up chasing these terror dogs down. It’s a shame that not all protesters can be as sharp as the Tea Party.
[Redacted]
The end to that story, so twists everything.
Pablo supports the protests, but he just wished the protests hadn’t destroyed his place?
What? better, if the destruction was one block down and he dodged the bullet?
And that stupid girl: they should have made her say that comment to Pablo’s face. She wouldn’t have had the courage to do that. The platitudes and talking points are so easy when you aren’t face to face.
The random montage of factoids is disaggregated. It creates a distorted narrative ricocheting within the mind of a thinking person like bullets in a gothic cathedral.
The story (from somewhere else) that breaks my heart is the one about the homeless man, and the looters burned everything he had, which wasn’t much, but it was every comfort he had scavenged and needed. He was no capitalist.
These a$$holes can’t even discern their true targets.
Maybe they think (if they think at all) Reparations by fire. Who pays? Anyone but me.
It is a plan by evil authors who essentially punk foolish non-thinking pawns to poorly execute their plan. Which is what makes it so effective. The pawns are truly clueless.
Eventually, the evil authors will be uncovered.
They were robbed of their self-respect as part of The War on Poverty. That is what is so sad. That is the true crime, that their destruction was cloaked within promises of support and goodwill, but we’re nothing of the kind.
They just don’t want to see it. It is too painful.
The solution to your horrendous life is often hidden within the most painful place to look.
But like heroin addicts, the high ends, and you need another hit.
Pathology lol!
Wow, so much like a prophet from 2017.
True dat about the gun laws: the left knows they’re screwed, that’s why they try to ban guns, magazines, ammo.
Exactly why the right says, no way. Anyone with a moderate understanding of humanity knows it.
Edit your first sentence thus: “I really don’t get people.” Then it all becomes clear.
Agree with all you say, @julespa. I had the same thought about that girl–so say that to his face–but she’d not have the nerve.
Unfortunately I am skeptical that the Chinese, or Russians are giving them much funding. Instruction and training no doubt, but not direct funding. More likely it is the American political donor class; corporations and wealthy individuals funding them via donations to non-profits of a social justice bent. The tech-billionaires and their SJW trophy wives may be more enthrall to Mao’s little red book than the Chinese themselves.